Casey surveyed the feast before her, and Zeb got the feeling that she didn’t approve. He couldn’t say why he thought that, because she was perfectly polite to Jamal at all times. In fact, when he tried to leave, she insisted on getting a picture with him so she could send it to her father—apparently, her father was a huge sports fan and would also know who Jamal was.
So Zeb took the photo for her and then Jamal hurried away, somewhere between flattered and uncomfortable.
And then Zeb and Casey were alone.
She didn’t move. “So Jamal Hitchens is an old friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s your...personal chef?”
Zeb settled into his seat at the head of the conference table. “Among other things, yes.” He didn’t offer up any other information.
“You don’t really strike me as a sports guy,” she replied.
“Come, now, Ms. Johnson. Surely you’ve researched me by now?”
Her cheeks colored again. He liked that delicate blush on her. He shouldn’t, but he did. “I don’t remember reading about you owning a sports franchise.”
Zeb lifted one shoulder. “Who knows. Maybe I’ll buy a team and make Jamal the general manager. After all, what goes together better than sports and beer?”
She was still standing near the door, as if he were an alligator that looked hungry. Finally, she asked, “Have you decided, then?”
“About what?”
He saw her swallow, but it was the only betrayal of her nerves. Well, that and the fact that she wasn’t smart-mouthing him. Actually, that she wasn’t saying whatever came to mind was unusual.
“About what kind of Beaumont you’re going to be.”
He involuntarily tensed and then let out a breath slowly. Like his father or his brother? He had no idea.
He wanted to ask what she knew—was it the same as the public image of the company? Or was there something else he didn’t know? Maybe his father had secretly been the kindest man on earth. Or maybe Chadwick was just as bad as Hardwick had been. He didn’t know.
What he did know was that the last time he’d seen her, he’d had the urge to kiss her. It’d been nerves, he’d decided. He’d been concerned about the press conference and Casey Johnson was the closest thing to a friendly face here—when she wasn’t scowling at him. That was all that passing desire had been. Reassurance. Comfort.
He didn’t feel comfortable now.
“I’m going to be a different kind of Beaumont,” he said confidently because it was the only true thing he could say. “I’m my own man.”
She thought this over. “And what kind of man is that?”
She had guts, he had to admit. Anyone else might have nodded and smiled and said, Of course. But not her. “The kind with strong opinions about beer.”
“Fair enough.” She headed for the bar.
Zeb watched her as she pulled on the tap with a smooth, practiced hand. He needed to stop being surprised at her competency. She was the brewmaster. Of course she knew how to pour beer. Tapping the keg was probably second nature to her. And there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she could also destroy him in a sports trivia contest.
But this was different from watching a bartender fill a pint glass. Watching her hands on the taps was far more interesting than it’d ever been before. She had long fingers and they wrapped around each handle with a firm, sure grip.
Unexpectedly, he found himself wondering what else she’d grip like that. But the moment the thought found its way to his consciousness, he pushed it aside. This wasn’t about attraction. This was about beer.
Then she glanced up at him and a soft smile ghosted across her lips, like she was actually glad to see him, and Zeb forgot about beer. Instead, he openly stared at her. Was she glad he was here? Was she able to look at him and see not just a hidden bastard or a ruthless businessman but...
...him? Did she see him?
Zeb cleared his throat and shifted in his seat as Casey gathered up the pint glasses. After a moment’s consideration, she set down one pair of glasses in front of the tenderloin and another in front of the pasta. Zeb reached for the closest glass, but she said, “Wait! If we’re going to do this right, I have to walk you through the beers.”
“Is there a wrong way to drink beer?” he asked, pulling his hand back.
“Mr. Richards,” she said, exasperated. “This is a tasting. We’re not ‘drinking beer.’ I don’t drink on the job—none of us do. I sample. That’s all this is.”
She was scolding him, he realized. He was confident that he’d never been scolded by an employee before. The thought made him laugh—which got him some serious side-eye.
“Fine,” he said, trying to restrain himself. When had that become difficult to do? He was always restrained. Always. “We’ll do this your way.”
He’d told Jamal the truth. He should never underestimate Casey Johnson.
She went back behind his bar and filled more half-pint glasses, twenty in all. Each pair was placed in front of a different dish. And the whole time, she was quiet.
Silence was a negotiating tactic and, as such, one that never worked on Zeb. Except...he felt himself getting twitchy as he watched her focus on her work. The next thing he knew, he was volunteering information. “Four people in the marketing department have resigned,” he announced into the silence. “You were right about that.”
She shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “You gave a nice talk about family honor and a bunch of other stuff, but you didn’t warn anyone that you were bringing in a new CMO. People were upset.”
Was she upset? No, it didn’t matter, he told himself. He wasn’t in this business for the touchy-feely. He was in it to make money. Well, that and to get revenge against the Beaumonts.
So, with that firmly in mind, he said, “The position was vacant. And Daniel’s brilliant when it comes to campaigns. I have no doubt the skills he learned in politics will apply to beer, as well.” But even as he said it, he wondered why he felt the need to explain his managerial decisions to her.
Evidently, she wondered the same thing, as she held up her hands in surrender. “Hey, you don’t have to justify it to me. Although it might have been a good idea to justify it to the marketing department.”
She was probably right—but he didn’t want to admit that, so he changed tactics. “How about your department? Anyone there decide I was the final straw?” As he asked it, he realized what he really wanted to know was if she’d decided he was the final straw.
What the hell was this? He didn’t care what his employees thought about him. He never had. All he cared about was that people knew their jobs and did them well. Results—that was what he cared about. This was business, not a popularity contest.
Or it had been, he thought as Casey smirked at him when she took her seat.
“My people are nervous, but that’s to be expected. The ones who’ve hung in this long don’t like change. They keep hoping that things will go back to the way they were,” she said, catching his eye. No, that was a hedge. She already had his eye because he couldn’t stop staring at her. “Or some reasonable facsimile thereof. A new normal, maybe. But no, I haven’t had anyone quit on me.”
A new normal. He liked that. “Good. I don’t want you to be understaffed again.”
She paused and then cleared her throat. When she looked up at him again, he felt the ground shift under his feet. She was gazing at him with something he so desperately wanted to think was appreciation. Why did he need her approval so damned bad?
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I mean, I get that owning the company is part of your birthright, I guess, but this place...” She looked around as her voice trailed off with something that Zeb recognized—longing.
It was as if he were seeing another woman—one younger, more idealistic. A versio
n of Casey that must have somehow found her way to the Beaumont Brewery years ago. Had she gotten the job through her father or an uncle? An old family friend?
Or had she walked into this company and, in her normal assertive way, simply demanded a job and refused to take no for an answer?
He had a feeling that was it.
He wanted to know what she was doing here—what this place meant to her and why she’d risked so much to defend it. Because they both knew that he could have fired her already. Being without a brewmaster for a day or a week would have been a problem, but problems were what he fixed.
But he hadn’t fired her. She’d pushed him and challenged him and...and he liked that. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of him. Which didn’t make any sense—fear and intimidation were weapons he deployed easily and often to get what he wanted, the way he wanted it. Almost every other employee in this company had backed down in the face of his memos and decrees. But not this employee.
Not Casey.
“Okay,” she announced in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t going to finish her earlier statement. She produced a tablet from her lab-coat pocket and sat to his right. “Let’s get started.”
They went through each of the ten Beaumont beers, one at a time. “As you taste each one,” she said without looking at him, “think about the flavors as they hit your tongue.”
He coughed. “The...flavors?”
She handed him a pint glass and picked up the other for herself. “Drinking beer isn’t just chugging to get drunk,” she said in a voice that made it sound like she was praying, almost. She held her glass up and gazed at the way the light filtered through the beer. Zeb knew he should do the same—but he couldn’t. He was watching her.
“Drinking beer fulfills each of the senses. Every detail contributes to the full experience,” she said in that voice that was serious yet also...wistful. “How does the color make you feel?” She brought the glass back to her lips—but she didn’t drink. Instead, her eyes drifted shut as she inhaled deeply. “What does it smell like—and how do the aromas affect the taste? How does it feel in your mouth?”
Her lips parted and, fascinated, Zeb watched as she tipped the glass back and took a drink. Her eyelashes fluttered in what looked to him like complete and total satisfaction. Once she’d swallowed, she sighed. “So we’ll rate each beer on a scale of one to five.”
Did she have any idea how sensual she looked right now? Did she look like that when she’d been satisfied in bed? Or was it just the beer that did that to her? If he leaned over and touched his fingertips to her cheek to angle her chin up so he could press his lips against hers, would she let him?
“Mr. Richards?”
“What?” Zeb shook back to himself to find that Casey was staring at him with amusement.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” he said because, once again, that was the truth. He’d thought he’d been ready to take over this company—but until right then, he hadn’t been sure he was ready for someone like Casey Johnson.
They got to work, sipping each beer and rating it accordingly. Amazingly, Zeb was able to focus on the beer—which was good. He could not keep staring at his brewmaster like some love-struck puppy. He was Zeb Richards, for God’s sake.
“I’ve always preferred the Rocky Top,” Zeb told her, pointedly sampling—not drinking—the stalwart of the Beaumont product line. “But the Rocky Top Light tastes like dishwater.”
Casey frowned at this and made a note on her tablet. “I’d argue with you, but you’re right. However, it remains one of our bestsellers among women aged twenty-one to thirty-five and is one of our top overall sellers.”
That was interesting. “It’s the beer we target toward women and you don’t like it?”
She looked up at him sharply and he could almost hear her snapping, Women are not interchangeable. But she didn’t. Instead, in as polite a voice as he’d ever heard from her, she said, “People drink beer for different reasons,” while she made notes. “I don’t want to sacrifice taste for something as arbitrary as calorie count.”
“Can you make it better?”
That got her attention. “We’ve used the same formula for... Well, since the ’80s, I think. You’d want to mess with that?”
He didn’t lean forward, no matter how much he wanted to. Instead, he kept plenty of space between them. “There’s always room for improvement, don’t you think? I’m not trapped by the past.” But the moment he said it, he wondered how true that was. “Perhaps one of your experiments can be an improved light-beer recipe.”
She held his gaze, her lips curved into a slight smile. It was disturbing how much he liked her meeting his challenges straight on like that. “I’ll do that.”
They went through the rest of the beers and, true to her word, Zeb couldn’t have said that he’d drunk enough to even get a slight buzz. Finally, as they’d eaten the last of their cupcakes, he leaned back and said, “So what are we missing?”
She surprised him then. She picked up what was left of her Rocky Top and took a long drink. “Look—here’s the thing about our current product line. It’s fine. It’s...serviceable.”
He notched an eyebrow at her. “It gets the job done?”
“Exactly. But when we lost Percheron Drafts, we lost the IPA, the stout—the bigger beers with bolder tastes. We lost seasonal beers—the summer shandy and the fall Oktoberfest beers. What we’ve got now is basic. I’d love to get us back to having one or two spotlight beers that we could rotate in and out.” She got a wistful look on her face. “It’s hard to see that here, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, look at this.” She swept her hand out, encompassing the remains of their lunch. “This. Most people who drink our beer don’t do so in the luxury of a private office with a catered four-course meal. They drink a beer at a game or on their couch, with a burger or a brat.”
Suddenly, a feeling he’d gotten earlier—that she hadn’t approved of the setup—got stronger. “What about you? Where do you drink your beer?”
“Me? Oh. I have season tickets to the Rockies. My dad and I go to every home game we can. Have you done that?” He shook his head. “You should. I’ve learned a lot about what people like just standing in line to get a beer at the game. I talk with the beer guys—that sort of thing.”
“A ball game?” He must have sounded doubtful, because she nodded encouragingly. “I can get a box.”
“Really?” She rolled her eyes. “That’s not how people drink beer. Here. I’ll tell you what—there’s a game tomorrow night at seven, against the Braves. My dad can’t go. You can use his ticket. Come with me and see what I mean.”
He stared at her. It didn’t sound like a come-on—but then, he’d never gotten quite so turned on watching another woman drink beer before. Nothing was typical when it came to this woman. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
He had a feeling she was right. He’d spent years learning about the corporate workings of the brewery from a distance. If he was going to run this place as his own—and he was—then he needed to understand not just the employees but their customers.
Besides, the Braves were his team. And beyond that, this was a chance to see Casey outside work. Suddenly, that seemed important—vital, even. What was she like when she wasn’t wearing a lab coat? He shouldn’t have wanted to know. But he did anyway. “It’s a da—” Casey’s eyes got huge and her cheeks flushed and Zeb remembered that he wasn’t having a drink with a pretty girl at a bar. He was at the brewery and he was the CEO. He had to act like it. “Company outing,” he finished, as if that was what he’d meant to say all along.
She cleared her throat. “Covert market research, if you will.” Her gaze flickered over his Hugo Boss suit. “And try to blend, maybe?”
He g
ave her a level stare, but she was unaffected. “Tomorrow at seven.”
“Gate C.” She gathered up her tablet. “We’ll talk then.”
He nodded and watched her walk out. Once the door was firmly closed behind her, he allowed himself to grin.
Whether she liked it or not, they had a date.
Six
Casey really didn’t know what to expect as she stood near the C gate at Coors Field. She’d told Richards to blend but she was having trouble picturing him in anything other than a perfectly tailored suit.
Not that she was spending a lot of time thinking about him in a perfectly tailored suit. She wasn’t. Just because he was the epitome of masculine grace and style, that was no reason at all to think about her boss.
Besides, she didn’t even go for guys in suits. She usually went for blue-collar guys, the kind who kicked back on the weekend with a bunch of beer to watch sports. That was what she was comfortable with, anyway. And comfort was good, right?
And anyway, even if she did go for guys in suits—which she did not—she was positive she didn’t go for guys like Richards. It wasn’t that he was African American. She had looked him up, and one of the few pictures of him on the internet was him standing with a woman named Emily Richards in Atlanta, Georgia, outside a Doo-Wop and Pop! Salon. It was easy to see the resemblance between them—she was clearly his mother.
No, her not going for guys like Richards had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that he was way too intense for her. The way he’d stared at her over the lip of his pint glass during their tasting lunch? Intensity personified, and as thrilling as it had been, it wasn’t what she needed on her time off. Really. She had enough intensity at work. That was why she always went for low-key guys—guys who were fun for a weekend but never wanted anything more than that.
Right. So it was settled. She absolutely did not go for someone like Richards in a suit. Good.
“Casey?”
Casey whipped around and found herself staring not at a businessman in a suit—and also not at someone who was blending. Zeb Richards stood before her in a white T-shirt with bright red raglan sleeves. She was vaguely aware that he had on a hat and reasonably certain that he was wearing blue jeans, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his chest. The T-shirt molded to his body in a way that his power suit hadn’t. Her mouth went dry.
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