19. The Other Side
THE OTHER SIDE
“ Y ou’ve got curly hair,” Elias said an hour later when Phoebe came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her damp hair falling over her bare shoulders.
“I thought you were in the kitchen,” she said.
They’d gotten up after he had his fill of her. She jumped in the shower and he got dressed and went to make coffee.
He didn’t want to leave while she was showering for the day.
He could show up at work when he wanted, but it wasn’t even five yet. He’d drive home and shower and still get there around his normal time.
“I was,” he said. “I heard the door open and thought you were done and was going to ask if I could make you breakfast. You ran in there so quickly and turned the water on I hadn’t realized you were going to shower.”
He figured she was just going to the bathroom after he’d taken care of the condom.
Did she want him to leave so the place was empty when she came out?
Maybe he thought that right away until she said she thought he was in the kitchen.
“Sorry,” she said. “I normally have toast, but you can do what you want.”
She rushed into her room and shut the door. Probably to get dressed and then would deal with her hair.
Laken always got ready in her room when they were teens. By the time Talia was of that age, she had her own suite away from him and he never saw nor cared to see what her morning routine was.
He found the bread and pulled it out to put two pieces in the toaster, then opened the fridge and grabbed some eggs.
When her bedroom door opened again, he called out, “Phoebe.”
She walked into the kitchen dressed for work. Brown pants, a white sweater, and brown socks on her feet.
Her damp hair was falling in curly ringlets around her cheeks and shoulders, her face bare of makeup.
Any man who said a woman was at her best fully made up had never seen Phoebe Kelly in the morning.
The light reflecting off her dewy hair almost created a glow around her beckoning his feet to lift inches off the ground and follow her to the ends of the earth.
“Yes?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just wanted to see your hair again before you straightened it. I had no idea.”
“It’s unruly,” she said.
“No,” he said. “It’s hot.”
“What?” she asked, laughing.
“Long curly hair. Why do you tame it? It’s almost like you tame your personality too, but I saw the other side of it last night.”
She just stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. It almost felt like it to him too.
Then a slow smile filled her face.
“No one else has ever realized that about me before.”
“Lucky for you, I’m good at seeing through things,” he said. At least he always thought he was. “Do you ever wear it curly?”
“On the weekends when I’m not doing much.”
“It wasn’t last weekend,” he said, lifting his eyebrow.
“Because I was doing something with you,” she said. “Do you want to see it curly?”
“I’d love to,” he said.
She nodded and returned to the bathroom so he grabbed eggs and found a pan and put some food together. He sure the hell burned some calories being around her.
When she walked into the kitchen ten minutes later, her hair was a mass of ringlets and surprisingly not chaotic in the least.
“It’s quicker to do my hair this way,” she said. “Just some product, towel dry, then hit it for a few minutes with a diffuser.”
“A what?”
“It’s a device at the end of a hairdryer that spreads the air out to dry better.”
“Whatever it is, it looks great on you.”
“I don’t think I’m taken as seriously like this,” she said.
She walked to the coffeemaker. He’d been lucky to figure out how the thing worked. It was nothing like any machine he had or had operated before.
“Do you have to be taken seriously all the time?” he asked. “The element of surprise might be on your side too.”
She laughed while her coffee was brewing. Just a tiny one. Guess she was going for the powerful shit. He needed one of those too.
“I never thought of that,” she said. “I’ll have to consider it. About last night…”
“Oh boy,” he said, trying to make light of it. “Let me sit down for this. You’ve got your lawyer hat on. See, there is that element of surprise. I look at you and see the passionate woman in my bed shouting out my name.”
Her face turned red and he loved he was able to do that to her.
“I’m still that person, and no professional hat on. I just wanted to talk for a minute.”
“Says no attorney ever,” he said.
“Is this yours?” she asked, moving toward the bread on the counter.
“Yours,” he said of the toast that he’d buttered. “If you don’t like it that way, there is more cooking. The eggs are almost done.”
She grabbed the toast that was ready. “This is good,” she said.
He found a plate. “Did you want eggs?”
“No,” she said. “You can have them.” He dumped them all on the one plate, the toast popped and he took care of that and sat next to her at the table. “Go on, hit me with it.”
She closed one eye at him. “Nothing to hit you with. I normally talk about this before and sort of lost my head with you. I seem to do that a lot.”
“The ‘you better not be sleeping with someone else while you are with me’ talk?” he asked.
She’d been sipping her espresso and looked over the rim of the small cup. Her light brown eyes were staring hard into his. “Yep.”
“No worries,” he said. “It saves me from bringing it up to you.”
“Oh really?” she asked, leaning back.
“Yep. I don’t share. I’ve never been good at sharing anything in my life. Ask my mother. She’ll tell you.”
“I think I’ll pass on the conversation with your mother about this,” she said, grinning.
“Good move,” he said. “If that is all you wanted to say, don’t worry about me. My mother would kick my ass too. And now I realize I talk about my mother a lot and probably sound like a wuss.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t. There are a lot of you in the family and you’re the closest to her. I’m willing to bet she leans on you more than anyone else.”
Funny how even his family didn’t get that.
“It happens,” he said. “I’m there for her if she needs me, but she rarely does.”
“But you still check in on her to find out if she’s fine,” she said. “I know it. You don’t have to admit it. I can see it on your face.”
“I do that,” he said. “We all do. Well, no. Not everyone.”
His younger brothers didn’t think of it much. West was often too busy half the time to check in with anything more than to see if their mother was financially set. Braylon talked more, but he wasn’t close by to do much, the same with Foster.
Which left him and he was fine with it.
Maybe it made him feel less like the fifth kid when he had the responsibility on his shoulders to help out.
“I get it,” she said. “Everyone has to do what works for them.”
“I only care about us,” he said. “And what works for us .” He finished his eggs and was biting into his toast. “I need to get home to shower and change.”
“Oh,” she said. “You don’t want to go to work in yesterday’s clothing?”
“I’d showered and changed after work yesterday. No one would know other than I normally wear a shirt that has my business on it and not a dressier shirt, but they wouldn’t think much of it either.”
“I’m sure my employees are going to comment on my hair,” she said.
He laughed. “What are you going to tell them?”
“That I decided to be lazy today,” she said. “I’m sure the hell not saying the hot guy in my bed told me I look better this way.”
He burst out laughing. “I didn’t use those words. I’m smarter than to tell any woman they look better one way or another. It’s not my decision how a woman wants to present herself.”
He didn’t have a death wish if his sisters or mother ever found out.
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s not. It’s refreshing to hear a man say that. But I do appreciate you making me feel better about the curly hair. I do love it, just always had this opinion of myself.”
“Which is your right,” he said, taking his last bite, then standing up to put his plate in the dishwasher.
“And I need to run. No pressure on either of us. If I don’t hear from you or you don’t hear from me today, don’t panic and I won’t.
We’ll be in touch tomorrow. There is no reason for either of us to overthink anything. ”
She almost spit the coffee she was sipping out of her mouth. “How the hell can you read my mind?”
“I can’t,” he said, kissing her. “It’s what I was thinking too.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thank you for sharing that. Have a good day.”
He left and went to his truck, hopped in, started it up, and drove away. Someone was looking out their window while he did it and he’d have to let her know that she might have some nosy neighbors.
She was probably already aware.
An hour later he was at the brewery and walking around with a large coffee in his hands.
He had to wake the hell up since he didn’t sleep nearly as well as Phoebe had.
Maybe he would have if he didn’t have a bunch of shit running through his mind.
Stuff like he’d said to her.
Not to get worked up if he didn’t hear from her.
Or for her to do the same.
He had too much going on with work and too many people relying on him for this collaboration to go wrong.
When he was here, his attention had to stay on the business.
“There you are,” Kyle said to him. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“What’s going on?” he asked. “I’m not late.”
He was earlier than normal but not by more than twenty minutes.
Since he’d already eaten, he went home, checked his house, showered, dressed, and left again.
“I saw your truck when I pulled in,” Kyle said. “You weren’t in your office. Tony stopped me, said one of the brews doesn’t taste right.”
He frowned. “What?” he asked. “Why is he tasting one this early?”
Tony was one of his other brewmasters. He had several. Tony was reliable and he trusted him. He was on at night overseeing things.
“He said he noticed one ingredient didn’t smell right. It’s a different brand. He hadn’t been aware you changed anything. I wasn’t either. He got nervous and tapped a new brew early in the first stage. It’s not right.”
“I haven’t changed any ingredients. You know how I am about that.”
They were so damn big it’s not like he could inspect every shipment that came in. It was someone else’s job to do that and no one came to him or anyone else to question it.
He was marching to the other end of the building.
“Elias,” Tony said. “This isn’t right. Taste it.”
He reached for the cup and put it to his lips. It wasn’t going to taste anything like the finished product, but he knew damn well what it should taste like. It was his base. The first one he brewed.
Somehow it got messed with.
“I already know by the smell it’s bitter.”
It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t his.
“That’s what I thought too,” Kyle said. “Why did you change the brand of barley we use?”
“I didn’t,” he said again. “How many batches have used the wrong stuff?”
This was a nightmare. He’d have to decide to get rid of it all in the fermentation stage or let it go through the last few stages and see how it tasted.
His loyal customers were going to know the difference.
That was how you lost business.
And the last thing he needed was bad press or complaints when he was still working through his contract with the Fierces.
“Too many to count right now,” Tony said. “But not as many as it could have been.”
“Shit,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “We need to sort this out now. Let’s find out which ones used this new product with our existing brews and go from there. If it’s a new beer we might salvage it and just use the rest of what was purchased if it was a lot.”
Because everything he bought was in large orders.
“I’m on it,” Tony said. “I’ll stay until we get it figured out.”
“Thanks,” he said and marched right to his office to find out what the fuck went wrong.
Here he’d hoped for a nice relaxing day.
Imagine how much worse he’d feel right now if he hadn’t started his morning out as well as he had.
Maybe his brothers were right, and a woman could make all the difference in your life.
But was it a good thing since he’d been thinking of Phoebe so much and this happened under his nose?