by Addison Fox
Philip had the grace to blush before he nodded. “No, it’s not. And of course we’ve spoken. Took him on a tour of the facilities a few months back. He was full of questions.”
“Damn good ones,” her father mumbled.
“What do you think of his character?”
“I like him fine.” Philip stopped, considered. “He’s a good guy, and he doesn’t have to be, you know what I mean?”
She did know what he meant. It was the same kindness he’d afforded her after her bad date and that wayward punch outside of the End Zone.
The image of that cheeky grin faded into the fierce self-possession she detected when they were outside his bar. Nick’s determination to get answers and ensure nothing inappropriate was happening inside his doors had been palpable. He had respect for tradition, and he had a sense of what made something good and worthwhile.
Perhaps she’d been looking at this problem all wrong.
“Then let’s make a deal.”
Nick watched the beer coming off the production line, the steady tinkling of bottles against the conveyor as they passed strangely hypnotic. He and Tommy had left the conference room with the intention of giving Emma and her father some space, and Tommy had booked it for the front door to make a few calls. Uninterested in texting his brothers or making any calls of his own, Nick had wandered through the first floor of the brewery, his aimless walk bringing him here.
The bright yellow labels indicated the Unity’s pale ale was coming off the line, a summer special that had been a hit in his bar three years running. He’d stocked up on his last order, unwilling to run out in June, like he had for the past two years. The beer was yet more proof that even with Peter’s lack of interest, the Unity held its own.
The same young people who’d spilled over the bridges into Brooklyn over the past decade—the ones who’d embraced Brooklyn’s renaissance and contributed to its rebirth—loved the borough’s heritage, and the Unity had profited from that. Their regular lineup had several tap spots in pretty much every bar in Brooklyn, his included.
“You ready?” Tommy interrupted his thoughts, his gaze flitting briefly to the line before focusing on Nick. “Philip just texted me they’re ready for us.”
“To sign the papers?”
“He didn’t say.”
Nick had signed enough contracts in his life to know nothing was a sure thing, so rather than prolong the inevitable, he followed Tommy back to the conference room. Peter, Emma, and their lawyer had taken the same seats as before, their stiff postures and crossed arms hard to ignore.
“Should we begin again?” Tommy reopened his prospectus, but before he could start the discussion again, Emma interrupted him.
“I’d like to propose a modification.”
“Of the sale?” Tommy remained perfectly still, a move Nick might have admired if his future weren’t hanging in the balance.
“I’d like three months.”
The words fell, scattershot around the room, and Nick could have sworn he felt a hit clean through his heart. Three months? He’d already dicked around with Vandenburg’s terms for the past four. And even once the papers were signed, there was still the finalization of the contract, the loan paperwork, and the final transfer of the payment.
“Mr. Kelley’s put considerable time and good faith into this process. Three months is excessive,” Tommy shot back. Under other circumstances Nick might have smiled at the “Mr. Kelley” routine.
But not today.
Not now.
“With that in mind I’d like to propose a fair trade for Mr. Kelley’s time.” The faintest smile tilted the corners of her lips at the use of his last name, and Nick almost smiled in return.
“Lay it out.”
Her gaze shifted to him, that ghost of a smile falling as she stared at him across the scarred wood.
Nick knew the look in her eye. Understood the mix of calculation and avarice that hovered there, barely visible, but there all the same. Emma might not have a lot to bargain with, but she wasn’t entering this negotiation empty-handed. Between her mother’s shares, her knowledge of the family business, and the additional knowledge she brought to bear with her degree, she had something to bargain with.
“Mr. Kelley’s clearly been well-intentioned in his desire to purchase the Unity, but he has no practical experience.” She shot Tommy a quelling glance, stilling the protest that sprang to his lips. “Running a bar and understanding the distribution elements are only one facet. I’m proposing Nick takes the next three months to learn the business, top to bottom.”
Nick sat back, unwilling to show just how deeply her words stung. He’d worried about the same since starting down this path, reading as much as he could get his hands on and drilling his sales reps every chance he got. None of it compared with practical experience.
But he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that here.
“What’s in it for me? You don’t want to sell, and a three-month stay of execution isn’t going to change that.”
“No, I don’t. But if I give up my legacy, I’d like to see it go into qualified hands.”
“So what do I get out of this?”
“Education. Knowledge. The benefits of my degree.”
Something dark began to swirl in his stomach. He’d skated through school, getting by, but never fully excelling. And now she wanted to put him through that again? “What are you proposing?”
“I’ll teach you all I know. I’ll also share my full curriculum from Siebel. Three months should be enough time for you to learn the business basics. It’ll also give me a bit more time to put my feelers out and find something new.” Her attention drifted to her father before she seemed to catch herself. “By the time Labor Day rolls around, I’ll give you the same test I took at the end of my operations-and-technology course.”
“And if I pass, you sell the brewery?”
“I won’t stand in my father’s way.”
What he’d pegged as calculation and avarice had returned to her gaze, but Nick reconsidered his assessment. There wasn’t greed there, but a weird, desperate hope that had him believing Emma Vandenburg Bradley would be a worthy opponent.
“And if I don’t pass?”
“Then maybe you need to ask yourself why you’re buying a brewery.”
Two hours later Nick wasn’t sure if he’d been laid low or won the lottery. His roller coaster of a morning hadn’t worked out as he’d planned, but he could hardly call it a total blowout either. He was about halfway through his first lesson in Brewery 101, and he couldn’t find any fault with Emma’s teaching.
Or her attitude.
She’d promised to teach him, and so far she had. He’d taken more notes and learned more in the past ninety minutes than he had in the past three months of online surfing and salesperson hounding, and they’d barely gotten started.
“You ready to go in?”
He eyed Emma, clad in a half-zipped suit that looked like something hazmat crews wore, and nodded, his own matching yellow suit rubbing against his clothes every time he moved. “Sure.”
“I know Philip gave you a tour of the floor, and we discussed the basic flow of the process on the whiteboard in the conference room, but you need to see the entire production line. How and where the real work’s done. It’s not just the bottling line.”
“Beer looked pretty real to me.”
“The beer is real. But the process of getting it into those bottles is what really interests me. That’s where the fun stuff happens.” The frustration he’d seen earlier was nowhere in sight, replaced instead by a wide smile that even managed to dull the sharpness of the bruise that still rimmed her eye.
She was beautiful. Even in the half-zipped suit that wrapped around her lower half like a shapeless, yellow sack. What struck him, as a small ray of light filtered over her from the windows that perched high above the factory floor, were the dimensions of her beauty.
Yes, she was attractive. Classically so. But as he lo
oked closer, he had to admit the slender frame, high cheekbones, and light wash of freckles over her nose were more window dressing than the true reason for her beauty.
It was her eyes. Dark and mysterious, they shifted from situation to situation, holding back the secrets of her thoughts. In the conference room, she’d held them poker-face still, even as she made her offer. And now they were lit with the air of a determined teacher focused on the task at hand.
“Nick?”
“Sorry.” He shot her a big grin, the same one he used to flash at sports reporters after a game. “You mentioned beer, and I got distracted.”
She pointed toward a door at the end of the hall. “Let’s go.”
Nick followed behind her, his eyes skimming the way her skirt bunched slightly beneath the suit. A mental image of the thighs exposed just beneath that yellow material shot a bolt of heat straight through him, and he nearly knocked his head on a low entryway as they stepped into a cavernous room full of tanks.
Fender loved teasing him about being a leg man, and Nick usually shot back a rather dirty response about Fender’s lack of imagination for stopping at a woman’s breasts. Well aware his body would do him no favors when he had to zip up the monochrome suit, he shifted his attention. The enticing image of Emma’s legs faded, although he did toss a mental bone to Fender as his gaze lingered oh-so-briefly on her breasts before he shut down the lingering attraction.
She’d proven this was nothing more than a business transaction, and he’d do well to remember that.
He had to remember that.
She pointed toward the large tanks while she finished dragging the zipper to her neck. “We make the wort in here. These are the mash tuns, and once we get the proper temperature and cooking time, we’ll lauter the wort.”
“And then ferment it once it’s been separated out from the grains.”
“That’s right.”
Although the conversation wasn’t exactly the same, a long-forgotten memory of a day they mixed chemicals in class shimmered between them. Nick had no memory of the actual experiment, but he could still see Emma’s proud look when he’d correctly identified the proper sequence of reactions. “You always look surprised when I get something right.”
“I don’t always—” She broke off, the depths of her eyes warming to a rich chocolate. “Chemistry class. The week before spring break.”
“Yep.”
“To be clear, I’m not surprised you got something right. But I do remember that day. You seemed so discouraged every time we did a lab project, and it was nice to see you smile. It was even nicer to see you get an A on that lab.”
“It was nice to be right for a change.”
Her shoulders stiffened before she stepped back. “Being right’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.”
A small blush crept up from the neck of her suit before she turned away and climbed up a small metal ladder next to one of the tanks, stepping off midway onto a narrow platform. “If you come up here you can better see what’s happening.”
With the subject of school firmly closed, Nick followed her up, the metal ladder clanging beneath his feet. Although he’d noticed it the moment they’d crossed the threshold, he keyed back into the smell. A heavy, almost cloying scent permeated the room, the air thick with anticipation. Which was an odd way to think of it, Nick admitted to himself, yet spot on.
Transformation happened in this room.
“Look through the window here and you can see the mash as it’s heated, and the mash rake keeping everything evenly distributed.”
Nick mentally walked through the brewing steps he’d done his level best to memorize, and had to admit a book was a far cry from the real thing. There was life inside that tank. Products from the earth that they’d heat up, extract, and take the best of.
“What do you do with the grain after the wort’s extracted?”
“The Unity has agreements with several farmers to provide the used grain as feed. We also provide several tons a month to the horses for the mounted police.”
“No shit?”
Her eyes widened before a hard, throaty laugh spilled out. “Actually, that’s something of a literal, yes, shit. Especially after the horses get done with it.”
As jokes went, it was crude and unexpected, but after the strange morning they’d shared, he was happy for the break.
“I’ve read about this, but it’s something else to see it happen.”
“My father hasn’t given you a tour?” Her tone remained casual—and her smile still broad—but Nick sensed the bigger question beneath her words.
“Philip provided a walk-through when I first showed serious interest in the sale. Your father didn’t seem interested in joining us.”
“My father’s not the most accommodating of men on the best of days. And I’m not sure he’s had a single one of those since my mother passed.”
Although he’d always considered his mother one of the nodes on the Park Heights grapevine, it had come as no small shock when he’d realized about two years after buying the End Zone that he knew a surprising amount about the ins and outs of the neighborhood.
People talked, and when they had a few drinks in them, they talked even more. And people had talked when Marcy Vandenburg had gotten sick. Her illness had been just one more bit of news in the endless neighborhood gossip that passed through his bar.
“I’m sorry. About your mom.”
“Thanks.”
Emma pointed to the ladder, an effective end to the conversation. “Why don’t we head back down and we can keep going? There’s a lot you haven’t seen, and you should.”
He wanted to say something else—the loss of a parent was a huge thing—but he didn’t know what to say, and he’d only feel awkward trying. People got sick. The ones still living likely didn’t want to be reminded of that. And yet something in her gaze made him hesitate.
“We should move on.”
Nick nodded and reluctantly went first, the steps creaking beneath his feet as he descended the ladder. The warm room seemed to envelop him, the air thick with the heavy scent of the mash.
Emma came up beside him. “People either love or hate the smell in here.”
“I like it.”
“You’re not grossed out?”
“I was raised on the scent of sweaty football pads and locker rooms. Few smells can compete.” Nick ran a hand over a large brass tank.
“You never seemed all that bothered by the sulfur in chemistry class, either. Now I know your secret.”
It was funny to remember those days that seemed like a lifetime ago. He hadn’t thought about his high school science class—or his lab partner—since high school, but now that he did, he could remember his moments with Emma. They’d been paired randomly with their partners through luck of the draw, and he’d gotten the quiet girl who kept to herself.
Nick had never concerned himself much with the politics of high school. He’d recognized even then the adulation of his fellow students was because he was good at sports, so he’d never put much stock in it. Which was likely why the adulation had stuck.
What had seemed like a lack of interest on his part was steeped in the reality of his life. High school was easy compared to dodging Arch Kelley’s moods. Spending the first ten years of his life with an abusive drunk ensured there wasn’t much high school could throw at him.
So he’d done his time and focused on the things he cared most about—playing football and making Mama Lou proud—and the rest had sort of passed in a blur.
Like Emma?
Nick watched as she inspected a large dial on the side of one of the wort tanks before writing something down on a small clipboard attached to the wall. How had he missed that the woman in his arms on Friday night was Emma Vandenburg? Although it had been a while since they’d been lab partners, it hadn’t been that long. Yet she’d vanished from his thoughts as if she’d never existed.
A small frown marred the edges of her mouth, and he ste
pped forward, his suit squeaking with the movement. “Everything okay?”
“You mean besides the fact that I’m writing down time, temperature, and status of the wort on a clipboard?”
“What’s wrong with that? Clearly you’re taking measurements of some kind.”
“On a clipboard. Like it’s 1972.”
Tommy had warned him that the Unity was a bargain because of the age of the facility, but he hadn’t fully appreciated what that meant. Hell, a lot of things in Brooklyn were aged—the new renaissance throughout the borough was about refreshing those treasures for a new time and a new generation.
“Maybe we could look into changing that.” He unzipped the top of his suit and pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket. “I’ll make a note of it.”
When she only stared at him for a long beat, he pressed on. “Everything else is okay?”
Their gazes lingered for a few more moments before she seemed to catch herself. “Yes, things are progressing fine. This batch is right on schedule.”
They moved around the room, Emma doing the same with each subsequent tank before they came to a large door at the opposite end to where they’d started. She reached for the handle, but he laid a hand over hers.
As she turned to look at him, those expressive eyes struck a chord somewhere deep inside him, like a clock striking the time. Cavernous and echoing, it resonated through him, vibrating with motion and a need for action.
“Why’d you make a deal with me?” he asked.
“Because you’re Nick Kelley.”
For reasons he couldn’t fully identify, the wry comment struck a nerve. Removing his hand from over top of hers, Nick stepped back. “Got it.”
Emma turned the heavy door handle, the motion nearly completed when she stopped. Once again he was struck by the ethereal beauty that seemed to frame her in a warm, sort of muted glow. Like a ghost had crossed between them, his lips tingled from their kiss Friday night, the sense memory nearly as heady and intoxicating as the moment had been.
She had been heady and intoxicating.
