Your father passed away last night from liver cancer. I didn’t tell you he was dying because I knew you wouldn’t want to see him, but I hope you’ll change your mind and come home for the funeral. You belong with your family, Kaden. Come take your place at the head of the distillery.

Then a long, pregnant pause. A sigh and—click.

He’d started it over. Played it again. And again.

Kaden had promised himself he’d never go back to Yarrow. He’d sworn he’d never take up the family business.

His father, Christian Durant, had married into the Bonner family. The son of one of the largest coal-mining moguls in Kentucky, he had the breeding and the fortune the Bonners required for a husband to the sole heir of the Bonner estate. It was Christian’s money that kept the distillery afloat in the early ’80s while the country turned its taste to clearer liquors. Yet Kaden’s mom had never taken Christian’s last name and hadn’t allowed him to pass that name on to his sons. Not that Kaden would’ve wanted it. His father hefted words like fists, and when words were no longer enough, he threw actual punches.

And his mom stood by and let it happen.

As the eldest, Kaden had been first in line to take over the distillery. Instead, when he was twenty-two, he had it out with his father one last time, then fled. All these years later, he couldn’t remember the specifics of the fight, only that his mother and his brother took his father’s side, and Kaden left Yarrow and the Bonner legacy behind for good.

He hadn’t tasted their bourbon since that summer. But after learning his father was dead, he decided—just once—to order a glass of Bonner’s. It was a silent, private celebration that the man was finally gone. Christian Durant got what was coming to him. He’d loved bourbon so much he married a Bonner, and in the end, it was the alcohol that killed him.

It felt like a small sort of justice.

Kaden held his glass up to the light and swirled it as a woman slid onto the stool beside him. She wore a short-sleeve dress and black boots and leaned toward him in a cloud of perfume that smelled like pineapple and lemon.

“What’re you drinking?” she asked.

“I’m drinking alone,” he said.

She scooted closer. Her knee brushed his. With a nod to Kaden’s glass, she said to the bartender, “I’ll have one of those.”

“Bonner bourbon, straight?” the bartender asked, sizing her up. The way he looked her over irritated Kaden.

“Add a splash of water,” she said.

At least she knew how she liked her whiskey.

“Heavy alcohol to be drinking alone,” she said once the bartender turned his back on them.