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I’m paid to be a master of etiquette. But right now, I have no clue how to approach this guy. I mean, he hired me, the woman he’s seen naked too many times to count, to plan his wedding. Do I hug him too? Shake his hand? Give him a horrifically awkward fist bump in a silent show of solidarity—how fucking weird is this?
“Thanks, Milly,” Nate says and shoves his hands in the front pockets of his pressed slacks.
My heart dips, and I can’t tell if it’s relief or regret that sweeps through me. “I’m looking forward to working with y’all.”
“Same! I’m finally excited,” Reese says.
Nate cuts her a look. “You weren’t excited before?”
Wrapping her hand around his upper arm, she smiles at him. “You know what I mean. It’s all been such a whirlwind. But now that we’re finally getting down to brass tacks, I couldn’t be more grateful.”
I’ve been so distracted I hadn’t noticed Reese’s ring until now. It winks at me from its spot on her fourth finger. I wanted it to be enormous. Obnoxious. Instead, it’s a tasteful round solitaire on a dainty, rose gold band, the diamond big enough to make your heart skip a beat but not so big you think the guy’s making up for something. Three carats I’d say.
“He did a good job, right?” Reese says when she catches me staring. She wiggles her fingers, making the stone glitter. “He even got the size right.”
I try to smile. “Of course he did.”
Reese’s style is completely in line with my own. The budget is huge. The wedding’s going to be a ton of fun to design. A challenge too, to make it stand out enough to land a coveted spread in a big-time magazine.
Landing this wedding is a victory. I just wish it felt like one.
Chapter Three
Nate
Pulling up to the makeshift parking lot in front of the construction zone that is currently our distillery, I see Dad climbing out of his shiny new Dodge Ram pickup.
My truck—the same ’82 Bronco I learned to drive in almost twenty years ago—groans as I wrangle it into park and cut the ignition. Reese hates the truck, mostly because it doesn’t have Bluetooth and it’s loud as all get-out. Still, I can’t make myself get rid of the thing. The Bronco and I have been through a lot together, and somehow we’ve both managed to survive.
Luckily, I dropped Reese off at her place downtown on my way over here, so I’m free to chew out my least favorite family member in any way I see fit. She knows there’s no love lost between my dad and me, but she doesn’t need his shitty behavior to dampen what should be a great day.
Ignoring the rumble of heavy machinery in the background, I leap out the door, my boots crunching on the gravel.
“What the fuck was that?” I hiss. “There’s a reason you weren’t invited to our meeting.”
Dad doesn’t even have the decency to look at me as he grabs his phone from the Dodge’s center console. “Son, I’ll go to any meeting I damn well please. I think I’ve earned the right.”
A vicious surge of anger chokes me as I stare him down, hands on my hips. “You embarrassed me, and worse, you embarrassed Reese. Dad, this is our wedding. Not some dog-and-pony show you can use to promote the business.”
He turns around but still doesn’t look at me. Instead, he focuses on the phone in his hands. “And whose business is that, exactly?”
“I’m not playing this game today.”
“Then I’m not signing your paycheck.”
I resist the urge to grab his phone and chuck it across the lot. But I don’t, because fights between deadbeat dads and their long-suffering sons are bad for business. Been there, done that, got the fucking T-shirt. We’ve turned a new leaf here at Kingsley Distilling, Inc., thanks not only to the Nobles but also to Dad’s and Silas’s promises to stay on the straight and narrow. We’re actually making it work, despite Dad still being a huge pain in my ass. Case in point: the new state-of-the-art distillery being built twenty feet from where we stand.
“It’s our business,” I grind out. “The family’s.”
I mean that. When we signed our new partnership agreement with Chris and Reese Noble, we all got a piece of the business as stakeholders. Chris has a forty percent stake in Kingsley Distilling, while Reese got nine percent. Dad, Silas, and I each received seventeen percent of company ownership, making the three of us together the majority stakeholders at fifty-one percent. While that allows us to maintain control of the company, it also means all three of us have to sign off on payroll every month.
“My business.” Dad jabs his finger into his chest. “Let’s not forget I’m the one who thought to bottle twenty-year whiskey when nobody else was. I’m the one who made the booze that put us on the map. Without me, there’d be no Appalachian Red, and there’d be none of this.” He gestures to the new distillery behind us.
