by Flynn, Avery
Warmth washed over her, that one–of–a–kind sisterly love of knowing someone was in her corner. After her breakdown during college, her sisters could have treated her like a broken doll that had been carelessly glued back together. But they hadn’t, and for that she’d be eternally grateful. Bald lies in the face of an ugly truth never sat well with her. She’d have shattered under kid gloves, and thanks to their tough love, she’d found the strength she’d thought she’d lost.
“That makes three of us.” She saluted Miranda with a donut. “The fact that I haven’t had a knee–knocking anxiety attack despite all of this crazy is comforting.”
Her sister grinned and grabbed the remaining donut. “You’re a hell of a lot tougher than you look.”
“You know I look just like you.” Mirror reflections, at least on the outside. But on the inside? What she wouldn’t give for Miranda’s bone–deep confidence, or Olivia’s willingness to take chances, instead of being the Nervous Nelly middle sister.
Miranda laughed. “Touché.”
Needing to pull her thoughts away from the maudlin edge, Natalie turned the conversation back to what had brought her sister into the office in the first place. “Enough touchy–feely sisterly love, what gossip did you just hear?”
Miranda held up her pointer finger and finished her mouthful of donut. “Well, Logan and Hud were having lunch at The Kitchen Sink today when the sheriff came in for pie.”
“Fascinating.” She polished off her own donut. “Your fiancé and his best friend were eating and saw someone go to The Kitchen Sink for pie? Well, I never.”
“Oh, shut up.” Miranda flung a donut chunk at her. “Well, Ruby Sue put the screws to the sheriff. He told her that Carl tested positive for PCP, which would explain the paranoid delusions and general violent whack–a–do–ness from the other day. We’re lucky he only had a BB gun with him. People go nuts on that stuff.”
Natalie scooped her jaw up off the floor. “Damn.”
“Exactly.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Supposedly there wasn’t very much in his system.”
“And the sheriff just spilled all of that?” Natalie contemplated the few bits of loose tea floating in her cup.
“Do you know of anyone who can withstand Ruby Sue’s interrogations?”
She considered it, trying to recall a single instance of that happening, and came up with nothing. “Nope.”
“That’s where the good news ends.”
With care, she set her cup down on a coaster. She doubted green tea was going to be enough to smooth over whatever was coming next. “That was good news?”
“Pretty much.” Miranda sighed. “I just got off the phone with the sheriff’s investigator assigned to our case,” Miranda continued. “While he admits Carl is the likely suspect if—and he stressed that—anything nefarious happened, there’s no physical proof to tie him to the possible sabotage, and there’s not much more they can do.”
Of course not. Old habits died hard in Salvation, and treating the Sweets like the redheaded stepchildren had become second nature to the people who’d lived there over the past hundred years.
“Great.” She traced the length of her pearl necklace. “So now we just keep our eyes open and move forward with brewery operations?”
Miranda shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“Right back at the beginning.”
“Not completely.” Miranda’s body language was nonchalant, but Natalie knew better than most when her sister was going in for the kill. “After Ruby Sue got done with the sheriff, she turned her laser beam of truth on Logan and Hud.”
“Looking for wedding details?” Please say yes.
“Nope.” Miranda shook her head. “She wanted to know all about you and Sean.”
Her stomach dive–bombed to her knees. “Great.” She traced the length of her pearl necklace. Salvation’s gossip gods giveth and they taketh away. “What did they tell her?”
Miranda shrugged. “Not much they could tell. It’s not like there’s anything going on.”
One pearl. Two pearl. Three pearl. “Exactly.”
“Of course not, because you’d totally tell your big sister if there was,” Miranda said. “From what I hear, you and Sean made quite the team when Carl showed up. Maybe you two should…work together more often.”
Oh no, she wasn’t taking that bait. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was doing with Sean but it scared her just as much as it thrilled her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Had someone heard them? Then she remembered how Hailey had burst into the room as soon as their clothes were back on. Had she been outside the whole time, trying to get their attention, but they’d been too focused on each other to hear the outside world? Natalie’s cheeks burned. She was falling back onto old habits. Sex with the unobtainable—in this case an employee—when what she needed was to find someone with relationship potential.
Miranda arched her eyebrows and cocked her head to the side. “Oh, if Olivia could see you now, you’d be in so much trouble.”
Too late for that. Natalie was already neck deep in it.
Natalie paused outside of Sean’s closed office door and took a deep breath. She’d just talk to him. Work only. No mind–melting kisses. No sexual tension. No noticing his amazing ass that you could bounce a quarter off of. Definitely no sex. She wasn’t sure she could take a second time without getting her heart broken—and that was not part of her master plan to have a healthy, non–compartmentalized relationship.
Plan. Brewery. Keep it together, Natalie.
Miranda was right. To implement the changes, she had to get the staff’s buy in, and to do that, she needed Sean. She wouldn’t even notice his broad shoulders or the way he chewed his bottom lip when he rolled a problem around in his head.
She could do this.
She would do this.
So why are you standing here with your hand hovering in the air, unable to knock on his door?
Straightening her shoulders and snapping on an imaginary chastity belt, she rapped her knuckles against the wood.
“It’s open.” Sean’s deep voice stirred up nothing but trouble inside her.
Steeling her nerve, she turned the knob and walked in. “Hey, do you have a minute?”
Sean looked up from the notes he was writing in his cramped script. He’d tossed his Sweet Salvation Brewery hat on top of the file cabinet, leaving his chin–length waves loose and wild. Like him. God, that enough should make her control freak self–padlock her knees together. If only her libido worked that way.
She clutched her clipboard closer to her chest.
His gaze zeroed in on it, and his pupils dilated and darkened. “I don’t know.” A slow, deadly smile curled his lips, and he relaxed back against his chair. “You’ve got that clipboard and too many clothes on.”
“Very funny.” Heat blazed against her cheeks. “Look. I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s always trouble.” His flirtatious tone remained, but his body sharpened as he leaned forward, tension thrumming off him.
Her breath caught and she almost stumbled back. Everything about him screamed danger. To her heart. To her sanity. To her ability to control the chaos. Tightening her grip on the clipboard, she squeezed it close to her chest like a shield.
“Yesterday shouldn’t have happened. People are already talking—neither of us wants that. We don’t need to pretend it was anything more than temporary insanity.”
That last bit was harder to get out than she’d expected. Each word slashed against her skin like a whip, leaving a red, raw welt in its wake.
“Who said I was pretending?” The deadly serious look in his brown eyes made her heart stutter. “I sure as hell hope you weren’t.”
“Oh.” For once, it was Natalie who didn’t have a thing to say, because he was right. She hadn’t been pretending at all. She wasn’t falling for her brewmaster—she already had.
He shrugged and rubbed his palm against hi
s head. God, she could still feel the smoothness of his hair as she’d run her fingers through it while he’d licked her nipples. A slow and easy warmth invaded her body.
Remember the plan, Natalie.
Latching on to her logical side before lust could tip its hand, Natalie shot him a dirty look and remained standing to hold on to the height advantage. “Enough procrastinating. We need to get these changes in place.” She whipped a copy of her plan from the clipboard. Back in control of her libido—okay, barely, but it was still control—her hand didn’t even shake.
Not much anyway.
He glanced down at the papers but didn’t take them. “Why?”
Natalie took a deep breath, resisting the urge to roll up the paper and smack him in the head. Instead, she rounded the desk, stopped on the edge of his hot–guy–pheromone force field and slapped the papers down in the middle of his desk.
“Because the brewery has so much potential.” She dropped her clipboard to the desk, the clatter of it hitting the wood echoing her own frustration. “My sisters and I own this brewery, we know what needs to be done to make it better, and it’s past time you got on board.”
Power streamed through her veins, revving her up from the inside out. She might have her faults, but her belief in what the right processes could do to improve efficiency wasn’t one of them. If only that strategy worked as well in her relationships as it did in business.
Sean rolled back from the desk, interlocked his fingers, and rested them on top of his head. “Is it so wrong to just let it be?”
“Yeah, it is.”
Just let it be?
If she just let things be, she never would have reenrolled in college after dropping out, never would have found a healthy outlet for her anxiety, and never would have made good on what right now seemed like an insane promise to stop compartmentalizing sex and relationships.
Let it be.
Total crazy talk.
“Why just be okay when you can be more?”
He stiffened in his seat, and something dark flashed in his brown eyes. “So nothing but the best at any cost, huh?”
Just the way he said it, with such a cold, hard tone, sent a chill down her spine. Knowing she was treading on thin ice but not understanding why, she took a half step back and let out a cleansing breath. She’d sold more stubborn people than Sean on her ideas before. She could do it now.
“Not exactly.” Slowly, she slid the printout of her plan across the desk. “Take a look. You’ll see the changes are about improving efficiency and strengthening our production abilities.”
He stared at the papers but didn’t reach out to take them. “Part of what makes the Sweet Salvation Brewery special is the way we make our beer with care and commitment. It’s who we are.”
“Instead of thinking only the worst, why don’t you at least take a look?”
“You and your sisters own the place,” he snapped. “Why not just change everything by fiat?”
She considered it. It had happened at other businesses. Management had accepted her recommendations and told underlings it was this way or the highway. The results had always been tainted by the ensuing turnover and bitterness. The total brewery staff clocked in at twenty–five, many of whom had been there since the Sweet triplets were in middle school. Even a small change, if it wasn’t supported by key team members, could negatively affect the whole process and alienate the staff.
So why not just change everything by fiat?
“Because it’s not our style.” She shrugged and sat down on the corner of his desk. “We want your buy in.”
“What about you?” He dropped his arms and rolled his chair closer so that his knees almost touched her legs dangling from his desk. “What do you want?”
Electricity zapped between them, and she nearly fell into his deep–brown eyes—not to mention his lap.
Fighting to maintain proper decorum, she tapped the papers on his desk. “This is what I want.”
“No.” Sean leaned forward, his knee brushing against her leg. “What do you really want?”
Only his jeans and her winter tights kept them from skin–to–skin contact, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from going jittery and molten at once. Who was she kidding? A three–foot steel wall probably wouldn’t be enough for her not to notice him. The man was fast becoming her kryptonite.
She should move—but she didn’t.
“I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation for employer and employee.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time we were inappropriate.” He winked and scooted closer. Now his legs bracketed hers, and his palms rested flat on the desk, one on either side of her hips. “Did you forget yesterday? I haven’t.”
“You’re just trying to throw me off my game.” That came out way too breathy. What was it about this man that made her lose control so easily?
Sean rose from this chair but kept his hands planted on the desk. Leaning forward, he didn’t stop until his lips were millimeters from her ear. “Is it working?” he asked in a teasing growl.
Hell yes. “No.”
He chuckled. “Really?”
Low and rumbly, his single–word question sent desire spiraling through her like a tornado of want and need and gimmie–some–of–that–hottie–now desire. But everything was so new, she didn’t have enough data to understand what was going on. There wasn’t a flowchart for how to act when you’d fallen for an employee. So she scrambled to safer conversational ground.
“Really.” She pushed him away and stood before her lust overwhelmed her ability to breathe and think straight, her knees a little shakier than she wanted to admit even to herself, and delivered a pointed stare at his arm blocking her retreat.
He took a few steps back to give her room to escape. And that’s what it was; they both knew it.
“Read it.” She grabbed her clipboard from the desk and held it close. “After all, I was right about organizing your office.”
He glanced around at his still–clean office before giving her a half–smile that melted everything south of her waist and made her rethink the importance of oxygen. “One condition.”
Her heart tripped over itself and banged against her ribs. Her lips parted. “What’s that?”
“Research the Southeast Brewers Invitational and what it can do for a brewery’s reputation.” He snagged a brochure from his top drawer and handed it to her. “That’s where we need to be concentrating. Winning could make the Sweet Salvation Brewery.”
She took it, careful to keep her fingers from brushing his, and backpedaled to the office door. A girl could only take so much temptation after all. “That may be true, but it won’t mean a damn thing if we can’t fill the orders without breaking the bank.”
“So you think the artist of alcohol and the organizational queen can work together?” Sean asked.
With the length of the office between them, Natalie regained her natural balance. Mostly. “Something like that.”
His phone buzzed. “Yeah?” He paused. “Sure, she’s right here.”
She took the phone and the air sizzled around them when her fingers brushed his. “Hello?”
“Natalie, there’s a guy here to see you,” Hailey said. “His name is Rupert Crowley.”
Fingers crossed it was the new hops and barley dealer here to negotiate next year’s prices. “Send him to my office. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“You got it.”
Natalie hung up the phone. “I have to go.”
Sean tipped an imaginary hat at her. “Looking forward to talking again soon.”
Damn her mutinous body, so was she.
Sean finished the last page of Natalie’s twenty–five–point plan, dropped it on his desk and sat back. The woman was scary smart and damn good at her job. The changes she outlined seemed so obvious and a hell of a lot less crazy once he’d read them in black and white. He rubbed the back of his neck hard enough to heat his palm, but not enough to wipe out the memory of
the lengths he’d gone to avoid even taking a look at Natalie’s plan.
And the asshat of the year award goes to…me.
It really sucked that he couldn’t even cook something as simple as popcorn, because he was going to be eating crow for days.
He pushed away from the desk and stood. Better to get it over with sooner rather than later. Anyway, it wasn’t as if he was making any headway on creating a unique new stout recipe. Everything he’d come up with in the past two days had lacked any kind of punch. He glanced down at the notes he’d scrawled in the notebook laying open in the middle of his clean desk.
One word was circled: cherry.
It wasn’t unheard of for cherry to be in beer. The cherry lambic was made by fermenting the lambic with sour Morello cherries. Maybe Natalie had something.
Again.
With traditional ales and lagers, the fermentation was carefully controlled and included specific cultivated strains of brewer’s yeast. But a lambic utilized spontaneous fermentation with wild yeast and bacteria from Brussels. If he could apply some of the lambic process to the stout, he could create a unique sweet and sour stout that would stand out at the Southeast Brewers Invitational.
He turned the idea over in his head, trying to think around the mental image of Natalie in the reference room and the way her pink lips had moved when she’d said the word cherry. In a heartbeat, he was back in that tiny room, surrounded by the honeysuckle scent that clung to her tightly bound hair. He’d stood close enough that, with the slightest movement, he could have reached out and touched her soft skin hidden beneath the naughty librarian cardigan and sensible skirt.
His fingers itched to touch her now.
As much as she’d driven him to distraction when she’d arrived at the brewery with her clipboard and no–nonsense attitude, he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since the first time she’d said “flowchart”. The pull only gained strength the more time he spent with her. Shit, their meeting in his office this afternoon had left him with a hard–on big enough to leave a zipper imprint on his dick.
She felt it too, he knew it, but propriety and office etiquette held her back from thinking it could be more. He wished he had as good of an excuse. Lying through his teeth about who he was and why he was in Salvation didn’t tread the same moral high ground. Either way, she was off limits.
