Honey Red (4 page)

Gavin stretched and stood. “I know. I know we need more people, blah, blah, blah. I get it, but you get it, too, right? I can’t afford to bring anyone else into this yet. I’m stretched every month paying the five employees we have. We gotta sell more…”

Ian held up a hand. “We will not sell more, Gavin, not unless someone besides me is managing both the brewery and the sales efforts. Period. And we fire the lame ass Traynor Company.” Ian named the distributor who handled sales of their products—or mishandled them, as he liked to say. “We need to cut them loose and find a better distributor while we’re at it.”

“Ian, I know you don’t want to accept this, but there is no money right now for another employee. Stop asking me. And firing a distributor is practically impossible, as you know. Stop making it sound so fucking simple.” Gavin’s dark eyes were hard, angry. Ian tried to remain calm.

Ian knew that his twin brother—the man who succeeded at everything he did no matter what—felt failure breathing down his neck. He’d failed at marriage, and he was teetering on the edge of something either really great or irreversibly terrible with this brewery venture. One thing Ian realized about his brother was that Gavin hated being less than perfect at everything, and these last few years had been a pure exercise in seat-of-your-pants learning curves, mistakes, and screw-ups. But Ian could sense that they were emerging into the light. He had a handle on their strengths and weaknesses and was focusing on three brews they bottled and had plans for one more of them before the year was up. But he needed help, and Gavin needed to make the lazy distributor snap-to and start really selling their product. Traynor Wholesalers was old school—had too much invested in the macro brews they represented and were a bunch of order takers, not sales people that Ian needed to get his new products into the market.

“Are you even listening to me?” Gavin demanded.

Ian stood putting his hands on his brother’s shoulders. It felt beyond strange being the one, instead of Gavin, who was calm, the one who could make the right choices for success, but he was resolved in this thing now. He wanted Ypsi Brewing to take the next step and knew Gavin was being tight fisted about another employee when he didn’t need to be. “Take off the bean-counter hat a sec, Gav. You know as well as I do that someone who really knows how to sell, who can come up with a coherent marketing plan that encompasses both the wholesale and retail side will be worth every penny. If we troll around up at EMU, I’ll bet we can find a starving MBA grad eager for a paycheck. Right?” He leaned down, tried to catch his brother’s eyes.

“Yeah.” Gavin shrugged him off, sat, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re right. Shit.” He sighed and stared into the middle distance.

Ian tried to rustle up some sympathy, but found only “It’s-About-Time-itis” with regard to his brother’s frustration. “Okay, so I’ll post an ad on Craigslist and on our website. I say we see what we get and determine salary value then.” He turned to his screen and started fiddling with recipes and checking fermentation temps before heading back towards the small lab.

They’d turned the empty auto factory into a twenty-thousand square foot brewery, plus three thousand square foot pub that on most nights was standing room only. Ian was happy with his life, if a little lonely for adult companionship beyond what his brother and the sparse brewery staff provided. He glanced at his phone, noting the time and realized if he didn’t hurry he’d be late to get Jamie from the daycare…again. He grinned, picturing the boy’s eager face and bright green eyes. He was pretty much a small replica of Ian, right down to his knee-jerk temper and apparent need for constant stimulus and movement. He tossed his stuff in his backpack and headed out; convinced he could find a sales specialist and really get things rolling in a successful direction.

“I met somebody.”

Ian looked up from his appraisal of the new fermentation vessel’s temperature controls at the sound of his brother’s voice. He frowned at the odd expression on Gavin’s face. The man’s first marriage had been one of similar tastes, drive, and looks. Ian had hated her guts from the start. She was the worst kind of social-climbing fake bitch and had shown her true colors clearly in the last few years, keeping the twins away as much as possible from their father while demanding ever more in alimony and child support. Ian knew not having his sons around nearly killed Gavin on a daily basis and was only just beginning to understand how awful that must be. His nephews were in Michigan this month, however, spending time with their dad while their mother worked on snagging rich husband number two.

 “Cool. Who? Where?” He kept busy wrapping up the brewing day and ignored the small voice reminding him how much he still lacked physical grown up company. They’d had great response to their call for a marketing director in the last few weeks, and he was working on a group interview, but still wanted to make one more contact over at Eastern Michigan’s Business School. A couple more decent candidates would be ideal before he brought them all in for a group-think session so he could see who stood out from the crowd, but he was honestly happy for his brother. “That explains the goofy ass look on your face. I assume you’ve gotten laid?”

“Maybe. It’s Alyssa…um…Alyssa Traynor. Met her on the job, actually.” Gavin ran a hand through his thick black hair. The two of them were about as far apart in looks and personality as fraternal twins could be. Gavin had their mother’s black Irish looks with hair as dark as night and bright blue eyes. Ian was green-eyed with wavy dark blond hair—that same hair that repeated itself on Jamie’s head and was in sore need of cutting. Kid could pass as a girl with his soft features and long hair. His mother nagged him nearly daily about it. Ian stopped musing, processed what his brother had said, then stared at him.

“Traynor…as in Traynor Wholesale Company…as in our distribution partner…the one I want to fire because they suck?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Wow.” Ian put down the clipboard and crossed his arms over his chest. “Nice one. Hope she’s worth it.”

“Oh, I think she is.” Gavin raised an eyebrow and stuck his hands in his pockets. “And she has invited you over to dinner this weekend. She has a brother at home with her right now. He’s a Marine Corps vet, from Iraq, and a little messed up, at least physically, but she’s determined to take care of him until he can get settled.”

“A brother,” Ian said, slowly finally realizing what was going on. “A wounded warrior brother. No, thanks, Gavin. I’ll take a pass.”

“I’m not setting you up with the guy. Jesus. For the record, I still think you should stick with girls, but since you can’t seem to make up your mind…I just thought since you haven’t been out or anything in a while, and Alyssa said her brother was…your type. Although you should know, he is blind from a firefight that got him discharged with a Purple Heart and a Navy Cross. He has a service dog that he’s trying to get used to as well as a new job as an internet security consultant. The shit they can do with computers now—it’s as if his being blind makes no difference at all in that respect. His name is Nick.” Gavin shrugged.

Ian gaped at his brother, his heart racing with something he could only identify as anger. “A blind, gay, pissed off, computer geek, ex-Marine? Thanks, Gavin. Sounds like fun. Maybe I’ll invite my son’s drug-addled mother along, you know, to complete the dysfunctional family portrait.” He turned away, aware he was being an ass about a guy he didn’t even know.

“Sorry,” Gavin said.

“Whatever. I’ll think about it. Can Jamie come over and stay with the boys and the nanny that night?”

The thought of a man, any man, in his orbit startled him and made him a little tingly because he’d spent so much time and energy sublimating those feelings to his new responsibilities. He hardly drank anymore, didn’t touch cigarettes or pot, ran every day, and had not gotten laid in almost four years.

Ian had always thought of himself as the sort of man who required physical connection. He’d never gone without sex for any extended period of time, so he’d never questioned it. Sex for a guy like him, given his innate flexibility when came to gender, was pretty easily arranged. He was not hard to look at, knew how to flirt, and what buttons to push for men and women. He was not ashamed in the slightest of being bi-sexual. He always thought of it as a bit of a bonus.

But at that moment he’d never felt more alone, and the slight twinge of familiar horniness at the base of his spine at the thought of the faceless, wounded Nick Traynor made him want to punch something. Words to the contrary spilled out. “I’ll go,” he called to his brother’s retreating back. “I need to get out.”

“I thought you might,” Gavin waved to him. “See you in the morning?”

A shiver passed down Ian’s back. He was lucky. He had the job he wanted and family he loved. The support Gavin had given him in the last few years meant more to him than he could ever explain or repay. The Saturday morning pancake ritual with his Uncle Gavin was something Jamie talked about every Friday. It gave Ian an entire morning alone, and he was always grateful for it. Since Gavin’s boys were visiting on one of their rare trips to Michigan, Jamie was beside himself already. They were great kids and loved their cousin, or at least tolerated him admirably. Ian shook his head. The least he could do was meet this Nick and his sister Alyssa whom Gavin seemed as ga-ga over as Gavin ever got. What would it hurt?

“Daddy! I want to come with you,” Jamie did his usual round of whining before realizing he got to have a sleep over with his cousins. By the time Ian had showered, tugged on dark jeans and a somewhat non-wrinkled button down shirt the little boy was standing by the door, backpack full of army men and Legos, ready to go. Nervousness coated Ian’s brain as he kissed the boy’s face when he dropped him at Gavin’s. “Take me with you,” Jamie gripped his arm once until he saw the older boys headed toward him.

“Next time, sport,” Ian said, sensing his heart clench for the millionth time at the sight of his son. He hesitated, somehow realizing this was a strange pivotal moment, but unable to pinpoint why. He smiled at the nanny and climbed back into his car, pointing it towards Ann Arbor and the address Gavin had given him for Alyssa and Nick.

He parked in front of the bungalow and took a long breath. Gavin needed his support, so he was here, nothing more or less. His life was complete. He did not need anything, including a relationship with a total stranger. By the time Gavin pulled up, Ian felt in control and that he could handle whatever lay behind the front door he’d been staring at for ten minutes. The two men walked up the steps in silence. Gavin knocked on the door, and the smile Ian saw spread across his brother’s face when it was opened by one of the most stunning blond women Ian had ever seen, made his ears hot. He’d met Alyssa Traynor once before but all he recalled from that encounter was fury at her seeming nonchalance about their plight and his utter determination to cut Traynor loose. At that split second he remembered her brother, the stiff but model-handsome Marine who’d been in the office that day, on leave or something, visiting his sister.

Now, he watched, mesmerized as the woman pulled his brother into an embrace, saw them exchange a soft kiss. Then he was introduced, and he felt her arms around him. The whole thing passed like a surreal dream. Gavin frowned at him at one point, but Ian just grinned and acknowledged the sensation of hovering over the scene, as if observing strangers going through the socially accepted motions. He was as sober as a judge, but he sensed a wooziness in his brain while something hovered on his horizon just out of reach.

He stepped into Alyssa’s small, but tidy foyer, his eyes adjusting to the soft, subtle lamplight in the minimally decorated room. It was empty. Ian blew out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Just as he turned back to say something to his brother he heard a low growl.