Real Men Will (Donovan Brothers Brewery 3)

“Excuse me? What did your family ever do for me?”

“The dinners, the introductions, the trips to Aspen…”

“There was one trip to Aspen, and the dinners and everything else were for your benefit.”

“My benefit? What the hell are you talking about?”

Beth didn’t want to say this. Monica might be a bitch, but it wasn’t easy for Beth to deliberately hurt someone’s feelings. Still, there was another condescending laugh lurking just beneath the surface of Monica’s voice. Beth could hear it. “Your dad thought I was a good influence on you. He wanted me around because he didn’t like those snobby girls you were always hanging around with.”

“My sorority sisters? How dare you!”

“Talk to your father,” Beth interrupted.

For a moment, Monica sounded as if she couldn’t get any words out of her throat, but she finally managed, with a vengeance. “Look, you little slut. My father let you latch on to us because he felt sorry for you. You were poor and quiet and always carrying around about thirty too many pounds. You owe us, so you’d better back me up if the police get in touch. Understand?”

Beth hung up. There was nothing left to say. Not to Monica, anyway. She waited, shoulders tense and hands clutched together, but the phone didn’t ring again. Silly that it could hurt to hear those things from someone she neither liked nor respected, but it stung. She had been poor and shy back then, and she hadn’t known how to dress for her figure. Oversize shirts and baggy jeans had been a mistake.

She managed a smile at that understatement. A mistake didn’t begin to cover her fashion choices back then. She’d been hiding. But she’d learned. So screw Monica. College was supposed to be the place where you discovered who you truly were deep inside. Beth had made big strides in college and afterward. Monica hadn’t changed at all.

Not for the better, anyway.

Beth stared down at the phone, feeling that she should do something. She had to do something, didn’t she? A woman who was being investigated by the police had just asked Beth to lie for her. Was Beth an accessory now? She’d never even had a parking ticket.

But she didn’t understand. What could Monica have to do with theft? She was hardly going to climb over security fences in her Manolo Blahniks.

Beth did another Google query for Graham Kendall, but she didn’t find any new details. Then she pulled up the website of the Boulder Police Department. She couldn’t call 911 about something so trivial. But who would she call? The tip line? That seemed melodramatic.

She stared at the phone, biting her thumbnail until she realized what she was doing and forced her hand down.

The thing was…what if part of Monica’s story was true? What if Jamie had taken advantage of her? Would the Donovans even want Beth bringing all this up to the police?

She couldn’t imagine it. The man Beth had met had been outraged over Eric’s lie. Surely, if Jamie Donovan was an immature, arrogant asshole, he would’ve been high-fiving his brother over a good score. Then again, you couldn’t tell what some men were like. Beth knew that from personal experience.

She didn’t owe them anything. Even if she had encouraged Roland Kendall to do business with the Donovans, this wasn’t her fault. Not really. At most, they were even now, she and Eric. He’d lied to her over and over, and she’d…introduced him to a family who’d stolen and lied and dragged the brewery into an international fraud investigation.

“Crap,” she muttered.

She wanted nothing to do with any of this. She certainly didn’t want to talk to Eric again. But now she had information that might affect a police investigation.

“Crap.” She had no choice.

Beth picked up the phone, but she didn’t call the police. She called the brewery instead. Eric wasn’t in, so she asked for his voice mail, even as she wondered if a brewery would have a voice mail system. Somehow, she pictured messages being written down on napkins, but then the phone clicked and Eric’s voice was in her ear.

Beth closed her eyes at the sound. His voice was gruff and deep and sexy, and she was abruptly taken back to Saturday night and her fantasies about him.

Silence rang in her ear and she realized she’d already heard the beep. “Oh, hi. Eric. This is Beth. Cantrell. I wanted to talk to you about something. Um…could you give me a call?” She left her cell number and hung up, accidentally clattering the phone hard against the receiver.

Cringing, she waited. And waited. Ten minutes later, she made herself get back to work. An hour later she told herself to stop worrying. And by the end of the day, she’d put him from her mind. If he never wanted to talk to her again, so be it. Good riddance to bad rubbish. She’d only been trying to help.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ERIC HADN’T PLANNED ON setting foot in the brewery until Tuesday. He’d worked from home instead, making calls and booking hotels for the winter beer fest in Phoenix in November. He didn’t want to talk to his family, and when Tessa finally called, he let it go to voice mail. But by the end of the day, he was pacing the small dimensions of his condo, desperate to get behind his desk and do the last few things on his schedule that he couldn’t do from home.

By six-thirty, he’d decided it was safe. Tessa was likely long gone, and if Jamie was still there, he’d be in the front room. Eric could sneak in, shut his door and work for another hour or two before heading back home.

When he saw neither Tessa’s nor Jamie’s car in the lot, Eric breathed a sigh of relief. Monday was a fairly quiet evening, so they’d left the barroom in the capable hands of Chester, who’d recently been promoted to supervisor to let Jamie spend more time on the restaurant plans.

Eric walked in without worrying he’d run into a family member he owed an apology to, and sat behind his desk with a grim smile. He had fifteen voice mails, but he knew from experience to leave those until he was done with his current worries.