Sassy Blonde (Three Chicks Brewery 1)

Prologue

Maisie Carter followed her two older sisters, Clara and Amelia, out of the big, white, colonial-style house, the gravel driveway crunching under her pink Converse, and the blistering hot sun above promising a beautiful day. Clara was all the things Maisie wasn’t. Responsible. Organized. Dependable. Not that Maisie didn’t try to be those things, but she always came up short. Amelia’s personality had always fallen smack dab between Clara’s buttoned-up ways and Maisie’s free spirit. Amelia was definitely the most well-adjusted.

Maisie stayed a step behind as they headed toward the black barn that once belonged to their beloved grandfather, Pops. He’d passed away a month ago, leaving the farm, an idea for a brewery, and all his savings to the three sisters. A blessing, for sure, and not an unexpected one either. Their grandfather had raised them after their parents died in a fiery car crash. Maisie had only been four months old. Amelia was two, and Clara four. None of them remembered their parents, and maybe that was a good thing. The loss didn’t feel so great, not when they’d been raised by their father’s doting parents. A heart attack had stolen their grandmother away five years go. And a month ago, Pops had gone too.

Maisie missed her grandparents. Even now, when Pops’s last wish had created a dark cloud over Maisie’s life. She was an artist and never wanted to own a brewery, but she’d always kept that thought to herself.

Hindsight was a bitch.

“How long until the beer is ready?” Clara, their oldest sister, asked Amelia. Clara had long, reddish-brown hair that she wore in a tight ponytail most days, and a good three inches of height on Maisie. She was pretty in a very elegant way. Her fine features and full lips belonged on an old Hollywood movie screen.

Next to her, Amelia answered, “Weeks away still. I’m close to getting the formula right, but something is still missing.” The sunlight picked up the natural golden highlights in Amelia’s hair. At twenty-six years old, and with her ginger-colored hair and freckles dusting her nose, Maisie would argue that Amelia was the prettiest sister.

Both her sisters took after their mother with the reddish hue in their hair. Maisie didn’t have a drop of red in her blond hair. Even physically, she was their opposite, the outcast, the one in the family who didn’t actually belong. Clara and Amelia had always been cut from the same cloth. Maisie had always been…different. Even now, as she walked behind them while they planned the future of their craft brewery, she knew that while she owned one-third of the business, no one really expected her to put much into the company…besides designing the logo. Which she’d done as soon as they’d come up with the name: Three Chicks Brewery. Pops had always called them the three chicklets, a spin-off from the Three Musketeers. The name felt right, and she used the old Charlie’s Angels logo as inspiration for the design, drawing her and her sisters each holding a beer bottle, with the name in calligraphy. But this company belonged to Clara and Amelia, and everyone knew it.

The business plan was simple: Clara, with her business degree, would handle all of the logistics of running the brewery. Amelia had become a brewmaster last year after finishing a program in Denver and was adjusting their grandfather’s homemade brew for market to a larger audience. And Maisie…well, she was the third wheel, the one who had a stake in the business, but was completely and totally out of her league.

When they entered the barn, Maisie followed, greeted by cobwebs, an old straw floor, and a moldy scent mixed with thick dust. A loud war scream echoed in the barn, and a blur of light brown hair and bright green eyes rushed by.

Clara’s four-year-old son, Mason, charged forward, a fake sword in his hands, while he ran to hunt and kill the monsters in the barn.

“Please don’t hurt yourself, buddy,” Clara called to him before she addressed Amelia again. “I’ve got the construction crew coming out tomorrow to begin demolition.”

Maisie laughed as Mason attacked a wooden beam like a fierce warrior. Her nephew had two speeds—super and torpedo. He never sat down. Ever. Maisie stayed by the open double doors, leaning against the frame, having nothing to add. She didn’t know a thing about running a brewery. She knew how to mix colors to create perfect hues. How to use a pencil shading to bring a drawing to life. How to see beauty and replicate it. Before Pops passed away, she’d just finished her art major. In fact, she’d been days away from asking Clara to go into business with her. Maisie wanted to open her own art studio, selling her art and teaching children and adults how to draw. She wanted to host paint nights. She wanted to inspire people to dream, to create, to live their passion. But then Pops died, leaving them the property, along with a letter indicating he wanted them to use the money to open a brewery like he and her sisters had always talked about. He also left a personal letter to each of them.

Only problem, Pops didn’t know that Maisie didn’t want anything to do with the brewery. She had her own dreams.

“You look miserable.”

Maisie smiled and turned to find her favorite person in the world, Laurel Taylor, her best friend since the first grade. Laurel was a little taller than Maisie and had honey-blond hair that reached the middle of her back, but it was her soft green eyes that welcomed a person in. She had the kindest eyes Maisie had ever seen. So full of love. Maisie hugged Laurel tight before she said, “I didn’t know you were coming by.”

Laurel gestured over her shoulder. “We were visiting Hayes’s dad, so I wanted to stop by before we head back home. Just missing you.”

Maisie hugged her again. Even tighter. “I’m missing you too.” She noted Hayes sitting in the driver’s seat of his black car. Hayes had whiskey-colored eyes and was a rough-around-the-edges kind of man, with slightly wavy chocolate-brown hair that was cut short on the sides and longer on top. Laurel and Hayes had been together since Laurel was eighteen. Back then, it had been a bit of a scandal since Hayes was twenty-four. But everyone saw how in love they were, an

d even their parents finally got over the big age gap. Maisie had always been happy for them, until Hayes received a job offer from the Denver Police Department and they moved away from their hometown of River Rock.

Maisie waved, and Hayes waved back as Laurel asked, “When are you going to tell them you don’t want to do this?”

Maisie cringed. “How about never?”

Laurel frowned, crossing her arms over her mauve tank top. She glanced into the barn, obviously making sure Clara and Amelia couldn’t hear her before she said, “You need to be honest with your sisters. Everything is in the planning stages right now. Tell them you want your cut of what your grandfather left to open the art studio like we talked about. I’ll buy that quaint coffee shop right next door and drive from Denver every day. We’ll finally see our dreams come true.” Those had been their dream jobs since they were in the seventh grade. Their plan.

Maisie’s heart hurt. “I can’t pull out money from the brewery before they even get it going. Pops left everything so this dream could happen for them. What kind of horrible person would I be if I went back on his wishes?”

Laurel unlocked her arms and took Maisie’s hand. “Okay, that’s fair, but ask yourself this: Would Pops have left all this money for the brewery if he knew your heart wasn’t really in it?”

“Probably not,” Maisie said. He would have ensured Maisie fought for her dreams too.

Laurel gave a firm nod of agreement. “All I’m saying is, your sisters have their dreams. They’ve always been close like that. Made plans together. Done everything together, like we do everything together. But don’t forget about you and your dreams.”

Maisie threw her arms around Laurel, always feeling like Laurel understood her when no one else did. “You always fight for the best for me. Thank you for that.”

Laurel squeezed back tight, resting her head on Maisie’s shoulder. “You don’t need to thank me, babe. I love you like crazy, and you’d be saying the same thing to me.”

“I love you too,” Maisie whispered.

Those words echoed in the air for a moment, and suddenly, the warmth seeping from Laurel’s hold began to vanish…replaced by something dark…something cold.

She blinked, realizing she was not standing outside with Laurel anymore. She tried to remember how she got back inside her house but failed miserably. Hayes was not sitting in his car waiting for her best friend to return to him. Laurel’s soft voice, her smile…gone. The sun had disappeared, bringing a dark, eerie night. Maisie pressed her hands flat against the cool hardwood floor in the foyer of the house, barely able to drag in breaths. Screams blasted against the walls, until she realized the sounds of pure agony came from her mouth. Her pile of vomit lay next to her, some soaking her nightgown.

She’d just been with Laurel today. They had just talked. Just hugged.

Maisie forced her gaze up. Hayes stared down at her, his expression unreadable, his whiskey-colored eyes were dead…empty. His mouth was moving, but the screams from her mouth wouldn’t stop, the roaring in her ears too loud.

Hands suddenly grabbed her, and Maisie had enough sense to recognize it was her sisters, dragging her away from her vomit.

People began yelling, panic and confusion ripping through the house. Mason stood on the staircase sobbing before Clara ran to him, her nightgown fluttering with the movement.

Time no longer existed, not for Maisie, as Hayes turned and strode out of the house, leaving the front door wide open. He became a blur of navy that faded into the night. Only then did she fully process what he had said.

“Murder. Robbery gone wrong. Laurel…she’s gone.”

1

Two years later…

Maisie’s paintbrush swept across the canvas, mixing the darker green paint in with the lighter, creating depth to the trees of the forest. The sun’s beams warmed her face, the wind swishing the long grasses behind her, while her painting of the sweeping meadow flowed easily. “Not Picasso yet,” she noted, leaning back to admire her work. She caught a hundred things wrong with the painting, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed at home. Few things made her feel content, but replicating the beauty in the world was one of them.

The slight heaviness in her eyelids from waking up at the crack of dawn was worth the spike of happiness painting gave her. She wiped off her paintbrush, tucking her supplies into her tote bag with COOL AF ARTIST written on the side, a present from her sisters for her birthday last year. The last letter from her grandfather peeked out from the bag. She reached for it as she heard the flapping of wings overhead. She unfolded the piece of paper and revealed the quote by Michelangelo: The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

Even after two years, Maisie still didn’t know what Pops meant by this or why he’d chosen this quote as his very last thing to say to her. She’d never asked what Pops wrote in her sisters’ letters, and neither Clara nor Amelia had offered the information up.

Thinking of her sisters, and knowing she had a mile-long to-do list today, Maisie checked the time on her phone that rested on a fallen log next to her.

“Shit!” She jolted up, grabbed her bag and canvas, and took off running. The alarm she’d set to remind her about work hadn’t gone off. Her footsteps were muffled in the grass, but a squirrel ran away from her as she charged up the small hill. When she reached the top, she spotted the long driveway that led to the house and the black barn—now turned into a brewery—off to the right of it.

Prepared for a lecture, Maisie stopped at her MINI Cooper and deposited her tote bag and canvas onto the passenger seat before she hurried into the barn. Rows of huge steel tanks filled the space, with a main walkway that led to a room in the back for tastings. Some days the brewery held a metallic scent. Other days, it smelled earthy. As Maisie sucked in a breath, she realized today, it smelled fruity.

As she made her way through the tanks, she caught sight of Amelia, bent over the rim of a tank. Maisie held her breath and tiptoed past. Amelia must have been brewing last night and was now cleaning out the tank. She’d gotten into the habit of brewing Foxy Diva—their top-selling beer that had won over the locals—at night, since the brewery was part of local tours for travelers during the day.

“I see you,” Amelia called.