The Good Chase (20 page)

“It's kind of a strange coincidence I ran into you here, Byrne, considering you were the one who told me about Shea here.”

“You did?” she said to Byrne.

“I knew he loved whisky,” Byrne replied, “and I thought he'd appreciate what you knew.”

Pierce was eyeing them, a finger wagging back and forth. “And you two know each other?”

Byrne stayed silent. He'd let Shea answer that one. All she said was “yes.”

Pierce's hand dropped and he said nothing more. Byrne had always liked that about him—his tact and decorum, the politeness that made you want to open up to him.

“Will you two excuse me?” she asked, and then turned away before either of the men could answer. She went to a middle-aged man with a tattooed neck and pointed to the bar, clearly asking him to take over.

“What's all this about?” Byrne asked, throwing a glance at Shea as she moved deeper into the crowded bar.

Pierce picked up his glass. “I want her to work for me.”

Byrne couldn't hide his surprise. “And you two have talked about that before?”

“Once.”

Why hadn't Shea mentioned this? Not that she was required to or that she owed him anything, but when she was talking about wanting to expand beyond the Amber and dreaming of opening her own distillery, wouldn't something like this have come up? Then he remembered her going all quiet at one point, and him getting the distinct impression that she was glossing over something.

“She turned you down?” Byrne asked.

Pierce's lips flattened as he nodded. “But I don't give up. Not when I know I'm right.”

And the CEO hadn't sent one of his executives or middle managers to do the pitching. This hunter was going after the deal himself. It was one of the many reasons why Byrne respected him so much.

Byrne didn't want to prod. This was Shea's thing, and he hoped that if she wanted to tell him, she'd do so when she was ready.

Byrne raised his glass to Pierce. “To new deals then.”

Pierce took his first sip of the whisky. “Holy shit. That's good stuff. She pick that out for you?”

“Not exactly,” Byrne mumbled into the glass, then swallowed his own taste.
Holy shit
was right. He chewed it for a bit at the back of his tongue and pictured Shea doing the same. Pictured her drinking this in some secret, dusty warehouse filled with barrels, and then being equal parts smug and gleeful over having snagged such a special bottle.

“So.” Pierce took another mouthful, teeth bared in appreciation. He nudged his chin over to where Shea was weaving through the tables. “You two are together?”

Would be dumb of Byrne to deny anything was going on. He and Pierce knew each other too well. Resting his elbows on the bar, Byrne considered how to answer. “I hope so.”

Pierce smiled with his eyes, a restrained expression that reminded Byrne of his own father, who smiled so very little.

“It was great until I walked in here,” Byrne added, not really sure why, only that he felt the need to explain to someone. “I think I fucked up.”

“Why would you think that?”

Byrne swirled the brown liquid in his glass. “What you and I have, what we work for every day and what we've earned, it makes her uncomfortable.”

“You're talking about money.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Pierce regarded him over his glass, then pulled the drink away and considered the whisky sloshing inside. “Huh,” he said again, and Byrne could practically see his brain gears churning.

“She'll talk to you,” Byrne said, beckoning to the tattooed guy behind the bar for the check, “after I leave.”

Byrne scrawled his signature on the bottom of the outrageous check, tipping twenty percent.

He looked out over the bar, filled with people dressed to the nines, many of them drinking drinks just because they were expensive, to say they could. To buy them for other people they wanted to impress: a date, an investor, a client, a family member.

“Huh,” Pierce said yet again.

“Listen, it was great to see you. I hope it goes well for you tonight.”

Pierce nodded sagely. “And you, too.”

Byrne laughed, though it sort of hurt.

As he slid off the bar stool, he found Shea in the very center of the main room. Four guys in their midtwenties—investment bankers, most likely, entry-level by the cloud of cockiness and impending drunkenness hanging over them—had commandeered the big armchairs surrounding a low stone table. One was holding the Amber's giant menu with one hand and trying to snake the other around Shea's ass, to the lip-smacking, obnoxious glee of his friends.

Byrne's blood began a slow boil, but then he watched Shea easily step away from the touch. Shoulders back, she established a new position. She shot the asshole a coolly professional stare and said some words to him Byrne couldn't hear. The offending little shit looked appropriately abashed.

And Byrne suddenly got it. Why she didn't like him coming in here, all smiling and flirting so openly. Because she probably had to deal with that crap nightly, and encouraging one man—even if it was a man she'd been sleeping with, laughing with, talking with—could send the absolute wrong kind of message to anyone else even considering hitting on her.

She started to walk away from the center table, her expression darkening, but then she caught sight of Byrne standing near the door, and she stopped.

Apologizing across a loud room of people wasn't possible. Neither was telling her how he felt. So he did what came naturally, and that was putting his hand over his heart, and giving her a nod to convey his regret over having come.

Hopefully she would know what he meant.

*   *   *

S
hea watched Byrne leave the Amber, the fine clothes he likely thought were “casual” disappearing into the crowd packed near the hostess stand. And then he was out the door. Gone.

She wanted to chase after him, grab him right there in the middle of these tipsy strangers and throw her arms around him. Which was the complete opposite of what she'd wanted to do after he'd come to the Amber without notice when he knew her personal and professional boundaries perfectly well.

You name it, she'd felt it when she'd looked over and found him sitting there at the end of her bar. Shocked. Off balance. Excited. Mortified. Confused. Frozen.

Earlier that day he'd texted to tell her that his plane from the Caribbean had been severely delayed and that he wouldn't see her until tomorrow. Sighing in disappointment, she'd removed her cell phone from her pocket and stashed it in her office.

Now, instead of delivering the center table's order to the bar—the obnoxious little prick who'd grabbed her ass could wait another five minutes—she went down the back hallway and ducked into her office. She spun the combination on her desk safe and dug into her purse for her phone.

There it was, a voice message from Byrne, time-stamped not even an hour ago:
I'm home. I really want to see you. I'm coming to the Amber. I hope it's okay. Call back if it's not.

Hell and damn.

She stared down at the phone, wondering if she should call him right now, but then decided against it. The conversation she wanted to have with him deserved more than a quick ring between toting around trays and glasses.

Tossing her phone back into her purse and then locking the safe, she headed back out to the noisy bar, thinking of Byrne and wanting the work night to be over.

Pierce Whitten had commandeered Byrne's former seat. He was enjoying the expensive whisky by the looks of it, too. She felt conflicted. On one hand she was extremely curious about why Whitten had returned. On the other hand, her conscience was telling her that no amount of money he offered could get her to compromise her principles, and that she should just ignore him tonight.

The first hand won out.

“Stick around behind the bar, Dean,” she told her employee. “I need to talk to someone.”

Dean nodded, and Shea blocked out the expressions of disappointment coming from the four suits who'd previously been so eager to eavesdrop on her interaction with Byrne.

“Hello again, Pierce.” She stretched out her hand. “Sorry about before. You caught me by surprise. More than your first visit.”

“Hello.” He shook her hand briefly. “I see you're rather busy tonight, and I suppose it's my fault for dropping in unexpectedly on a Thursday, so I won't take up much of your time.”

He didn't ask if they could go someplace quieter, which would've meant that he really did want a lot of her time, so she said, “All right. How can I help you?”

He smiled, and it was professional and warm, not remotely oily or contrived. “I'll just say it. Hell, I'll just admit it. We did a shitty job before. I did a shitty job of selling my own product to you.”

“No, that's not—”

“Now that I've talked to you more, Shea, now that I've done even more research on you, and now that I've really watched how you interact with your customers”—he raised dubious eyebrows at the obnoxious center table—“I've come to the conclusion that I took the wrong approach before. I went home that night after leaving here and thought about your reaction to and what you had to say about my media outlets. I talked with Linda about the doubt we saw in your eyes, and we came up with something else. So here's my new sales pitch—”

She held up a hand. “Wait. But you're still proposing the same thing?”

“Same proposal, along with anything else you feel we could collaborate on under the Right Hemisphere umbrella. I still want a sit-down with you, hear what you have to say. I want to know what you want and how we can help make that happen.”

An image of the Gleann farm, captured in sunset with encroaching rain close behind, came to her so strongly she could smell the sweet grass and the pungent tang of the whiskey's sour mash seeping out from the barn distillery. She inhaled long and slow.

“Go on,” she said.

“I want to expand our market beyond the upper-class male demographic. I want to appeal to women as well. I also want men to respect powerful women and realize how knowledgeable, interesting women make their lives better. I want them first to be shocked as hell that a woman knows as much as you do about a subject that is so typically male, and then I want them to bow down in worship. I want women to turn an eye to my products because they applaud you and because they want to expand their own horizons. That's not going to happen if all I have is a bunch of guys spouting off to more guys. I want intelligent, determined, strong women at the core of my new arm of business, and I want you to be my queen, so to speak.”

He clapped his hands together once like he was finished, but then quickly added, “Oh, money. You probably want to know about money. There's the potential for a lot of it. And you'll benefit just as much as I will.” Now he nodded and crossed his arms. “There. I'm done.”

She looked around the Amber, the place she built with her own hands but with someone else's bank account. For the first time, the dream of the distillery felt tangible and achievable.

When she looked back at Pierce, she saw the ghost of Byrne sitting on that chair.

“So . . .” She chose her words carefully, not really knowing how to address this. It was yet another blurring of the lines between personal and professional. “Byrne told you about me?”

“He made me aware of you, yes.”

And Byrne knew of her dream, knew how much it would cost and that she was nearly desperate to break away from the Amber. How much of a hand in all this did he have?

“I have to ask. Did Byrne put you up to this proposal?”

“No one puts me up to anything, Shea. You don't get to where I am by following someone else.”

Made perfect sense.

“I'm trying to get my timeline straight,” she said. “When did he tell you about me?”

“At Yellin's party.”

“You were there?”

He smiled. “I was. I even got a drink from you, at Byrne's suggestion.”

“I'm sorry. I come across so many faces, it takes a lot for me to remember one or two.”

He waved her off. “It was late at night, but I'd only just arrived. Byrne and I hadn't run across each other in a while and we got to talking. I said I wanted a good drink and he pointed to where you were, said you really knew your stuff, that you were famous. So of course, as a Scotch whisky lover, I had to see for myself.”

Shea dropped her gaze to the bar top. This had all happened
after
she'd gotten annoyed by Byrne's behavior at Yellin's and had turned his begging eyes and pleading words away. And before she'd ever even told him about the farm and the distillery. Before they'd reconnected in Gleann. Before they'd ever really talked.

And yet he'd still brought her to Pierce Whitten's attention.

“Is Byrne your banker?” she asked. Because that connection would just be too weird.

Pierce laughed low. “No. We met through mutual business acquaintances five or so years ago at some boring event or another. Let's just say we had a very interesting conversation in which we discovered some personal similarities, and the whole thing may have involved a hell of a lot of this.” He hefted his now-empty glass. “Only not nearly as fine.”

Ah, male bonding. Couldn't be called such if it didn't involve alcohol.

“I feel like it bothers you,” Pierce added, “that he told me about you?”

“No, it doesn't.” It would have, if Byrne had secretly asked Pierce to do her some sort of favor, knowing how she had her own dreams and wanted to break away from Douglas Lynch and the whole “silent partner” thing. But because of the timing, it didn't sound that way at all.

Still, she was confused by Byrne's motives. He'd been frustrated and angry at her rejection of him at Yellin's party, and yet he went on to be gracious toward her in front of Whitten.