It was while I was in the middle of scraping burned food off the stove that I felt someone watching me. I turned to find Jackson standing in the doorway, a bottle in one hand and two highball glasses in the other.
He said, “Since you like Boudreaux Bourbon so much, I thought you might want to try something special.”
He lifted the bottle, a beautiful piece of cut crystal filled with an amber liquid so dark it was nearly brown. The gold label read, “Heritage 30 Year.”
My eyes widened. “I thought that stuff was an urban legend!”
Jackson moved from the doorway to the large marble island in the middle of the kitchen and set the bottle and glasses down. He’d removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. I still couldn’t get over how different he looked, though his hair was trying its hardest to return to its former state of disarray. Several unruly dark locks flopped over his forehead in an appealing, boyish way.
He said, “It’s an orphan from one of only a few dozen barrels made with this particular mash bill. An experiment that was ended when my father opened the barrels after ten years and declared it shit. The rest of the barrels were sold to a competitor for blending, but one was misplaced, found in the back of the rickhouse a few years ago. Turns out the mash bill was perfect, but it needed a lot longer to age than the other recipes.”
I heard my mother’s voice telling me, Some caterpillars need more time to turn into butterflies than others when I asked her why, at fifteen, I didn’t have boobs like all my friends. Like the Heritage 30 Year, I was a late bloomer.
It was both strange and strangely comforting to find I had something in common with a rare, expensive liquor.
Jackson uncorked the bottle, poured a precise measure into each glass, and put the corked cap back on. He picked up one glass, swirled the bourbon, sniffed it, and then held it out to me.
“Tell me what you smell.”
Unsure if this was a test of some kind, I set down the sponge I was holding, walked over to him, took the glass, held it to my nose, and inhaled. Aromas of caramel, toasted oak, vanilla, maple, dried apricots and lemon zest filled my nostrils. My eyes drifted shut in bliss. I said, “I smell heaven.”
Jackson chuckled. When I opened my eyes he was smiling. “I thought heaven was a library filled with every book ever written.”
Surprised he’d remembered that comment, I smiled back at him. “You have to have something good to drink while you’re reading a good book, Mr. Boudreaux.”
His smile slowly faded. He took up his own glass and lifted it to his mouth. He kept his gaze on me as he took a sip, swallowed, then set the glass back down. He slowly licked his lips and then said huskily, “Jackson.”
Hell’s bells, the man should work as a phone-sex operator! That voice!
I cleared my throat. “Right. Jackson. Sorry.”
“Have I said something to offend you again?” he asked.
I blinked. “No. Why?”
His gaze dropped to my cheeks. “Because your face gets flushed when you’re mad.”
“Or embarrassed,” I corrected. “I get it from my father’s side. You could always tell when he was feeling something strong because his cheeks would go red as Rudolph’s nose.”
Jackson let that bizarre admission hang between us for a moment, watching as the flush spread from my cheeks and down my neck. Then in a low voice, he asked, “Why would you be embarrassed that I told you to call me by my first name?”
Gee, let’s see, it could be that your porn actor’s voice could induce spontaneous orgasms in women who remember what sex was like, or that you have this dominant way of giving orders that I’m starting to find less annoying and more interesting, or that watching you lick your lips has set off a nuclear detonation between my legs.
Instead of saying any of those insane thoughts aloud, I simply threw my head back and chugged the bourbon in my glass. “Whew!” I exclaimed when I was finished. “That possum’s on the stump!”
Jackson slowly raised his brows.
“It means it doesn’t get any better than that,” I said hastily, feeling like a class A idiot.
Jackson said, “I know what it means. I’m just wondering what’s got you so riled up.” Then he stared at me, his eyes burning like blue blazes.
I stammered, “I—I’m uh . . . tired. I get kinda loopy when I’m tired.”
Dear God, if you will please help me out and grant me the power of invisibility or cause my sudden death from something quick and painless, I’d be much obliged.
But God was probably having much too good a time watching me squirm to grant my wish. I stood there looking at Jackson while he looked back at me, neither of us saying anything.