Zeb mulled that over a bit. “Why didn’t you go with him?”
“Because the brewmaster did and Chadwick wanted to actually make the beer himself. Percheron is a much smaller company.”
He heard the sorrow in her voice. She’d wanted to go with her old boss—that much was clear.
Then she turned a wide smile in his direction. “Plus, if I’d left the brewery, I’d still be an assistant brewmaster. I’m the brewmaster for the third-largest brewery in the country because I outlasted everyone else. Attrition isn’t the best way to get a promotion but it was effective nonetheless.”
“That’s what you wanted?”
She looked smug, the cat that had all the cream to herself. His pulse picked up another notch. “That’s what I wanted.”
Underneath that beer-drinking, sports-loving exterior, Zeb had to admire the sheer ambition of this woman. Not just anyone would set out to be the first—or youngest—female brewmaster in the country.
But Casey would. And she’d accomplished her goal.
Zeb took a long drink of his lager. It was good, too. “So, Percheron Drafts was your baby?”
“It was Chadwick’s, but I was Igor to his Frankenstein.”
He laughed—a deep, long sound that shocked him. That kind of laugh wasn’t dignified or intimidating. Zeb didn’t allow himself to laugh like that, because he was a CEO and he had to instill fear in the hearts of his enemies.
Except...except he was at a ball game, kicking back with a pretty girl and a beer, and his team was at the plate and the weather was warm and it was...
...perfect.
“So I want you to make Percheron—or something like it—your baby again.”
Even though he wasn’t looking at Casey, he felt the current of tension pass through her. “What?”
“I understand Chadwick started Percheron Drafts to compete with the explosion of craft breweries. And we lost that. I don’t want to throw in that particular towel just yet. So, you want to try experimental beers? That’s what I want you to do, too.”
She turned to face him again, and dammit, she practically glowed. Maybe it was just the setting sun, but he didn’t think so. She looked so happy—and he’d put that look on her face.
“Thank you,” she said in a voice so quiet that he had to lean forward to hear it. “When you started, I thought...”
He smirked. She’d thought many things, he’d be willing to bet—and precious few of them had been good.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
Her lips twisted in what he hoped was an amused grin. “How many times are you going to ask me that?”
“I’m not such a bad guy,” he went on, ignoring her sass. “But don’t tell anyone.”
She mimed locking her lips and throwing the key over her shoulder.
Somewhere in the background, a ball game was happening. And he loved sports, he really did. But he had questions. He’d learned a little more about what kind of man his half brother was but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
But the spell of the moment had been broken. They settled in and watched the game. Sure enough, by the third inning, a grizzled older man came around with a stout for Casey. Zeb didn’t warrant that level of personal service—certainly not in the opposing team’s colors. As he sipped the flagship beer of his second-largest competitor, he decided it was...serviceable. Just as Casey had described their own beer.
A fact that was only highlighted when Casey let him sip her stout. “It’s going to be tough to beat,” he said with a sigh as she took a long drink.
For the first time, he had a doubt about what he was doing. He’d spent years—years—plotting and scheming to get his birthright back. He was a Beaumont and he was going to make sure everyone knew it.
But now, sitting here and drinking his half brother’s beer...
He was reminded once again what he didn’t have. Chadwick had literally decades to learn about the business of the brewery and the craft of beer. And Zeb—well, he knew a hell of a lot about business. But he hadn’t learned it at his father’s knee. Beer was his birthright—but he couldn’t whip up his own batch if his life depended on it.
Casey patted his arm. “We don’t have to beat it.” She paused and he heard her clear her throat. “Unless...”
“Unless what?”
She looked into her cup. It was half-empty. “Unless you’re out to destroy Percheron Drafts.”
That was what she said. What she was really asking was, Are you out to destroy the other Beaumonts? It was a fair question.
“Because that’s kind of a big thing,” she went on in a quiet voice, looking anywhere but at him. “I don’t know how many people would be supportive of that. At work, I mean.” She grimaced. “There might be a lot of resignations.”
She wouldn’t be supportive of that. She would quit. She’d quit and go elsewhere because even though her first loyalty was to herself and then the beer, the Beaumont family was pretty high on her list.
Again, he wondered how she’d come to this point in her life. The youngest female brewmaster at the third-largest brewery in the country. He might not know the details of her story, but he recognized this one simple truth: she was who she was in large part because the Beaumonts had given her a chance. Because she’d been Igor to Chadwick Beaumont’s Frankenstein.
She’d give up her dream job if it came down to a choice between the Beaumont Brewery and Percheron Drafts.
This thought made him more than a little uncomfortable because he could try to explain how it was all business, how this was a battle for market share between two corporations and corporations were not people, but none of that was entirely true.
If he forced her to choose between the Beaumonts and himself, she’d choose them over him.
“There was a time,” he said in a quiet voice, “when I wanted to destroy them.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“I used to hate them. They had everything and I had nothing.” Nothing but a bitter mother and a head for business.
“But...” She stared at him, her mouth open wide. “But look at you. You’re rich and powerful and hot and you did that all on your own.” He blinked at her, but she didn’t seem to be aware of what she’d just said, because she went on without missing a beat, “Some of those Beaumonts— I mean, don’t get me wrong—I like them. But they’re more than a little messed up. Trust me. I was around them long enough to see how the public image wasn’t reality. Phillip was a hot mess and Chadwick was miserable and Frances... I mean, they had everything handed to them and it didn’t make them any happier.” She shook her head and slouched back in her seat.
And suddenly, he felt he had to make her understand that this wasn’t about his siblings, because he was an adult and he realized now what he hadn’t known as a child—that his siblings were younger than he was and probably knew only what the rest of the world did about Hardwick Beaumont.
“Casey,” he said. She looked at him and he could see how nervous she was. “I was going to say that I used to hate them—but I don’t. How could I? I don’t know them and I doubt any of them knew a thing about me before that press conference. I’m not out to destroy them and I’m not out to destroy Percheron Drafts. It’s enough that I have the brewery.”
She looked at him then—really looked at him. Zeb started to squirm in his seat, because, honestly? He didn’t know what she saw. Did she see a man who made sure his mom had a booming business and his best friend had a good-paying job he loved? Did she see a son who’d never know his father?
Or—worse—would she see a boy rejected by his family, a man who wasn’t black and wasn’t white but who occupied a no-man’s-land in the middle? Would she see an impostor who’d decided he was a Beaumont, regardless of how true it might actually be?
He
didn’t want to know what she saw. Because quite unexpectedly, Casey Johnson’s opinion had become important to him and he didn’t want to know if she didn’t approve of him.
So he quickly changed the subject. “Tell me...” he said, keeping his voice casual as he turned his attention back to the field. He didn’t even know what inning it was anymore. There—the scoreboard said fourth. The home team was at the plate and they already had two outs. Almost halfway done with this corporate outing. “Does that happen often?”
“What? Your boss admitting that he’s not a total bastard?”
Zeb choked on his beer. “Actually, I meant that guy proposing to you.”
“Who, Marco?” She snorted. “He proposes every time I see him. And since I have season tickets...”
“What does your dad think of that?”
That got him a serious side-eye. “First off, Marco’s joking. Second off, my father is many things, but he’s not my keeper. And third off—why do you care?”
“I don’t,” he answered quickly. Maybe too quickly. “Just trying to get a fuller picture of the one person responsible for keeping my company afloat.”
She snorted as a pop fly ended the inning. “Come on,” she said, standing and stretching. “Let’s go.”
Slowly, they worked their way out of the seats and back to the concession stands. He got a stout for himself and Casey got a porter. Marco flirted shamelessly but this time, Zeb focused on Casey. She smiled and joked, but at no point did she look at the young man the way she’d looked at him earlier. She didn’t blush and she didn’t lean toward Marco.
There was no heat. She was exactly as she appeared—a friendly tomboy. The difference between this woman and the one who’d blushed so prettily back in the seats, whose eyes had dilated and who’d leaned toward him with desire writ large on her face—that difference was huge.
With more beer and more nachos, they made their way back to their seats. As odd as it was, Zeb was having trouble remembering the last time he’d taken a night off like this. Yeah, they were still talking beer and competitors but...
But he was having fun. He was three beers in and even though he wasn’t drunk—not even close—he was more relaxed than he’d been in a long time. It’d been months of watching and waiting to make sure all the final pieces of the puzzle were in place, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t stopped to appreciate all that he’d accomplished.
Well, sort of relaxed. There was something else the beer vendor—Marco—had said that itched at the back of Zeb’s mind.
“Did you mean what you said?” he blurted out. Hmm. Maybe he was a little more buzzed than he thought.
There was a longish pause before she said, “About?”
“That it didn’t matter if I was black or not.” Because it always mattered. Always. He was either “exotic” because he had an African American mother and green eyes or he was black and a borderline thug. He never got to be just a businessman. He was always a black businessman.
It was something white people never even thought about. But he always had that extra hurdle to clear. He didn’t get to make mistakes, because even one would be proof that he couldn’t cut it.
Not that he was complaining. He’d learned his lesson early in life—no one was going to give him a single damned thing. Not his father, not his family, not the world. Everything he wanted out of this life, he had to take. Being a black businessman made him a tougher negotiator, a sharper investor.
He wanted the brewery and the legitimacy that came with it. He wanted his father’s approval and, short of that, he wanted the extended Beaumont family to know who he was.
He was Zebadiah Richards and he would not be ignored.
Not that Casey was ignoring him. She’d turned to look at him again—and for the second time tonight, he thought she was seeing more than he wanted her to.
Dammit, he should have kept his mouth shut.
“You tell me—does it matter?”
“It shouldn’t.” More than anything, he wanted it to not matter.
She shrugged. “Then it doesn’t.”
He should let this go. He had his victory—of sorts—and besides, what did it matter if she looked at him and saw a black CEO or just a CEO?
Or even, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered, something other than a CEO? Something more?
But he couldn’t revel in his small victory. He needed to know—was she serious or was she paying lip service because he was her boss? “So you’re saying it doesn’t matter that my mother spent the last thirty-seven years doing hair in a black neighborhood in Atlanta? That I went to a historically black college? That people have pulled out of deals with me because no matter how light skinned I am, I’ll never be white enough?”
He hadn’t meant to say all of that. But the only thing worse than his skin color being the first—and sometimes only—thing people used to define him was when people tried to explain they didn’t “see color.” They meant well—he knew that—but the truth was, it did matter. He’d made his first fortune for his mother, merchandising a line of weave and braid products for upper-class African American consumers that had, thanks to millennials, reached a small level of crossover success in the mainstream market. When people said they didn’t see color, they effectively erased the blackness from his life.
Being African American wasn’t who he was—but it was a part of him. And for some reason, he needed her to understand that.
He had her full attention now. Her gaze swept over him and he felt his muscles tighten, almost as if he were in fight-or-flight mode. And he didn’t run. He never ran.
“Will our beer suddenly taste black?” she asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. We might broaden our marketing reach, though.”
She tilted her head. “All I care about is the beer.”
“Seriously?”
She sighed heavily. “Let me ask you this—when you drink a Rocky Top beer, does it taste feminine?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
That got him a hard glare. A glare he probably deserved, but still. “Zeb, I don’t know what you want me to say here. Of course it matters, because that’s your life. That’s who you are. But I can’t hold that against you, and anyway, why would I want to? You didn’t ask for that. You can’t change that, any more than I can change the fact that my mother died in a car accident when I was two and left me with this,” she said, pointing to her scarred cheek, “and my father raised me as best he could—and that meant beer and sports and changing my own oil in my car. We both exist in a space that someone else is always going to say we shouldn’t—so what? We’re here. We like beer.” She grinned hugely at him. “Get used to it.”
Everything around him went still. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t sure his heart was even beating. He didn’t hear the sounds of the game or the chatter of the fans around them.
His entire world narrowed to her. All he could see and hear and feel—because dammit, she was close enough that their forearms kept touching, their knees bumping—was Casey.
It mattered. He mattered. No conditions, no exceptions. He mattered just the way he was.
Had anyone ever said as much to him? Even his own mother? No. What had mattered was what he wasn’t. He wasn’t a Beaumont. He wasn’t legitimate. He wasn’t white.
Something in his chest unclenched, something he’d never known he was holding tightly. Something that felt like...
...peace.
He dimly heard a loud crack and then Casey jolted and shouted, “Look out!”
Zeb moved without thinking. He was in a weird space—everything happened as if it were in slow motion. His head turned like he was stuck in molasses, like the baseball was coming directly for him at a snail’s pace. He reached out slowly and caught the fly ball a few inches from Casey’s shoulder.
>
The pain of the ball smacking into his palm snapped him out of it. “Damn,” he hissed, shaking his hand as a smattering of applause broke out from the crowd. “That hurt.”
Casey turned her face toward him, her eyes wide. There was an unfamiliar feeling trying to make its way to the forefront of Zeb’s mind as he stared into her beautiful light brown eyes, one he couldn’t name. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“You caught the ball bare-handed,” she said, her voice breathy. Then, before Zeb could do anything, she looked down to where he was still holding the foul ball. She moved slowly when she pulled the ball out of his palm and stared at his reddening skin. Lightly, so lightly it almost hurt, she traced her fingertip over the palm of his hand. “Did it hurt?”
That unnamed, unfamiliar feeling was immediately buried under something that was much easier to identify—lust. “Not much,” he said, and he didn’t miss the way his voice dropped. He had a vague sense that he wasn’t being entirely honest—it hurt enough to snap him out of his reverie. But with her stroking his skin...
...everything felt just fine.
And it got a whole lot better when she lifted his hand and pressed a kiss against his palm. “Do we need to go and get some ice or...?”
Or? Or sounded good. Or sounded great. “Only if you want to,” he told her, shifting so that he was cupping her cheek in his hand. “Your call.”
Because he wasn’t talking about ice. Or beer. Or baseball.
He dragged his thumb over the top of her cheek as she leaned into his touch. She lifted her gaze to his face and for a second, he thought he’d taken it too far. He’d misread the signals and she would storm out of the stadium just like she’d stormed out of his office that first day. She would quit and he would deserve it.
Except she didn’t. “I live a block away,” she said, and he heard the slightest shiver in her voice, felt a matching shiver in her body. “If that’s what you need.”
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