4. Chapter 4
four
M ax walked into the fully finished kitchen an hour before anyone else was supposed to be there and found his new chef, Luis, in the cooler with his back to Max.
He raised his brows, impressed.
From the moment he’d hired Luis, Max had known he’d be a good fit. He’d already built the first draft of the menu and was working to test it all in the coming weeks. He was hardworking, ambitious, and decisive.
Max admired those traits.
Especially after spending all last night with his sister as she bawled her eyes out and destroyed a half gallon of ice cream while googling ways to get the fool who’d dumped her to give her another chance. It was refreshing to be spending the day with someone focused on useful endeavours .
Max left Luis to his work for a moment as he made his way through the rest of the kitchen to ensure everything was in working order. Adam had told him last night that the kitchen was complete and his crew would work in the dining room, but Max wanted to be certain.
People had accused him of micromanaging in the past, so he usually came in early to avoid being called out for it.
“Morning,” he finally said.
Luis turned toward him, and that’s when he noticed that Luis was holding a tablet and carefully filling out a colour-coded spreadsheet.
Max’s shoulders relaxed.
“Good morning. I came early to get started,” he said in his thick Québécois accent. “Okay?”
“Of course. Do you need anything from me?”
“Yes,” Luis said, clicking a few more times on his tablet, then turning it toward Max. “Here’s the menu I’m going to test. I made a few changes from the first draft I sent you.”
Max read through, his eyes snagging on the only line he actually cared about. When he’d hired Luis, he’d had only two pieces of input about the menu: make sure they were profitable, and make sure his grandmother’s cabbage rolls were on it.
But Luis had put cabbage roll under sandwiches .
“What’s this?”
“I had an idea to make your cabbage rolls more pub-friendly and more profitable. I’m going to test out a cabbage roll sandwich.”
Well, that sounded pretty fucking delicious. “Like a meatball sub?”
“Exactly!” Luis said, his hand flying upward.
Max had never met someone so animated when they spoke. He chalked it up to passion, but he was pretty sure Luis waved his hands even when he spoke of the blandest of things.
“We could have the thick brioche bun,” he continued, his eyes squinting and his hands in front of his face as if layering an imaginary sandwich. “A delicious cabbage roll, but made into a patty, with stewed cabbage and a mouthwatering tomato sauce. Beautiful.”
Max nodded, a little uncomfortable with the look on Luis’s face, but mostly impressed.
“We could serve with a coleslaw or potato salad. Easy, delicious, higher profit margin.”
Max smiled. “Perfect.”
Luis threw his hands in the air, an over-the-top smile stretching across his face. Man, this guy fucking loved being a chef.
The door swung open, pulling their attention, and Adam strolled into the kitchen. Max’s brows rose. Adam wasn’t supposed to be there until later in the afternoon.
“Problem?”
Adam nodded. “Morning, Luis,” he said.
Luis waved dramatically, then returned to his tablet.
“Office?”
Another nod and Max followed Adam out of the kitchen, into the office, and closed the door.
“It’s looking better in here,” Adam said, taking a seat.
Max had spent a day painting the walls, building some proper shelving, and organizing the desk. It was time well spent. Now he could actually concentrate.
“What’s up?”
“Willow called,” he said.
Max stared, waiting for Adam to elaborate. “And?”
Adam shook his head.
“Fuck,” he said. “Did she counter with a different offer? Did she want more money?”
“No, she said it was personal and that the offer was generous and she loved the brewery, but the timing wasn’t right for her to move.”
Max rolled his eyes, immediately spinning his chair toward the shelf behind him and reaching for a binder .
“What are you— Not the spreadsheet again,” Adam said, rubbing his face.
Max opened the binder, took out his spreadsheet, ignoring Adam. The other four brewers they’d interviewed weren’t as great as Willow, but he needed to choose someone. They were running out of time. “What about the first guy?”
“No.”
“Third guy?”
Silence. He looked up at Adam, who was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Who do you want, then? We’re running out of time.”
“Obviously, I still want Willow.”
Max slapped the spreadsheet onto the desk and sat back in his seat. This conversation was killing him.
“Cool. So we’ll kidnap her, then? Burn down the brewery she works at? Kill her whole family so she has no reason to stay in Churchill?”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “You know, it’s a little concerning how fast you jump to arson and murder. This is why people are afraid of you.”
“No one’s afraid of me. And unless you have an actual solution, I’m going to do this my way.”
“As it turns out, I thought of something yesterday.”
“You knew about this already yesterday? ”
Adam nodded as if this shouldn’t matter.
Max inhaled slowly, trying to summon patience. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“I wanted time to think about it without you being all . . . well, you.”
“And did you come up with a plan?”
Adam nodded. “I think we need to adjust our offer.”
Max shook his head and reached for the spreadsheet, but Adam slapped a hand on it.
“If she doesn’t want to move here, and she’s always wanted her own place, and we desperately need a brewer ASAP—”
Max’s eyes went wide. “Are you fucking— No,” he said, shaking his head. “Murder is a better plan.”
“I haven’t even finished.”
“I know exactly where you’re going with this. You want to sell the brewery to her, have her run it from Churchill.”
Adam smiled and gave a nod.
“Obviously, that’s a no.”
“Why?”
Max rubbed at his temples. “I’m not selling off half my business to some stranger. I barely tolerate working with you.”
“You’re taking this independence thing too far,” Adam grumbled under his breath .
Max shook his head, not wanting to reopen their long-running debate over Max’s control issues. Max had originally wanted to go it entirely alone, but he agreed to partner with Adam because he could secure more funding and get cheaper labour. As it was, they’d built a contract where Adam was a silent partner—though not as silent as Max would like—and a plan for Max to buy him out slowly over five years after opening.
“The whole point of me running my own businesses is because I don’t want to deal with other people. Otherwise, I would have just taken any job. Now you want me to sell part of my business to a person I don’t know? What if she sucks? How will I fire her if she’s the fucking owner?”
Adam sighed. “Look, I know why you’re doing this, and I know how much of a controlling freak you are. But the financial pressures are mounting. We need to open in six weeks. Delaying will cost too much. Our margins are razor thin as it is. She can take some financial pressure off.”
“And she’ll keep all the brewery revenue.”
Adam reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded paper, and handed it to Max. “I had my guy run the numbers. We’ll come out on top if she takes over the brewery. ”
“You ran numbers without me?” he asked, taking the paper.
“Well, I know how much you like numbers, and we’re running out of time.”
Max unfolded the sheet and looked through the lines.
“She could come for a month to get the place off the ground. We’ll get her beer recipes, and the quality she can offer, not to mention all the systems in place for her staff. And she’ll get to go back to live in the Arctic like she apparently likes.”
Max sighed, annoyed that the numbers actually looked good. Maybe it wasn’t as bad an idea as he’d thought.
Adam kept his pitch rolling. “You can be supervisor of the brewery and overlook things once she’s gone so you won’t be completely losing control over it. You can make sure it’s still running the way you want.”
“I hate it.”
“Why don’t we discuss it with her and see if she would be interested? Maybe she’ll say no, and then we’ll have no choice but to pick from your spreadsheet. Unless you’d rather have one of those guys?”
Max glanced at the list, disgusted. “Maybe I can find more brewers to interview. ”
“Look, there’s a reason all the brewers we interviewed sucked. It’s because brewmasters who are really talented and hardworking open their own breweries.”
He definitely had a good point there.
“We got lucky with Willow because she’s stuck. She can’t open her own place in Churchill. If she was from here, she’d have already opened her own place and been our competition. It’s better to have her on our side.”
Max rolled his neck. “I still fucking hate this.”
Adam shrugged. “I think she’ll do even better if she has some skin in the game.”
Max went through the paper as Adam waited. It would be nice to have some financial pressure off. He hadn’t planned to go so deep into debt renovating the place. He had wanted to open as it originally was, and slowly, as their margins increased and they turned a profit, update things. But Adam thought bigger and had convinced him to open fresh with a place that would attract a good crowd.
Maybe selling the brewery to someone with that much talent would be better for his pub than keeping the brewery and having someone subpar making beer.
“Fine.”
“Fine? ”
“Yeah,” Max said. “Make the offer. Maybe she won’t accept.”
“I think you need to make the call.”
Max’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, that’s an even better plan. She probably won’t even answer.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “I’ve been wondering if her hatred toward you is one reason she said no. Maybe if you called and made amends, she’d agree. Just try to be nice.”
“Nice?”
“Yeah,” he said as he stood. He made his way across the office to the door. “Just remember to smile while you talk to her. People can sense smiles over the phone.”
Max glared at Adam as he laughed and walked off.
He looked at his phone, then dropped his head. This was going to be a fucking disaster.