“He told you tonight?” she asked, putting the emphasis on tonight. “That’s awful. He should have talked to you, first of all, and he definitely shouldn’t have landed this on you right after you lost Beau.”
He noticed she hadn’t said anything about Finn’s decision to sell, but it would be rude to comment on it. She was being sweet, and he liked it.
“Thank you. I think I needed to hear that.” He lifted his beer to clink it with hers, and realized it was empty. “How are you doing on beer?” he asked.
She gave her bottle a little shake and looked at it in surprise. “Empty. You know, you were right. It was pretty good. Do you have anything else we can try?”
“About six or seven something elses come to mind,” he said with a grin. “I have what’s almost assuredly a bad idea, but I’m hoping you’ll like it.”
Beau had about a dozen tasting cups from various beer festivals, souvenirs he’d kept in the way people hoard things they like, and River had arranged them in two rows on the dining room table—one tasting cup each for each of the beers he’d picked out. A few fruity ones since she liked wine and cocktails, plus a lager, a gingerbread Christmas beer, and a chocolate cherry porter he’d made for Valentine’s Day. She’d never experienced everything that was possible with beer, so he’d figured he might as well offer a wide selection to show her.
They’d made it through all of the fruity ones, which she’d liked more than the amber, plus the lager, which had made her scrunch her nose in a cute way, and the gingerbread. The chocolate cherry was the last one he’d chosen, and he did a drumroll on the table as she lifted it to her lips.
She held it back from her mouth, laughing a little. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to make me laugh when I’m drinking, and this one’s going to end up on your shirt too.”
“Maybe I want it to,” he said. “It might balance out the smell of the other one.”
She made a face and then sipped it, and from the way she kept drinking, he knew they had another winner.
“What do you taste?” he asked as she pulled it away from her lips, which glistened a little from the liquid.
“Mmm. That one was maybe my favorite, even better than the peachy one. Chocolate and cherries but not too sweet.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” he said, making a plus mark next to it in the little chart she’d made. Leave it to a businesswoman to carry around a notepad and pen in her purse. A monogrammed notepad.
“Only one minus and five pluses,” he said. “Guess you like beer more than you thought.”
She grinned at him, a wider, looser grin than earlier. “I guess maybe I do. Although you’re being a little generous with those plus signs. I said the mango sour was interesting. That was a nice way of saying I’m not going back for seconds.”
He hammed up a dramatic frown as he scribbled out the plus sign and added a minus sign next to it on the chart. “Demoted! Does this mean I have to be suspicious of anything you call interesting?”
“No, just the mango sour.” She paused, meeting and holding his gaze. “You, River Reeves, are quite interesting.”
Her eyes sparkled as she said it, and he felt warmth pulse through him. He found her interesting too, and he was running out of reasons why he shouldn’t. She planned on staying, on restoring Beau’s brewery, and he had no doubt she had the brains and means to do it.
But this woman had been to business school—she’d formed a business from nothing—and he was almost thirty and still a few community college classes short of a degree. He’d fumbled his way into the job that he’d quit a few hours ago. He doubted he was Georgie Buchanan’s type, or at least her type for more than one night. And for some reason, that wasn’t what he wanted from her.
“I like the porter too,” he said, clearing his throat and reaching for his tasting cup. The moment shattered, like he’d meant it to. “We sold out at the brewery, but I brought a six-pack over to Beau’s. This one’s all that’s left.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said, reaching for the bottle the porter had come in. “I think I’m going to claim the rest of this one for myself.”
Her phone buzzed again, about the fifth time it had—he’d set his on silent mode after getting yet another message from Finn—and she glanced at the screen before setting it down on the table with a little more force than necessary. She took a big sip of her beer.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he asked. Not to be nosy, or at least not just to be nosy. He’d confided in her, and he wanted her to do the same if she needed to unburden herself.
“Just my brother Lee trying to talk me around. He wants to sell, or at least his girlfriend and my father have convinced him he does. But I think this could be good for Adalia, even if she doesn’t agree, and for Jack too.” Her face twisted up a little when she said it, and he felt sorry for asking. The last thing he wanted was to upset her. Tonight was about having fun, forgetting a few of their worries. “Maybe especially for Jack,” she added.
“You’d really never met him before?” he asked, because despite himself he was interested.
“No,” she said, taking another sip from the bottle, pausing a little to savor the taste in a way that made him smile. “Lee works with our dad in the real estate firm. I’d say the family firm, but I’d argue it can’t really be called that when it’s just the two of them. Anyway, he was looking for some files in my dad’s office, and he found a nondisclosure agreement. My dad made Jack’s mother sign it in exchange for a big one-time payout. My half-brother’s name was in there, but I had no idea where he lived or anything.”
She paused, looking into his eyes. “Truth be told, I didn’t look very hard. I wanted to meet him, but I wasn’t sure what I’d say. I was ashamed of our father—of being one of the kids he acknowledged. Lee thought it best for us to both forget the whole thing, although he did tell me so we could decide together.”
She glanced down, as if embarrassed, and he found himself staring at the freckles on the bridge of her nose. They almost looked like a constellation.
“I shouldn’t be laying all of this on you. I’d blame the beer, but it’s my fault we kept Jack a secret. Well, Lee’s too. We could have sought him out and we didn’t. So I want to make sure he gets plenty of say in what we do. Although, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know the first thing about running a brewery. I’m not even sure there’s even room for four of us if we’d just be replacing Beau.”
“You’d find a way,” River said, believing it. He reached out to touch her arm. “Beau had zero social media presence. Someone can handle that, maybe Adalia. And if you grow the brewery, there’ll be new jobs. Things like event management or opening a new location. Beau, he liked doing things the old-fashioned way, but he knew it wouldn’t last forever. He knew things would have to change. That’s why he trusted you to do the changing for him.”
Something flashed in her eyes, and she smiled at him—a smile so bright he had to pull his hand away to keep himself from pulling her to him.