* * *
“Boss?”
Casey Johnson jerked her head toward the sound of Larry’s voice—which meant she smacked her forehead against the bottom of tank number fifteen. “Ow, dammit.” She pushed herself out from under the tank, rubbing her head. “What?”
Larry Kaczynski was a middle-aged man with a beer gut, which was appropriate considering he brewed beer for a living. Normally, he was full of bluster and the latest stats on his fantasy football team. But today he looked worried. Specifically, he looked worried about the piece of paper in his hand. “The new guy... He’s here.”
“Well, good for him,” Casey said, turning her attention back to her tank. This was the second new CEO in less than a year and, given recent history, he probably wouldn’t make it past a couple of months. All Casey had to do was outlast him.
That, of course, was the challenge. Beer did not brew itself—although, given the attitude of the last CEO, some people thought it did.
Tank fifteen was her priority right now. Being a brewmaster was about brewing beer—but it was also about making sure the equipment was clean and functional. And right now tank fifteen wasn’t either of those things.
“You don’t understand,” Larry sputtered before she’d rolled back under the tank. “He’s been on the property for less than an hour and he’s already sent this memo...”
“Larry,” she said, her voice echoing against the body of the tank, “are you going to get to the point today?”
“We have to reapply for our jobs,” Larry said in a rush. “By the end of the day tomorrow. I don’t—Casey, you know me. I don’t even have a résumé. I’ve worked here for the last thirty years.”
Oh, for the love of everything holy... Casey pushed herself out from under the tank again and sat up. “Okay,” she said in a much softer voice as she got to her feet. “Start from the beginning. What does the memo say?” Because Larry was like a canary in a coal mine. If he kept calm, the staff she was left with would also keep calm. But if Larry panicked...
Larry looked down at the paper in his hands again. He swallowed hard and Casey got the strangest sensation he was trying not to crack.
Crap. They were screwed. “It just says that by end of business tomorrow, every Beaumont Brewery employee needs to have an updated résumé on the new CEO’s desk so he can decide if they get to keep their job or not.”
Son of a... “Let me see.”
Larry handed over the paper as if he’d suddenly discovered it was contagious, and he stepped back. “What am I going to do, boss?”
Casey scanned the memo and saw that Larry had pretty much read verbatim. Every employee, no exceptions.
She did not have time for this. She was responsible for brewing about seven thousand gallons of beer every single day of the year on a skeleton staff of seventeen people. Two years ago, forty people had been responsible for that level of production. But two years ago, the company hadn’t been in the middle of the never-ending string of upstart CEOs.
And now the latest CEO was rolling up into her brewery and scaring the hell out of her employees? This new guy thought he would tell her she had to apply for her job—the job she’d earned?
She didn’t know much about this Zebadiah Richards—but he was going to get one thing straight if he thought he was going to run this company.
The Beaumont Brewery brewed beer. No beer, no brewery. And no brewmaster, no beer.
She turned to Larry, who was pale and possibly shaking. She understood why he was scared—Larry was not the brightest bulb and he knew it. That was the reason he hadn’t left when Chadwick lost the company or when Ethan Logan tried to right the sinking ship.
That was why Casey had been promoted over him to brewmaster, even though Larry had almost twenty years of experience on her. He liked his job, he liked beer and as long as he got regular cost-of-living increases in his salary and a year-end bonus, he was perfectly content to spend the rest of his life right where he was. He hadn’t wanted the responsibility of management.
Frankly, Casey was starting to wonder why she had. “I’ll take care of this,” she told him.
Surprisingly, this announcement made Larry look even more nervous. Apparently, he didn’t put a lot of faith in her ability to keep her temper. “What are you going to do?”
His reaction made it clear that he was afraid she’d get fired—and then he’d be in charge. “This Richards guy and I are going to have words.”
Larry fretted. “Are you sure that’s the smart thing to do?”
“Probably not,” she agreed. “But what’s he going to do—fire the brewmaster? I don’t think so, Larry.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, okay?”
Larry gave her a weak smile, but he nodded resolutely.
Casey hurried to her office and stripped off her hairnet. She knew she was no great beauty, but nobody wanted to confront a new boss in a hairnet. She grabbed her Beaumont Brewery hat and slid her ponytail through the back. And she was off, yelling over her shoulder to Larry, “See if you can get that drainage tube off—and if you can, see if you can get it flushed again. I’ll be back in a bit.”
She did not have time for this. She was already working ten-to twelve-hour days—six or seven days a week—just to keep the equipment clean and the beer flowing. If she lost more of her staff...
It wouldn’t come to that. She wouldn’t let it. And if it did...
Okay, so she’d promised Larry she wouldn’t get fired. But what if she did? Her options weren’t great, but at least she had some. Unlike Larry, she did have an updated résumé that she kept on file just in case. She didn’t want to use it. She wanted to stay right here at the Beaumont Brewery and brew her favorite beer for the rest of her life.
Or at least, she had. No, if she was being honest, what she really wanted was to be the brewmaster at the old Beaumont Brewery, the one she’d worked at for the previous twelve years—the one that the Beaumont family had run. Back then the brewery had been a family business and the owners had been personally invested in their employees.
They’d even given a wide-eyed college girl the chance to do something no one else had—brew beer.
But the memo in her hand reminded her that this wasn’t the same brewery. The Beaumonts no longer ran things and the company was suffering.
She was suffering. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d strung together more than twenty-four hours of free time. She was doing the job of three people and, thanks to the hiring freeze the last CEO implemented, there was no relief in sight. And now this. She could not afford to lose another single person.
She was a thirty-two-year-old brewmaster—and a woman, at that. She’d come so far so fast. But not one of her predecessors in the illustrious history of the Beaumont Brewery had put up with quite this much crap. They’d been left to brew beer in relative peace.
She stormed to the CEO suite. Delores was behind the desk. When she saw Casey coming, the older woman jumped to her feet with surprising agility. “Casey—wait. You don’t—”
“Oh, yes, I do,” she said, blowing past Delores and shoving open the door to the CEO’s office. “Just who the hell do you think you...are?”
Two
Casey came to a stumbling stop. Where was he? The desk was vacant and no one was sitting on the leather couches.
But then a movement off to her left caught her eye and she turned and gasped in surprise.
A man stood by the windows, looking out over the brewery campus. He had his hands in his pockets and his back turned to her—but despite that, everything about him screamed power and money. The cut of his suit fit him like a second skin and he stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, as if he were master of all he saw.
A shiver went through her. She was not the kind of girl who went for power suits or the men who wore t
hem but something about this man—this man who was threatening her job—took her breath away. Was it the broad shoulders? Or the raw power wafting off him like the finest cologne?
And then he turned to face her and all she could see were his eyes—green eyes. Good Lord, those eyes—they held her gaze like a magnet and she knew her breath was gone for good.
He was, hands down, the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Everything—the power suit, the broad shoulders, the close-cropped hair and most especially the eyes—it was a potent blend that she felt powerless to resist. And this was her new boss? The man who’d sent out the memo?
He notched an eyebrow at her and let his gaze travel over her body. And any admiration she had for a good suit and nice eyes died on the vine because she knew exactly what he saw. Underneath her lab coat, she had on a men’s small polo shirt with Beaumont Brewery embroidered over the chest—and she’d sweat through it because the brew room was always hot. Her face was probably red from the heat and also from the anger, and she no doubt smelled like mash and wort.
She must look like a madwoman.
A conclusion he no doubt reached on his own, because by the time he looked her in the eyes, one corner of his mouth had curved up into the kind of smile that said exactly one thing.
He thought she was a joke.
Well, he’d soon learn this was no laughing matter.
“Congratulations,” he said in a voice that bordered on cold. “You’re first.” He lifted his wrist and looked down at a watch that, even at this distance, Casey could tell was expensive. “Thirty-five minutes. I’m impressed.”
His imperious attitude poured cold water on the heat that had almost swamped her. She wasn’t here to gawk at a gorgeous man. She was here to protect her workers. “Are you Richards?”
“Zebadiah Richards, yes. Your new boss,” he added in a menacing tone, as if he thought he could intimidate her. Didn’t he know she had so very little left to lose? “And you are?”
She’d worked in a male-dominated industry for twelve years. She couldn’t be intimidated. “I’m Casey Johnson—your brewmaster.” What kind of name was Zebadiah? Was that biblical? “What’s the meaning of this?” She held up the memo.
Richards’s eyes widened in surprise—but only for a second before he once again looked ice-cold. “Forgive me,” he said in a smooth voice when Casey glared at him. “I must say that you are not what I was expecting.”
Casey rolled her eyes and made no attempt to hide it. Few people expected women to like beer. Even fewer people expected women to brew beer. And with a name like Casey, everyone just assumed she was a man—and usually, they assumed she was a man like Larry. Middle-aged, beer gut—the whole nine yards. “It’s not my problem if you made a set of erroneous assumptions.”
The moment she said it, she realized she’d also made some erroneous assumptions herself. Because she had not anticipated that the new CEO would look quite like him. Oh, sure—the power suit was par for the course. But his hair was close-cropped to his head and his eyes... Damn, she just couldn’t get past them.
He grinned—oh, Lord, that was not good. Well, it was—but in a bad way because that grin took everything hard and cold about him and warmed him up. She was certainly about to break out in another sweat.
“Indeed. Well, since you’re the first person to barge into my office, I’ll tell you the meaning of that memo, Ms. Johnson—although I’d hope the employees here at the brewery would be able to figure it out on their own. Everyone has to reapply for their jobs.”
She welcomed his condescending tone because it pushed her from falling into the heat of his eyes and kept her focused on her task. “Is that a fact? Where’d you learn that management technique? Management ‘R’ Us?”
Something that almost looked like amusement flickered over his gaze and she was tempted to smile. A lot of people found her abrasive and yeah, she could rub people the wrong way. She didn’t pull her punches and she wasn’t about to sit down and shut up just because she was a girl and men didn’t like to have their authority challenged.
What was rarer was for someone to get her sense of humor. Could this Richards actually be a real man who smiled? God, she wanted to work for a man she wouldn’t have to fight every step of the way. Maybe they could get along. Maybe...
But as quickly as it had appeared, the humor was gone. His eyes narrowed and Casey thought, You’re not the only one who can be condescending.
“The purpose is twofold, Ms. Johnson. One, I’d like to see what skill sets my employees possess. And two, I want to see if they can follow basic instructions.”
So much for a sense of humor. Men as hot as he was probably weren’t allowed to laugh at a joke. Pity. On the other hand, if he smiled, it might kill her with handsomeness and the only thing worse than a CEO she couldn’t work with would be a CEO she lusted after.
No lusting allowed. And he was making that easier with every single thing he said.
“Let me assure you, Mr. Richards, that this company did not spring fully formed from your forehead yesterday. We’ve been brewing beer here for—”
“For over one hundred and thirty years—I know.” He tilted his head to the side and gave her a long look. “And you’ve only been doing it for less than a year—is that correct?”
If she weren’t so pissed at him, she’d have been terrified, because that was most definitely a threat to her job. But she didn’t have time for unproductive emotions and anger was vastly more useful than fear.
“I have—and I earned that job. But before you question how a woman my age can have possibly surpassed all the good ol’ boys who normally brew beer, let me tell you that it’s also because all the more experienced brewers have already left the company. If you want to maintain a quality product line, you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.” She waved the memo in front of her. “And I don’t have time to deal with this crap.”
But instead of doing anything any normal boss would do when basically yelled at by an employee—like firing her on the spot—Richards tilted his head to one side and looked at her again and she absolutely did not shiver when he did it. “Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why don’t you have time to respond to a simple administrative task?”
Casey didn’t want to betray any sign of weakness but a trickle of sweat rolled out from under her hat and into her eye. Dammit. He better not think she was crying. She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. “Because I’m operating with a bare-bones staff—I have been for the last nine months. I’m doing the work of three people—we all are. We’re understaffed, overworked and—”
“And you don’t have time for this ‘crap,’ as you so eloquently put it,” he murmured.
Was that a note of sympathy? Or was he mocking her? She couldn’t read him that well.
Not yet, a teasing voice in the back of her mind whispered. But she pushed that voice away. She wasn’t interested in reading him better. “Not if you want to fulfill production orders.”
“So just hire more people.”
Now she gaped at him. “What?”
He shrugged, which was an impossibly smooth gesture on him. Men should not be that smooth. It wasn’t good for them, she decided. And it definitely wasn’t good for her. This would be so much easier if he were at least 70 percent less attractive. “Hire more people. But I want to see their résumés, too. Why let the new people off easy, right?”
This guy didn’t know anything, did he? They were screwed, then. This was the beginning of the end. Now she would have to help Larry write a résumé.
“But...there’s been a hiring freeze,” she told him. “For the last eight months. Until we can show a profit.”
Richards stepped forward and traced a finger over the top of the conference table. It was an oddly intimate motion—a caress, alm
ost. Watching his hand move over the wood...
She broke out in goose bumps.
“Tell me, Ms. Johnson‚ was it Chadwick Beaumont who put on the hiring freeze? Or Ethan Logan?”
There was something about his voice that matched his caress of the conference table. Casey studied him. She had the oddest feeling that he looked familiar but she was sure she would remember seeing him before. Who could forget those eyes? Those...everything?
“Logan did.”
“Ah,” he said, shifting so he wasn’t silhouetted against the window anymore. More light fell on him and Casey was startled to realize that the green eyes were set against skin that wasn’t light but wasn’t exactly deep brown, either. His skin was warm, almost tan, and she realized he was at least partly African American. Why hadn’t she seen that right away?
Well, she knew why. First off, she was mad and when she was mad, she didn’t exactly pay attention to the bigger picture. She hadn’t noticed the fullness to his frowning lips or the slight flare of his nostrils. Second off, his eyes had demanded her total attention. They were striking, so gorgeous, and even...familiar?
His hand was still on top of the conference table. “So what you’re telling me is that the only non-Beaumont to run this company instituted a series of policies designed to cut costs and, in the process, hamstrung the operations and production?”
“Yes.” There was something about the way he said the only non-Beaumont that threw her for a loop.
And then—maybe because now she was paying more attention—it hit her like a ton of bricks.
This guy—this Zeb Richards who wasn’t quite black and wasn’t quite white—he looked vaguely familiar. Something in the nose, the chin...those eyes...
He looked a little bit like Chadwick Beaumont.
Sweet merciful heavens. He was a Beaumont, too.
Her knees gave in to the weight of the revelation and she lurched forward to lean on the coffee table. “Oh, my God,” she asked, staring at him. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
His Illegitimate Heir Page 2