by Flynn, Avery
“Those didn’t pick up anything before,” he scoffed.
Like she’d ever leave underperforming equipment in place. “I’ve made some adjustments.”
“What do you mean?”
“See for yourself.” She grabbed the remote out of her center desk drawer and punched a few buttons. The camera zoomed and refocused. The grainy image disappeared, replaced by a screen divided into four boxes with clear footage of a different part of the brewery in each one.
“Damn.”
With the technology upgrade, she’d be able to spot an intruder and alert the authorities without ever leaving the safety of her locked office. “Yep. We have night–vision, motion–sensitive cameras now. So you see, you don’t—”
He took the remote from her hand, his fingers brushing hers and setting off a mini–tsunami of desire. “Where’d they come from?”
“You don’t want to know what all my Uncle Julian had in his garage.” The two–car garage had been filled to the rafters with survival supplies, chain–link fencing, surveillance equipment and more. “It’s like he was prepping for a zombie apocalypse.”
He gave the remote a thorough looking over before handing it back to her. “Well then, I’ll see you tonight.” He pivoted and headed toward her closed office door.
“Sean, you don’t—”
“Forget it, Natalie.” He shoved his hat on his head. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Hungry and bordering on hangry, Sean walked into The Kitchen Sink ready for a pot roast sandwich served with an oversized helping of potato salad and a gallon of sweet tea. If he was lucky—a really big if—there’d still be a slice of pecan pie in the glass display case when he finished.
“Don’t think you’re getting by me.” The voice, made low and wheezy by decades of smoking, stopped him before the diner’s front door had even swung closed.
Ruby Sue sat in her usual spot on a high stool behind the cash register. She looked like the stereotypical little old lady, with her tight white curls and her thick glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. Sean knew better. The woman was a restaurant owner, gossip mastermind, and PhD–level pot stirrer. She’d seen through him the first night he’d rolled into town looking for a warm meal and a menial job. He’d washed dishes in the back for three months before she’d manipulated Julian into hiring him at the brewery.
Fact was, Sean owed Ruby Sue. And she knew it.
“Now why would I want to do that, Ruby Sue?”
“Come on, there’s a corner booth open.” She made a half–snort, half–honk sound, grabbed her purse, and sidled down off her stool. “We wouldn’t want any of these rumor mongers to listen in.”
It took everything he had, but Sean managed not to laugh out loud at her sass. She was like the housekeeper in the original Parent Trap movie who always swore she “never said nothing about nobody” and then managed to tell everything about everybody.
Still, he followed her spry shuffle across the crowded restaurant, past the packed lunch counter, and to an empty booth in the far corner.
She took the seat with the back to the wall. All the better to keep an eye on her customers and the front door. “Sit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He slid into the seat across from her already set up with silverware wrapped in a white paper napkin.
Ruby Sue leaned forward on her elbows, gave a shifty–eyed look toward the lunch crowd, and dropped her voice. “Is it that fool Carl Brennan? His mama tried to steal my pecan pie recipe when she worked here. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“That’s what they say about the Sweets.”
“Whoever’s saying that obviously doesn’t know shit from Shinola.” Her eyes crinkled at the corner. “But you sure are awfully protective of that family…or at least one Sweet in particular from what I hear.”
He shifted in his seat and fidgeted with the wrapped silverware. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I always liked that Natalie Sweet. Girl’s got fortitude.”
He kept his attention focused on the silverware now held in a tight grip. He couldn’t look at Ruby Sue. She took in too much at a glance.
“Here’s Ellen. Do you want the regular?” She glanced up at the redheaded waitress making a beeline toward them while holding a giant glass of sweet tea in each hand.
He nodded.
Ellen placed the condensation–covered plastic glasses on the table.
“Boy, it wouldn’t kill you to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while,” Ruby Sue said.
He didn’t bother trying to smother his laugh this time. That advice coming from Ruby Sue was like hearing Dixieland jazz from a punk rock band. “Have you been watching the daytime talk shows again?”
“Hush your mouth.” She ripped open three packets of sugar and poured them into her already diabetic–coma–inducing glass of the sweet stuff. “He’ll have the pot roast on a hoagie with extra potato salad. I’m good.”
“You should eat,” he urged. “It’s lunchtime.”
The look she gave him would have made his old cold–blooded Hollywood agent take a few steps back. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
The waitress gave him a what–can–you–do shrug and ambled off to the kitchen to place his order.
Ruby Sue took three large drinks of spiked sweet tea, five years coming off her face with each swallow, before beginning her interrogation. “Okay, spill it.”
He filled her in on the troubles at the brewery and the fact that all signs pointed to the permanently pissed–off former brewmaster.
Ruby Sue shook her head. “Make a decision in haste and repent on your own time.”
“Come again?” he asked.
“Joni Peterson was a wild child. Her mama and daddy warned her. Hell, half the town warned her about Carl Brennan, but she was too headstrong to listen. She tied her wagon so tight to Carl that she cut off contact with her family. Her daddy died a year ago. Cancer finally got her mother a few weeks ago.” She poured another pack of sugar into her sweet tea, stirring it with her straw until the white granules dissolved. “Seems bad news and old gossip always circles back around.”
“What do you mean?” Cold air blasted up his spine even though they weren’t anywhere near the front door.
“Fella came in the other day flashing an old photo of a young man.” Ruby Sue watched him from over the rim of her glass. “Thought at first he was some sort of private investigator looking for a deadbeat, then he gave me his card.”
She fished a business card out of her purse and slid it across the table. Hollywood and Vine Reports was written in purple calligraphy across the top. He didn’t have to look closely at the photo in the bottom left corner to see the man’s botox–injected forehead, blinding–white smile, and empty eyes.
Sean’s time in Salvation was up.
Rupert Crowley had found him and was closing in for the kill.
Everything inside him froze in place and he automatically clicked over into a sort of detached survival mode. He knew it well. It’s exactly how he’d survived the first years of his life. He’d won an Oscar at twenty–one for a very good reason. He’d been acting his whole life. It had been the best way to avoid his father’s fists.
“I gotta go.” He stood and was reaching for his wallet before the sentence was even out of his mouth.
“This Rupert fella said he was tracking down an actor who’d fallen off the face of the earth.” Ruby Sue didn’t make a move to stop him, but her flinty blue eyes took in his every move. “Said he was working on a where–are–they–now piece and would pay good money to anyone who could point him in the right direction.”
“Huh,” he grunted. Whatever the sleazeball gossip reporter was working on, Sean sure as hell wasn’t interested.
“Asked me if I knew of a Sean Duvin. Told him I’d never met anyone by that name.”
She may not know exactly why he was hiding or who from, but she wouldn’t give him up. Of that he
was one–hundred–percent confident.
“And you won’t.” Sean tossed a ten and a five on the table. That should cover the sandwich he wasn’t going to eat and Ellen’s tip. “Sean Duvin doesn’t exist anymore.”
Sean’s SUV idled at the stop sign on the edge of Salvation. His left turn signal ticked in a steady rhythm like a time bomb.
The savvy move would be to turn left, go home, pack up, and disappear in another small town. Crowley wouldn’t have left the bright lights of the big city and traveled across the country to small–town Virginia unless he was damn sure he’d find Sean here—and he wouldn’t leave until he’d confirmed he’d found him.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
There was plenty of gossip in Tinseltown, but the reporter had dogged Sean’s footsteps for years, writing too many magazine articles and televised reports to count and even publishing a book about the “talented young actor who’d vanished from the face of the Earth.” Crowley had built up Sean to be this generation’s James Dean just without the dead body inside a twisted car’s wreckage.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
A car horn blared behind him. Sean rolled down the driver’s side window and waved the minivan around. The soccer mom gave him a one–fingered salute and peeled off toward the right. Following the van with his gaze, he leaned forward until he could see the Sweet Salvation Brewery turnoff. Natalie waited two miles down that asphalt road.
Long answers to short questions. Soft sweaters with tiny little buttons. The clipboard always at the ready. Hungry lips and soft moans. Tightly wound hair. The teasing scent of honeysuckle that followed in her wake. Five–billion–point plans. Endless possibilities.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He glanced the other direction at the open highway. Freedom and anonymity lived along that road. All he had to do was turn left and Sean Duvin would stay buried. Maybe forever if he did a good enough job of running. He was good at disappearing. Always had been. He’d been eight years old the first time he’d lost himself in a role, escaping his frustrated actor slash domineering stage father and the backhands that came out of nowhere for no reason. After that, he’d never looked back.
He couldn’t afford to now.
But the idea of leaving Natalie while someone was doing their damnedest to sabotage the brewery left a foul taste in his mouth, sour without any hint of sweet. He couldn’t fucking do it.
Truth was, he was tired of play acting at being himself.
Easing his foot off the break, the SUV rolled into the intersection before making a right turn and heading toward the brewery and Natalie.
Chapter Nine
With four hours to go until most of the brewery staff left, Natalie was officially going stir–crazy waiting for something—anything—to go wrong. If she stayed another minute in her office, she was going to start accessorizing with a straightjacket instead of pearls.
Armed with her clipboard, her red pen, and the anxiety jitters reminiscent of downing ten shots of espresso, she marched out of her office on a mission. She’d find Sean, work out a schedule for the stakeout tonight, and plot a course of action for when they found the son of a bitch messing with her brewery.
Turning the corner, she crossed into Sean’s office. “Hey, about tonight.” She looked up from her clipboard and almost dropped it.
The office was empty.
And clean.
“Holy shit,” she muttered to herself as she walked in slow motion around the space.
The paper towers were gone, as were the coffee mugs that had littered Sean’s desk. The overturned pen holder had been righted and filled. The stack of brochures sat in the inbox with the brewers invitational on top. He’d said last night that he’d found the paperwork in the third pile he searched, but she hadn’t thought…
She shuffled over to the filing cabinets. Only the smallest line of sticky residue remained of the tape holding the drawers shut yesterday. Wondering if it was a dream, she yanked open the top drawer. Perfectly organized files filled it. They weren’t color–coded, but it was a start.
“Not one word.” Sean stood in the doorway, one shoulder propped up against the doorframe and his mouth sealed in a straight line.
Natalie blinked in surprised and opened her mouth.
He held up his hand. “I mean it.”
He had to be kidding. It was a total office makeover. He deserved high praise. “But it’s so—”
“I’ll take all the paper out and scatter it.” It wasn’t an idle threat. The stubborn man would do it.
She preached the gospel of organization and efficiency with the zeal of a born–again devotee. She couldn’t let that happen. So instead of a well–deserved “I told you so”, she pursed her lips and mimicked locking them closed with a pretend key that she tossed over her shoulder.
Shaking his head, he pushed off the doorframe and strutted across the room, stopping a foot from the filing cabinets. Too far away to touch, but too close to ignore the tension winding up her insides like a rubber band airplane. Unable to have what she wanted, Natalie clutched her clipboard close enough that the metal clip scratched her collarbone, a discomfort that registered dimly in the back of her mind.
Sean moved closer, slid the clipboard free from her grasp, and turned it over to read. “What’s on the agenda today?”
Yielding ground to give herself breathing room, the back of her thighs hit Sean’s desk. Pull it together, girl. “A schedule for tonight, a contingency plan for if he shows up, and another one for if he doesn’t.”
He flipped through the pages. “You’re kidding, right?”
Why would she be? She’d never been a girl to leave things to chance and she wasn’t starting now. “No.”
Sean tossed the clipboard over her head. It landed on the desk with a clatter and skidded to the edge, teetering for a second before staying put on the flat surface. “You need to focus on something else.”
“I can’t.” She twisted around to grab her clipboard, feeling as lost without it as an alien in rush–hour traffic.
Before she could grasp it, he took her by the hand and pulled her toward the door. “Come on.”
Heated electricity tingled up her arm, dancing across her skin, danger and a comfort jolted her system. “Where?”
“My office.”
“We’re in your office.” She took one last glance around before crossing into the hallway.
He turned, his face only inches from hers, an icy determination in his eyes. “No. The real one.”
Calling the Sweet Salvation Brewery’s reference library a “room” was being kind. Roughly the same size as Natalie’s walk–in closet, the room had books about everything from the history of hops to the modern brewery operations and everything in between. A worn stool sat in the corner next to a small table crowded with spiral notebooks and handwritten diagrams listing various beer ingredients’ properties.
When she’d first gotten to the brewery, she’d poured over the books to better understand how breweries worked. Then she’d moved on to the internet and interviewing everyone from other brewery owners to the staff at the National Craft Brewers Association.
Sean followed her inside and shut the door behind them. He stayed by the door, but in the tiny room the distance was more an illusion than a reality. In actuality, he filled the space from wall to wall until even the idea of him pushed against her, as tangible as the books on the shelves.
Awareness of him jolted through her body, as if she had a sixth sense for hotness. It made her jittery and unsure. Two of her least favorite feelings. She backed up until her ass hit the table’s edge. Shit, she was doing that a lot around him.
Floundering for words—something else that happened whenever he was near—she blurted out the first thing that came to mind that didn’t involve her licking his abs. “So this is one of the places besides the cooler where you hole up whenever I’m looking for yo
u.”
God, it seemed so obvious now. No one would be calling her Sherlock anytime soon.
He shrugged. “Pretty much.”
He slouched against one of the bookshelves, his brown–eyed gaze locked on her. Though his body language was relaxed, an underlying sexual tension came off him in waves.
And damn her, she wanted to drown in him. Another place, another man, Natalie would be planning which item of clothing to discard first. But he was an employee and she couldn’t cross that line with him again.
Needing to touch something, she raised her hand to her necklace and rubbed one pale pearl between her fingers. “Why are we here?”
“You need to be distracted before your head explodes.” The too–knowing smile curling one side of his delicious mouth showed that he knew exactly how much he’d thrown her off balance. “I’m working on the stout recipe that will win the Southeast Brewers Invitational. I’m making small batches to test out each recipe, and this is where I come up with combinations to try out.”
Falling into research mode, she relaxed. “How does that work?”
Sean pushed away from the bookshelf and joined her by the table. Standing only inches in front of her, he let his dark gaze dropped to her mouth.
So much for getting comfortable. Her heart jackhammered against her rib cage. There were a dozen reasons why she should leave now, but standing so close to him, none of them seemed to matter.
Leaning forward, his arm snaked around her, close enough that his bare forearm brushed against her waist as he reached for something on the table.
Her breath caught. It would have taken an earthquake to move her even the barest inch as she inhaled his clean–soap scent mixed with the brewery’s distinctive hoppy aroma. Somewhere between inhalation and exhalation, she gave up the ghost. While she hadn’t moved a millimeter, inside she felt like one of those animated gifs declaring “My body is ready.”
“First…” His whisper tickled her ear. “You have to figure out what kind you’re making.” Sean pulled a red spiral notebook from behind her and took half a step back.
