* * *
Oasis
Unequivocal Love
Five Words
Broken Rules
…and a few more as well.
THE LIQUOR CABINET SERIES
Liquor has never been so disturbingly saucy
* * *
Malt Me (Book 1)
Tequila Healing (Book 2)
Wine Not (Book 3)
The Final Shot (Book 4)
* * *
The Liquor Cabinet: Series boxset
About DL Gallie
DL Gallie is from Queensland, Australia, but she’s lived in many different places all over the world, including the UK and Canada. She currently resides in Central Queensland with her husband and two munchkins. She and her husband have been together since she was sixteen, and although they drive each other crazy at times, she couldn’t imagine her life without him.
* * *
Shortly after her son was born, DL began reading again. With encouragement from her husband, she picked up the pen and started writing, and now the voices in her head won’t shut up.
* * *
DL enjoys listening to music, drinking white wine in the summer, red wine in the winter, and beer all year round. She’s also never been known to turn down a cocktail, especially a margarita.
Muchas Smoochas
Halo Roberts
Synopsis - Muchas Smoochas
Single for Christmas, sounds like a dream come true, right? Yeah, hard pass. My marriage exploded, my date for the holidays is my cat Mitzy and I’m planning to cuddle up to a bottle of wine until this awful year is over.
* * *
And then Enrique opens a brewery next door...we’ve got history. He was my first, well, everything, and now we’re all grown up. If I rekindle things with him, I’m nuttier than a fruitcake...but, maybe, this fruitcake is the good kind of nutty.
copyright @ 2020 by Halo Roberts
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews.
For information, please contact the author.
This a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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1
Freya
“Just so we’re clear, there’s no return policy when this whole thing goes to shit,” I give the bride-to-be and her mother a perky smile. Their eyes widen.
“I beg your pardon?!” The mother exclaims, outraged.
“It’s inevitable isn’t it?” I shrug, paying little attention to my audience of two as I continue. “True love is a garbage concept and weddings are a nonsense waste of mon-oomph!” My assistant, Charlene, swiftly hip bumps me right out of the way and I bounce off my office door, landing in a heap on the floor behind the counter. Smoothly taking each of the offended women by an elbow, Charlene begins murmuring soothing apologies. I catch ‘husband’, ‘medicated’ and ‘poor thing’ before she manages to lead them to the private dressing area furthest away from me.
Cheeks flaming, I reach up and open the office door, crawling inside and closing it behind me. I don’t know what I was thinking, coming to work today. I own a bridal boutique and my marriage exploded three months ago...I’m clearly not a good candidate to provide an objective opinion on bridal wear right now.
That annoying beeping sound that a large truck makes when it backs up, along with men shouting outside makes me curious enough to get up and go to my office window. I heard a few weeks ago that a new business is opening in the empty building next to my shop. Guess today is the day I get to see the owner of the new brewery.
Situated in the downtown historic district of Edmundston, a sleepy river town on the western border of Iowa, a new business was cause for curiosity. It’s a good location, we’re just north of Omaha, plenty of folks come up from the city for the steakhouse and the winery.
I was raised here by my aunt, Amelia. My parents died in a car accident when I was too young to have more than a few scattered memories of them. What Aunt Amelia lacked in maternal instinct she more than made up for with good intentions and boundless energy, fueled by an unparalleled addiction to coffee.
Aunt Amelia opened this bridal boutique back in the seventies. Being a shrewd business woman, she partnered with designers in Omaha and Chicago and was able to develop a niche in vintage long before the internet dug its claws into the industry. After college, she roped me into a summer internship to help with fittings and I never left. Aunt Amelia retired a while back and moved to Florida, sold me the whole works for ten dollars with a smile and a hug.
The historic district spans six blocks of the main street. My boutique is at one end of a linked row of shops. It’s sort of the definition of quaint, white brick, black shutters, red flowers in the window boxes, brass lights. A tasteful sign reads, “Le Bridal”, because Aunt Amelia fancied the shop to be a little bit of Paris in the midwest, luckily she had good taste and endless cash from husband number four to fund her musings.
A small brick alleyway runs along the side of my shop and the empty building on the other side of the alley is becoming the brewery. I think it used to be a lumberyard or something industrial. It’s three stories tall, lots of old brick, wood and years of dust. Whoever is moving in has their work cut out for them, but the building has great bones. My office window offers almost nothing for a view, I can see up the alley to the front corner of the brewery, some men directing the truck as it backs up and nothing else of interest.
Sitting down at my desk with a sigh, I consider the papers scattered across the otherwise spotless surface and my eyes fill with tears. Spineless bastard moved his shit out of the house while I was shopping with a friend. A couple of semi-apologetic texts were all I heard from him until he had me served with divorce papers at my bridal shop, the dick.
Divorced at 28 was not the future I had envisioned when Scott and I said our vows three years ago. I guess it could have been worse. If he’d waited a few months, he could have brought his new baby mama on our anniversary date. That would have been a fun way to find out he’s slime.
Scott and I met the summer I returned to Edmundston. He was charming and confident and he swept me off my feet. We were engaged within a year and married just before Christmas. I’d always dreamed of a winter wedding, and ours was perfect. He was a marketing analyst for a big firm in Omaha and travelled regularly to the west coast. It never occurred to me that he’d pick up a side piece, even though the signs were there...I am a naive idiot.
The only positive is that he’s basing out of his California office now, so, with any luck at all, I’ll never see him again. Staring at the papers for another minute, I feel an odd sense of resolve sink right into my bones. I wipe my eyes and grab a pen. Scribbling my name in all of the required spaces is oddly cathartic. I toss the pen aside, neatly gather the papers into their envelope and seal it shut. Setting it carefully in the outgoing mail tray, I stand and walk to the small bathroom adjoining my office.