Page 42 of Her Age Gap Match

Johnny

The Due North Tasting Room hadn’t been part of the plan when I started the distillery—it had seemed like a silly extravagance, nothing necessary—but it had ended up becoming an important part of the business. People didn't want to come all the way up to Michigan; they wanted to stay in their fancy penthouses or visit nightclubs with a view.

That was fine by me, if it meant they kept paying.

The tasting room was in a ritzy strip of bars and restaurants in River North, upscale, exposed timber and brick with leather furniture and a small bar. I'd hired Sloane Maitland to handle the events side of things about two years back, when it became clear that running a distillery and running a social calendar were two entirely different skill sets. Sloane was good at her job in that slightly terrifying way event planners usually were—organized to the point of clinical, never flustered. She was thirty-two, short and curvy, and shocked damn near everyone she met with how she managed to command a room anyway.

She was waiting when I got to the tasting room, tablet in hand, reading glasses on, standing in the middle of the main floor. Sloane barely looked up over the tops of her glasses, then back at her tablet.

“You’re late,” she said.

“People keep telling me that.”

“Because it’s unusual,” she said. “And you’re distracted—I watched you ride by the parking garage twice before you remembered where you were going. Getting senile already?”

I snorted and shook my head. “No, Sloane. My brain is functioning just fine. And maybe I just thought you could handle Dean Russo on your own.”

“He likes you better,” she said, moving to the bar to put her tablet down.

“Because he knows he can haggle with me,” I said, joining her and putting my bike helmet next to her tablet.

“Because he likes you,” she said. “We keep clients because the clients who want to work with you get to work with you. It’s how we stay in business.”

“I’ll trust your judgment on that,” I said.

I went around the bar and pulled out a bottle of the Reserve batch, already open and breathing. We only kept a limited stock here; most of the time it sat empty, outside of events and the rare launch party for a new batch. “Want one?”

“Yes please.”

I poured two, then glanced over at the door.

“He should be here in…what? Five minutes?”

“Mmhm.” Sloane looked up at me, eyes narrowed. “Seriously, there is something different about you today. I can’t place it.”

I hummed, trying to write it off. Couldn’t possibly be the fact that I’d spent the night with Poppy last night; afterglow wasn’t a real thing, right?

“You got laid,” Sloane said with a short laugh. “Holy shit.”

“You have no way of knowing⁠—”

“You have a hickey on your neck,” she said, pointing.

I reached up, finding the spot tender, and Sloane laughed louder.

“My god. Aren’t you like…sixty?”

“I’m forty-five.”

“Too old for hickeys.”

“Nobody’s too old for hickeys.”

“Debatable.” She picked up her glass, clearly delighted by this turn of events. “Who is she?”

“Nobody you know.”

“Obviously nobody I know, I don’t know anyone who could give you a hickey and survive the experience.” She took a sip of her whiskey, hissing out a breath as she swallowed. “But…you actually had a successful date with that matchmaking thing? You gonna settle down and start having kids?”