Enemies on Tap (4 page)

She smirked. “And a Sweet never has been.”

He shrugged. “You said it, not me.”

“You’re wrong.” She glared at the crowd. “You’re all wrong. I’m going to turn that brewery around.”

“With what money?” Logan leveled an appraising gaze at her. “We both know you need it, but don’t have it.”

The truth of his words dampened the indignation burning in her belly. “Doesn’t matter.” Her plan would work. And he’d know that if he’d bothered to read the proposal she’d brought to their meeting at the bank. But if he couldn’t be bothered to learn it then, she sure wasn’t going to give him a play-by-play now. “I’ll find a way.

“I don’t think you will.” The lips she’d moments ago yearned to kiss curled into a self-satisfied smile. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go back to that brewery, take a look around, and realize what a heap it is. You’re going to start wondering—if you’re not already—why in the hell you want to tie yourself to such a money pit. Then, you’ll wake up and realize you don’t have to be. That’s when you’ll beg me to take it off your hands. And I will. For about fifty cents on the dollar.”

What she wouldn’t give to slap the smug smile off his face. Damn, it would feel so…sweet. But she knew something that had eluded her Aunt Mae, a woman who’d shaved half her cheating husband’s head bald and then burned his clothes in the front yard after finding out he had a secret family in Washington state.

Winning was the best kind of revenge.

For the prince of Salvation’s entire life, everything had always gone his way. Until now. He’d loved to take calculated risks in high school. Was he still the same? Of course he was. People didn’t change—especially not in Salvation. The man who loved to bet on a winner was about to find out what it felt like to lose big.

“Care to make a bet on that?”

Logan blinked but recovered in the next heartbeat. “Name your terms.”

“When the brewery gets back on track within three months, you take out a full page ad in the Salvation Gazette admitting you’re a shortsighted idiot who wouldn’t know a good business opportunity if it knocked the silver spoon out of your mouth.”

“Agreed.” He narrowed his eyes. “But when that doesn’t happen, and we all know it won’t, you sell me the brewery and its land according to the terms I dictate.”

The first pinpricks of unease marched up the back of her neck. There was more on the line here than just a promotion. Her sisters had entrusted their inheritance to her, the ultra-responsible eldest sister who never failed, and the brewery staff needed their jobs. She braced her shoulders and mentally wrestled her doubts back to the ground. There was no way she would fail this time.

Logan Martin and the rest of Salvation’s elite could kiss her Sweet ass.

“This is one bet you’re going to regret making, Logan Martin.” Her gaze swept across the rest of the room.

Holding her head high even though her insides were shaking, Miranda pivoted on one heel and strutted out of the room, not giving a damn that the movement made her exposed cleavage jiggle.

Ruby Sue’s internal gossip radar must have gone off, because the elderly woman stood right outside the private dining room door. She took a step back to allow Miranda to pass.

“Girl, you make a crowd silencing entrance and sure know how to make one hell of an exit, too. I tell you—” The slam of The Kitchen Sink’s front door cut off the rest of Ruby Sue’s words.

It didn’t matter. Marching down the sidewalk, ignoring the double takes from the people walking past, Miranda was already planning her next move. She fired off a quick SOS text to her sister Natalie and another to her friend Marc Oberon, a genius in corporate turnarounds based in Harbor City.

Ruby Sue was right. She did know how to make an exit, but the people of Salvation—especially that pampered prick Logan—were about to find out that she wasn’t going anywhere.

Chapter
Four

After a quick change into jeans and a T-shirt at home base—AKA Uncle Julian’s old house, which technically belonged to her and her sisters—Miranda pulled into the parking lot at the Sweet Salvation Brewery, ready to put her plans in motion. The first step was a brewery-wide deep clean. She may not know a lot about running a brewery, but even as a newbie, she knew
that the smallest bit of dirt on the inside of the equipment ruined the beer’s flavor.

Miranda pulled into a parking spot a few feet away from the group of five brewery employees standing in front of the door. Their arms were crossed, and the curved brims of their camouflage caps were pulled low. They looked like a Southern version of mob enforcers here to collect protection money. Smack dab in the center stood Carl, the brewmaster. Her stomach twisted with dread.

Ignoring the little voice telling her to put the car in reverse and keep going until Salvation was a dot in her rearview mirror, Miranda turned off the engine and got out. She shut the Lexus door with deliberate care, buying herself a few moments before she had to march into the eye of an unavoidable shit storm.

“Gentlemen.” She nodded and walked toward them, stopping when she was just out of arm’s reach.

Carl hocked a chewing tobacco-laced loogie that splattered against the sidewalk an inch shy of her black ballet flats.

Lovely.

Refusing to take the bait, she kept her face neutral. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Only if it involves you leaving,” Carl sneered.

Weariness tugged at her spine. Was there anyone in town that she didn’t have to fight? She expected this kind of reception from the rest of the town, but her family had been running the Sweet Salvation Brewery for close to fifty years now. Most of the employees were long timers who knew her family better than most.

This greeting party sucked the big one, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to back down to anyone—long-timer or not.

“Me abandoning the brewery wouldn’t be the best way to operate our business.”

“It’s not
our
anything.” A vein thumped against Carl’s temple. “Julian never wanted you girls—” he spit again, this time leaving a brown stain on the grass “—to have the brewery. He’d promised to sell it to me, but he got sick before we could draw up the paperwork.”

An ogre armed with a sledgehammer started taking whacks at the gray matter in her head, and the muscles in her shoulders went to DEFCON levels. That sounded exactly like something Uncle Julian would do. He was famous in the family for agreeing to things he had absolutely no intention of ever doing just so he could avoid a confrontation.

His aversion to going straight at a problem explained the brewery’s financial and operational difficulties, too. More than likely, for at least the recent past, Carl had been used to running the place on his own terms, with minimal to no supervision.

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way you wanted, Carl, but it is what it is.” She leveled a no-more-bullshit glare at the group. “Now we’ve gotta do a lot of work today to get the brewery back to where it should be. Let’s get to it.”

Praying she could brazen her way through the crowd before they got a chance to regroup and launch into full mutiny mode, Miranda marched forward.

Carl hesitated for a heartbeat but then shifted to the side, giving her just enough room to get by.

Thankfully, her hand didn’t shake when she grabbed the door handle and strode inside.

Like the rest of the brewery, the tasting room could use a massive bleach hose down. Bits of mold hid in the crevices of the ten-foot-long oak bar with six on-tap stations that stood in the northeast corner. A giant chalkboard took up the wall behind the bar and listed the varieties of beer available, but half the words were wiped away. The tasting room hadn’t been open for six months, and a thick layer of dust covered the booths lining the rest of the twenty-by-twenty room.

Still, Mirada could envision the potential. An open spot on the Southwest corner would be perfect for local bands to set up. Live music would help draw in new customers once the brewery was back up and running like it should. The brewery’s location right by the river would be great for community events and fundraisers, the hosting of which would improve its image among the locals.

Then there was the beer itself. Craft brews were huge on the marketplace, with even large brewers attempting to rebrand themselves in the smaller businesses’ image. If she could find a way to convince the brewmaster she wasn’t the devil trying to usurp his power and convince him to stop fighting her on every move to get the brewery onto solid financial ground, she had no doubt the brewery would be profitable within the shortened deadline. They could work together to streamline operations, boost production, and line up local businesses to start selling Sweet Salvation Brewery beer again. Improving supply and increasing demand—that was the key to turning the company around. It would work.

It had to.

“Problem.” Sean O’Dell, the assistant brewmaster, set a half-full box of dried hops on the bar. The earthy smell filtered up from the box of light green, dried, acorn-shaped flowers.

“Only one? The day has improved.” Her shrill laugh sounded desperate even to her own ears.

He didn’t crack a smile. “There’s only enough hops for one brew day.”

That was practically a Shakespearean soliloquy from the friendly but bordering-on-silent Sean, but ordering more hops was an easy problem fix. Maybe that was a sign of things to come. “Okay, I’ll order more this afternoon.”

He shook his head. “You have to buy hops on a commodities market years in advance to lock in a price.”

The asshole using a sledgehammer on the back of her head picked up his pace. “And Uncle Julian didn’t lock in a price.”

“Nope.” Sean rocked back on his heels and looked at her expectantly.

And suddenly, her day turned into the kind that explained why God invented chocolate, comfy pants, and booze.

One brew day would produce enough beer to fill one set of orders, but not any follow-up ones. She was already dealing with a town that expected her to flake out. There was no way she’d prove them right. Not to mention that her real job and real promotion hung in the balance. They had to find a way.

“So what does that mean for us? Will we be able to get any?” Miranda held her breath while Sean consulted with an invisible force on the tin ceiling.

After a minute of clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth and tugging on his short beard, he shrugged. “Possible.”

“You’re killing me with these cryptic one-word responses. Come on, Sean, give me something to work with.”

He eyeballed her for a second, his soft brown eyes narrowing, then shrugged. “I have connections. I can ask around and see if any of the other breweries have extra stock they’re willing to sell.”

If that was their best chance. She was going to grab ahold of it with both hands and beat it into submission. “Great, let’s get that in motion.”

“It’ll be expensive.”

Of course it would. Why should anything to do with this damn brewery be simple and easy or—
God forbid
—cheap? “Can we make do with the hops we have?”

“Not after the next brew.”

Without hops, they wouldn’t be able to make more beer. Without beer, they couldn’t meet demand, and her plan would fail. There really wasn’t a choice to be made. She had to get more hops.

“How much?”

Sean passed her a piece of paper containing a figure that just about gave her a heart attack. Ignoring the palpitations, Miranda ran the numbers in her head. They’d have enough in the current budget to cover the cost of the hops, but it only heightened the need for additional money.

“Then I guess we don’t have a choice but to give them both arms and a leg.” Maybe she could persuade the seller to accept Carl’s arms and leg. The sledgehammer in her head went into overdrive, the vibrations shaking her spine. “At least the day can’t get any worse.”

Sean nodded toward the front windows. “Company.”

It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the brightness outside compared to the doom and gloom that had taken over the tasting room. When she did, she realized God really was not looking down favorably on her today. And judging by the way Logan Martin slammed the door of his red Chevy truck, neither was he.

Gravel crunched under Logan’s feet as he crossed the Sweet Salvation Brewery parking lot, loud but not powerful enough to drown out the self-recriminations of retreading a poisoned path. Almost kissing Miranda Sweet? What the fuck had he been thinking?

He hadn’t. Logan’s little head had taken over as soon as he’d seen Miranda, specifically her mind-boggling tits on display in her barely-there lace bra.

H
e’d almost kissed her. And damn it, he couldn’t tell if he was more pissed off because he hadn’t or that he’d wanted to so fucking bad. Shit, he still wanted to even after the shit storm she stirred up by barging into the meeting at The Kitchen Sink.

Get it straight, Martin, it won’t ever happen again.

He wasn’t about to let the Sweets ruin this opportunity for Salvation—especially not Miranda Sweet. He knew too well how she liked to cut and run. He couldn’t let her do that to Salvation. The industrial park would be a shot in the arm for not only the town’s but the region’s economy. He couldn’t afford to become blinded to that because of a pair of sinfully long legs or an ass that should be a world wonder. Several brewery employees were clumped around the front door. They eyeballed him with surly glares and puffed out their chests.

The possibility of a testosterone-fueled pissing match centered the energy running wild through his body, and his hands curled into fists. He hadn’t been in a fight since college, but he’d never forgotten the visceral rage and power that had pumped through his veins right before he returned that first punch. Aggression buzzed like a killer wasp in his gut, angry and ready for release.

“You here to give her that loan she needs?” One of the men practically snarled the question before letting loose a stream of tea-colored tobacco juice.

“Hell no.”

That negative response elicited a yellow-stained smile from the man. “Well then, by all means, welcome to the Sweet Salvation Brewery.”

Logan yanked open the door and stomped inside, righteous vengeance propelling him forward. He spotted his prey standing by the bar. A worried divot crinkled her forehead. Good. She had every reason to worry.

“Barging in on a private meeting and pitching a hissy fit is low, even for a Sweet,” he snarled.

The mountain man beside her took a step forward, but she stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “Sean, go touch base with your contacts about the hops. I can handle him on my own.” She spun on one heel and marched out of the tasting room, pausing only at the hallway entrance where she looked back over one shoulder. “You coming?”

Shit, it wasn’t like he was going to make an ass out himself by yelling at her back as she strolled away. Grumbling under his breath, he followed her down the hall, doing his best to ignore the swing of her hips and the way her jeans fit snug against her round ass.

Her office was a complete pit. Papers and boxes were piled all over the small space. Even with her narrow frame, she had to turn sideways to get around one stack just to get to the chair behind her desk. There was no place for him to sit, which was for the best. It made it easier for him to keep the psychological advantage of height.

As cool as a snow cone in January, Miranda settled into her seat and gazed at him expectantly.

Logan wasn’t shy about seizing the invitation. “I don’t know how things work in Harbor City, but that’s not done in Salvation.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “This should be amusing. What secret Salvation code did I violate?”

“Very funny. But unlike you Sweets, some of us here want to see Salvation prosper.” There, that had just the right amount of righteous indignation and pomp. He sounded like his dad. Not a comparison he normally wanted to be made, but the man wasn’t all bad.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders, her languid body language making him harder and more intractable. “I saw that map. Looks like every member of your little cabal is going to be lining their pockets.”

How had he gotten on the defensive here?
Man up, dude.
“There’s nothing wrong with capitalism.”

She narrowed her blue eyes, nailing him to the floor without even busting a nail. “I never said there was, but don’t pretend this deal of yours is all about altruism. You’re going to make a pretty penny off the whole thing. Or at least you would have if I hadn’t come back to town.”

“Come on, think straight.” Instead of giving into the frustration running rampant through his veins, he put his palms on her desk and leaned forward, invading her space.

She didn’t give an inch. But he grew a few. God, why did arguing with her have to be an aphrodisiac?

“You can’t possibly win the bet, Miranda.” He laid the sympathy on thick. “Sell to me now, and I’ll give you seventy-five cents on the dollar.”

“How—” She paused and tapped her steepled middle fingers against her chin “—
very
generous of you.”

Ignoring her not-so-subtle message, he forged ahead. “I’ll have the paperwork sent over in the morning.”

“Don’t bother.” She stood up and made her way to the door as if to dismiss him. “I’d rather lick the floor clean than sell the Sweet Salvation Brewery to you.”

“You don’t want to follow through on this bet.” He pivoted to face her but disregarded her hand on the knob of the closed office door. “I’m giving you an out that will let you save face. Come on. Prove it to the town that not all the Sweets are dumb enough to piss in the wind.”

“You’re cute. I’ll tell you what, I’ll name the first beer we take national after you.” Her pink lips curled in a sly smile. “I’m thinking Martin’s Folly has a nice ring to it.”

Logan didn’t want to take it to this level, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t—lose this bet. “Do you really want to test just how difficult I can make your life?”