Truly, Madly, Whiskey

  Truly, Madly,

  Whiskey

  The Whiskeys

  Melissa Foster

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

  TRULY, MADLY, WHISKEY

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2017 Melissa Foster

  V1.0

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover Design: Elizabeth Mackey Designs

  Cover Photography: Sara Eirew

  WORLD LITERARY PRESS

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  A Note to Readers

  I’m thrilled to bring you Bear and Crystal’s steamy and emotional love story. I hope you fall in love with them, as well as all their warm and wonderful family members and friends, each of whom will be getting their own happily ever after.

  Remember to sign up for my newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out on future Whiskey releases:

  www.MelissaFoster.com/News

  For more information about my fun, sexy romance novels, all of which can be read as stand-alone novels, or as part of the larger series, visit my website:

  www.MelissaFoster.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A Note to Readers

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from River of Love

  Excerpt from Tru Blue

  Book List

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  CRYSTAL MOON’S STOMACH knotted as she drove through the gates of West Millstone Estates Wednesday evening. Estates. She scoffed, her eyes darting to a group of scraggly looking guys smoking beside the rusted chain-link fence that surrounded the trailer park where she’d grown up. The “gate” hadn’t functioned since she was ten, when a stoned neighbor had driven his truck through it. Doing her best to ignore the lascivious stares coming from another group of guys standing by the run-down trailer on her right, she focused on the road, mentally ticking off the only names she’d ever associated with the people who had lived in the trailers as she passed each one.

  Hateful. Creepy. Sweet. Staythefuckaway.

  With the exception of her mother, she no longer had any idea who lived in each trailer, but the names she’d given them when she was a kid would stick forever, like the dirty feeling that clung to her like a second skin every time she returned.

  She parked behind her mother’s old Toyota. Decomposed leaves lay like skeletons on the hood. Dirt caked the wheel wells and lower half of the door. She’d made the mistake of giving her mother money to get a new battery ages ago, but her mother had spent it on alcohol. She scanned the street for her older brother Jed’s truck. Uttering a curse, she pulled out her phone and called him.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hey, you.”

  “Don’t ‘hey, you,’ me. I’m sitting in front of Mom’s. Did you forget? Third Wednesday of the month.”

  “Oh, shit. I’ll get a ride and be there in ten.”

  The line went dead. She’d forgotten his driver’s license had been suspended for too many unpaid tickets. Mike McCarthy, a local cop, had a personal vendetta against Jed, and pulled him over every chance he got, doling out the highest points possible. Jed swore the guy had a homing device to keep track of him, but Crystal knew their hatred went back to their high school days, when Jed had slept with every girl Mike had dated. She had a feeling it hadn’t stopped after graduation, but that was one confirmation she didn’t need. She loved Jed to the ends of the earth, but he was a bit of a hoodlum and had spent his teenage years in and out of trouble, and as an adult he’d spent a few months in jail for stealing. He said it was in his blood, but Crystal could attest to the fact that, unless she was born from different parents, it wasn’t. It was simply Jed.

  She zipped up her hoodie and glanced at the stack of designs she’d been working on for Princess for a Day, the boutique where she worked with her best friend, Gemma Wright. She’d met Gemma at a café shortly after escaping from her second bout with hell. When she’d left the dregs of the trailer park, she’d thought she’d left that nightmare behind. A few years later she found out that hell came in many forms, and the trailer park hadn’t looked quite so bad. She hadn’t returned, though. She’d been broken, not stupid.

  Pushing those dark thoughts away, she cut the engine.

  Untrusting of the cachectic, shirtless dude standing across the street, holding the chain of a vicious-looking barking dog, she shoved the designs into her bag and slipped the strap over her head and across her body. A barrier. As small as that thin strap was, anything separating the person she’d become from the mother who bore her was worth its weight in gold.

  She made one last sweep of her car, searching for anything theft-worthy. The 2010 Ford Fusion might not be much, but it was hers. Her eyes caught on the colorful worry doll hanging on her rearview mirror, a gift from her father. He’d made it out of twigs, fabric, and yarn when she was eight, and he’d given it to her the first week they’d moved into the trailer park. He’d been making her dolls for years, but this time he’d given her a reason. Give these dolls all your worries, and then you’ll be free of them. Like magic. Her eyes drifted to the smaller doll hanging from her key chain. Little reminders that she’d once had a parent who’d loved her. She snagged the doll from the rearview and stuffed it in her bag. It would piss her off if it got stolen. She’d hang it up again when she left.

  She stepped from the car and locked it up, bracing herself for the visit. It’s only once a month. One hour, twelve times a year. She could suck it up for an hour. Then she’d return to her life in Peaceful Harbor, Maryland, forty-five minutes away. Just far enough to allow her to pretend that this part of her life didn’t exist.

  Her phone vibrated with a text, and she pulled it out, ready to give Jed a hard time for whatever excuse he might use to skip dinner. Him flashed on caller ID. She rolled her eyes, trying to keep her body from heating up from head to toe. It didn’t work. It never did. She’d listed Bear Hot-as-Fuck Whiskey as Him in her contacts in an effort to fool her mind into thinking of him in generic male form. The problem was, there was nothing generic about the six-three, bar-and-auto-mechanic-shop-owning, tattooed biker.

  She opened and read the text. Bear.

  One word was all it took for fire to ricochet through her body like lightning. Traitorous body. The guy was relentless. He’d been acting as if she were his ever since she’d met him more than eight months ago, when Gemma had first met her fiancé, Truman Gritt, who was Bear�
��s best friend. The harder she’d pushed Bear away, the more determined he’d become. He’d been texting her his name for weeks, always out of the blue. It wasn’t like he knew she’d changed his name in her phone. He was just being Bear. Did he really think texting his name would change her mind?

  There wasn’t much changing necessary. She swallowed against that reality. She was not only hot for the guy, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him. The hardest part was that over the past eight-plus months, he’d grown on her like a third arm—exciting, reliable, and uncomfortable all at once. He was cocky and arrogant when it came to pushing himself into her life, which should have made her wary of him, but she was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Because he was also a loyal, generous friend and funny in ways that made her wonder what it might be like to experience all those attributes tangled together—in her bed.

  Ugh. She really needed to stop thinking about him.

  Her phone vibrated again with a text from Gemma. She opened it and found a picture of Bear painting. Great. Now she’d never stop thinking about him. His muscular, tattooed arm was over his head as he painted along the edge of the window. His shirt clung to his broad back, tapering down and disappearing into a pair of low-slung jeans that hugged his frustratingly hot ass. Another text rolled in. Enjoying watching my man paint. Thought you might want to see yours.

  She rolled her eyes. Gemma knew she wasn’t with Bear in that way. She was meeting Gemma and Truman after dinner to help paint their living room in preparation for their backyard wedding, and she knew Bear would be there. Their close-knit group included all four Whiskey siblings, so Bear was always around, like an itch she shouldn’t scratch. Her stomach fluttered, and she groaned. The last thing she needed in her busy, not-living-in-a-trailer-park life, was to be lusting after a man. Especially one who assumed he owned her.

  She shoved her phone in her pocket, inhaled deeply, and faced her mother’s mustard-yellow trailer, wishing she could climb back into her car and return to her normal life.

  Each of the trailers had a tiny plot of land out front. Most had turned to dirt over the years from being trampled or driven over. But before her father had been killed in a car accident, he’d set enormous rocks around the perimeter of their lot, where he and Crystal had planted a garden. Now that tiny plot of land was overgrown with long grass and the type of prickly bushes she’d always given a wide berth, as if the branches were gnarled claws that could capture her as she walked by.

  The whole complex feels like that.

  She stepped onto the musty indoor-outdoor carpeting beneath a green awning that hung from the side of the trailer. Jed had put it up when they were teenagers. The stench of cigarettes and sweat hung in the air. Two ancient lawn chairs and a plastic table sat at the far end of the carpet. Outside living at its finest.

  She hesitated, wishing Jed would hurry up, and finally reached for the metal handle of the screen door, which had no screen.

  “Jeddy? That you?” Her mother’s raspy voice might sound sexy if her speech weren’t slurred and the raspiness weren’t clearly the sandpaper sound of a throat worn down by too many cigarettes.

  Crystal stepped inside, assaulted by the earlier stench, only a hundred times stronger. Habit had her breathing through her mouth, which seemed less repulsive than smelling the rancid air with every inhalation. Her eyes skirted over the dark paneled walls, low-pile carpeting, and plaid sofa, hallmarks of her youth. The same green and yellow curtains that were there when they’d moved in hung from metal rods, darkening the windows. The two wooden chairs Crystal and her father had painted bright aqua the first summer they’d lived there were now chipped and marred. They were the last project she and her father had worked on together. Two empty beer bottles sat on the coffee table beside an empty carton of cigarettes, the top of which was torn off. Welcome home.

  “Chrissy?” Her mother stood by the stove stirring something in a big pot. A cigarette hung from her lips, as if it had grown roots. “I was expecting Jeddy.” Ashes floated to the floor as she spoke. Pamela Moon was a blond, drunken Peg Bundy lookalike, from her overly teased hair, pink tank top, black leggings, wide white belt, and high heels to the way she carried herself with one hand constantly waving.

  Crystal cringed at the name she’d given up when she’d gone off to college. It had been years, and her mother hadn’t noticed. Either that or she simply hadn’t cared. Crystal imagined it was a little of both.

  “Sorry, Mom. Just me.”

  She hoped her mother remembered they were supposed to have dinner. Sometimes she forgot. Crystal used to bring dinner for their monthly visits, but her mother complained about everything, and she’d given up trying.

  Her mother grabbed a beer bottle from the counter and took a long swig. Crystal gauged her unsteadiness, tallying the five empty bottles in sight and knowing it probably wasn’t the day’s total count. Her mother had gone downhill after they’d lost their father to a drunk driver, which made no sense to Crystal. Her father’s death had had a profound effect on her in too many ways to count, but most importantly, Crystal was careful not to drink too much. At first she’d thought her mother’s drinking was a coping mechanism, but as the months, then years, had passed, she’d realized she had a problem and had encouraged her to go to AA and seek help. Her mother had ignored her efforts, turning cold and bitter. Crystal had no idea how she functioned with the amount of alcohol she consumed.

  Crystal peered into the dark mass in the pot. “What are you making?”

  “Chili. You hungry?” More ashes drifted to the floor.

  “Yeah, sure.” She’d push the food around on her plate and praise her mother’s cooking. Then she’d wrap it up and leave it for her mother to eat tomorrow. She set her bag on the coffee table, settling in for the next hour, hoping it would race by.

  “How are you, Mom? Is your job okay?” Her mother worked at a convenience store three blocks away.

  She nodded, inhaling loudly as she plucked the cigarette from her mouth, and waved a hand. “Twenty, thirty hours a week. They’re still talking about making me a manager, but you know.” She winked and stuck the cigarette between her painted lips. “I’ll find me a good man before that happens.”

  “Sure.” Crystal had long ago stopped believing her mother’s stories about being promoted, and had also given up trying to convince her that a man would never be the answer to her troubles.

  She set the table, listening to her mother rattle on about a woman she worked with. Just once she’d love for her mother to ask how she was or what was new in her life, the way she had before her father had lost his job and they’d been forced to move from their home in Peaceful Harbor. But her mother hadn’t been that woman for years. She had changed when they’d moved, and she’d gotten even worse after her father was killed.

  The door flew open and Jed stepped into the room, making the tight quarters feel even smaller. At six two, with dirty-blond hair, a beard that came in a shade darker, and piercing blue eyes, he was the spitting image of their father.

  He kissed the top of Crystal’s head. “Hey, shrimp. Still doing the goth thing?”

  She rolled her eyes. She’d dyed her hair black right after she’d moved to Peaceful Harbor. That had been more than four years ago. She’d thought he’d be used to it by now.

  “Still doing the stealing thing?” She nodded at his leather jacket as he dipped his head to kiss his mother’s cheek.

  He flopped down on the couch and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “Nope. I helped a guy fix his car.” He brushed an invisible speck of dirt from the dark leather. “Earned the money for this legally.”

  “Uh-huh.” Crystal pushed his feet off the coffee table and went to fill water glasses for dinner. “I can’t remember the last time you earned money the hard way. Where are you living these days?”

  “Crashing at a friend’s place. Basement apartment.”

  “Got my cigarettes?” their mother asked.

  “Oh, crap.” Jed winc
ed. “I knew I forgot something.”

  “Christ, Jeddy,” their mother said as she dished the chili onto three plates. “What have you been doing? I’ve waited all day.”

  “Ma. I’ve been working. Don’t worry,” Jed said. “I’ll get them after dinner.”

  Crystal’s ears perked up. “Working? Really?”

  “I’m trying to pull my shit together. Finally putting that mechanics training to good use and picking up a few hours here and there at a restaurant.”

  Their mother scoffed. “Right. Get on up here and eat.”

  They sat at the table, the silence broken only by the clinking of silverware on plates. Crystal pushed her food around, watching her mother smoke and eat. She had vague memories of her mother without cigarette-stained teeth, yellowed fingers, and the bitterness of someone who the world had wronged. Memories of a woman who would send her off to elementary school with a paper-bag lunch and greet her with a smile when she’d stepped off the bus at the end of the day. In a sense, her father’s death had stolen both of her parents.

  “Where are you working?” Crystal asked, taking a longer look at her brother. He wasn’t a big drinker, and he’d never been a drug user. Unfortunately, there weren’t any outward signs for a thief.

  “My buddy runs a gas station. I’m helping him out.”

  “How much do you pocket?” his mother asked.

  “Mom!” Crystal might not buy that her brother was suddenly trying to clean up his act after a lifetime of trouble, but she didn’t like her mother’s condescending attitude. It was bad enough that she’d never believed a damn thing Crystal said, but at least she could understand her mother’s anger toward her. She’d left home at eighteen with a Pell Grant to attend college and had never looked back. But Jed had stuck by their mother, put her to bed when she was too drunk to walk and done whatever she’d asked of him for years.

  “What?” She took a drag of her cigarette. “You can’t trust a liar’s word. He’s just like your father.”