Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
I could. But every time I tried to envision doing it—picking up the phone or going over there after I’d fired him, I couldn’t do it. Matt would know exactly how much I needed that recipe and what it meant to me. I wasn’t going to ask Matt for the recipe; if the cost of my pride was losing it, so be it.
I’d told him I didn’t need him. If I went over there now and asked him to bail me out, it would just be proving him right. I could do this without him. Right? I would have given anything to feel a resounding answer in my chest—in my gut—Yes, you’re in control, you can run this business just as well as you can brew beer.
But there was a part of me that didn’t entirely believe it. I wanted to—God, did I want to—but the hollowness in my chest, the clench of my stomach—argued back. You’ve never done this without a brewmaster—not at this scale.
In the beginning, I’d barely had a taproom or business, selling just enough beer to break even, Ford’s well-timed infusions of cash keeping my head above water until I’d gained just enough of a foothold to afford hiring a real brewmaster who could teach me what I didn’t know. That had been Matt.
And now that I’d booted him out, I was going to have to sink or swim on my own. This is what you wanted; I reminded myself. And it was. I dropped the rag in my hand in surprise as a fist pounded on the metal door to the brewery, my mind going immediately to the intruder the cameras hadn’t caught. My phone was in hand, West’s number on screen, when I heard a familiar voice call out.
“Ave, open up.” My brother Finn. The tension drained out of me, and I pulled the door open to see his often surly face brighten with a smile.
“Hey,” I said, smiling back.
“Did I interrupt?” he asked, walking past me to the taproom.
“No, I’m just...” I looked around. How to explain? “Procrastinating, I guess.”
“I’ve been there,” Finn said with an understanding nod. “I was heading into town for supplies, and I started thinking about that little kitchen you’ve got here. Maybe doing an apple pumpkin fall pop-up thing. After Halloween, maybe?”
“That would be awesome,” I said. Now that Matthew was gone, nothing was stopping us from bringing Finn’s culinary excellence to Sawyers Bend Brewing. “The kitchen isn’t much.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve seen it. I’ve worked in worse. Anyway, we’re not talking about a full menu at this point.”
I tilted my head to the side and studied Finn’s face. Since he’d come home, we’d seen many evolutions of Finn: surly and angry, not unlike the teenager he’d been years ago. Then, after he took over the kitchen at Heartstone Manor, a settled, focused, creative Finn had emerged. He still had a temper and an attitude when he was annoyed, but I felt like, for the first time in our lives, I was seeing the real him. And I liked him.
I’d always loved my siblings, but liking is different. This new Finn made me regret all the years he’d been away from home, but I suspected he’d needed that time to become the man he was now. Since he’d fallen in love with our housekeeper, Savannah, and married her, he’d become a father to her young son, another role I’d never thought I’d see my rebellious brother fill, but he filled it happily, loving both of them so much it radiated whenever they were together.
The side of Finn’s mouth quirked up, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah, just pop-ups for now, but, and I’m not horning in on your brewery, Ave, I swear. I know how you are about this place. But, you know, we own the land next door, right?”
“I didn’t,” I said, surprised. There was a parking lot on one side of the brewery, and on the other side, a small lot with a ramshackle building that until recently had sold generic tourist crap. Sawyers Bend had a lot to offer in that area, and generic didn’t cut it. The tenant, a transplant from Florida who thought selling cheap junk would be easy, had packed up and left a year before. The place was growing more decrepit by the day.
“I was thinking,” he said, gesturing to the far side of the bar, “on this side of the building, the taproom is almost on the property line. If you wanted—” He raised two hands fending off the protest he thought was coming. “Only if you wanted, we could talk to Griffen about tearing down that building and extending your taproom and the kitchen.”
I closed my eyes, letting the image Finn had described sink in. The small kitchen off the taproom was on the side of the building that abutted the property in question. Finn’s proposal would work. I could see it, the way the stone and beam architecture of the taproom could extend into a dining room.