Page 3 of Sigh of Relief

“Ez says you’re still hibernating.”

“You two gossip worse than teenagers.” Exes who’d remained best friends, Ezra and Al were in constant contact, their lives still woven together by family, business, and their genuine affection for each other. He loved that for them, for him too as part of their extended family, except when they joined forces to collectively nag him.

“No summer tourists you wanted to date?” she continued, undeterred, the retired attorney never fully retired. “Or just someone to have fun with?”

Archer drank more of his beer, avoiding the story of last summer’s tourist who’d turned him off tourists for good.

“Archer . . .”

“You and Ez bought me a whiskey still I had to get up and running.” He threw out an arm in the direction of the property’s newest structure. “I had to build a barn for it and everything.”

She scoffed. “A barn is the old building you converted to guest quarters and winery offices. Your brand-new distillery is not a barn.”

He swatted her thigh for calling him on his shit, and she laughed out loud, tipping back and giving him a view of the not-so-much a barn as a state-of-the-art facility—and someone lurking near it.

Before he could get a better look, Al righted herself and curled a finger under his chin, lifting his gaze to hers. “I know things have been busy here, but Ez and I didn’t mean for the new still or this place to become your whole life.”

“Babe.” He laid a hand on her thigh and gave it a squeeze. “Stop mother-henning me.”

She didn’t take the least bit of offense, smiling as she covered his hand with hers. “It’s what I do.”

“I know. And we love you for it.”

She was the glue that held their family together: staying tight with Ezra after their divorce, supporting his decision to buy this place and move out west so they could have a base close to their son’s family in San Francisco, working together to make Archer an offer he couldn’t refuse regardless of their history scening together. She’d also encouraged Ezra to go for it with Noah, for Noah to open his restaurant, Hanover, on-site, and for Archer to expand into spirits. She only wanted the best for all of them, and she’d given Archer that already.

“Trust me when I tell you this,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Things are much better here than where I was before.” Lompoc had been a beautiful coastal town, but a military one that was becoming more hostile to queer folk by the day, even in California. “And if things go a certain way in November, there’s nowhere I’d feel safer than right here.” His safety, his career, his family, those parts of his life were exactly where and how he wanted them. His heart, though . . . “I’m just looking for something else, relationship-wise.” His gaze strayed again to the happy couples on the dance floor while his mind strayed further back, to the mesmerizing couple from a different party fifteen years ago.

In the present, at this party, movement flickered again in his periphery. Down by the distillery. “Shit,” he said, pushing to his feet. “Looks like someone wandered off.”

“I can⁠—”

He bent and kissed her cheek. “Go find your wife. I’ll handle it.”

Bottle in hand, he followed the path to the distillery and found a side door propped open. He emptied the last of his beer, then clasped the bottle by the neck, holding it like a weapon in case the trespasser was anyone other than an errant partygoer.

Thankfully not.

He found the intruder mid-structure, standing in front of the glass enclosure that held the tanks and stills, the tin and copper equipment aglow in the off-hours lighting. Head tipped back, hands on his hips, the tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows seemed to just be gawking. Despite his size, Archer didn’t read him as a threat; an amateur distiller, if he had to guess.

Archer loosened his grip on the bottle and reached for the light switch, flipping on the overheads. “This area is off-limits.”

The man turned, and Archer’s world stopped.

Halted on its axis by a pair of dark eyes he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. Those eyes. The man they belonged to was here. Had stepped right out of Archer’s fantasies and into his distillery.

A singular moment from his past, here in the present.

His heart pounded, blood whooshed in his ears, and the beer bottle slipped from his fingers, shattering on the cement floor.

“Shit,” Archer cursed, the world suddenly spinning again, wobbling a little.

“I’m sorry,” the stranger said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

In every sense of the words.

“Investigator,” the man said. “Occupational hazard.” He smiled, wide and easy, charm oozing from every pore, looking even better than he had a decade and a half ago. He’d filled out impossibly more, his hair was gone now instead of merely shaved, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth and across his forehead balanced out the hard line of his jaw. Which was moving as he continued to speak. “And don’t tell the one wearing the BoSox tee that you dropped that.” He nodded at the broken glass. “Won’t end well.”