Chapter One
PRESENT DAY
The brewery was flooded.
Sammie fought back a groan, closing her eyes and wishing she was even a little bit religious so she could pray for some patience.
Carson Everly, the new assistant brewer that Sammie hadn’t actually wanted to hire, was in charge of filling the cold liquor tank while Sammie herself had made a delivery to a local bar.
Apparently, he’d been distracted chatting with a couple servers in the taproom until one of the bartenders cut in to ask if water was supposed to be aggressively spraying out of the top of the tank.
Thus the inch of water covering the entire brew space. It was slowly, slowly pouring into the floor drains. Too slowly.
“Luz, can you go grab the shop vac and start helping Carson?” Sammie’s other assistant brewer had just walked in the door. Her dark eyes were round as saucers as she took in the mess, nodding and hurrying off to find the vacuum, her high, dark ponytail swishing behind her.
Luz was great. Luz was wonderful. Luz was the assistant brewer that Sammie actually wanted in her brewery.
Okay, so it wasn’t truly her brewery. The Everly family owned it. Sammie just made the award winning beers.
As Luz started sucking up water, Sammie sloshed over to the garage door, hauling it open so her assistant could get outside easier to dump the vac. She turned to see Carson with a mop in hand, running it back and forth on the concrete, doing nothing to actually lower the water level.
“Carson,” Sammie hollered. The kid—she had to stop thinking about him that way, even if he didn’t look old enough to be working with alcohol—stared at her with a bug-eyed, panicky expression.
His white cheeks flushed pink. “Go into the storage room and bring out the big fan.” He hurriedly dropped the mop, scurrying away. Sammie almost felt bad for him.
Almost.
The water was draining faster, between Luz with the shop vac and Sammie pushing water toward the drains with a giant squeegee.
Within half an hour most of the floor was more damp than flooded.
Sammie had Luz stop what she was doing, sending her to crush in the grain for the next day’s brew.
She handed off the squeegee to Carson, who looked back and forth between it and the mop for long enough to grate on Sammie’s nerves.
Just walk away. Walk away and let him do his thing while she calmed down.
Sammie had just finished fixing Carson’s mistake with the cold liquor tank, sweat dripping down the sides of her face, her shirt plastered to her pale skin, when voices reached her.
She passed Luz, slapping her shoulder with a thanks as she walked back toward the garage door to find Carson chatting with someone, all thoughts of mops and squeegees seemingly abandoned.
“Samantha!”
Sammie frowned at the man before her. Robert Everly—not Rob, never Rob, and certainly not Bob—was the sort of guy that made Sammie frown pretty often.
Crisp polo, perfectly styled light blonde hair, a hand he always offered for a shake that felt awfully soft and lacked the callouses everyone else in the brewhouse had. Well, except for Carson.
“Sammie,” she said, shaking his hand quickly, wondering why he always insisted on such a formal gesture. He gave her a questioning look, and she had to fight back an eye roll. “Nobody calls me Samantha.”
She could see the words fail to process behind those blinking brown eyes, and knew that next month, when he showed up for one of his rare visits to the business he owned, he would still fail to call her by her preferred name.
Even though she had been working for him for five years.
Had been his head brewer for three of those years.
Robert slapped his nephew on the back, and the poor kid stumbled forward.
“How’s Carson settling in? Got him brewing anything special yet?”
Dear lord, no.
“We’re still working up to that.” Sammie would rip out her own fingernails before she let Carson be in charge of any part of the actual brewing process, considering he struggled to even fill a tank with water properly.
“We hired him on to be your right hand man,” Robert said seriously.
We. Hilarious. Sammie hadn’t had a say in the matter at all. Robert had waltzed in one day with his nephew in tow, a lankier, baby-faced version of himself, and told her she had a new assistant brewer, despite the fact that Luz had been filling that role for the past year.
“Everly Brew Works is a family operation,” Robert continued.
Carson flinched as his uncle slapped him on the back, shoving his hands into his pockets and chewing the inside of his cheek like he didn’t even want to be there.
Sammie failed to understand why he was. Just like how she failed to understand why this conversation hadn’t ended yet so she could go on with her day, get home, take a gummy, and chill until she fell asleep.
“I want you to utilize this guy to his fullest. A strong work ethic runs in his Everly blood.”
Sammie blinked. She could not do this.
“Sure,” she said. “If you don’t need anything else, I’m gonna get back to work.”
“I’ll actually need you to get the rest of this mess cleaned up.” Robert waved a smooth hand at their surroundings. “I’ve got some people coming by.”
Some people? Sammie wanted to ask questions, wanted to know who these people were that were going to be intruding on her space.
And they were coming by now? Sammie had a grain delivery set to arrive any minute, and she really needed to get Luz and Carson going on their canning run.
But Robert’s strict tone stopped all of the questions flooding her mind.
It took everything in her not to throw Carson under the bus for the moist state of the brewhouse. “You got it,” she said, slinging a hearty thumbs up in his direction. “Carson, take over for Luz on the vac until this place is dry.”
Robert disappeared while Sammie, with a heavy sigh, set her crew back to work.
“Hello?”
Kieran McCullough knew his voice was lost over the sound of running machinery. He stepped into the brewhouse, careful to avoid the hoses and buckets littering the floor. Faint voices echoed from back by the canning line, so that was the direction he headed.
He knew his way around at this point, after delivering grain to Everly on his father’s behalf for the last two years. Ever since he’d moved back to Illinois.
“Carson!” A voice he recognized, one he’d known since childhood. Dry, just a hint of a rasp that colored her words. “Toss me the box that was delivered earlier.”
Kieran rounded a tank just in time to see a red-faced white guy pointedly looking away as Sammie Mills tore into the box she’d just caught out of the air.
She wore a white tank top with overalls tied down around her waist. Sweat dotted her skin, and her dark hair was pulled into two thick braids that brushed just past her shoulders.
She was focused on her work, and thus failed to notice Kieran’s arrival.
He was hesitant to break her concentration. When she still failed to see him, though, Kieran let out another greeting, loud enough to finally be heard.
Sammie whirled around, storm cloud blue eyes flying wide.
“Delivery’s here.” Kieran shrugged sheepishly, offering a smile as his gaze fell to the small object she had just pulled out of the box.
“Oh, thanks.” Sammie hurriedly stuffed the item back into the tissue paper it had been wrapped in, her own face nearly as red as Carson’s.
“I’ll come help you unload. Carson, get this taped on the whale tale so we can see if it helps to keep the cans moving.
” She tossed the box back, and Carson nearly missed it, snatching it out of the air and holding it as though whatever was inside might bite him.
He finally moved away toward the front of the giant, metal machine as Sammie led Kieran back outside.
“Sorry, didn’t hear you come in.” She was still not quite meeting Kieran’s gaze. The flush on her cheeks suited her, even if Kieran was clueless as to why she was blushing so much..
Sammie squinted against the sun, pushing her braids back behind her shoulders, showing off the long lines of her neck.
“I wasn’t waiting long.” Kieran popped down the tailgate on his truck, tugging a fifty pound bag of grain forward. Sammie did the same, and Kieran couldn’t help but notice the way she lifted it as effortlessly as he did, slinging it over her shoulder easily.
“What’s with all the water on the floor?” The question seemed to ruffle Sammie’s feathers, and Kieran chuckled as her cheeks puffed out with a sigh.
“Carson.” She didn’t need to say more. Kieran had heard her complain about the guy before. “How’s your dad?” She asked, switching subjects as she pulled another bag forward.
“He’s good right now. Tried to help me load all this up, didn’t want me to make you wait for it.” Help that Kieran had firmly refused, after seeing his father limping more than usual the night before.
“He needs to be careful.”
Something in Kieran’s chest tightened. Sammie knew his family. They’d grown up together after all. She always remembered to ask about his parents, especially his dad, whose hips had been bothering him more and more lately.
“Try telling him that.”
Sammie grinned, bright and genuine. “Maybe I will. I’m going down there to check on the house soon. Grant never tells me no.”
“Must be nice.” Kieran huffed another laugh.
His parents were like family to the Mills twins, had always viewed them as an extension of Kieran himself.
But while Grant McCullough might be more willing to listen to the kids that weren’t related to him by blood, he was still stubborn as an ox, especially when it came to his work.
They dropped their bags down on a pallet just inside the open garage door. Sammie laughed, turning back toward the truck. Her smile was brilliant, lighting up her stormy eyes. Kieran focused on grabbing another couple of bags.