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We were making final adjustments to the beer cocktails before we left for Colorado the following day to present our concept to the Emberox team.
We didn’t need the agency here for this, but I had invited Lana anyway. I was glad she decided to come. She was more easygoing today, more open to my flirting. I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, or something had changed the last time I saw her.
“Are you drunk?” I asked Lana with a laugh as she sipped the drink Aaron had made for her.
“Who, me?” she said, her cheeks a little pinker than normal. “Noooo.”
She wasn’t actually drunk, but she was starting to get slightly tipsy. Even just one sip from several cocktails added up over the course of our meeting.
“What do you think?” Aaron asked after she tasted the cocktail.
“Delish,” she declared with a grin. “This might be the best one yet. What is it?”
“Our signature Deft Rock ale with their best tequila and a splash of lemon-lime soda to add to the tart citrus taste of the lime juice.” Aaron looked so proud as he said it.
He and Shayna had been brainstorming cocktails for days, testing out different recipes for this mixology meeting.
Brent tasted everything along with me and Lana.
“Deftrox Margarita!” she said, gleefully enough that I was sure that the hard liquor was getting to her, just a little.
“Water time,” I said, pushing an icy glass in front of her. “Don’t want you dancing on the tables before the night’s over,” I whispered, leaning in.
One of her perfectly groomed eyebrows cocked.
“You don’t?” she asked, her half-grin almost too damn adorable to take.
I smiled back and pushed the water into her hand.
Aaron and Shayna had gone through all the drinks they’d worked out, so we all sat drinking water to get our equilibrium back.
“You might have missed your calling, Lana,” I said, motioning at all the cocktail glasses.
“Should have been a bartender?”
“No, a barfly,” I teased.
She slapped my arm and shook her head.
“I’m serious. What if I paid you to sit in the taproom drinking all day, being friendly to people who came in? You’d be like the town welcoming committee.” I leaned a little closer. “You’d certainly bring in the male clientele. Even the ones who don’t drink a drop.”
She smirked at me, but I could tell by the way her face reddened that she liked the compliment. Then she straightened and sipped more water.
“Maybe I should take you up on that. Between us, we’d have it covered. Because you certainly bring the female clientele in the door.”
I scoffed, but she put her hand up. “Oh yes. I saw that loud woman when I was here the last time. She looked like she was about to climb you like a tree. Maybe if her pants were a little looser so that she could move her legs, she could have tried.”
She laughed at her own joke, and I had to admit it was funny because it was true.
“Okay. You got me. My milkshake brings all the girls to the yard, I guess.”
She snorted at my bad joke, and I found myself next to her, our shoulders pressed together while we laughed and chatted.
The more we talked, the more I realized it wasn’t the alcohol that had changed Lana’s attitude toward my flirting. Enough time passed with us sitting and talking that we were both completely sober. But we were still flirting and laughing.
“I still feel like we need something to round it out,” Aaron said. “We’ve got frozen drinks and light alcohol drinks, but not really anything with whiskey or stout . . . nothing very dark. At least one drink like that would give the whole collection a better profile, don’t you think?”
Shayna and Brent nodded, and I agreed. “Yeah, I think so. But you guys have worked so hard on this already. You should take off and let me handle that one.”
