She beamed. “It’s a small but tight team. We can’t say we’re like family since I can’t call other employees a stubborn ass like I do with my brothers. But we have full-time positions other than my siblings.” She turned back towardthe windows. By the far wall were three computer screens and a U-shaped desk piled with papers and folders. “We track everything. Temperatures, yeast strains, the types of grains and how much— Tenor loves to dig into all that.”
“What about you? Do you stick to the bar now?”
“Daddy made me do my share of tossing around fifty-pound bags of grain, but no, I don’t do that anymore. I’d be charging into a well-choreographed dance the distillers have going on.”
She’d grown up with her family’s legacy, yet she’d chosen another profession. She had three older brothers and an older sister. Kind of like a monarchy, she would’ve been too far down the line to have much authority.
“You were okay with knowing you weren’t ever going to be in charge?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s still ours.”
Her words echoed in my head. All the kids at the party Dad had thrown would learn exactly what Autumn and her siblings had. If we had kids, the same would happen. Their roots would burrow deep in the Bourbon Canyon area.
But we weren’t having kids.
“The bottle line is on the other side.” She pulled on me again, her hand still in mine. “We can peek in, but it’s not exciting. Just a small assembly line where bottles are filled, sealed, labeled, and packed for shipping. The trucks go in and out that side too.”
She hit a switch. Lights flooded a plain room whose centerpiece was the metal bottling line. A long carousel traveled much of the length. At one end were nozzle heads to fill the bottles, then more silver knobs andmoving parts to cap and label them. At the end was a place for crates and boxes.
“Which sibling oversees this?”
“Teller. He’s in charge, so he gets the boring stuff. Tenor’s his backup, but he prefers to crunch numbers all day. Tate helps out, but he doesn’t like to make Teller or Summer feel like he’s watching over them. Junie might not physically work on the premises, but she coordinates with Wynter for commercials and radio spots.”
This whole building was a small ecosystem that took from its surroundings and gave just as much back. According to what Teller had said, Dad was giving back too.
I wanted Percival Farms for myself. I wanted it kept in the family. I’d focused only on what I wanted, but I’d never considered how I’d give back. Contributing to the community hadn’t been one of Grandfather’s lessons. As I was standing here, gazing at what was only one part of the Bailey empire, I struggled to come up with a good example of what I had to give.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Autumn
A knock at my classroom door jerked me out of my stupor. A common occurrence in the last week. How long had I been staring at the wall of pumpkin cutouts with each kid’s favorite fall memory written inside while I’d been lost in thought about my homelife?
I blinked at the door. School had let out an hour and a half ago, but I’d stayed late to grade since my productivity at home had tanked. Most everyone had left. Except Scarlett.
She wore an amused smile and crossed her arms over her pumpkin cardigan. She wore it every year in the week leading up to Halloween. “I feel like I can tell what you’re thinking about since you returned from Vegas. Or should I say who?”
She would be right. Gideon was on my mind all the time. And when I was home, he was inside me. All. The. Time. It was glorious.
I woke up to his cock. I went to bed with it. And many times, I’d even showered with it. Last night, for dinner, he’d had me first. The meat loaf had gotten overcooked.
I grinned. “Can’t help it.”
She wiggled her finger at me. “Tate would dry heave if he saw you right now.”
My brothers would not like to hear what I’d been getting up to with Gideon. “I might have to gush to him to make sure.”
Tate hadn’t contacted me since the party where Gideon and I had left early. Teller had probably passed on our exchange at the distillery. Other than that, my brothers were steering clear of me. Good.
A little scrape of indignation chafed the inside of my chest. Were they digging in their heels and going through with the sale without even asking my opinion?
Since when had they ever asked for my opinion?
But I wasmarried. To the man they were personally upsetting over the sale. Me. Their sister. Wasn’t I more than business?
“Uh-oh.” She crossed to my desk and pulled up a yellow wobble stool that looked like a giant board game piece with a broad base and wide seat. She sat on it like a pro, without tipping from side to side as she gained her balance, probably because she had some in her classroom. “Now, what thought is going through your head?”
“It’s nothing.” I shuffled the math papers I should’ve been done correcting. “What are you doing here so late?”
