Texas Thunder (6 page)

And free was all that Callie could afford at the moment.

She jiggled the handle until it clicked and the door creaked open. All the leftovers had been Saran-wrapped and packed into the car with her sisters, while the houseplants had been loaded into the back of Callie's truck. The flowers—what few fresh bouquets there were—had been transferred to the grave to mark the spot until they withered and dried over the next few weeks in the blistering Texas heat. Pastor Harris had nailed his hole-in-one, or so the tweets floating around the church during cleanup had claimed, and Callie had made it the past few hours without eating an entire box of cupcakes.

Four. That was it.

Now all she had to do was pick up the stuff for the open house tomorrow and drop everything off at the Bachman place on her way home. The idea of getting her mind off of the day's events and onto work for a little while eased the anxiety knotting her muscles and she drew a deep breath.

Yep, the worst was over, all right.

“Callie Tucker?” The name rang out as she fed the plant onto the front seat and pushed it toward the passenger side before turning in time to see the man who climbed out of a beat-up green Ford Explorer.

He looked to be in his midtwenties, with dark brown hair that was spiked into the latest style and a clean-shaven face. He wore a white dress shirt, his collar unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a pair of navy dress slacks. Polished dress shoes completed the urban professional look and told her he wasn't from anyplace nearby.

“Can I help you?”

“The name's Mark Edwards.” The man thrust out his hand as he caught up to her, his dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiled. “Foggy Bottom Distillers. We're located just outside of Austin, about an hour from here.”

“You're the one who sent me the text,” she said as she remembered the Austin area code that had popped up on her phone.

He nodded. “Your grandpa gave me your number as backup in case I needed to reach him. We're business associates.”

The admission sent off a burst of warning signals. “Listen, if you're here to score a few jars of his moonshine, I'm afraid it was all destroyed in the fire. Not that I'd sell it to you anyway because selling moonshine is illegal.”

“I'm not trying to buy any moonshine.” He held up both hands as if to say, ‘Don't shoot.' “We make our own, or we're trying to. Right now we only manufacture one product. Foggy Bottom Brew is our trademark whiskey.” Hope glimmered in his eyes. “Maybe you've heard of it?”

She shook her head. “I can't say that I have.”

His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, that's what I figured. But hey, it was worth a shot, right?” Frustration edged his expression. “My partner and I used to brew the stuff in college. When we graduated, we applied for our license and three years later, here we are. We're still fairly new to the game and the product didn't take off quite as well as expected. Not that we're giving up.” Determination pushed his spine a little straighter. “It's only been six months since our launch and we've got a full marketing campaign we're going forward with. That should give us some good customer exposure. We're also trying to expand our product line.” He plucked a card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “I was hoping your grandfather might have mentioned us to you.”

She shook her head. James had been a Wild Turkey man when it came to anything store-bought. That, or peach schnapps. “How exactly did you know my grandfather? Was he a customer?”

“No, no. I mean, I did give him a few samples of our stuff, but only as a courtesy. He was working for us.”

“You must have the wrong person. My grandfather didn't have a job.”

“It wasn't anything official. He was working on a recipe for us. See, we're interested in buying your family's Texas Thunder recipe.”

“My family doesn't have a Texas Thunder recipe.”

“No, but you've got half. It's the other half that James was working on. We know all about the big falling out with the Sawyers. Hell, it was in our Texas history book back in college. Big fight. Recipe split in half. Both men too stubborn to keep up with a good thing, so Texas Thunder just disappeared off the face of the earth. Until your granddaddy. He was trying to find the missing ingredients. He was close, too, according to the last message he left me a few days ago. He managed to nail down three more of the ingredients and the right combination of everything. He was pretty certain he was just two ingredients shy of hitting the jackpot.”

Callie remembered all those nights James had spent out in the woods over the past few months. She'd assumed he'd been cooking his usual home brew and selling the jars on the side for drinking money. That, and downing a good bit of the product himself.

Instead, he'd been working on something bigger.

Something that could have benefited them all.

The thought struck and she pushed it right back out. James might have been motivated by a higher goal, but it had nothing to do with helping his family. He'd been completely self-serving his entire life.

“He was supposed to call me yesterday with an update,” Mark went on. “When I didn't hear from him, I decided to drive out. I heard the news over at the diner on my way into town. I have to say, I was pretty stunned.” He shook his head. “I just talked to him last week.” He stared at the toe of his shoe and kicked at a few pieces of gravel. “I'm really sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.” Awkward silence fell over them for several moments before Callie glanced inside the truck. “I've got a lot of leftovers to get home. I appreciate you driving out. If you paid him anything up front, I'm afraid I'm not in a position to pay you back—”

“No, no. He didn't owe us. We were only going to pay him for a finished recipe. He put all his own money into the research.”

Correction—
her
money. The tax money.

Suddenly everything made a lot more sense—namely how he'd managed to go through three thousand dollars in such a short time. She'd figured he'd drank most of it, and gambled the rest of it away in some backroom card game over at the VFW Hall.

But she'd obviously been wrong.

A strange whisper of regret went through her and she steeled herself against the emotion. So what if she'd been wrong? It wasn't as if James had ever given her any reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. He'd still spent her hard-earned money and now she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And the niche was getting tighter by the second.

“I really need to get going. Thanks for stopping by.”

“Yeah, sure. Listen,” he said, his hand touching her arm just as she moved to get into the truck. “I don't suppose you have any interest in picking up where he left off?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

His brows furrowed. “Did Lone Star Distillers call you? Because I know they might have offered more, but we're willing to add a royalty to each jar—”

“No.” She shook her head. “That's not what I meant. I was talking about the people around here.” She remembered the influx of cars over the past few weekends and the sudden rise in James's home brew's popularity. If he'd been that close to the original … No wonder so many seemed sad to say good-bye to the local hooch. “Folks are going to miss his shine, that's all.”

“All the more reason for you to continue on with his research. He was close. Doesn't seem like too much work to finish it off.”

To someone who knew what they were doing, but Callie had no clue how to cook moonshine. Sure, she knew the actual procedure. She'd heard her grandfather talk enough about it over the years. And her great-grandfather before him. But she'd never actually seen them in action. Her parents had always kept her far away from James and his shed, and after that she'd been too busy keeping house and taking care of everyone to bother poking around out in the woods. As for coming up with a recipe?

She had no idea where to start.

And even if she did, cooking moonshine was highly illegal. And deadly.

Today was proof of that.

Even so, her curiosity got the better of her. When Mark started to walk away, she couldn't help but ask, “How much money were you actually going to pay him?”

He paused midstride and glanced over his shoulder. “Ten thousand dollars.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“That plus the royalty. But I guess it's a moot point now. Take care and again, I'm really sorry.”

So was she.

Ten thousand dollars.

The staggering amount echoed in her head as she dropped his business card onto the dash of the ancient Ford and climbed inside. Gunning the engine, she headed a few streets over to the realty office that sat on the main strip through town. Les had called it a day and gone home after the funeral, and so the place was locked up tight.

Callie pulled up at the curb out front, unearthed her keys from the bottom of her purse, and walked inside to retrieve the promotional merchandise, as well as a stack of information sheets for the property.

James had been
this
close to
ten thousand dollars.

She tried to wrap her head around the notion as she loaded everything into her truck, locked up the office, and headed for the Bachman place that sat just two streets over.

Ten thousand dollars would have solved all of their problems.

Then again, James had a way of turning every positive into a negative. Like the time he'd won five hundred dollars on a scratch-off. The money would have been plenty to pay for Lexi's graduation announcements and prom dress, not to mention a few past-due bills.

But before James could even make it home, he'd stopped off at a local bar, drank a fifth of the money, and lost the rest on a game of dominoes.

On top of that, he'd gotten himself arrested for public intoxication. Not only had Callie had to pay for the graduation announcements and prom dress by getting a second job on the weekends at the local dry cleaners, but she'd had to bail James out of jail on top of everything.

No, ten thousand dollars in her granddad's hands would have just meant ten thousand chances for more trouble.

Truth be told, it was probably better that he hadn't found the rest of the recipe. Texas Thunder had been a joint effort between the Tuckers and Sawyers. Fifty-fifty. She couldn't imagine any of the Sawyers sitting idly by and letting James take full credit, and full profit, from the original recipe.

The Sawyers would never let the Tuckers take anything from them. They were always up for a fight. A challenge.

She knew that better than anyone.

She'd resisted Brett for so long, snubbing her nose at him because he'd been the enemy. Because her granddaddy, not to mention her own mother and father, would have had a fit if she'd dared admit the hots for a Sawyer. But then she'd been forced to tutor him after school because of a program she'd signed up for. The more time she'd spent with him, the more he'd flirted with her, the more she'd started to give in like every other girl at Rebel High. And when he'd asked her to prom, she'd thought that maybe, just maybe an entire town had been wrong. Maybe the Tuckers and the Sawyers could find some common ground.

Maybe they could even fall in love.

But while she'd had visions of uniting the town, Brett had merely been playing a game, proving to the world that he could have any girl he wanted—including a Tucker.

Especially a Tucker.

That's what had been floating around the entire school after that fateful night. That he'd lured her in, only to throw her back because, well, he was a Sawyer and no Sawyer would stoop low enough to fall for a Tucker.

Not that she'd believed the gossip.

Brett himself had pushed the truth home with his behavior. He'd gone from walking her to and from her locker, to having nothing at all to do with her virtually overnight.

He hadn't even said so much as “I'm sorry” when her folks had died that very night while on their way to pick her up after he'd abandoned her. They'd had a head-on collision with a couple of prom-goers who'd had too much trash-can punch, and while the kids had walked away without so much as a scratch, her parents hadn't been so lucky. They'd veered off the road, straight into a gully in order to avoid the drunk kids, and it had cost them both dearly.

It had cost Callie.

There hadn't been a night since that she didn't regret calling them for help. She'd blamed herself at first and then the drunk kids, and then the damned gully itself, and then she'd come to blame the real culprit—the one and only Brett Sawyer.

If he hadn't abandoned her, she never would have called her parents. He'd set the tragic set of events into motion and she'd vowed never to forget.

Or forgive.

He'd taken not only her parents that night, he'd taken her trust, her hope, her stupid pie-in-the-sky optimism.

She was no longer that naïve girl who actually thought that love could overcome a hundred years of hatred. Love didn't overcome anything. It made people weak.

Blind.

Not that she'd been blinded by anything close to love when she'd handed over all that tax money to James. The man hadn't deserved her love. No, she'd given him the money because he'd been the deed holder and she'd been busy working and, well, all he'd had to do was drive to the bank and make that one payment.

But he'd failed her. Like always. And he'd been headed for more trouble this time with that stupid recipe. Luckily Fate had stepped in to lend Callie a hand and stop him.

Callie ignored the strange tightening in her chest and pulled into the driveway of the Bachman house. The engine grumbled into a few sputters and then went silent.

Her gaze went to the sprawling two-story with the large front porch edged with lush azalea bushes and fragrant Texas sage. The owners had made dozens of renovations to the spacious four bedrooms and three baths, as well as new landscaping around the large patio and pool out back. It was one of the nicer homes in Rebel with a key location on the corner of Main Street and Yellow Rose. Everything was within walking distance, from the pharmacy to the feed store. For that reason alone it should draw an offer quickly, or so she hoped. The quicker the house sold, the more amicable Les would be when she threw herself on his mercy and begged for a pay advance. Or a loan. She hadn't decided which. She just knew she had to do
something.