The Good Chase Read Online Free

Speyside distillery and the mashing process and what the years of aging on the bottle meant.
    Then Byrne ambled back into view. Just a red-and-black-striped figure in her periphery at first, but her stupid brain demanded she look out through the tent flaps again, and so she did, beyond annoyed at herself. Distantly she thought she heard a nearby clearing of a throat, but she couldn’t rip her stare away from Byrne.
    His friend had drifted out of sight, but Byrne didn’t seem to be looking for him. Instead Byrne went down the grass slope to where two couples, possibly in their forties, had spread out a blanket along the flag rope just outside the athletic field. The hammer toss was going on, but Byrne ignored the event and instead tapped one of the women on her shoulder. He gave her that incredible, crooked smile.
    Toast. That woman was toast.
    But then all four of the strangers were listening to Byrne say something, nodding up at him enthusiastically.
    Byrne reached into the pocket of his rugby shorts and pulled out four yellow wristbands. One of the men reached for his wallet, but Byrne waved him off.
    Shea gasped. Why on earth had he done that? Four hundred dollars. Four hundred dollars! Not to show off or to try to impress her, she hoped, because tossing around money was the absolute wrong way to do that.
    To be generous, maybe? But still, four hundred dollars on whisky, given to complete strangers? Who
was
this guy?
    As the two new couples slapped on the wristbands and stood, folding up their blanket, Byrne headed in the direction his team had gone. As he passed by the whisky tent, he turned his head and instantly found Shea. Caught her staring.
    She quickly ducked her head, blindly grabbing for the third and final bottle, but not before she was blasted by the full impact of that crooked smile, far too bright in the sunshine.
    That smile promised a lot. Things she hadn’t allowed herself—or been afforded—to think about in a long, long time. Things that hit her right where she hadn’t been touched in an embarrassing number of months.
    It disturbed her greatly, to be disarmed while in uniform, so to speak. It disturbed her even more that the man who’d done it was a taster—quite possibly a Brown Vein—met while she was working, and apparently in possession of some kind of money. No-nos, all around.
    He wouldn’t win.
    He had to know that even though he’d caught her staring, and even though she’d looked away like a shy virgin at a bachelor auction, it didn’t mean that he’d gained any sort of ground with her. She had strict personal rules to uphold, a hard-won reputation to maintain, and a business to keep at the top of the New York scene.
    But when she looked up to tell him all that with her cool, disinterested expression and Stay Back eyes, Byrne was gone.

Chapter

    2
    T hat one sip of sweet, hot, golden whisky spread out and tingled its way through Byrne’s body. He wanted more, plain and simple, but it had been pretty clear that what he wanted wasn’t exactly available.
    That was a damn shame.
    The day had started out with the stress of the workweek still lingering in his system, until he’d hopped into the van with the rest of his rugby team, tightened the laces on his cleats, and jogged out onto the pitch, so very ready to get physical. Every play, every scrum, every hit, knocked out a little chunk of the shit he’d had to deal with this week—the intense kissing of asses, only to lose the business in the end—so when the clock wound down today and Manhattan Rugby chalked up yet another loss, he didn’t care. The game had done what it was meant to do for him, and he’d walked off the field feeling high.
    Shea Montgomery had been merely a bonus. A delicious whisky chaser.
    He’d been meandering through the Highland Games, trying desperately to outrun the screech of those god-awful bagpipes, when he saw the whisky-tasting