All or Nothing (Mapleton #3)

1. Chapter 1

one

W illow Spencer was pretty sure she’d lost her mind.

She sat in the back seat of a cab, watching the pretty little town pass by, and wondering why on earth she was returning to Keller’s Pub.

Maybe it was the weather putting her in a more agreeable mood. When she had left Churchill two days ago, a thick blanket of snow and ice had covered the town. But Mapleton was warm, and the leaves on the trees were just beginning to burst into bright oranges and reds that looked kaleidoscopic through the sunlight. It made her smile, even after the crap she’d gone through the day before.

She watched the quaint main street pass by, lined with cafés and bookshops and clothing stores. It was so different from her hometown. It was big and busy and beautiful. She knew by most people’s standards that Mapleton was a small town, but it was four times the size she was used to.

“We’re here,” the cab driver said as he pulled to a stop.

She sighed in annoyance as she opened the door and stepped out of the cab onto the sidewalk. She thanked the driver with a smile, but as soon as she started toward the door, her annoyed scowl was back in place.

The door to Keller’s stuck out like a sore thumb along Main Street, clearly under construction with a paper Coming Soon sign in the front window and no sign above the door.

The rest of Main Street looked like a photo from a magazine with its pretty storefronts that led down to a sparkling lake. Even though the trip had been a bust, she was still happy about the change of scenery, even for just a day or two. She had been super excited at the idea of trying something new, right until Lurch had swung that door open and shooed her away like a rabies-riddled rat.

God, that guy was such a dickhead.

She sighed again, wondering why she’d come back. Actually, she knew why. It was because she’d already come this far, and she was a nosy bitch and wanted to see how they were setting up their brewery so she could get ideas of how to set up her own.

Not that she would open her own place soon, but a girl could dream.

It also didn’t hurt that her contact person, a guy named Adam, had called and apologized. She just hoped that the giant ass from yesterday wouldn’t be there.

She pulled the handle, surprised when it smoothly eased open, unlike the day before. She stepped in and immediately spotted him .

The asshole.

He was impossible to miss. When she’d first laid eyes on him, she’d actually thought he was good looking. Not that she cared; she was happily engaged. Nevertheless, it was impossible to deny the objective hunkyness of the guy.

He was a thousand feet tall with intense dark eyes under slashes of dark eyebrows, and he had gigantic biceps covered in tattoos. Then he opened his mouth.

He was just another asshole.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t scowling as he had been the day before. Actually, he had no expression whatsoever. His face was like an icy wall; hard, cold, and completely unreadable.

“Hi, you must be Willow. I’m Adam. ”

To her right, only a few feet away, a smiling face caught her attention. She hadn’t even realized anyone else was in the room. She took Adam’s outstretched hand in hers and gently squeezed.

“Nice to meet you,” she said with a polite smile, then threw a pointed look over his shoulder at the giant dick across the room.

See, Neanderthal? This is how normal people interact when meeting for the first time.

He gave her a blank look as if he could read her thoughts and walked over, surprising her when his knuckles didn’t drag on the ground. He came close, then extended his huge tattooed hand.

“Max.”

She glared at him, waiting. Was that it? Nothing else? No apology?

God, what a dick.

She left his hand in the air and looked back at the non-dickish one.

“I’m so sorry for the confusion yesterday,” Adam said. “It was my fault. I was going through some personal things, and I sent my crew home early. Max thought you were on the crew.”

She cocked a brow in the asshole’s direction. Why would he think she was part of a construction crew? Then she remembered her clothing. The standard outfit everyone wore from the catch-all store in Churchill. It made her blend in there, but she had to admit she looked way out of place in an upscale little town like Mapleton.

It hadn’t really occurred to her to dress nicely for the interview, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have mattered. These were the only clothes she had.

Her last interview had been a decade ago for her current job, and her boss, Doug, hadn’t batted an eye at her attire when he’d hired her. But to be fair, he bought all his clothes from the same store, so they had basically been wearing the same outfit.

Given all that, she supposed it wasn’t that huge a leap for Max the Asshole—Maxhole—to assume she was a construction worker.

But she didn’t have to forgive him for it.

Especially if he wouldn’t apologize.

She threw one last glare at him, then tried to forget he even existed, and focused on the nice guy.

“I hope everything is okay,” she said to Adam.

He smiled back. “It will be. Let’s get started.”

He led her through a hallway and into a small office that someone had hastily thrown together, and she sat down on a brown leather chair, questioning why she didn’t feel any nervousness. Probably because she’d already written this job off. Maybe Shane was right to tell her not to bother with this and stay home with him instead, but if nothing else, at least she got a change of scenery and some warm air.

Not to mention the tasty drive-through pumpkin spice latte she’d tried for the first time that day.

Adam followed her through the door, and to her dismay, Maxhole followed. They sat across from her.

Adam began telling her about the brewmaster position they were hiring for and how they wanted someone with good taste and a lot of experience to head it up, create the beer, the brew schedule, everything. They asked her some basic questions, presumably to see what her level of experience was and whether she could run a brewery. Which she obviously could. She’d been working at a brewery for over ten years, had gone through the steps to become a brewmaster, and had been desperate to get out from under Doug’s thumb for some time.

But she wanted her own brewery, not someone else’s.

Maxhole sat silently, staring at her, watching her every move as she answered Adam’s questions. She would have found it intimidating had she not already hated him so much.

“Do you have questions for us?” Adam asked.

She glanced over at Max’s intense dark eyes and back, then asked what she’d been wondering since he’d opened that door, but she was sure she already knew the answer. “Who would be my boss?”

Silence met her for a moment, then Adam finally spoke.

“Max is the owner and general manager.”

Willow gave a nod. That’s what she thought.

“What’s your role?”

“Investor.”

Willow fought the urge to shake her head and say Never in a million fucking years . She already had a controlling dick for a boss. The last thing she needed was an even more controlling, even bigger dick.

Huge dick.

Stop thinking about dicks.

She shook her head and had started standing when Adam stopped her.

“Would you like to see the brewery?”

Oh yeah.

“Sure,” she said, finally feeling a tinge of excitement. At least she’d be able to tell Shane that something came of this. He had been less than enthused when she told him she was going away for a few days for an interview. At least now she could put his mind at ease that she didn’t want to take the job. She knew it would be a long shot to talk him into moving away from Churchill with her, anyway .

She followed Adam and Max out of the office, through the dismantled dining area, and into the taproom. Then stopped dead in her tracks and stared up with her jaw going slack.

It was as if she’d just stepped into a greenhouse.

The ceilings were high and all glass, with lights strung up that gave it a glow. The floor was wood, as was the bar that spanned the far wall. Behind the bar, they had already fitted a long row of taps and mounted three screens on the wall above to display the beers.

“We started in the taproom,” Adam said. “It isn’t quite finished yet, but we’re getting close. The plan is to plant trees in the corners to grow to the ceiling so it feels like you’re outside even in the winter. The glass panes on the ceiling open in the warmer months.”

“Wow,” she said, at a loss for more words. It was incredible. Better than anything she could have dreamed up herself.

“Through here is the brewery,” Adam said, gesturing to an opening behind the bar and leading them through. “It’s ready to go. We have state-of-the art—”

She stopped listening.

The place was enormous. And immaculate. This was not the rundown crappy place she had spent almost every day for the past ten years in. They had sunk some serious money into this.

The tanks were shiny and new, with built-in touch screens to automate the process. She walked through the wide row between the fermentation tanks, checked out the storage tanks and the mash tuns. She was in complete awe.

“Where’s your canning line?” she asked.

“We’ve got a mobile service that cans for us,” Max said.

She nodded, then remembered that she hated him, and turned around again. They had to do the canning themselves in Churchill, and it was the only part of the process she didn’t really love.

“So,” Adam said, “what do you think?”

“I think that if I ever got to open my own brewery, it would be exactly like this.”

“Your own brewery?” Max’s deep voice, hard and unfeeling, came through, and she realized what she’d said.

She tried to shrug it off but couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. Realistically, she’d never be able to open her own brewery. She had some money from an insurance payout she got after her mom died, and her Nana had encouraged her to invest it and keep it to herself, so she’d done just that. In the fifteen years she’d been with Shane, she’d never told him about it, and it had grown into an enormous sum.

But the money was practically irrelevant.

She could never open her own place in Churchill. It was too small a town to support two breweries, and all the locals already loved what she brewed at Tipped Canoe. Not to mention that distribution from a town with no external roads was impossible.

But the logistics were hurdles she could jump. The real problem was talking Shane into moving. He never wanted to leave.

“It’s incredible,” she told Max, forgetting for a moment that she hated him. Her mind became consumed with more important things, like the realization that her dreams would never be achieved. “I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

She looked around again, basking in the disappointment that she would never own a place like this, then wondered whether they were actually going to offer her the job.

She had been so certain she would never work for Maxhole, but now that she saw the brewery, she had to admit that she wanted this job.

Like, badly wanted it.

Finally having control would be amazing, and she knew she could make remarkable beer. She’d have to deal with Maxhole, but she already knew how to put up with Doug, so how much worse could it be?

She glanced at Max, who was still glaring at her, unreadable.

She rolled her eyes.

It would be nice to get out of Churchill for a while, have a little adventure before she and Shane got married. She’d only left twice since she moved there to be with her father after her mom died. Once to visit her Nana in Ottawa when she was nineteen, and now for this interview.

She wanted to get out and see some more of the world, maybe go to a concert or see a Blue Jays game.

Something.

Anything.

Willow exhaled, reminding herself that she was in a job interview and couldn’t cry. “I should probably get going. My flight is in a few hours.”

Adam nodded with a polite smile. “Thank you so much for coming, Willow.”

Willow smiled back. “Thanks for having me.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

With a nod, she said goodbye and turned to leave. She didn’t know how they were feeling about her, but she knew she wanted this job, even if Max would be her boss. She’d just have to wait and see whether they offered it to her.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked back at the pub, then down to the pretty lake. If they offered her the job, she’d try her best to talk Shane into moving with her. Maybe he’d be willing to step out of his comfort zone, even for just a little while, and have an adventure with her.

Her shoulders began slumping, and she ordered them to stop. Stranger things have happened. Maybe there was still hope.