by Liz Crowe
A period that had resulted in another human being now breathing air on the planet. He’d surrendered the fatherly duty thing to Austin but thoughts of Rose were all tangled up in memories of his time with Evelyn. And so best left un-thought, in the grand scheme of things.
Austin was in charge of being protective of the baby, and of his wife. Ross had forcibly let go of those urges, purging them first with as much pussy as he could bang for a few months, then later with his monk life. Forcing abstinence down his own throat like his own ugly tattoo of punishment.
But now.
Now.
Now, something new and hot was coursing through his veins. He recognized it, of course. His new-found obsession with the skinny-sexy, German-speaking smart ass woman who was easily as talented a brewer as he was, had blossomed from something distracting, to something massive, all-consuming.
Something he needed to avoid like the fucking plague, as he’d promised he would.
Because on the hot tide of that desire to see her naked, to press his tongue against the deep cleft between her collar bones, to cup one small, pert breast while sucking the other no-doubt sweet pink nipple into his mouth, came something new to him. A raging, boiling fury at whoever had turned a strong, able, strong woman into the quivering prey across from him right now.
He took the few inches of space between them, looming over her in a way that probably didn’t help. His hands hovered over her upper arms. Not quite touching, but close enough to sense the coldness of her skin. She met his eyes once, then dropped her gaze to the floor between them.
Confused, since she’d never done that before—had always met him more than halfway with her left-handed compliments disguised as mild criticism of his methods—he tilted her chin up. The experience of looking down at her, of wanting her so fully, while at the same time wanting to shield her from whatever horrors roamed her backstory, choked him into silence. She blinked fast, then jerked her chin out of his grasp and took a short step back, connecting with the metal railing and gripping it with both of her hands.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she whisper-yelled in English. “Ever.”
“I… I’m…” It took everything he had in him not to grab her and yank her into his arms. To hold her close, so she could press her face into his chest and feel safe. He shook his head. He must be totally losing it. Her eyes seemed bluer at that moment and he realized they were brimming with unshed tears. “Elle… Elisa…listen.”
“Don’t ever touch me. Do you understand?” In English again. Such an ugly language.
“Yes, but…” His hands were positively burning with the need to touch her. He had the odd urge to lick his index finger and scrub it against that horrible thing circling her neck. To wipe it off her skin and out of her memory. Alarmed to realize he was doing so, he reached for her, in a sort of slow motion. The steam from the mash swirled around them, giving the whole scene a bizarre surreal aura.
She flinched away from him, turned and stomped down the metal steps. He leaned over the railing where she’d been standing and saw her turn. Her hand went to her neck, touched the disgusting ink that must be representative of the ‘something bad’ Evelyn had hinted at a few weeks ago.
“I am not for you, Ross Hoffman. I am not for anyone. Not anymore.” This, said in German, hit his brain and buried deep. Her small hand seemed to tighten around her own throat which brought that roaring, furious, protective monster to the forefront of Ross’ brain.
“You say that now,” he said, matching her in their native tongue. “But you might change your mind. I’m told I have that affect.” He kept his tone neutral but his throat was so tight it hurt. The steam cleared, giving him a view of the single tear sliding down her face before she turned away and disappeared into the stainless-steel jungle of the brewery.
With a loud exhale, Ross slumped back against the mash tun. The increased spray of water that he’d ordered made a comforting, rhythmic whish-whish sound behind him. The sounds of the busy brewery filled his ears again, replacing the noise of his pounding heart. He looked down at his hands, surprised to find them clenched into fists, so he opened them slowly, inspected his palms with their familiar scars and imperfections. He turned them over and studied the hop flowers on his knuckles.
Someone had hurt that woman. Hurt her so badly she thought she would never be happy again. They’d transformed her into something that ran opposed to her natural, strong-willed personality. He’d realized that the moment she’d dropped her gaze to the floor when he’d stood over her, glaring at her like some kind of an asshole.
He yanked his phone from his pocket and tapped out a quick message to Evelyn.
I want Elisa’s whole story. Tonight. I’ll be over and bring pizza for dinner. No excuses.
Her reply came while he was transferring the thousands of gallons of liquid from the mash tun to the boil kettle. As he wiped his face with the towel he kept tied to his belt loop, he felt the phone buzz.
I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone. Sorry.
Cursing under his breath, he shot back—
I don’t care what you told her. I want to know so I can kill the fucking bastard who did whatever he did to her.
It’s a little more complicated than that, she replied.
I can take the complexity.
He took a drink from the water bottle he kept handy, trying to come to terms with the odd sensations racing around his mind. After he hollered for one of the assistants to come babysit the kettle, and gave him strict instructions on when to add which ingredients, he stomped away, heading for the flight of steps up to Evelyn’s office.
It was a space he’d managed to avoid so far. With good reason. The moment he was halfway up he was blindsided by memories—most of them X-rated—of his life here, with her. With them, together. Of all the times they’d shared—working, laughing, and fucking like their lives depended on it.
He stopped, hands gripping the metal rails, head dropped low, willing his mind clear so he could focus.
“Ross.” Evelyn’s voice circled around his brain, clogging it like smog. “Come on up.”
He lifted his head and met her steady, blue-eyed gaze. At that moment, something heavy seemed to lift off his chest. Something he’d been dragging around ever since he’d forced Austin and Evelyn back together and had decided to leave, to give them the space they deserved. It was as if it had been tied around his neck, albatross-style and the string holding it there had broken the minute he looked at her.
He smiled, and walked the rest of the way up the stairs. The hug they shared was easy, friendly, comforting.
“Thank Christ that’s over,” he muttered into her hair.
“What?” she asked letting go of him.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. So, are you gonna spill it or do I have ask her myself?”
Chapter Eighteen
“Fucking girl code,” he muttered as he finished adding the yeast to the giant fermenter of stout he’d begun that morning. “Fuck that shit.”
Sweat streamed down his face. He reached for his towel but couldn’t find it. Cursing a blue streak, he hauled the yeast container onto the ’gator so he could drive it across the brewery and back to the cold storage. When he turned to complete the process then clean the area, a small white towel met his gaze. He looked at it, then at the person holding it.
“Thanks,” he grunted, grabbing it from Elle’s hand and applying it to his face. Every cell and molecule in his body was aching, sore and exhausted. He’d been at this, without direct contact with Elisa after their odd encounter for a solid five days now with little sleep. Either brewing himself like he’d done today to spell the staff, or pitching in with bottling and packaging around-the-clock to catch up after the series of disasters.
He wanted nothing more than to fall into his hotel bed—he’d declined Austin and Evelyn’s invitation to stay at their house—and sleep for a solid ten hours. After he ate a giant steak, some potatoes, and drank a few pints.
&n
bsp; She stood there, hands behind her back, staring at him. He could sense her nervousness as a visible shimmering movement in the air around them. It was akin to the kind of sexual chemistry he’d experienced before, but milder, slower to act. And in its own way, pleasant.
She’d come to him, he figured. So, he was gonna jump right in to this. Something was urging him forward. And if it were the same something that had allowed him to let go of his unhealthy obsession with his friend’s wife, then he was by-God going with it.
“So,” he said, tucking the towel into his belt loop where it belonged. “I think you owe me a beer. At the very least for ignoring me for the past week.” He spoke in German, figuring it might ease her anxiety as much as it did his.
She blinked, and lifted her hand as if she were going to touch the tattoo he now hated so badly he could taste it in the back of his throat—slippery and metallic, like blood. He kept his eyes on hers and she lowered her hand slowly.
“Nothing more than that,” he said, crossing his arms and willing her not to drop her gaze. “Just a beer. And a nice little chat between…what did you call us? Oh, right. Colleagues.”
“I’m…I don’t drink with colleagues.”
“I think those are the best people to drink with. I’ll see you in the pub in an hour.” He didn’t formulate it as a question but also tried to keep the bossy tone out of his voice. He turned away from her to fiddle with the fittings on the tall fermentation vessel. “Are Rick and Scott cued up for the next brew? We must keep to the schedule.”
He looked up and saw her still frozen in place. Her hand was at her neck now, which infuriated him for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Go on,” he said, more gently this time. “Check and see if those guys are all set. I know the brew house is ready, thanks to the second cleaning crew you made Austin hire.”
She worried the ball that was pierced into her lower lip, making Ross wish he were doing that exact thing.
God damn, I am turning into a full-on sap.
Fuck it. He wanted to at least find out what had happened to this strange, alluring woman. Even if nothing ever came of it.
He raised an eyebrow at her, keeping himself low, still checking that he’d closed all the connections, recalling that this batch of stout was one of many he’d brewed to make up for the sabotage at one of these very vessels. But he also knew he was staying low for another reason. He didn’t want her to feel threatened by him, and he’d figured out that looming over her like some kind of ogre would do exactly that.
“All right. I will check with them.” She turned away as if to leave, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m not certain that we should be fraternizing. I don’t think that’s a good idea for either of us.”
“Really?” He stood, wincing at the pain in his back from the last week of nonstop brewing. “Allow me disagree, just this once?”
She frowned but sort of smiled at the same time, giving him hope that she’d pop off with something smart ass and the stupid tension between them would be broken. “Fine,” she said in English, making his heart sink. “I will allow it. And meet you for one beer in one hour, and nothing more.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” he said, smiling. But her frown seemed embedded onto her face now so he figured he’d best leave it for later. Wondering what, exactly, he wanted from her later, he resumed the final tasks of his brew.
Once he’d supervised the mash-in for the third brewing shift, he took a quick shower in the locker room and redressed in a clean pair of jeans and plain gray T-shirt. He pondered his image in the foggy mirror for a few seconds. The relief he’d experienced a few days earlier, when the whole Evelyn obsession had slipped away from him was still the most prominent thing in his mind. He ran fingers through his wet hair, then tied it back with a bit of leather string as he let that new, but very pleasant sensation suffuse his bloodstream.
While he wasn’t positive that the reason he’d had that burden lifted off him didn’t have a direct correlation to his new obsession with the German brewer lady, and that that might prove even more difficult to shake down the road, he was nothing but grateful for it. He even felt the urge to hang out with them, to hold Rose and be a part of their family, but in a safe, uncle-type way. He brushed his teeth, then grabbed his backpack, whistling his way around the back of the still-busy brewery to the pub.
“Hola, Adolf,” Melody called out. “How’s it hangin’?”
“Low, heavy, and to the left, chica,” he answered. “Hey, shouldn’t you be cleaning my hotel room right now?”
“Go fuck yourself,” she replied merrily as she poured him a beer without asking what he wanted.
“Ah, if only I could. Then I could retire on proceeds from my Nobel Prize.” He took a seat at the bar, blew her a kiss after she set the glass in front of him.
“Food?”
“Maybe,” he said, feeling his stomach growl when the delicious odors wafted from the kitchen.
“Angus beef burger is particularly delish today,” she said, leaning forward on the bar and wincing.
“What’s the matter, doll? Feet hurt from running across the border?”
“Shut up, genocidal Nazi.”
“Touché,” he said, lifting his glass and polishing off the hoppy IPA in two long drinks.
“I’ll order up a burger for you. Rare, right?”
“Si, por favor. Almost mooing.”
“Disgusting Kraut,” she said, smiling. “Oh, hello there.”
Ross sensed her before he saw her. The hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms trembled as that uncomfortable combination of lust and extreme protectiveness coated his brain. Melody flicked a coaster, landing it square in front of Elle—or Elisa as he was starting to think of her. Ross kept his eyes forward, watching while the woman pulled them both a pilsner, once again without asking. Funnily enough it was the perfect chaser to the astringent pale ale he’d already consumed.
“Can I put in an order for something for you, Elle?” Melody’s tone had gone soft and mushy. Her mother-y voice, Evelyn called it.
“No, thank you very much. This will be fine. I won’t be staying…long.”
Ross glanced over at her when she spoke the last word.
“Shall we?” she asked, in German, indicating an empty booth away from the busy bar filled with eager-for-gossip ears.
With a shrug, he got up and followed her, keeping his eyes anywhere but the tight ass of her dark jeans. She’d also changed, he noted, recalling that she’d been wearing cargo-shorts earlier. All the better to house wrenches, measuring devices and pens, he mused, admiring her all over again.
He slid in across from her, determined to get something resembling a back story out of her and wondering what it would take. Typically, he had little trouble making small talk, which then ended up being a full-frontal assault of unwanted personal details from women he was trying to pick up in bars. But right now, at this precise moment, sitting across from the most interesting woman he’d ever encountered in his entire life, he was dry-mouthed with stress.
She sipped her beer, patted her lips with a napkin, put it neatly in her lap, propped her elbows on the table, and met his gaze. “All right. I’m here, having a beer with you. And what are we to chat about? Do you want study the bottling line output? I have that right here.” She reached into a pocket of the sleeveless denim vest she was wearing over nothing, best he could tell.
Stymied, he gulped down some beer then coughed for the next few seconds when it went down his breathing hole. She had, he saw, matching circles of thorns around each biceps, high up, near her spare shoulders. There was also a series of stars running up the inside of one arm.
Shocked when his mouth actually began watering at the thought of how her near translucent skin would taste, he cleared his throat and leaned away from the table. “Nice ink,” he said, by way of super-awkward segue.
She nodded, sipped and put her elbows back on the table, waiting him out.
“Well, um, no I don�
��t require a bottling line update. But we will have to check in on it first thing tomorrow. Make sure it’s keeping up. I know there was an issue with it last week.”
“Yes,” she agreed, sipping again, her gaze wide and expectant but somehow guarded at the same time.
“Your eyes,” he blurted out, likely surprising them both. “They’re a very unique shade of blue.”
She shrugged and looked down at the table.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice low and soft.
“Don’t do what?” she asked, picking up her glass. Her hand shook so hard she had to put it back down. “You need to leave me be,” she whispered to the table top.
Confused by this honest comment, Ross stayed silent, studying her. The thick ropes of her dreadlocks were piled high. The tiny bands holding them together were all different colors, he noted for the first time. As he watched, one slipped free and fell over her face. He reached slowly across the table, and held it between his thumb and index finger. Marveling at its silky texture, given the somewhat brittle appearance of them, he allowed himself a quick fingertip graze to her cheek. She flinched, but not nearly as violently as she had earlier.
In a matter-of-fact way, she took the rope of hair from him and tucked it up into the mass on her head. The action exposed her bare armpits to him and Ross was jolted by the sight of them. Dear Lord but he was definitely losing it if the sight of a woman’s pale, delicate underarms was making him pop a boner harder than concrete.
He greeted the server who’d brought his dinner, thankful for the distraction. Grinding his teeth and feeling like a god damned teenaged boy on prom night, about to get his first feel of actual pussy, he downed his beer and clunked the glass on the table so hard the people next to them glanced over at him.
“I am telling you again, Ross Hoffman, we do not need to be anything but colleagues.”
