Chapter 4
Callum
Teagan frowned as she went through her notebook, a question forming behind her eyes. I leaned forward and rubbed the lines in between her brows. “Stop frowning. You’re going to end up with tan lines there.”
I should have expected the punch, even though it was gentle because we didn’t hit each other hard as siblings. But I still let out a gasp and laughed. “Ouch.”
“Be nice to me. I’m going through your calendar for you.
You’re lucky that I love you and will do this.
If anything, you should hire Felicity. I know that you used to use Gregory, but he got a little behind since the old man should have retired years ago.
But now that Felicity is working for the company, they’re all caught up and doing great things for the books.
My shop uses them. The bed and breakfast uses them. You should too.”
I wasn’t about to touch that concept with a ten-foot pole. There was no way I was going to hire Felicity to work on my books. That meant I would have to be near her. Talk to her. And keep her from my mind.
What I needed to do was get laid.
Getting laid in a small town wasn’t always easy.
Mostly because I didn’t want anything permanent, and I didn’t like gossip.
However, we had enough people coming in as tourists to the brewery, the bed and breakfast, and through town for outdoor activities and skiing that I could usually find someone.
Something that didn’t need to last more than a night or two and where we both walked away getting exactly what we wanted.
I should just do that and not think about Felicity Carter.
Except every time I left the damn house, I either saw her or someone mentioned her. There was no escaping her.
And it was my own damn fault.
“You’re doing such a great job. Why would I hire someone outside the family?”
“I thought the Carters were family,” she said as she marked up another line on her notebook.
“I am going to see if I can get Bodhi to hire Felicity too. Because I’m a decent manager, but his artwork is getting enough traction out there that I feel like I need somebody who’s an actual accountant for some things.
There are only so many things I can do when it comes to taxes.
I’m sure that I’m losing you guys money. ”
“Without your organizational skills, every single one of us Ashfords would be fucked over. You know that.”
“I do not.” She laughed, shaking her head. “You have a business manager and financial advisor when it comes to all your earnings from the NFL, but for the brewery? You rely on me. That’s silly.”
“It’s family. I told you when I came back to town that I was going to make sure that our family figured things out on our own and grew closer. That we would walk away from whatever the hell that old man wanted us to do. So here I am, making that happen.”
Compassion covered her face. She reached out and patted my hand. “And you’re doing a damn good job about it.”
“That was a little patronizing.”
“Maybe. But look at this brewery. Ashford Brews is hitting all the blogs and influencers out there. Every time that you do a four-pack line, it takes hours to get to the line. And you haven’t even announced what the yearly brew is going to be.
Your IPA, Pilsner, and Ale are flying off the shelves locally, and I know a few national chains have already contracted you. ”
I snorted. “I’m not selling. We’re good the way we are.
If I sell, they’re just going to water it down, put on a different label, or skyrocket the price where it makes no sense.
I don’t want to build another brewery or figure out how to keep my secret recipes secret from the man.
” I rolled my eyes. “I like what we’re doing. ”
“And you’re doing it well. But you need another accountant.”
“I don’t know how I feel about you trying to fire me,” I said dryly.
“What? When you first started, Georgia was the one who handled the paperwork. She was great at it. I just came in when I could.” She paused and winced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring her up.”
I shrugged. That pain was an old ache that would always be there. “Georgia’s been gone for ten years now.” I paused, shaking my head. “Still can’t believe it’s been ten years.”
“Time moves abnormally slow, and yet so fast sometimes it scares me.”
“I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been able to open up this brewery or be where we are without Georgia being there at the beginning. I just hate that she didn’t make it to see where we are now.”
Getting married at twenty-two, right when you were drafted into the NFL, might seem ridiculous to some people.
But Georgia and I had gotten along, and I loved her.
I loved her. I loved the way that she made me laugh and that she centered me.
Starting off as a rookie on one of the best teams in the NFL, where we made it to the AFC Championship both years I was in, meant the pressure on my shoulders had increased with each passing moment.
But Georgia had been steadfast. We’d been the same age, wanted the same things, and when I’d broken my leg in two places and lost whatever dreams I’d thought I’d be able to have, she hadn’t walked away.
Instead, she’d picked up the pieces and helped me figure out what to do with the rest of our lives without even taking a moment to crash out on her own.
We’d only been married three years, and then she died. She died and left an already broken man behind.
My family hadn’t even truly had a chance to get to know her, and the town had pretty much forgotten her. After all, I hadn’t moved back to Ashford Creek until right before she had died, and that was only to start the brewery. I’d been locked in my own world, in the cabin, just like Bodhi was now.
“I really don’t mind you mentioning Georgia, you know. Not many people do.”
“Our family’s really good about not mentioning things that hurt.” Teagan began to draw little doodles on the corner of her notebook, a frown etched on her face again. “We barely talk about Malcolm. Or Mom. We sure as hell don’t talk about Bodhi.”
“He doesn’t want us to. And even though it might be good for him, it’s not our place yet.”
She looked up at me then, sighing. “When is it our place?”
“I don’t know, Teagan. I don’t know.”
She let out a shaky breath, then rolled her shoulders back.
“Anyway. Let’s get everything set up for the next big event, and then I want to try a beer.”
“Didn’t you used to say you were a wine girl?
” I tried to lighten my voice because I knew there were reasons our family didn’t talk about things.
The more we did, the more it hurt. And talking about the fact that our mom was dead, and our dad was probably the one who had murdered her, wouldn’t bring Mom back.
It would only bring more resentment because the cops hadn’t been able to do anything.
Just like we didn’t talk about the fact that our stepmother had walked away from us and had never come back.
Was she dead? We would never know. And deep down in my heart, I had a feeling that my dad had something to do with it, but nobody could prove it, and so here we were, pretending the Ashfords weren’t the town messes and my dad wasn’t the town drunk.
“You’re thinking about Dad again.”
I blinked at Teagan’s words. “What?”
“You’re thinking about Dad. And since you are, you’re going to get tan lines in between your brows from frowning like that.”
I barely resisted the urge to rub my forehead to check if those lines were indeed carved into my skin. “Fuck you. Come on, I’ll go get you that beer. We have family dinner tonight anyway.”
“Oh, yay,” Teagan said dryly, and I threw a balled-up piece of paper at her.
“You’re the one who wants to continue to have family dinners in such abundance. We could just go to any one of the siblings’ places. But no, you like it at my house.”
“You have the bigger house. You can fit all of us. And you’re closest to Bodhi, so we can drag him down.”
“One day we should just show up at his cabin and annoy the fuck out of him.”
“He would probably shoot us and ask questions later,” she added, and I wasn’t quite sure she was kidding.
I shook my head as we headed to the tasting room. There were a few people milling about, but the big rush wouldn’t happen until later. I nodded at a few locals and went to pull a draft for Teagan.
“Are you going to tell me what the new one is?” she asked, kind of fluttering her eyelashes.
“You don’t want to be my bookkeeper anymore, so maybe I won’t tell you.”
“I’m just saying Felicity would be better at it.”
“Felicity would be better at what?” Rune asked as he walked into the tasting room, a pile of large and smaller boxes in his hands.
Teagan leaned forward to help with the smaller box on top of Rune’s pile. “I think that Callum over here should hire Felicity to work on the books. It just makes more sense.”
“You should. And if you don’t, I’ll feel like you don’t trust my baby sister, and then we’re going to have words.”
Trusting his little sister wasn’t the problem. And he was going to have words with me if he ever knew what ran through my mind. Or the fact that I knew exactly what she tasted like.
I cleared my throat. “What are you bringing me?”
Rune rolled his eyes. “An empty box or four. I’m here to buy more.”
“More empty boxes?” Teagan asked, her tone so polite that I just snorted.
“I need a couple more packs. People are in the mood for bottles rather than just on draft. Which is ridiculous because everything tastes better on draft.”
“Fuck yeah,” a customer said as he lifted his glass.
I tilted my chin at him in thanks, then looked over at my team member. We had a limit on how many drinks a person could have, and while I didn’t think this person had reached it yet, they were a little too bleary-eyed for my liking.
The team member immediately went to smile and chat with the other group, and I looked back at my best friend.