Page 18 of The Prince Who Loved Me

She led him out the kitchen door to the employee parking lot. Soon they were driving down the darkened back roads of Claremont. Sebastien barely saw the dirt road that marked the path to Belle’s distillery before Brandi turned onto the hidden street and slowed down.

Her headlights lit the buildings where a couple of Belle’s employees were checking the gages on one of the large machines. Ona shielded her eyes from the glare, then wavedthen turned back to her job.

“You have employees working here this late?” Sebastien asked.

“Yeah, they volunteered to finish up.” She took a deep breath. “Just smell that air.”

Sebastien obliged, filling his lungs with the outside. The air held a sweetness and a faint note of smoke, plus the scent of fresh grass and nature. A picture came to mind, nothing tangible, but one he’d like to try to draw anyway. Shapes and shading and negative space with unsuspecting dashes of color.

“Come on.” Brandi led Sebastien to an open building made of stone. She flipped the light switch. Bare bulbs dangled overhead.

Large round barrels sat on the floor next to stacked wooden boxes of glass containers, all holding that rundown look, as if they had been alive for centuries and were waiting for a cup of coffee and a nap. Dust hung from the pipes near the ceiling. Unlike the spring personality of the air outside, these walls held a musty odor.

“Look at this.” Brandi stepped into the space. “Look at how old this equipment is.”

“It looks like it’s been around since your Grandma was born.”

“It might have been.” She ran her hand down the side of a metal container a few inches taller than she was. “I don’t want to mess with the whiskey. Belle’s has been around for so long that changing the recipe would be bad for business. I want to investigate and see when this equipment was used, when it changed. I bet Rob could help me with the research.”

“Or I could.” He wasn’t jealous of Rob and his background in historical research. No. Not at all.

“It might be too boring for you.” Brandi gave him a distracted smile, her eyes still on the machine. “There are waysto speed up the brewing process, but I wouldn’t know for a while how badly I messed things up since whiskey has to sit for a few years. Or if Belle’s could recover afterward.”

It killed his heart when she said things like that. She was so matter of fact that it wasn’t a tease for encouragement. She honestly believed it things went awry when she got involved. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

“What?” She didn’t seem to know what ticked him off. “I know, I shouldn’t upgrade anything. You’re right. Belle’s could produce more in a shorter period of time, and Grandma’s check gives me the money to do it without having to go over budget concerns with Wendy. But if it could be done, why hadn’t it been done already?”

“I’m not saying that at all. Modernizing is a great idea. Thinking you mess things up is not.”

“You know how I am.” She shrugged it off, then rubbed her thumb against the base of her ring finger.

The tell-tale Brandi sign that something was on her mind. Sebastien didn’t even know if she was aware she did that. He waited for her to figure it out.

“There’s something else I want to show you,” she said.

“Lead on.”

He followed her to an outbuilding with no windows and a padlock on the door.

She put her hand on the knob and pierced him with her green-brown gaze. “If you think this is a stupid idea, lie to me and tell me you love it. No, don’t do that. Tell me the truth. I trust you. No, lie to me. I don’t know if I can handle the truth.”

“Hey.” Sebastien put his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be great. Because you’re great, and you do great things.”

She gave a muffled laugh and unlocked the door.

The room looked like a mad science lab. Long tubesstretched along the floor, curling around crates with empty glass bottles. Large vats sat next to other pieces of equipment and the hum of a refrigerator filled the space. He sniffed the air. Not as musty as the old equipment.

He stopped next to a wooden contraption with a horizontal handle. “Is this a butter churner? You want to make butter?”

“It’s a fruit press.”

“What’s it for?”

“Pressing fruit.” She grinned at him, a complete change from her thoughts on whiskey.

The delight in her eyes nearly knocked him back. She might be playing it cool, but this was definitely something special to her. “You’re going to make wine.”

“That’s the plan.” She led him around the room. “Grandma and I started clearing out this room about a year ago. I, uh, was here for a bit in the fall.”