Chapter 21
21
Ethan crumpled the scratch paper into a ball and pitched it against the warehouse wall. “Goddammit.”
Exhaling, he slumped on the stool and tapped his pencil on the workbench, letting his gaze blur over the empty kettle that should have something brewing in it. But there wasn’t any point in doing all that work to keep his brand alive or his customers happy if there wasn’t going to be any brewery.
No. He’d worked too long and too hard for this. Pops was depending on him to pull through.
Ethan dragged the notebook in front of him again, raked one hand into his hair, and started scribbling with the other, jotting all the locations of his cash and where he could get more.
“Savings . . . checking . . . retirement . . . IRA . . . CDs . . .”
He could sell his personal truck and just drive the work truck. If he pulled all the crap around his house together and sold it on Craigslist, he’d make a few hundred. Now that he wasn’t wasting his free time doing charity work to bring in money for his father’s campaign, he could pick up odd jobs on the weekend. Easy tile, masonry, or carpentry gigs. Handyman stuff. He could make a couple thousand a month?—
No. He scratched that idea off the list. He made more money off his beer.
His mind circled back to his house, and he reconsidered the renovation and refinancing to pull some money out. If he could focus his free time on the upgrades, he could have it ready for appraisal in maybe three, four months. He could get fifty grand there.
But after adding that to the equation, Ethan still didn’t have enough to pull this damn brewpub off.
“Jeeeezus.” He closed his eyes, let his hand slide from his hair to rub his forehead, then pushed it back in and refocused. “What if I doubled production?”
He jotted the numbers that would result if he did nothing but work and produce beer with a little renovation here and a little sleep there.
Then threw the pencil down and covered his face with both hands.
His head throbbed. His heart ached. He was so goddamned . . . unhappy.
Unhappy?
What a stupid thought. He didn’t even know what “happy” was anymore. He hadn’t been “happy” a day since Ian died.
A memory flashed in his head. One of Delaney lying atop him in one of those languid moments they’d shared in bed. Of her head resting on one hand, her hair falling like a fiery waterfall, her other hand combing through his damp hair. Of the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, and the way she listened to everything he said as if he were the only man in the world.
He was wrong. He had been happy.
He’d been happy in those stolen moments with her.
His shoulders softened, his breath released in a slow stream, and he let his forehead fall to his forearms on the workbench.
How do I get her back?
And how do I keep her?
Suddenly it was all he wanted.
“What a mess.”
His murmur was punctuated by the scrape of his warehouse door opening, turning his mood from defeated to feral. This misery sure as shit didn’t want any goddamned company.
He lifted his head, ready to tell whoever had walked in to get the hell out, but his words froze when his eyes settled on Delaney.
She was scanning the warehouse, which made Ethan realize it was darker than usual inside. He’d turned on only one light.
“Ethan Hayes,” she yelled, her voice an eerie blend of fury and...fear? “I know you’re here. Get your butt out?—”
“Delaney.” He spoke softly, but she still jumped and backed away. The look on her face pumped ice into Ethan’s heart and pushed him to his feet. “I’m right here.”
She bumped into the corner of a workbench, reached out to steady herself, and knocked a box of just-cleaned bottles to the floor. Ethan bolted off his stool as her shriek was swallowed by the smash of breaking glass. Delaney stumbled to avoid the shards and rolling half bottles and pitched sideways, right into Ethan’s arms.
“Whoa.” He held her to him and lifted her off her feet to step back and out of the mess before he set her down. That’s when he realized how badly she was shaking. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“No.” Her hands pried at his arms, and she pulled away. She turned on him, and her expression was a mess of raw, painful emotions he’d never seen before. “It’s not okay. You told Austin—” Her words cut off, and she tried again, her face twisted in a sick kind of agony. “You told Austin we slept together?”
“What? No. Never. I would never?—”
“He knows, Ethan.” She was breathing hard, and when she lifted her hand to her face, Ethan realized there were tears glistening there. “I sure as hell didn’t tell him, so tell me how he knows.”
Ethan lifted his hands out to the side. “Are you sure he knows?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Her edge of hysteria confirmed it for Ethan. He narrowed his eyes, and the first stirrings of rage bubbled low in his gut. “When did you talk to him?”
“Just now.” She jerked a hand toward her property. “He came to the bar.”
With his heart in his throat, Ethan closed the distance between them and slid his hands down her arms, holding her gently but firmly even when she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Delaney,” he said softly, seriously. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she said. “But he would have . . .”
His gut tightened. His stomach folded. And he bit out a curse as he dragged her close and wrapped her in his arms. She kept her head bent, her arms crossed, but she didn’t push back.
Ethan squeezed his eyes tight, trying to force away the image of Austin with his hands on Delaney. “How did you get rid of him?”
“Told him there were security cameras. Cameras to dirty cops are like sunlight to vampires.”
He frowned. “Are there? Cameras?”
“Yes. Trace installed them for theft.”
She lifted her head and looked at him with watery blue eyes. “Why would you tell Austin, of all people? We understood each other. We were on the same page. I trusted you. I ended things between us for you.”
Her tear-filled voice tore at his heart. To see such a strong woman reduced to such turmoil and fear killed him.
“You know I didn’t tell Austin,” he said, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Otherwise I’d be rolling on the floor with my nuts in my throat.”
Her head bowed again, her body softened, and a breath stuttered past her lips.
“You just needed to hear it from me.” He lifted a hand and stroked her hair.
Delaney pressed her face into his chest. “Asshole shouldn’t have a badge,” she muttered, slowly unwinding from the coiled state she’d come in. “Should never be allowed to carry a gun.”
With her posture easing, Ethan was able to cocoon her in his arms. He pressed his face to her hair, closed his eyes, and breathed her in. Then sighed. “I’ve missed you.”
She exhaled and leaned into him. “This situation is so fucked up.”
“It is, and it wears me out. Come sit with me.”
He uncurled long enough to guide her to the sofa in the unit by way of the front door, which he locked before sinking onto the velour and pulling her onto his lap.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face to his neck. “I shouldn’t stay.”
He kissed her head and smoothed her hair off her face. He didn’t agree or disagree. He just soaked in the feel of her weight against him, her warmth, her sexy, salty, musky scent, and enjoyed her for as long as she let him.
“I know I asked you this before,” she said after several long, quiet minutes, “but how did you come out of that family so great?”
“Probably my mom. She’s nothing like them. If you took them out of the picture, you’d like her.” More silence. “I hear Avery’s coming for a visit.”
“Yeah.”
The upbeat tone of her voice made him smile. “You sound happy.”
“I am. You might see her if you’re still at the bar doing the inspection when I bring her by. It’s a good time to mend broken ties, you know? She’s in a bad place right now, and I hope I can make it better somehow.”
Her generosity and sweetness warmed Ethan. “And Chloe?”
“Still don’t know where she is.”
She lowered one hand from his shoulder and threaded her fingers with his free hand. Kissed his neck and whispered, “Miss you, too.”
Ethan’s already half-hard erection stiffened beneath her thigh, and he let his lids slide closed. But he didn’t act on the desire, because this time with her was special. These quiet moments were golden. He was pretty sure she didn’t give them to just anyone.
He wanted to broach the subject of the bar with her but didn’t want to lose this intimacy. So he held her waist firmly, twisted, and lay back, pulling her with him.
She tried to sit up, pushing against his chest.
“Relax, relax. I’m just getting comfortable.” She gazed down at him, those beautiful eyes a little wary. “What? You have somewhere pressing to be right now? Because my calendar happens to be wide-open.”
Her lips kicked up on one side. “I hear that’s rare.”
“Not as rare as it used to be.”
“Why’s that?”
The thought made him grin. “Because I closed down the mayor’s free favor-for-a-friend service.”
That brought both her brows up, and her laugh was low and dubious. “That couldn’t have gone over well.”
“Nothing I do goes over well unless it’s exactly what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. And, well, we all have to draw the line somewhere, right?”
“We do.” Her lashes lowered, shading her eyes. “I just wish those lines weren’t always so difficult to draw.”
She propped her elbow on his shoulder, her chin in her hand, and seemed to drift.
Ethan twirled a piece of her hair around his finger, unable to remember the last time he’d been so utterly comfortable. But something about her comment on drawing lines had him saying, “Tell me about your job. How’d you go from waiting tables at your father’s bar to climbing the ladder at a company like that?”
“A lot of being in the right place at the right time willing to bust my ass. I picked up a job working at their bars down south and was able to improve their efficiency because of all those years I’d had to work Dad’s bar alone. That earned me a management position, where I made more changes, which they liked.
“And then one winter seven years ago, seventy percent of the construction crew working on a new restaurant in Burbank came down with some nasty intestinal bug. They think it was some kind of food poisoning, but it lasted weeks. The corporation was scrambling to stay on course, and I always needed money, so when I wasn’t working my shift in the restaurant, I was on the construction job site.”
She smiled, the expression soft. “Those were great days. Filled with lots of fun guys, loud music, belly laughs, and hard work. I’ve never felt like more of a team than I did with them. They took me under their wing, taught me everything. Some of the best days of my life. It was like having twenty fathers to make up for the one I never had.
“I knew that’s where I wanted to be, so I transitioned out of the restaurant and into the construction crew. And as soon as the bigwigs put two and two together—my customer service experience with my construction experience—they jumped at the chance to push me out of construction and into design.
“Everything I know I learned on the job. I’ve never spent any time in a classroom. I haven’t been back to school since Wildwood High.” Her expression sobered, and she sighed. “Wish I’d known how much more value companies place on education than they do on experience before I quit.”
“What made you quit such an amazing job?”
“They turned the construction department over to one of the brothers who’d been living in Europe for years.” Her voice made a drastic shift toward derision. “Basically just to shove him into a corner where he wouldn’t cause the rest of the family trouble. Which meant I ended up getting stuck with him. And he was the epitome of why I don’t value education over experience. He’d graduated top of his class from some fancy Ivy League university with freaking double majors in engineering and business, but his parents had to promote me to run the division because he was absolutely worthless.”
“His parents promoted you?”
“Yes. On paper, they made it look like he promoted me in an effort to give him the illusion of power, probably in hopes that he’d actually grow a pair and claim some.”
His lips lifted. “From the sounds of it, that didn’t happen.”
“He was too busy trying to continue living his French lifestyle.”
“What’s the French lifestyle?”
“Working too little, talking too much, partying too much, eating and drinking too much, and fucking too many women who weren’t his wife.”
Ethan’s stomach squeezed. “Ah.”
“Not me,” she said. “Not for lack of trying, but I was not one of his conquests.”
“He hit on you?”
“Relentlessly. Which is no jewel in my crown. The man hit on every female within a ten-block radius between the ages of eighteen and fifty-eight.” She made a disgusted sound. “I miss my job, but getting away from him was the best thing I’ve done in years.”
“Why didn’t you file a harassment suit?”
“Because his parents didn’t want the family name tainted. They swore if I did, they’d drag it out in the courts so long whatever settlement I got would be eaten up by lawyers. They swore I’d never work in the industry again. I decided to take my experience and move on. Little did I know how difficult that was going to be.”
“Jeez, nothing like an employer’s appreciation of a job well done.”
She laughed softly. “Right?”
He believed her. Call him gullible, call him suckered, but he believed in the beautiful soul he’d always believed her to be when others believed the worst.
He ran his fingers over her cheek, collected a wayward strand of hair, and tucked it behind her ear. “And what’s in your future, Delaney Hart?”
Another heavy sigh. “I’d rather not think about the future or the past. Because I’m feeling pretty damn perfect in the present.”
Ethan’s heart swelled.
He hugged her close, his heart brimming with emotion, his body bursting with sensation, his soul teeming with joy. “I was thinking the same thing.”
She lifted her eyes to his. “Thank you. For understanding.” She stroked her hand down the side of his face and her thumb over his lower lip. “You are...so special.”
“Thank you for forgiving my insecurity and doubt.”
She stretched to press her lips to his, soft and sweet, then rested her head against his shoulder with a sigh of utter contentment, something he would never have guessed possible given the state in which she’d arrived. And the fact that he’d provided that contentment, that he’d been able to settle her from the spin, made her feel safe in a crisis...hell, that meant everything to him.
But while Ethan’s brain was busy trying to figure out just how he could possibly have both Delaney and his pub while giving her the financial security she needed with The Bad Seed, she murmured, “I should go.” Then she wrapped her arm around his waist, snuggled closer and murmured, “I just need five more Ethan-minutes.”
He chuckled and settled in, prepared to give her as many Ethan-minutes as she wanted, because Delaney didn’t just make him happy. She made him happier than he’d ever believed he could be.