Hollywood on Tap (7 page)

Natalie shoved against her desk with more force than necessary, freeing her chair and rolling herself halfway across the office in the process. “We’re just talking business.”

“At his house,” Olivia teased.

“Yes.” Natalie got up from her chair and walked over to where the folder had fallen.

“At his house?” Miranda asked.

God, they were like the Greek chorus standing just offstage with no purpose other than to bust her chops and remind her of where her own thoughts had been drifting ever since Sean had proposed meeting.

“Yes.” She swept the papers back into the folder, not even bothering to ensure they were properly arranged, and shoved it back onto her desk.

“At his house.” This time her sisters said it together, as in sync as if they stood shoulder to shoulder instead of on opposite coasts.

Natalie inhaled a deep breath. “Repeating the location won’t change the fact that that it’s only a business meeting.” She yanked open her middle drawer and pulled a Tums bottle from her alphabetically arranged first–aid supplies.

“Uh–huh.” Miranda nodded her head in mock seriousness. “A, ahem, business meeting with the hot brewmaster at his house, after hours, alone. Yep, that totally sounds on the up and up. Maybe I should call Ruby Sue and see what she thinks?”

Natalie almost dropped the bottle of Tums as she was shaking out the prescribed two tablets into her palm. The town of Salvation loved nothing more than to flap their gums about the Sweet family. It had been that way since the dawn of time, but she’d never been at the center of it. She’d been too quiet and boring for that.

“We’re just giving you shit.” Miranda hurried over, wrapped an arm around her shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with us.”

“It’s not a secret.” Natalie relaxed against her sister. “It’s just a business meeting.”

She ignored the fizzy feeling in her stomach and the extra lightness in her lungs because it was just a business meeting. She popped the Tums in her mouth.

Really. That’s all it was.

With Hailey, Natalie had finally found a kindred soul in the world of organization. Flicking her fingers across the color–coded and alphabetized personnel files in the brewery office manager’s vanilla–scented front office, the staccato beating of her heart had smoothed out to a steady rhythm. Her vision lost the blurry haze around the edges and her shoulders inched their way down from her earlobes.

This morning’s events had been a close call in more ways than one.

The files she’d pulled shook in her hands.

“Here, let me take those before you send everything flying.” Hailey swept the files from Natalie’s grasp and set them down on her desk. “Now you’ve got files for everyone who’s been fired—that’s the red tab—or quit—that’s the blue tab—in the last year.”

Pulling herself back to the present, Natalie ran through her mental checklist. “What about anyone who’s been written up or suspended?”

“Green tab.” Hailey pulled open a filing cabinet drawer without even having to look first. “Only one of those.” She grabbed a thick folder and handed it to Natalie.

Someone had written the name at the top of the file in precise block letters: Sean O’Dell.

Natalie blinked rapidly in surprise. She looked up at Hailey’s determinedly blank face. “Really?”

“Oh yeah.” Hailey snorted jeeringly. “He and the last brewmaster had their moments.”

Carl Brennan, the old brewmaster, was a real piece of work. He’d been so pissed off when Uncle Julian left the brewery to her and her sisters that he’d tried to run Miranda off the road after she’d fired him. The fact that Natalie hadn’t thought of him already as being the possible cause for the breweries troubles just went to show how out of her element she was. “Is he still in jail or has he made bail?”

Hailey nodded. “Yep, the judge wasn’t messing around when she set his bail and his family doesn’t have that kind of money.”

Natalie’s stomach sank. So much for her number one suspect. “Family?”

“Yep, his wife, Joni, is a stylist down at Pig Tails Salon.”

A pissed–off spouse who had knowledge of the brewery’s workings? That sounded like a possible suspect to her. “Did Joni ever work at the brewery?”

“Nah, she came to visit every once in a while, but she’s a teetotaler.” Hailey’s narrow shoulders shuddered. “How she manages that, I have no idea. If I was married to that man, I’d be using whiskey instead of milk in my cornflakes every morning.”

“Thanks, Hailey.” Natalie gathered her stack of personnel files and headed out the door.

An hour later, her vision blurry from going through so many files in her office, she glanced up at the clock. Five–fifteen. At this time of year, dusk was giving up its foothold on the horizon to full dark, and judging by the lack of chatter filtering in through her open door, most of the crew had left already.

Miranda had hit the road with her fiancée, Logan, a half hour ago to go check out wedding reception venues. They’d picked April Fool’s Day for their wedding date—a testament to the Sweet family’s reputation in Salvation.

Normally, Natalie was pulling out of the parking lot by 5:05, but Sean’s file alone had taken her a half–hour to read through. Unlike the others, that file was a mess. Hiring documents were out of order and half filled out. The W–2 was missing. There wasn’t much in it at all if she didn’t count the many warnings written by Carl with the word “overturned” in her Uncle Julian’s cramped scrawl at the top of the page.

Glancing down at Sean’s contact sheet, she memorized his address and then closed the manila folder, the sound amplified by the silence around her. Her pulse revved inside her like a race car waiting for the green light. Of course she wasn’t alone. Hailey didn’t usually leave until after six. Same with Clyde, who was determined to fix the fermentation tank tonight. Still, she knew Sean was gone, and despite the fact that she shouldn’t feel better when he was around—she did. Somehow he’d moved into a spot that she hadn’t realized was empty and filled it perfectly.

With deliberate care, she ran her fingers across the pearl necklace’s smooth orbs, closed her eyes and breathed in a calming breath.

After three ten–second inhales and exhales, she opened her eyes.

Ignoring the apprehension buzzing quietly in her mind, she opened the desk’s bottom drawer and retrieved her purse. Crossing to the door, she made an extra effort to maintain her normal pace, and not one footstep faster.

She wouldn’t fall prey to old habits. The amped–up breathing. The jittering that shook her inside and out. The tightness in her chest, squeezing her heart nearly in two. It had been too long, and she’d been doing so well.

Stop acting so silly.

Everything’s fine.

However, as she strode down the hall, keeping a tight grip on her purse’s shoulder strap, the anxiety remained. It was weak and muffled, like a bee trapped under a glass dome, but still it fluttered in the pit of her stomach. It was only a quick five–minute drive to Sean’s house. All she had to do was get there.

Chapter Seven

The smell of burnt popcorn overwhelmed every cubic inch of air in Sean’s kitchen and living room. While his converted firehouse home was drafty enough that a continuous breeze swept across the exposed brick walls and over the hardwood floors, it was no match for the stench.

“Great,” he muttered to himself as he threw open the window over the sink.

The night’s chill rushed in, freezing the hairs inside his nose, and he shoved the window closed again. As soon as he did, the stink hit him square in the face. He was weighing the benefits of freezing versus being a mouth–breather when the doorbell dinged.

He whipped around and stared at the front door.
She
probably never burned popcorn. Hell, she probably hand–popped her own organic kernels in something vintage for the prescribed five–point–two minutes.

Diiiiiiiiiing!

Longer this time. As though she knew he was inside trying to stuff the last pair of dirty Jockey shorts under the bed. In reality, he’d rolled all the clothes from his floor into a ball and crammed them into the dryer fifteen minutes ago. God, he was pathetic. It was as if his life had turned into a chick flick and he was the permanently friend–zoned, no–nuts whiner character.

Well, he hadn’t played that kind of guy when he was in Hollywood, and he sure wasn’t going to start now. Pulling his head out of his ass, he marched over to the front door and yanked it open.

Natalie stood shivering in the soft glow of his front porch light, hopping from foot to foot. “Thank God, I thought you were ditching me again.”

“Nope.” He stepped back so she could enter, feeling suddenly warmer despite the cold wind following her inside.

“Wow. This is not what I expected.” She completed a full circle in the middle of his great room. “Not at all.”

Sean looked around the converted firehouse, with its cavernous great room that flowed into the kitchen without any interior walls, and all he saw was work. He’d painstakingly finished the hardwood floors and filled in the brick’s mortar where time had chipped it away, but his mental to–do list went on for several pages.

She brushed her palm across the uneven, exposed brick walls. “These are awesome.”

Having seen her pristine, white, dirt–never–stood–a–chance office, he had a hard time believing the unfinished, raw house did anything other than give her the heebie–jeebies. “They’re the original firehouse walls. Same with the metal staircase that goes up to the loft.”

“But not the floors,” she mused.

Sean looked down at the still shiny hardwood floors. Each board represented the best money he’d ever spent on therapy—also the only money he’d ever spent on therapy. “I added them. It was just concrete before.”

“It’s beautiful.” She turned on the full force of her brighter–than–a–Klieg–stage–light smile. “But it’s missing something.”

“An air freshener,” he quipped.

“Nothing kills burned popcorn smell but time. I know that from personal experience.” She laughed. “No, you’re missing a fireman’s pole. This was the old East County Firehouse, right?”

“Yeah, Ruby Sue bought it at auction. I’m renting it from her. It never had a pole.”

“That’s too bad, I would have loved to have given it a try.”

Just the mental picture of Natalie sliding down the pole with her skirt flying up was enough material to fill the spank bank for a decade.

He clenched his jaw so tightly it made his temples ache.
Down, boy. She’s your boss. The one who wants to change everything about the brewery. Plus she doesn’t even like you, let alone want to sleep with you.

His stubborn dick ignored the advice as he stood by the closed front door and watched her stroll around the open space, looking as if she fit right in.

Stopping next to the big–screen TV he never turned on, she shrugged off her puffy winter coat, revealing a pale–blue cardigan with a row of tiny buttons sparkling in the light. Sean jammed his hands into his jeans pockets to keep from reaching out for her.

He’d never understood the naughty librarian thing some guys had—not until he met Natalie Sweet.

All he wanted to do was unwrap her.

Still scoping out the space, she laid her coat over the back of his slate–gray couch, put her hands on her hips, and inhaled a deep breath. The move stretched her soft cardigan enough that her buttons deserved hazard–duty pay.

And he thought he’d been hard before. There were forests with less wood than he sported in his jeans right now.

“I don’t want to freak you out, but I have paperwork for you.” She nodded toward her tan leather satchel she’d set on the floor. “But let’s talk about what’s going on at the brewery first.”

Everything hard behind his zipper started to deflate. Nothing like a little bad–news reality to get rid of a raging hard–on. Someone with insider–level knowledge of the Sweet Salvation Brewery was behind the trouble. He knew it like he knew the smell of fresh hops.

“I need a beer for this.” He rubbed his forehead. “Want one?” He crossed the open great room to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

“Sure, thanks.”

He reached past the recently released Sweet Proposal Ale and grabbed two unlabeled, brown long–neck bottles. Watching Natalie unpack a notebook and three pens from her bag, he popped the caps and strolled over to the couch.

He set the bottles on the refurbished pallet coffee table next to her stuff. “Something I’m working on.”

“For the brewers invitational?” She picked it up and took a long, slow drink. Her eyes closed and she savored the dark brew.

Sean’s mouth went dry and he sat down beside her. “Yep. A stout.”

“This is good.” She held up the bottle in a toast.

“But not great.” He’d been working on the recipe for months. The dark stout’s flavoring emphasized the slightly sour notes produced by the dry–roasted malt and burnt–caramel bitterness, but it was missing something. What that thing was, he didn’t have a fucking clue.

Natalie took a second swig and then her pink tongue darted out to capture a dot of creamy foam from her lip. “I don’t know, I might argue with you on that point.”