Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIAM
I spot her as soon as I walk into the diner. Of course I fucking do. She has golden hair down to her ass and the face of an angel. I could pick her out of a lineup of ten thousand people with only one eye open.
I don’t have a thing for her—she’s just objectively beautiful.
A warm chuckle draws my gaze away from her. An older woman with white-streaked brown hair and an ugly pink apron is standing practically in front of me, waving her hand to get my attention.
“Get in line, son,” she says. “We’ve had young men mooning over that girl all day. She hasn’t spoken to any of them yet.”
I clear my throat unnecessarily and shove my hands into my coat pockets. “But she asked me to meet her here”—my gaze dips to her name tag—“Sharon.”
Her expression turns icy. I’d know. I have a history of pissing off women without trying.
“It’s you, then,” she says with displeasure.
“Does my reputation precede me?”
“Go along,” she responds frostily, shooing me. “But if you hurt that young woman any more than you already have, I’ll give you a good wallop. The kind your mother should have given you.”
I can’t help but laugh. “You know, I’m flattered you think I could score with Princess over there, but it’s not that kind of a meeting. If you can find my mother, though, feel free to tell her off for both of us.”
I head on back, aware of Sharon’s eyes staring at me from behind. It’s surprisingly disconcerting.
“Briar?” I say as I near the table, because she’s writing feverishly in the notebook set out in front of her. A nearly empty glass of whiskey sits beside it, and she smells like she drank the whole bar.
Getting her sober might be more of a challenge than getting fired was.
Briar glances up, her big eyes full of excitement. “Liam! You came!”
I smile without meaning to. It’s not every day a man scores a greeting like that from a woman like her. Particularly not when he’s a six-foot-five bearded man with a broken nose. Plenty of people aren’t too happy to see me coming. It’s rare I get a one-person parade.
“Yeah,” I say, pulling out the chair across from her. It’s small, and I know before I sit down it’s going to be uncomfortable.
I lower into it, biting back a sigh as it digs into me.
Yep, damn near excruciating. I stretch my legs out to ease the discomfort, and my knee brushes against Briar’s.
“I heard your news,” I say.
She drops the pen, and her shoulders slump.
Sharon approaches our table eagerly. It’s a few minutes past two, and despite its expensive downtown location, this place isn’t exactly buzzing with activity.
I’m guessing it’s got a month or two, tops, before it gives up the ghost and is replaced by a business selling liquified wheatgrass or patchouli incense and tarot cards purchased off .
Sharon pauses a half step from our table. I’m tempted to offer her a seat for the show, but she might actually take me up on it.
“Anything else, love?” she asks Briar.
“Oh, I’ll have some more of that awful whiskey,” Briar says. “It’s not as bad after the first couple of glasses.” She waves an unsteady hand at me. “And a glass for my guest.”
I shake my head at the server. “We’ll both have black coffee. She needs to sober up. We’ll take the bill too.”
“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” Briar says, picking the pen back up and waving it at me. “I’m right in front of your face.”
Sharon hurries off, probably realizing the hot drunk girl is more intoxicated than she thought. No one wants a Code V.
“You are.” I wrap my hand around hers and slide the pen out of her grip, provoking an enraged gasp. “I don’t want to lose an eye,” I add.
Briar angles her head to study me, some of her hair tumbling over her shoulders.
“You’d look like a pirate if you had an eyepatch.
Maybe it would look good. Do you think it would look good, Sharon?
” She snaps her fingers. “You’d be like that Redbeard guy.
Or is it Bluebeard? Maybe Sharon knows.” She glances over her shoulder, looking for her.
“She went to get the coffee,” I say, smiling. “You’re acting shit-faced.”
She clenches her jaw, and I figure I’m about to get blasted. Maybe she’ll pull a page out of Frodo’s playbook and tell me I’m a shitty employee—obviously—but instead she lowers her gaze to her glass. “I might have had more than I intended. It was a difficult morning.”
I nod. “You had some bad news, but you don’t have to let it break you. You remember what it felt like when you punched the heavy bag last night, don’t you?”
Her big eyes seem to grow even bigger. “Yes. I’ve been thinking about it all day.” She places her hand over mine, nearly bowling me over with her unexpected touch. Her fingers are soft but warm against my skin, rubbing gently across my flesh.
She’s drunk. She’s just drunk, and as my father told me when he first taught me how to brew, drunk people are either touchy-feely or punchy-fighty.
Briar Sterling is a touchy-feely drunk.
“This challenge isn’t going to own you,” I say, prying my hand away. “You’re going to take it on. You’re going to punch it like that heavy bag.”
Briar grins at me, practically blinding me with her white teeth.
“I’d like that.” She picks up the notebook and waves it, then drops it unceremoniously, nearly knocking over the mostly empty glass of bad whiskey. “Oopsie-daisy.”
I give her an incredulous look before turning to search for Sharon.
Thank Christ, she bursts out of the back with a carafe of coffee and beelines for our table.
Within seconds, she’s got both of our mugs full.
The coffee smells like what you’d find at a 7-Eleven at three a.m., but at least it’s caffeinated.
“Okay,” Sharon says. “Two decafs.”
“Decaf?” I blurt in disbelief and, yes, horror. “What’s the point of decaf?”
Sharon’s gaze is full of the same disapproval I used to get from my high school principal. “She asked for it earlier.”
I fix a quizzical stare on Briar.
“Too much caffeine disrupts the body’s natural balance,” she says primly. “I like to be in touch with my inner self.”
“Something tells me drinking your weight in whiskey does the same thing.” Turning to Sharon, I say, “Yeah, we’re gonna need some real coffee.”
She sniffs and gathers the mugs she just filled. “Fine. But I’ll have you know I have been feeding her.”
Briar sighs. “Everyone talks about me. No one talks to me. I’m not a child or some plastic doll like Felicity, you know. I’m a full-grown woman.”
“No one could mistake that,” I say, then instantly regret it.
It’s too much like flirting, and there are two very solid reasons I shouldn’t flirt with her, on top of the fact that she’s wasted.
Reason one, she’s my new boss. Reason two, Hannah will cut my balls off—with a butter knife for maximum agony.
“I’m thirty-one,” Briar says, holding out one finger.
“I would have guessed thirty-five,” I lie.
She and Sharon both scowl at me, so I lift my hands. “Joking. You barely look legal to drink, let alone run a brewery. I’ll bet you still get IDed to buy drinks.”
For some reason, this deepens Briar’s scowl. “They ID everybody.”
“Sure they do, Princess.”
Sharon walks away, clucking her tongue and murmuring something about men. Moments later, she’s back with the real-deal coffee.
Briar doesn’t even seem to notice the coffee set in front of her. She’s playing with a long lock of her hair, and it takes me a few seconds to tear my gaze away from her.
“What am I going to find in that notebook?” I ask, forcing my eyes to focus on her nose. “Drunken bullshit, or do you have an actual plan for the brewery?”
“I told you I have a plan,” she says, sounding disgruntled.
“Is that plan drunken bullshit?” I ask, picking up the book and starting to thumb through it.
“No!” She glowers at me, which looks cuter than she probably wants it to.
I start reading. The last couple of pages are drunken bullshit.
Silver beer?
Ooh, star-shaped glasses!
Dottie. Herbs. YES.
Sophie, decoration.
Hannah. I LOVE Hannah. Have I told Hannah how much I love her?
Suppressing a smile, I flip to the beginning.
New Year’s party: Drink us dry.
Midnight: Reveal of first new beer.
January: Weekly parties to launch new beers
I look up at her sharply. She was twisting a few straw wrappers together in an intricate design but now drops them.
“You want a new beer by New Year’s?” I ask. “That’s less than three weeks away.”
And the feeling in my gut…
It’s excitement. I haven’t been challenged for years. What she’s asking for…it would be nearly impossible to do it well, and that’s exactly what makes me want to pull it off.
“I know,” Briar says. “Hannah probably told you, but my father only gave me enough money to last through the end of the year. So we need…” She waves a hand around.
“What’s that thing people say?” A finger snap follows.
“Butts in seats. And soon. I’m hoping I can hire enough staff to reopen the tasting room next week.
“So Hannah said.”
“We can take longer to hire the bottling people. Sales reps. That kind of thing. But we need to serve Bubba’s beer until it’s gone.
On New Year’s, I was thinking we could lower the price on a few of the old beers as midnight gets closer—you know, start at five dollars a pint, then four, five, three, two, one. ”
I smile at her drunken slipup, especially because despite having downed a ton of whiskey, she’s come up with a bold idea. An interesting idea.
“And we’ll reveal your first new beer on New Year’s Eve at midnight.” She tries to snap her fingers again but fumbles it. “A free midnight toast.”
“Even if it sucks, they’ll love it if they’re already tanked,” I say with a smirk, a bit carried away by her vision.
I can see this working. It’ll be a big show built around my beer. A beer I’ll only have a few weeks to make.
Can I do it?
Damn straight I can.
“Yeah, I thought maybe that would help,” she says, prompting me to laugh.
“It’ll have to be a pale ale or maybe a wheat beer.”