Chapter 16
16
Ethan leaned into Steve French’s drafting table in his office at his Santa Rosa architecture firm, forty minutes south of Wildwood, looking down at the plans for Ethan’s lifelong dream and Pops’s only retirement—Wildcard Brews pub and brewery.
And for the first time since he and Pops had hashed out this idea, Ethan’s stomach knotted with mixed emotions over the plan. While Steve talked about the changes he’d made in the design, Ethan was counting down the hours until that damn bar wasn’t standing between him and Delaney anymore.
Yeah? Then what are you gonna do, smart guy?
The nagging little voice in Ethan’s head piped up, and he crossed his arms and rested his forehead against the fingers of one hand, trying like hell to look as if he were paying attention when his mind was a mess.
What was he going to do?
“By making your malt room just three feet smaller”—Steve moved his hand to point out that section of the floor plan, and Ethan forced his mind to the present—“I was able to increase your cold storage on the west side. Then I nudged your reverse osmosis this way, tucked your chemical containment in here, and that made room for one more fermenter in your pilot brew house, leaving all this space for expansion.”
That was pretty damned brilliant. Almost as brilliant as Delaney’s offhand suggestion for Ethan to move his keg washer and chemical containment at the warehouse. It had been saving him twice as much time as she’d estimated.
And now he had an almost uncontrollable urge to show these plans to Delaney to get her opinion, her ideas, her suggestions on how they could be better. Watching his dream come to life on paper was thrillingly surreal, and Ethan couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be able to share that dream with someone he...someone he what? Liked? Lusted? Was that even a term?
“Anything rattling around up there?” Pops asked, prodding Ethan out of his uncomfortable thoughts with the harsh tone his grandfather had adopted as of late.
Ethan cut a look at Pops and found that same pain-etched aggravation he’d been seeing more and more over the last several months. Then he smiled at Steve. “I love the changes.”
The architect nodded in acknowledgment, then glanced at Pops. “You haven’t said what you think, Harlan.”
“They look real good. Real good.” His watery blue eyes lifted to Steve, then slid to Ethan. “Look even better in brick and mortar, if they ever get that far. If we’re done here, I gotta get back to the farm. Hops don’t grow themselves.”
“You two should be about ready to break ground.” Steve straightened all the pages, lined them up, and rolled them into a tube. “Are you excited?”
A grunt rolled from Pops, and Ethan’s stress ratcheted up to an almost unbearable level.
Steve lifted a brow at Ethan. “What am I missing?”
“There’s a slight possibility we’ll run into a problem getting the liquor license.”
Although, somehow, that wasn’t bothering Ethan as much as the status of his relationship with Delaney, which was asinine. Their relationship was great sex. Period. She’d made that plenty clear.
At least with words. And, yeah, actions, too, judging by the way she avoided him like a rampant outbreak of herpes.
But Ethan still felt a discord between her words and her emotions, or her desires, or...something. Something was telling him there was more between them, that she felt it, that she wanted it. Yet...
“What kind of problem?” Steve asked.
“Like we can’t get one,” Harlan said.
“What?” Steve looked at Ethan, eyes widening. “I thought you were condemning a bar and grabbing the license.”
Wow, that was a slanted way to phrase it.
“No, no, no.” Ethan took the time to reword the circumstances of coming by the license in a legal context, if for no other reason than to ease his conscience. “I can’t grab anything until it’s available. Until the owner fails to pay the renewal fee or the company goes bankrupt or closes. I have an approved application on file with Alcohol Beverage Control and my contact there”—the guy he delivered free beer to every week—“promised to call me the minute this one becomes available.”
Steve leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms. “So what’s the problem?”
“One of the daughters who inherited the bar is back in town, trying to decide what to do with it.”
A troubled hum rolled from Steve’s throat.
Harlan pointed at Steve. “Exactly.” He looked at Ethan. “He gets it.”
“She’s only got a day left to file the papers,” he reminded Pops. “And there is no way in hell she could pull everything she needs together in that time. No way she could have gotten an architect or an engineer or a designer or a contractor on board that fast. She’s not on my schedule, and my calendar’s booked. It’s not going to happen.
“She’s smart enough to realize just how big a job it is and the risk she’d be taking. But she’s also proud and stubborn. She’s just taking her sweet time to make peace with the hard decision.”
And Ethan was both ticked and disheartened by the fact that she wasn’t allowing him in on that process. While at the same time growing sick over the fact that he needed her to suffer that loss so he could find his success.
Harlan pointed at Ethan but spoke to Steve. “That right there is the face of denial.”
Ethan heaved an exasperated sigh, took the plans from Steve, and thanked him.
They were at the door when Steve said, “Have you offered to buy it from her?”
Ethan turned. “In our county, that license would go for at least a hundred grand. We don’t have that kind of money.”
“There are a lot of people out there who do. One of my clients, for instance. He’s got a dozen projects going at any one time. Dabbles in a lot of different venues as a silent investor, always looking for a place to sink some cash for tax benefits, but doesn’t want to get involved in the business. Doesn’t want to be tied down. He also happens to be a craft beer lover.” Steve lifted his shoulders. “Just an option. I can talk to him for you if you want. See if he’s interested.”
The information hooked a desperate corner of Ethan’s brain. The one he was trying to fight off. “Thanks, Steve. We’ll keep it in mind.”
On the way to the truck, Pops’s hobble slowed him more than usual. And he was grouchier than usual, too.
“We’re not taking on another investor,” Harlan said, trailing behind Ethan. “I don’t trust no silent nothin’. Anyone who ain’t interested in working to earn their money don’t deserve any.”
“I don’t have a plan B here. If we lose this license, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
“Huh. Could swear I just heard you sayin’ that wouldn’t happen.”
Ethan would have opened the passenger’s door for Pops and helped him in, but the man would probably chew Ethan’s arm off. So he climbed in the driver’s side, tossed the plans behind the seat, and turned the engine over, thinking about everything he’d spent months and months researching before seriously considering starting this business. And his frustration boiled over in a rant.
“Securing a location is always the first step. That’s what everyone said. Every book I read, everyone I talked to, the first piece of advice from every expert: location, location, location. First things first. You can’t do anything until you’ve got your location nailed down.
“So what did I do? I waited and I watched.” As soon as Harlan closed the passenger’s door, Ethan backed out and kept talking as he headed toward the highway and took the ramp north to Wildwood. “I’m patient. I’m a good boy. I go to work every day and help everyone else build their dreams. Then one day, it happens. That perfect place hits my radar. Right on the corner of Main and Vine with room to expand back and up. It doesn’t get any better.
“So I sink every penny I have and every penny you have into buying the damn thing. Jump through every hoop in existence to do it quietly so I can keep the whole thing under wraps until I’m ready to go at this full force, because I’m not a millionaire like some people. I can’t just buy the property outright, then buy a nonexistent liquor license, quit my job, and break ground.
“So I brew my beer on the side, build my customer base, and save and save and save, waiting for the day the Harts let their renewal lapse, knowing, knowing, not one of them plans on coming back to town.
“And then, this shit happens.”
He was yelling now, and he didn’t care. He was angry. Angry that his family wasn’t the kind of family who would support him. Angry his father was such an ass. Angry Austin was such a prick. Angry he’d taken his grandfather’s money for that land. Angry he’d believed in this damned idea in the first place. Angry Delaney was avoiding him. Angry he gave a damn.
And angry that he couldn’t think of a way to make this right even after Delaney demolished the bar.
“Of all the times for her to come back and take an interest in that shithole after ten goddamned years, she chooses now.” He huffed out a caustic laugh and shook his head. “And you know the worst of it? I can’t even be angry with her. She’s doing everything right. And she’s doing it all for the right reasons. It’s my family that’s the problem. It’s my family that’s held me back. It’s my family that created this issue in the first place.
“I’m the one that’s been trying to live so far inside the box for so long, I’ve trapped myself there.”
And now Pops was trapped there with him.
Ethan propped his elbow on the window ledge and rested his forehead in his hand. “Just perfect.”
The thought unintentionally came out as words, making Ethan realize he hadn’t heard a word from Pops since they’d gotten in the truck.
He glanced over and found his grandfather asleep. Arms crossed, head angled against the headrest, lips parted in a soft snore. The man was dead on his feet. Barely able to walk. And he planned on getting back on that damn tractor today.
A boulder of guilt slammed the bottom of Ethan’s stomach. Harlan was alone on that farm with no help, because when it came down to choosing sides over where to place blame over Ian’s death, Pops had ditched the party line and told his daughters exactly where the blame belonged—on Ian, not Ethan.
Taking Ethan’s side had cost Pops his entire family—everyone but Ethan. His daughters, his sons-in-law, and his two remaining grandsons, Austin and Adam, all but deserted him.
Now Pops’s retirement was threatened, because Ethan had gone and invested it in a stupid dream—a dream of letting Pops hang up that goddamned hoe and put his backbreaking lifestyle behind him. A dream of supporting the only man who’d ever supported Ethan in his life.
Time to face reality. Outside the bedroom, Delaney wasn’t into him. The bottom line now was that Ethan had to do whatever he had to do to make sure Pops was secure when that knee finally went out. Ethan had to put Pops first now, the way Pops always put Ethan first when he’d needed it most.
And while the forty-minute drive back to town had given Ethan time to accept the disappointing situation with Delaney, he still hadn’t come to terms with his discomfort over her loss leading to his gain. By the time he’d gotten Pops settled at home and convinced him to leave the unfinished work for tomorrow, Ethan barely made it back to the office in time for his four o’clock appointment.
He pushed through the door to his office, expecting to see a woman sitting in the reception area across from Jodi’s desk, but the waiting area was empty.
Jodi looked up from her computer screen. “Hey. I was starting to think you weren’t going to make it.”
“Me, too.” He reached up and unbuttoned the top button of his dress shirt on the way into his office. “I have to look over the Peterson application again. I don’t?—”
“Ethan?” Jodi called standing from her desk. “About Mrs. Peterson?—”
“Give me a minute,” he said passing through his doorway, focused on his desk, where Jodi always laid the file of his next appointment for him. “I just want to?—”
He stopped at the sight of someone looking out the window in his office. In split-second intervals, he took in her height, her build, her long auburn hair spiraling down her back.
And he broke into a sweat.
“Delaney?”
When she turned, settled those big blue eyes on him, and smiled, he swore he felt a breeze sweep through his body and drag some of the tension away.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Jodi said behind him. He glanced back at his secretary, who wore a wry grin. “Delaney is your four o’clock. She scheduled the appointment under a different name.”
All his tension rushed back. Along with dread. And fear. And guilt.
Fuck.
Me.
Any glimmer of hope for the future drained out his feet. “I see.” He swallowed the disappointment and pulled on his big-boy armor. “Thanks, Jodi. You can go early if you want.”
“Really?” Her face brightened. “Thanks. Have a good night. Good to see you, Delaney. Are you going to be at Black Jack’s opening? I’d love to catch up.”
“Absolutely.” Delaney’s smile was warm and genuine. “Would love to hear what you’ve been up to.”
“Great,” Jodi said, her grin bright. “See you tomorrow.”
Jodi closed the door, and the office fell silent.