Deliciously Bitter (Naked Brews Book 3)

by KB Jacobs

  “Warner? Joe? Oh my god, what happened?” Melissa asked.

  Alex pursed her lips, taking in the disarray of the room and scowled at the two men.

  “There you go, loverboy,” Joe hissed to Warner under his breath.

  I could hear their chirping, although the women stood too far away, so they couldn’t.

  “I’ll bet she’ll kiss your boo-boo and make it feel better if you ask nicely.”

  Warner lunged, and I grabbed him around his arms, physically lifting him off the floor before he could make contact. The kid didn’t have the size on him to take on me.

  “Cool it,” I yelled, “before you both get fired.” Not that I had that kind of authority.

  Alex raised an eyebrow, a look that basically said the same thing. How did she manage to even make that imperious expression look sexy? But she continued to stand back and let me handle the two men. Smart lady.

  Melissa had no such compunction. She rushed toward Joe and gently touched his quickly swelling face. He jerked away with a wary glance at Warner.

  Against my chest, Warner literally growled when she touched Joe.

  “If you chill, I’ll let you go,” I warned, “but not until you fucking calm down.”

  “Fuck you. In fact, fuck all of you.” Warner struck an elbow into my gut and scrambled out of my grasp. Without another glance at anyone, he stormed out the back door of the building.

  I glanced down at the blood that had dripped onto my shirt. “Think he’s had his rabies shots this year?” No one reacted to my bad joke.

  “Dammit.” Joe leapt to the corner, cursed, and flung a pile of flattened boxes.

  Melissa jumped in fear at the sudden violence. I didn’t blame her. Guys could be unpredictable when there was this much leftover testosterone and adrenaline after a fight.

  “That’s it,” I warned him. “You need to calm the fuck down before I fire you, too.”

  “Too?” Joe’s eyes widened in alarm. “No, you can’t fire Warner. I’d rather you not fire me, either, but don’t fire him just because I said something stupid.” He glanced over at the girls uncomfortably. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have been giving him a hard time.”

  “What did you say?” I growled. Was Joe the one stirring up trouble for the brewery?

  “He’s my friend, but I shouldn’t have riled him up like that.” Then with another glance at Melissa, he pressed his lips together. I frowned. There were a lot of undercurrents here stemming from Melissa that I didn’t understand. We weren’t going to get anywhere with her in the room.

  I sent Alex a meaningful glance that she gave me a slight nod.

  She gathered Melissa by the shoulders and started to usher her out. “Come on. We need to go get the bleach and cleaning supplies. I think Damian has this under control.”

  When the door closed behind them, I turned on Joe. “She’s gone now. Tell me.”

  He let out a gusty sigh. “Really, it was nothing. I don’t know why Warner gets his panties in a twist so easily. He’s had a crush on her forever, and he was already torqued about what I said this morning about the fire. He gets real touchy when it comes to her and how she’s been hurt a couple of times. He’s worried something else is going to happen with the opening coming up. Not that I blame him for that. Melissa’s a real sweet girl. I don’t like seeing her hurt, either.”

  “Focus,” I instructed, or else the guy was going to ramble into the next week. “What caused the fight this afternoon?”

  Joe shook his head. “It wasn’t anything serious. I just offered to set him up with this new girl I met last week at the Edge. She’s cute and blonde and little, just like Melissa. I thought maybe it might help take the edge off his temper if he could just get laid.” Joe pursed his mouth in thought. “I guess I shouldn’t have told him that, though. He got really mad, didn’t he?”

  “Um, yeah.” Why did I suddenly feel so old? This was like junior high or life on one of those housewives shows that were always so ridiculous. “How old are you guys?”

  Joe shrugged. “We’re both twenty-two.”

  So, they were still young enough that their hormones and cocks were the ruling factor in their lives. I didn’t think I’d ever been as young and naive as these two. When I’d been their age, I’d already done two deployments, ugly ones where friends had died. Something about that harsh reality aged a guy quick.

  “Do you think he’ll get over it?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah. First, clean this place up. Then you can take a six-pack and go find him. Tell him you’re sorry, and things will probably be okay. Guys don’t generally hold grudges so you should be fine.”

  Alex knocked on the door and dipped her head in. “Is it okay if we come in and get this all cleaned up?”

  I nodded.

  At the sight of her, my body surged to life, nerves tingling just under my skin and a slight sheen of sweat coating my back. Hadn’t I just been musing that my hormones and dick didn’t rule me anymore? What a fucking joke. She tied me up in knots without even trying. The question was...what was I going to do about it?

  Chapter Eleven

  Alex

  I sat upright in bed, my brain foggy with an interrupted dream. I scanned the pitch dark room for the source of whatever woke me up, but it was impossible to see anything. Reaching over, I grabbed for my cell phone on my bedside table and missed, knocking it to the floor.

  “Shit.”

  My bedroom floor was a wasteland of objects I kept promising myself I would put away, knowing full well it was never going to happen. I leaned over the side and brushed back an empty wine bottle and the shirt I’d worn yesterday. My fingers gripped the hard plastic case, and I raised it up to my face in triumph.

  Two thirty a.m.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  I clicked off the screen and flounced back on the bed. It had been a crap day at work, the exact opposite of what I’d planned for Lake’s first day of vacation. Melissa and I had spent hours decontaminating the bottling room. I declined her offer to get a late dinner with her and Anthony and wolfed down half a pizza from my couch before crashing around midnight.

  What I needed was a good night’s sleep.

  “Crap.”

  Since I was awake, my brain was never going to shut down again. Instead of falling back into REM, my thoughts swirled around all the items I needed to get done tomorrow, which included everything I didn’t get to today because I’d been busy cleaning blood off a conveyor belt.

  I ran my hands over my face and forced my eyes closed. If I could just lie here long enough, eventually exhaustion would take over. It might take a while, but I could get five hours or so. That, paired with enough caffeine, would get me through the next day.

  A blood-curdling scream burst through my window, and all thoughts of sleep disappeared.

  “What the holy fucking hell?”

  I jumped out of the bed and banged my toe on the edge of my nightstand turning the light on. Outside was dark, stillness, but I was certain something had to be dying right outside my window. The scream had seemed so raw and panicked.

  “Nooooooooooo!”

  My stomach sank. It wasn’t a wounded animal. Not exactly. The shout had come from Damian’s rental cabin. Walsh had warned me this might happen, but I’d really thought he was being a worry wart. Guess not.

  I waded through the bathroom, threw on my robe, and grabbed the extra key I had the foresight to hang next to the door. Damian’s cabin was next door, but it was the middle of the night, and there were a lot of trees and probably more than a few wild animals between his place and mine, so I hopped in my Aston Martin and drove over.

  Pulling my robe tighter, I knocked on the front door, but it was just a courtesy. As I got closer, the softer mumblings and cries were easy to hear, pouring out of the bedroom window. The tortured sounds broke my heart. I didn’t know the full story of what they’d been through, but from the bits I’d gleaned from Walsh and Lake, I knew it was horrific.

&nb
sp; I let myself in and let out a soft whistle at the high-end decor. We might be neighbors, but our homes couldn’t be more different. My place was Lake’s dad’s old cabin. Charming would be a fitting description since it certainly wasn’t modern or spacious. But Damian’s cabin was more like a chalet than anything else. The vaulted ceilings made the main room feel like a cathedral more than a cabin tucked away in the woods.

  This place definitely needed a full exploration, but that would have to wait. Following the sounds of a nightmare ramping up, I made my way to Damian’s bedroom.

  Moonlight spilled into the room, spotlighting Damian tossing and turning on the bed. His face was contorted in pain, making the scars on the right side more dramatic than they looked in the light of day. He was deep inside the dream torturing his mind.

  “Damian.” I crept to the side of his bed, hesitant to wake him. “Damian, wake up.”

  He moaned and turned to the side, pulling his shirt up and exposing the right side of his abdomen. The skin there was scarred and puckered just like his face. Jesus. What had he been through?

  I laid my hand on his cheek, and the contact instantly pulled him out of his nightmare. He jerked away and launched to his feet, curled up like a cat prepared to pounce.

  “What are you doing here?” His words growled out of his chest, his voice rough from the screams that tortured his sleep.

  I took a step back but held my hand up. “You were having a nightmare.”

  Damian flinched and then nodded. According to Walsh, this happened with varying frequency. More often when Damian was stressed. He might be used to it, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it happening.

  Without saying a word, Damian marched out of the room.

  I followed him as he turned on every light in the house on his way to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filling it straight from the tap, and gulped down the lukewarm water like a man dying of thirst.

  “So now what?” I asked. “Should I stay until you fall back to sleep?”

  Damian laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “That’s the end of my sleep for the night. You should go home.”

  I stood there, watching him gulp down water as he stared at the wall. My heart hurt. Damian’s scars went so much deeper than the ones on his face. “I can’t just leave you here. I’ll never get any sleep, knowing you’re sitting over here by yourself, not sleeping.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Damian turned to me slightly but was careful to keep the right side of his face to the wall. “I’ll just watch a movie and wait for the sun to come up so I can go to work just like a normal person.”

  I walked out of the kitchen and into the main living room. “Where’s your TV?”

  “Why?” Damian followed me to the living room but stayed several feet behind me.

  “Because if we’re watching movies, I get first pick.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  I held up my hand to hold off whatever protests he was about to toss up. “Yeah, not sure if you noticed, but I’m not really a take-suggestions kind of girl. I said I’m staying here to watch a movie with you, so that’s pretty much exactly what’s going to happen.”

  Damian stood at the edge of the room and stared at me. His face didn’t have the clouded and confused expression of someone just waking up anymore, but his eyes were bloodshot and dark circles lay under them. Even with those signs of exhaustion, he was still handsome. How long had it been since he’d had a truly decent night’s sleep?

  After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, Damian nodded as if he’d been waging some kind of mental battle and a winner had been declared. He turned and walked back to the kitchen but called out over his shoulder, “Do you like popcorn?”

  I followed him and tried to choke down my victory grin. “It’s a movie requirement, but only the good stuff, so I’ll pass on whatever overly salted, soggy microwavable junk you’ve got in the pantry.”

  Damian bent down and pulled an old school, hand-crank, stove-top popper out of a cabinet. He lit the gas and measured out oil. “Microwavable popcorn is shit in a bag. I bought this baby my first day here. It’s not quite as good as the free-standing popper I have at home, but it works.”

  The scent of hot peanut oil filled the kitchen. I closed my eyes and smiled, letting the aroma take me to my happy place. The tinkling of dried kernels hitting the sizzling oil brought my attention back to the moment. “You should check out Grundy’s. They have the best popcorn in town.”

  Damian held up the bag of kernels, the purple diamond Grundy logo prominent on the front. “Where do you think I got the popper?” He turned the crank, and we both stood next to the stove, letting the sound of corn popping inside the metal container ease away the awkward tension.

  When the popping grew less regular, Damian pulled the popper off the stove and dumped the hot popcorn into a giant bowl. Without asking how I liked it, he squirted the whole batch with specialty spray butter and then topped it with white cheddar seasoning, my favorite of all the Grundy flavors.

  He met my eyes for a second and nodded at the bowl.

  I grabbed a handful and tossed the whole thing in my mouth. It was perfect. The salty puffed kernels melted when they hit my tongue.

  “All right,” he said, picking up the bowl and walking out of the kitchen toward the back of the cabin. “You’ve got good taste in popcorn. Let’s see if that translates to movies.”

  “Clue.” I followed behind him and smiled when he nodded. I’d seen the film at least a hundred times, but that’s what made it perfect. I could give half my attention to the who-done-it on the screen and the other half to figuring out the mystery that was Damian Thorne.

  Chapter Twelve

  Damian

  I peered into the window of packaging to make sure all was calm this morning. Joe, Warner, and Smitty were all there, working on their separate tasks—Smitty loading boxes, Warner running the bottling machine, Joe getting the bottles prepped for filling. With the closed door separating me from them, I couldn’t hear their discussion, but the grins on their faces made it look like yesterday’s drama had been settled.

  Thank fuck.

  Since all was calm, I didn’t disturb the peace.

  It was still early, but the hum of the brewery felt good. Last night’s nightmare had been a particularly brutal one, but Alex’s visit had actually made the aftermath bearable. We’d sat down on the couch, watched the movie, eaten way too much popcorn while huddled under quilts, and had both dozed off before the end of the movie, managing to catch a couple more hours of sleep. That never happened for me after waking up terrified and caught in the grips of horror like that, so I felt more rested than I had in a while.

  Barb, the daytime cook for the tasting pub, and Eric, the tasting pub manager, were both in the break room, discussing changes to the menu when I passed through. Ice’s Brew Pub wouldn’t be open during the day...at least not at first. We were still debating the commitment to running a full service restaurant for both lunch and dinner and had decided to ramp it up slowly. But some of Chef Luke’s recipes were perfect for the daytime menu of the smaller, more casual tasting pub.

  “Hi, Damian.” Eric nodded at me.

  “Morning. Everything going okay?” I asked.

  Eric nodded, but Barb frowned for a moment at the list in front of her before glancing up at me. “What do you think about crab cake sliders?”

  I thought for a moment. “In general, I’m a fan. But in Colorado?” I bit the inside of my cheek and then grimaced. “We’re too far from the ocean for that to truly be a good plan, aren’t we?”

  She nodded and gave me a huge smile and a celebratory wave. “Exactly my point,” she said with a shove at Eric’s shoulder. “Thanks, Damian. Come over to the tasting pub at lunch, and I’ll treat you to the new grilled goat cheese and plum jam sandwich special.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Wow, fancy, but it sounds good.”

  She laughed even as Eric scowled. “N
ot everyone is as taken with the idea, but I think you’ll like it.”

  I grinned as Eric grumbled something about highbrow, fancy suits and that there was nothing wrong with bean nachos.

  “I look forward to it.” I rapped on their table and then continued on my way.

  While Eric wasn’t wholly thrilled with all the changes being made, I couldn’t see his disgruntled vibe taking a malicious edge. He still might be someone to examine closer just in case.

  In the brewing room, Alex stood with Harlan at a high, pub-style table in the corner. There were several tasting glasses in front of them, and I could see the label art on Alex’s clipboard from my spot in the doorway. They must be discussing the artistic options and names for the latest release coming this fall, a limited Oktoberfest brew.

  Harlan nodded at me, but Alex was too caught up in her note taking to notice me. That was okay; it allowed me to watch her for an unguarded moment.

  What she’d done for me last night had been incredible. Walsh was normally the only person around when the nightmares hit, but other than waking me and freeing me from the grips of the particularly bad dreams, he generally left me to handle them on my own. Before last night, I would have said I preferred it that way.

  But being with Alex had been nice. Hell, it had been better than nice. It had been a gift, a gift that had me feeling better—more whole—than I had felt in years. I’d awoken on the couch to find her gone, but a tiny niggle of hope had lit up my world with the dawning light this morning.

  I couldn’t let that take hold.

  She had a generous heart. That should have been obvious from the smile that seemed permanently etched on her features, but I was surprised that she’d given up her night’s rest to help me.

  Therein lay the problem, though. She’d stayed to help, not because we were friends or any other similar idea my heart wanted to cling to. She was a good person, a generous person, the kind of person who couldn’t pass by a fellow human being in need. No matter how much I personally liked her, she helped me out of pity.