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.