"Just so you know, if you hurt my sister, I will kill you."
Easton sat on one of the padded benches in Matthew's gym and stared up at his friend. "I thought you were going to spot me?" They'd intended to go out for a drink, but except for very athletic sex, Easton hadn't gotten in a workout recently, so they'd decide to talk over weights and machines.
"I'll spot you while I interrogate you. Trust me. You want to give me the right answers."
"I have no intention of hurting your sister. What she does to herself, though, is out of my hands."
"What do you mean?"
"She doesn't want to sell the distillery. I just hope she realizes it before she makes a mistake."
Matthew seemed to study him. "Agreed. But what about you? Are you a mistake?"
Easton thought about the bullshit campaign. About how he'd let Marianne on his arm instead of the woman he was falling for, hard and fast. "I'm not," he said firmly. "But I've definitely made some mistakes. I'm going to correct them."
"How?"
"Not sure," Easton admitted. "But I like your sister. I think I might even love her." And wasn't that pretty damn scary? "So I promise you I'm going to figure it out."
In front of him, Matthew nodded. "Fair enough. Just know that if you do hurt her, don't come bitching to me if a heavy load of weights falls on your head one day."
Easton laughed. "We have a deal."
He spent a few more hours with Matthew, then headed over to see Selma, only to end up bereft when he didn't find her at home. He tracked her down, but she was with a group of girlfriends, and he hadn't crossed the line to being so needy he'd pull her away from her friends. Or, at least, he hadn't crossed the line to admitting he was that needy.
Unfortunately, that meant that he saw very little of her that week, because he was in trial in Waco, and drove up before dawn Monday morning. Selma, however, wasn't foiled by the distance; the woman made texting an art form. And all Easton had to do was remember to keep his phone away from his client and opposing counsel. No one else needed to see the naughty sexts they sent back and forth.
The trial was exhausting and brutal, which was a good thing. For one thing, he loved the excitement of being in front of the bench and thinking on his feet; that was something he'd definitely miss if he won the election.
On top of that, a perk of the intense concentration necessary for trial meant that he didn't have time to miss Selma or mourn their time apart.
But by the time he was finished with the final day's trial prep on Thursday night, he was definitely ready for some sexy texts. That, of course, was when she didn't send naughty pictures and raw words describing exactly what she intended to do when she saw him again. Instead, she texted him pictures of bats.
He called her on the phone within seconds. "Bats? I was hoping for breasts. Yours, actually."
The sound of her laughter made him smile. "Too bad for you. I'm working on a new logo for Bat Bourbon. What do you think of the middle image?"
He didn't bother looking. Just frowned at the phone. "Baby, what's going on with you?"
"Excuse me?"
"Branding isn't your concern anymore. Or it won't be after you sign."
"Oh. I know. I'm just fooling around. Besides, it's kind of my legacy. I should go out with the company and brand looking exactly like I want them too, right?"
Wrong.
But what he said was, "What are you afraid of?"
"Excuse me?"
"That if you keep the distillery you'll be trapped? There are no bars. That it might fail later so you should sell it now? It won't, and even if it does, you'll survive. That you'll be bored? You won't be. You could find something fascinating in a sea of asphalt. That's just the kind of person you are."
"Easton--"
"That you'll be alone?" He heard her sharp intake of breath. "You won't be."
"You can't promise that."