“You aren’t legally allowed to flavor it with anything. Water, corn, barley, rye and that’s it. You see what you get. You get what you see. No artificial colors. No artificial sweeteners. No artificial nothing.”
“Right. So let’s drink a little honesty, shall we?”
“If you’re buying,” she said.
“I’m always buying.”
He picked up the bottle and slipped it into his pants pocket. He opened the door of the security shed and Paris stepped out into the warm night air. Almost 2:00 a.m., he should be in bed now. He’d hoped to be in bed with her. One of these days he’d learn. Not today apparently.
“Boss?” James asked, dropping his cigarette on the ground and crushing it under his boot.
“A misunderstanding.” McQueen had his hand on the small of Paris’s back. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Got it. Sleep well, Mr. McQueen.”
As they walked back into the house and up to his drinking closet, McQueen considered the possibility that he might be making the worst mistake of his life.
“Sit.” McQueen pointed at the jade sofa and Paris sat without a word of protest.
McQueen took the key from the silver bowl and put the bottle of Red Thread back into the cabinet.
“I shouldn’t have trusted you.” McQueen locked the cabinet and slipped the key into his pocket.
“You’re a rich white man. Not your fault for assuming the entire world is on your side. It must seem like it most days. Usually you’d be right, but times, Mr. McQueen, are a-changing.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Sounds like Bob Dylan to me.”
He needed a drink, a stiff one, so he poured each of them a shot. The entire time he kept an eye on her as he unscrewed the cap and measured out the bourbon. Now she seemed calm, but it wasn’t the calm of surrender. This was a cat’s version of calm. A calm that could turn into an attack or a run in an instant.
When she had her shot in hand and he had his, he lifted it in a toast, a toast she didn’t return. Instead, she merely sipped her bourbon.
“Pappy’s?” she asked.
“It is. You have a good palate.”
“You can taste the leather in it.”
He couldn’t, but it impressed him she could.
“You weren’t exaggerating. You do know your bourbon,” he said.
“They used to say that about the Maddoxes,” she said. “Ever since Jacob Maddox started the distillery and made himself a wealthy man in five years...they said it about all of us—the Maddoxes have bourbon in their blood.”
“I’ve seen the Maddox family tree. There is no Paris on it.”
“Perhaps you were looking at the wrong branches,” she said coldly.
His words had hit a sensitive spot and her eyes flashed in a familiar way. It was not his first encounter with her sensitive places, after all.
“Now that we both have an honest spirit in our hands,” McQueen said, “tell me something.”
“Anything,” she said, although he doubted the sincerity of that declaration. She was proving to be altogether miserly with her explanations and answers.
“Did you sleep with me just to steal my bottle?”
“Does that sting? I bet it stings.” She winced in feigned sympathy, shaking her head and clucking her tongue like a mother tending to the skinned knee of her child. Right then and there he made a realization—he didn’t like this woman, not at all.
“I think I could fuck you a thousand nights and never actually touch you.”
“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “You’re not the only one with rock fences around you. Built by the same people, too, as a matter of fact.”
“Irish immigrant stonemasons hired by my great-grandfather?”
Paris’s eyes widened slightly. Then she laughed. Finally. He knew he’d scored a point on her. True, most of the rock fences in Kentucky were built by slave labor. His was not, however, and somewhere he had the paperwork to prove it. While he didn’t know the game he and Paris were playing, he knew that while he wouldn’t win it, if he played it well enough, he might not lose it.
“You’re funny. And you’re handsome.” She tossed the compliment at him like a dollar bill at a stripper’s feet. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t have to fake anything with you. If I hadn’t wanted to sleep with you, I wouldn’t have. It was convenient that you were attractive. Otherwise, I might have simply hired someone to break into the house while you were away. Does that help?”
“I feel so much better now,” he said. “While we’re being honest...is it true?