Enemies on Tap (Sweet Salvation Brewery 1)

le of the brewery floor. They were going to do it. Despite everything, they were really going to make the brewery profitable.

“Thought you were nuts.” Sean stood beside her, his normal grimace replaced with a neutral look. That translated to practically an ear-to-ear grin for him. At six-foot-one with a barrel chest and a close-trimmed beard, the taciturn assistant brewmaster wasn’t known for his exuberance.

“Be still my heart. You think I’m sane now?” She laid on her long-dormant Southern accent extra thick and batted her eyelashes for comic effect.

Not a muscle in his face moved. “Didn’t say that.”

Mirada let out a laugh. “You’re the oldest and grumpiest twenty-eight year old I’ve ever met.”

He lowered the bill of his Sweet Salvation Brewery cap. “Thanks.”

After a week spent cleaning the brewery from the front office to the back door, she and the assistant brewmaster had formed an alliance of sorts. He backed up her changes to the staff with his silent-but-solid presence, and she prodded him into longer and longer sentences each day. The other day, while they and three other staff members had been working to clean the walk-in cooler, she’d asked about the difference between Amarillo, Fuggle, and Sterling hops. He’d spoken for two minutes straight about aromas, alpha acids, beta acids, and growing locations. Then he’d launched into an explanation about how alpha acids acted as precursors to beer bitterness. Beta acids, on the other hand, were only a little bit bitter, he’d said, and typically lost their bitterness during the brewing process. The monologue had stunned the staff into silence.

Miranda peeked into the walk-in cooler, now organized and sparkling, which only went to show just how damn empty it was when it should be bursting with boxes of dried green flowers.

“So where are we with the hops?”

A horn blared, and Sean nodded in the direction of the loading dock, which had been refinished and stained. “Should be them.”

Thank God. In between cleaning and renovating, she’d been lining up restaurants, bars, and stores willing to carry a new line of beer. She had a meeting with the Boot Scoot Boogie management soon. It wouldn’t be easy to get them to bring on Sweet Salvation beers, not with the slipshod operation Uncle Julian had run the brewery and handled accounts, but she had to make it happen. And when they did sign, she wasn’t going to blow it by not being able to fill their beer orders due right in time for the holiday season. And if the people of Salvation didn’t need an extra beer or twelve on hand when they were stuck elbow-to-elbow with family arguing about football and the proper way to make stuffing, she didn’t know when they would.

The late October breeze swirled the leaves scattered across the wooden loading dock that stuck out about three feet outside the large rolling door that looked like a garage door on steroids. The driver backed the delivery truck decorated with the green and gold Gulch City Brews logo up to the edge of the planks before getting out and jumping up onto the dock.

The timbers groaned and swayed under his feet.

Miranda reached out to him, but it was a hair’s breadth too late. The wood posts holding up the dock tilted to the right and the whole thing tumbled down like a slinky on a staircase. The driver landed in a heap on top of the pile.

Sean jumped down the three-foot drop and hauled the driver into a standing position.

“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Miranda scrambled into the fray, picking her stepping spots carefully so as to not bite it.

The driver brushed off his pants and jacket. “It’ll definitely leave a mark, but I’ll live.” He had a pair of leaves stuck in his hair, but otherwise didn’t have a scratch on him—at least not one she could see, and she wasn’t about to do a strip search.

Relief slackened the tension pulling her shoulders tight. “Thank goodness. Is there anything you need? Anything we can do?”

“Well, I’d suggest getting that dock fixed.”

Which was exactly what she’d asked Carl to do on Tuesday. “Where’s Carl?”

“Outside.” Sean pulled the driver up onto the landing.

She pulled the assistant brewmaster aside and lowered her voice. “Make sure he’s okay and get folks moving on unloading those hops. For what we had to pay out for those little buds, I won’t be able to breathe until they’re safe in our cooler.”

“Where you going?”

“The OK Corral.” Time for a showdown with her mutinous brewmaster. She’d tried nice. She’d tried all business. She’d tried cajoling. Now, it was time to try bitch with big brass balls.

While the rest of the crew worked their asses off, Carl was exactly where he’d spent most of his time this week —lounging in the outdoor employee picnic area, a dented soda can full of tobacco spit in one hand and a view of the Hamilton River in front of him. There was no way he didn’t hear her cross the gravel parking lot to get to him. Still, he didn’t bother to glance her way, keeping his gaze locked on the slow-moving water.

It was one thing to be a difficult person to work with, but laziness and a bad attitude made a dangerous combination. She marched in front of him, blocking his view and forcing him to look at her. “I asked you to stabilize and refinish the dock on Tuesday so we’d be able to accept delivery of the hops we just spent a huge portion of our budget on. The dock just crumbled underneath a driver from Gulch City Brews here to deliver the hops. We’re lucky as hell that he didn’t get seriously injured.”

Carl rolled his shoulders. “It’s not like he fell into the Grand Canyon. He’ll live.”

“That’s not the point.” She smacked her palm down on the table hard enough to make her skin sting. “If you aren’t with us in turning this place around, then you’re against us, and there’s no place for you here.”

He thunked the can down on the table, splashing a few drops of foul-smelling brown liquid onto her hand. Hate and a little touch of something crazy burned in his narrowed eyes. “You think you can fire me?”

“I know I can. My sisters and I own the brewery.” The hairs on the back of her neck pricked up, but she wasn’t about to back down to Carl. First the grandstanding when he and a few others tried to intimidate her from walking into the brewery, his refusal to help with the renovations this week, and now the dock. He was a bully and a lazy SOB, and she’d put up with enough of his shit. “Clean out your office, Carl. You’re fired.”