Best Kind of Trouble (Babes of Brewing #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

brIAR

I hate conflict so much that I continued seeing a therapist I disliked for a year before I managed to ghost her after a scheduling mishap.

It’s no wonder I’m twitchy as I wait for Cleet and Ross to report to my father’s office at Silver Star Brewery.

It’s a Sunday, less than three weeks before Christmas, and I’m about to fire them.

Not because I want to, but because my father threatened to fire five employees if I don’t choose two to fire and do the deed myself.

I tried convincing him it would be heartless to fire anyone before the holidays, and in retaliation he announced to the already-dissatisfied staff that there would be no holiday bonuses this year and it was all my fault.

He sounds like a sadist, right?

He is, and proud of it.

According to him, his ability to “think beyond others’ feelings” is a key ingredient in his recipe for success.

I suppose he would know. My father is a wildly successful businessman who has developed and sold half a dozen businesses since I was born.

Print-on-demand photo albums. Fake chicken he would never eat himself.

Kombucha, right on the cusp of it becoming the next big thing.

An inappropriate gummy candy he and my mom prefer not to talk about.

My mother thinks so highly of his recipe for success that she had it burned into a slab of maple. It hangs in their dining room.

Identify a rising trend

+

Think beyond others’ feelings

+

Give the people what they want

=

Success by any measure

I sit in the literal shadow of my father’s success every week when I have dinner with them, knowing his recipe will never work for me because I don’t have all of the ingredients.

Which is bad news for me, because I’m the heir apparent of Silver Star Brewery, my dad’s latest success story.

Silver Star is one of the nation’s few fully organic breweries, and we age all of our sours and some of our saisons in oak barrels in our barrel room.

It must be acknowledged that my father knows how to stand out. He always has, but none of his other business efforts have mattered to me personally.

Silver Star does.

I’ve loved this brewery from the moment my father sent me photos of the empty warehouse a few years back.

I can’t explain why it stood out for me other than that the space seemed to tremble with possibilities.

And now it’s a place of literal transformation, where grain, yeast, and hops are turned into gold… well, golden beer.

Even though my parents and I aren’t close, and I was busy running a small business at the time, I’d helped my dad make some important early decisions. We’d discussed how to decorate the tasting room, which beers his brewer should focus on, and even his decision to go organic.

I’d given this brewery a piece of myself. So when my life imploded just under a year ago, my father knew exactly how to reel me into his world.

Give the people what they want.

Instead of patting me on the back and telling me it was going to be okay, he announced he’d give me Silver Star Brewery if I moved back home, worked at the brewery for a year as an “ideal employee,” and attended family dinners every Friday night.

“You can even bring a guest to dinner,” my father had said as if he were granting me a massive concession.

I knew there’d be dozens of strings attached, but I’d wanted it badly enough to sign on the dotted line.

Yes, there was a contract—an extensive one—and the one-year period is up in a couple of months. The brewery will finally be mine.

But my dad doesn’t believe in making anything easy. For the past few months, he’s been putting me through “Briar Boot Camp”—a series of increasingly obnoxious challenges designed to test my mettle and prepare me to run the business.

I hate the tests, but my God, I want this brewery.

So I’ve decided to show him I do have what it takes by firing Cleet and Ross.

When I told my friend Hannah about the firing challenge, she said I should axe the two least popular staffers, not the worst, but my sense of fairness wouldn’t allow it.

So I picked Cleet, who wears the same hoodie every day and stinks of cheap pot, and Ross, who tried to look up my dress last week when I was lifting something off a high shelf.

(He also did not offer to help.)

Choosing them was the right thing to do. Still, firing two people back to back would destroy my soul, which is why I asked them both to meet me here, in my dad’s office, so I could do it at the same time.

I really don’t want to go through with this.

I’m tempted to sneak out the back and join my friends at Big Catch Brewing, where Hannah works.

She’s throwing a holiday party for the staff (and her friends) there tonight, and within fifteen minutes, I could be drinking mulled wine.

It would be worth the effort of having to dodge the inevitable mistletoe like it’s poison ivy.

I can practically see my father shaking his head. If you weren’t the product of IVF, I’d doubt you were my daughter…

I’m still stewing about what to do when Cleet raps his knuckles lazily on the door. He and Ross come in without waiting for a response, trailed by a cloud of pot stench. If it had a color, it would be the purplish gray of ennui.

I wait until they’re sitting in the visitor chairs and then slip behind my father’s heavy desk. I stay standing, because sitting in my father’s chair would feel like stealing a king’s throne. I’m also worried his asshole aura would rub off on me.

“Thanks for taking the time to meet with me,” I tell them. “You guys are great. So great.”

“We are?” Cleet asks with understandable doubt as he plucks something from his nose and flicks it onto the floor.

I try not to cringe as I tug a tissue out of the box near my father’s computer and hand it to him.

He looks at it in confusion. “What’s this for?”

“You’re great,” I repeat, my tone frantic now. I definitely should have done more yoga this morning. I’m as zen as a Wall Street trader during a market crash.

“You already said that,” Ross points out, a corner of his mouth hitching up. His gaze rakes over me. “And I’d love nothing better than to show you how great I am, in detail, but what’s this about? Are we getting some kind of raise?”

“Uh…no.”

“An award?” Cleet asks, perking up. “I never got an award before.”

Panicking, I blurt, “No! There’s no easy way to say this, but we’re going to have to let you go.”

Cleet’s mouth gapes open.

Ross hikes up his eyebrows so high they get lost in his mussed blond hair.

Before either of them can say anything, I add, “I’ve emailed you a list of open jobs you can apply to. I’m sure you’ll find something in no time. There’s lots of seasonal work right now, and—”

“You fired us at the same time, Rapunzel?” Ross says in a mocking voice. I’ve heard plenty of people call me that in whispers, as much because I’m “daddy’s little princess” as for my waist-length blond hair. “Is this the respect you show your staff?”

“I’ll give you both positive references,” I continue, falling back on the script I wrote and memorized.

“Well, lah-di-dah,” Ross says with a snort. “The princess will give us a positive reference. Did you need any references to get this job, or did your daddy just give it to you?”

“He gave it to me,” I say through a tight throat, “and I’ve done everything I possibly can to earn my place.”

It’s true. Since moving back to Asheville, I’ve devoted most of my time to learning about beer and breweries.

It’s become my special interest, I guess you could say.

Even my best friends are connected to the brewery world—Hannah is at Big Catch Brewing, and Sophie used to work at Buchanan Brewery and came up with a new nonalcoholic drink line for them.

And, sure, the real reason I met Hannah and Sophie was because all three of us, along with a fourth woman, were unknowingly dating the same beer distributor—Jonah Price—but I’m trying not to dwell on my failures.

Ross snorts, turning to Cleet, and says, “We’re lucky we’re getting out of this dump. Bubba has it right. If she’s taking over, it’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

I bite my lip. Bubba is the head brewer. I had a feeling he wasn’t my biggest fan, but I was hoping that was just paranoia.

Truthfully, I’m worried he’s right about the handbasket. My father isn’t a caring boss, but there’s no denying he gets things done. The one time I ran a business—the online jewelry store I started with my then-friend Theresa—it was initially successful and then crashed and burned.

Hannah would probably have toasted marshmallows in the ashes; I’d come home to daddy.

Ross makes a disgusted sound, but Cleet sniffs and leans forward in his seat. There’s a mystery crust attached to the string of his hoodie. “Now that we’re not working together,” he says eagerly, “maybe you’d like to get a beer with me sometime?”

“Oh…oh.” My chest feels tight. “I’m so sorry, Cleet, but I don’t date anymore.”

Ross snorts. “That’s her princess way of saying she’s not interested in your hairy ass, Cleet. Take the hint.”

“It’s nothing but the truth,” I insist hotly, even though I wouldn’t date either of them if we were the last three people alive. “I’m focusing on work. No more dating until next summer at the earliest.”

After the Jonah debacle, I made a vow to myself to stay single for an entire year.

One year with dating off the table. It’s been refreshing, honestly, and I have Hannah and Sophie to keep me company.

Sure, both of them are newly in love and busy with their own lives and business ventures, but they’re always there when I need them.

“Can I borrow a pen?” Cleet asks.

I hand him one, hoping it’ll get him out of here sooner.

“And a sheet of paper?”

I grab one from the printer and slide it across the desk, then watch as he slowly and painstakingly writes on it.

“That there’s my number,” he says, tapping it with the pen. “I’ll wait for you, Briar. As long as it takes.”