Deliciously Smooth (Naked Brews #1)

by K. B. Jacobs

  The announcer hadn’t lied. The judges were enamored with Dad’s Beer, calling it a bold new flavor that would be hard to top. They loved it as much as I hoped Dad would. I flipped through the pages until I found the entry form. My heart twisted, and I gasped aloud. Down at the bottom was Walsh’s signature.

  Son of a bitch.

  Chapter Forty

  Walsh

  I stared into the flickering flames of the outdoor, stone fireplace between Damian’s house and my bungalow. The heat from the fire kept the freezing cold night air at bay. I took another long pull from my bottle of Hops on Top. I’d finally found the six-pack in a package store thirty miles away, but the extra effort had been worth it. Drinking her beer made me feel marginally closer to Lake...in probably a weird, creepy, stalker kind of way, but I could live with that.

  It had started to snow about thirty minutes ago, but the cold and wet didn’t bother me. I liked listening to the soft hush of the snow falling in the dark of night.

  “So, how long are you going to sit around here and mope?” Damian asked. I’d heard him come out a few minutes before but had ignored his presence.

  “I’m not moping.” I pulled a beer out of the six-pack on the ottoman and handed it to him.

  He took it and grabbed the bottle opener to pop the top. “If you’re not moping, then what do you call it? I haven’t seen you working since you got home.”

  “Well, since I blew everything about my job, I kind of figured I was fired. Naked Brews is a bust, and I can’t act on your behalf anymore.”

  My days of impersonating Damian Thorne were gone since my story had again hit the national news media. I knew Damian had been fielding questions from the work we’d accomplished already with GSC. People were concerned they were somehow being conned and just couldn’t see it yet. I hated that the good we’d done had been tainted by the situation with my parents. Damian kept telling me it was fine. Everything we’d done had been one hundred ten percent above-board, and people would see that once the furor died down.

  Damian was quiet, so I looked over at him.

  He stared into the flames, the flickering light reflecting off his black hair and bright blue eyes and highlighting the ravaged, burned skin on the right side of his face. This is why he’d needed me for the last two years. He refused to go out and face the world. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad for him if the scars were more widespread, but from one side, he still looked perfectly normal. In fact before he’d been hurt, some of the guys said he looked like Superman...all dark, brooding good looks. Over half the world saw him from that perfect side first, so it was hard for them to cover their reactions when they saw his full face.

  The guilt over failing him ate at me. “I’m sorry.”

  He turned to me and sighed. “Walsh, you’ve been given a rotten hand in life.”

  I hung my head. My past sins continued to catch up with me. This is where he’d tell me our friendship was over because I had fucked it all up. I nodded. I deserved that. I hadn’t done the job I’d been hired to do, but even worse, I’d failed my best friend.

  “I’ll be honest,” he continued. “I never understood what drove you and always wondered if there was a reason. In the military, you were the guy who automatically took charge, making sure everyone was safe even though that put you in some extremely dangerous situations. You were always the one who had to be the best, the fastest, the one who worked the hardest like you had something to prove.” Damian shook his head. “We all already knew you were badass. But now I realize that maybe it wasn’t us you were trying to prove your worth to. Maybe it was all about you and the fucked-up way they had raised you to doubt yourself.”

  I stared into the flames and considered his words. He wasn’t wrong.

  Damian took a sip of his beer. “I know you blame yourself for getting hurt and not being there with us that day of the explosion. You need to give yourself a break. You got hurt because you were angry and grieving for the man who’d been, for all intents and purposes, your father. Newsflash, Walsh—you’re human. It never had anything to do with that girl. That’s what you tell yourself, but it’s a lie. That’s been just one more way you’ve somehow convinced yourself that you aren’t good enough.”

  I swallowed, wanting to argue, but this had been a week of self-revelations. Damian was right.

  “And dammit, I can’t be sad that you weren’t there that day.” Damian looked away and focused on the fire. “If you had been there, I have no doubt you would’ve died with the rest of the guys, because that’s who you are. You would’ve been the guy in front, and that meant you would’ve been the one to get blown up first.” His voice choked.

  I reached for him. “Da—”

  He raised his hands to stop me. “No.” He turned fierce, determined eyes toward me. “You need to let me finish, because this is important.” He ran his left hand across the edges of the scars that I knew were under that fabric on his right arm. It was a habit he’d developed to center himself when he got too emotional.

  Damian looked up at me again. “I wouldn’t have survived the last three years without you, and we both know it.”

  We had never talked about his depression, but it had been the elephant in the room for a long time. It was part of the reason I hated that I’d failed him.

  “I owe you everything,” Damian said. “You kept my spirits up through recovery at the cost of your own recuperation. Hell, you’d barely come out of surgery where they rebuilt your entire ankle when you set up camp in my room to help me deal with my injuries and my mom.”

  “What else would a lover do?” I asked with a joking smile, trying to lighten the moment.

  Damian’s mother had always been the overbearing, protective, helicopter type. To make her step back, we’d concocted a story that Damian was gay and I was his lover. It had worked. She had given him the space Damian had needed to recover, and it had provided the two of us fodder for countless private jokes over the years.

  “And that just goes to prove my point further. Damn, Walsh, I can’t think of another straight guy who would have spent the last three years committed to me—and that lie—just to help protect me. I know you have issues that can be traced back to your parents and childhood, but you have moved so far beyond that. I’m fucking proud to call you my friend. You stood up in that courtroom and claimed your identity.”

  The day before the hearing, I’d come home to Damian’s and had confessed the half-truths and lies I’d told him over the years. I didn’t want him to hear it all through a news broadcast.

  “So, what I don’t understand now is...why haven’t you gone and claimed your girl?”

  Because I was terrified I’d lost her for good. It was so much easier to sit here and not know than face that possible reality.

  “She hates me now.”

  “That’s only because she doesn’t know the full story. You’re the best man I know, Walsh. Talk to her. Tell her everything. Any girl would be lucky to have you in her life. If she doesn’t see that, then she doesn’t deserve you. Besides, we still have to figure out what GSC is going to do for Ice, which means you need to be in Aspenridge.” Damian took a deep breath. “And you need to decide what to do with the rest of your life. It’s time I stood on my own. I’ve leaned on you for long enough. Too long, in fact.”

  And there it was. He was booting me out. Just not for the reasons I’d expected. I knew that was the right thing. As long as I was here for Damian to lean on, he would never stand up on his own and find that life was worth living again.

  “So, you’re kicking me out?” I so wasn’t ready for this. For the last few years we’d grown to depend on one another. I knew we both needed to learn to stand on our own. For too long, we’d been bound by our grief and recovery, but would he be okay?

  “No, I’m setting you free,” Damian said as he reached over and grasped my shoulder. “It’s something completely different.”

  Emotion choked my throat. “Okay, but I’ll only agre
e to leave if you agree to something in return.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to promise me that wherever I end up that you’ll come and visit.” Please let that be with Lake.

  He looked away, his throat working in the firelight as he swallowed. He gave me a short nod of acquiescence. “Deal. Now, let’s go inside. I’m freezing my balls off, and you have some packing to do.”

  Tingling erupted low in my belly. A mix of nerves, fear, and anticipation rolled into one. It was time to go claim my life, the one I wanted more than anything.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Lake

  “A toast.” I stood and lifted my glass of Dad’s Beer over my head. Melissa and Alex raised their glasses as well. “To Dad. For starting this brewery with a five-gallon carboy and a dream and building it up to the classy joint it is today. And to the three of us.”

  With the brewery closed for the night, it was just me and my two best friends, sitting around one of the rickety pub tables. Hardly a glamorous event. But with most of the lights off, the colors from the neon logo in the window reflected through our glasses and created a disco-ball effect. It was perfect for our little celebration.

  “Hear, hear!” Alex said, lifting her glass a little higher.

  “Let’s show this world what Naked Brews can do,” Melissa toasted.

  We each took a healthy drink of the beer that had saved us and was going a long way toward putting us on the map. Within twenty-four hours of winning the competition, one of our distributors called in with requests from a dozen different bars and restaurants wanting to serve Naked Brews.

  “And let us not forget She Who Shall Not Be Named.” Alex lifted her glass again and winked at me. “For her most generous gift.”

  I took another drink and sat down to stare at the paperwork in front of us one more time. It had arrived by courier that morning without any notice or preamble. Emily had signed all ownership of the brewery to me. Attached to the legal documents was a pink sticky note.

  I only ever wanted you to be happy. Go live your dream. – Mom

  She wasn’t in her office when I had called, but I did get ahold of the lawyer who had drawn up the paperwork. Turns out Emily never wanted money. This was all some big test to see how much I really wanted the brewery. She just didn’t want me to stay here out of some misguided sense of obligation.

  Melissa had said it was sweet, and it showed just how much Emily really cared about me. I could see it, but if my mother had believed me in the first place, I could have avoided the past month of stress and heartache.

  I grimaced against the phantom pain in my chest that popped up whenever I accidentally thought about Walsh. But that was done, and Naked Brews was officially mine.

  “Okay.” Alex took another drink and set her beer down. “No more worrying about a contest, and you don’t have to stress about finding a loan you can’t afford.”

  “And now that we have several new clients in the pipeline, our financial projections for the rest of the year are looking better every day.” Melissa sat down and smiled at me with a little too much wide-eyed innocence. Even for Melissa.

  “So have you given any thought to future plans?” Alex pulled a crinkled sheet of paper from her back pocket and slid it across the table to me.

  The pub redesign sketch Walsh had drawn stared up at me. I ran my hands through my hair, almost afraid to touch the paper and risk drudging up the hurt that hit me more often than I’d ever admit.

  “Regardless of what happened, he had some really good ideas.” Melissa laid a gentle hand on my arm, and I stopped tugging on my short locks.

  I slowly shook my head. “I can’t.” I swallowed down the tears threatening to spill. There were too many emotions swirling in my gut to process all at once. “I just can’t.”

  “Have you talked to him at all?” Alex tilted her head and eyed me hopefully.

  Shaking my head harder, I dashed at my damp eyes. “No, and that’s for the best.”

  Melissa and Alex exchanged a look that made it clear they thought I was a complete idiot.

  With the very public parole hearing, Alex was able to fill in the holes of Walsh’s identity. Turned out his name change happened ages ago, probably to avoid the public hoopla surrounding his parents’ trial. Damian Thorne was a real guy who was also a part of Ghost Squad Charities, and the two of them were in the same army unit. Damian’s trail ran pretty cold, which drove Alex crazy, but we knew enough to determine that Walsh wasn’t living some secret double life, trying to con me. He wasn’t guilty of any of the crimes I’d thrown at his face.

  “He still lied to me.”

  Alex nodded and took another sip of beer. “Yes, he did. About his last name. Which in the grand scheme of lies is...”

  “Minor,” Melissa chimed in. “Very minor. And he kept his word about withdrawing the purchase offer from GSC.”

  I ignored them and took a long, slow sip of beer.

  Alex reached over and grabbed the glass from my lips.

  “Hey.” I scowled at her.

  “Don’t hey me.” She slammed the glass down out of my reach, sloshing the beer up and over the rim. “You’ve spent the past two weeks moping around this place, trying to pretend that you aren’t staring at the door, hoping Walsh walks in here with snow all over his head.”

  “I haven’t been moping.”

  Melissa hopped up from the table, her shoulders hunched in front of her, wearing the saddest face I’d seen on her since Prince William got married. “I’m Lake,” she blurted in a pathetic Eeyore voice. “I found the love of my life, but I overreacted without getting all the facts, and I kicked him out. Woe is me.”

  “Ha, ha,” I said without a trace of humor to my voice. “You’re hilarious. And I never said Walsh was the love of my life.”

  “You didn’t have to say it out loud,” Alex said, grinning over her beer. “It was clear as day on your face every time he walked in here.”

  Melissa sat down, her cheerful expression back in place. “And you practically skipped into the office on the mornings after spending the night at his hotel.”

  “How do you know when I spent the night there?” I reached over for my glass.

  Alex slid my beer farther away from me. “Because you came in the next morning with a large black from Coffee Haus and a grin for miles.”

  “You’re full of shit.” Except she wasn’t. I’d never admit it, but I had been happy, really happy. I’d been in love. Hell, I was still in love. But it just hurt instead of making me giddy.

  “No, you are, especially if you think you can just walk away from this, and it won’t haunt you for the rest of your life.” Melissa glared at me, though her big blue eyes ruined the effect a bit.

  “Look, Lake.” Alex leaned back in her chair. “I’ve been on one decent date in the past six months. The rest? Total duds. And do you think Melissa sits up in her apartment reading all those romance books because she dreams of being a cat lady?”

  “I’m more of a dog person.” Melissa shrugged and took another drink of beer.

  “The point is, most people would kill to find their other half and all that happy-ever-after shit. But you did, and you’re letting it get away.”

  Was I? I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my life here at Naked Brews without Walsh. Without him walking through the door covered in snow because he never remembered to look up first. Without his cocky grin whenever he wanted to call me out or get me riled up. Without finding little surprises like the jar full of red M&Ms hidden in my desk drawer. Without him...

  “It’s too late.” I sat back and let the weight of Walsh leaving hit me like a full keg falling on my chest. “I kicked him out, and he’s never coming back.”

  Alex slid my beer back across the table, and I took a long drink to drive back the pain erupting in my chest.

  Melissa nudged my phone with her elbow. “Call him.”

  What if they were right? What if Walsh was supposed to be my one cha
nce at love? I had my best friends by my side, and the brewery was all mine. All I was missing was him.

  I picked up the phone and dialed his number before I could chicken out.

  This was going to work. It had to. I made a mistake by assuming the worst and kicking him out, but we could get over that. Naked Brews was home, but it needed Walsh, not just because of his great ideas and his willingness to believe in me. Naked Brews needed him, because I needed him.

  A ring tone sounded from the phone, so I pressed it to my ear and closed my eyes. Please pick up. Please pick up.

  The front door opened, and the ring tone got louder, as if it was in this room. Melissa sucked in a gasp of air, and I opened my eyes.

  Walsh stood in the doorway, brushing snow out of his hair.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Walsh

  I brushed the wet slush off my shoulders. Damn snow got me every time.

  Lake looked up from her phone screen, and her eyes widened.

  Okay, maybe not as welcoming as I’d hoped, but at least she wasn’t coming at me with a bat.

  My heartbeat had started galloping in my chest as soon as I pulled out of Denver, but seeing her and being in the same space with her again, I wasn’t sure my heart could handle the stress. She looked tired but still so stunningly beautiful.

  “Hi,” I said and tried to smile, but it probably came across as more of a nervous grimace. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I saw the light from the sign and hoped—”

  “Dammit,” Alex cursed and jumped up from the stool she sat on. “I completely forgot to put my laundry in the dryer. If I don’t do that soon, I won’t have any fresh panties for tomorrow.” She grabbed her purse and coat. “Bye, girls. See you tomorrow.” She gave them a breezy wave.

  As she rushed by me, she gently squeezed my arm. “Good to see you again, Walsh. I hope you’ll be here tomorrow, too.” Under her breath, she murmured, “Good luck.” She hurried out the door.