Sweet Bitter Honey Read online

  Table of Contents

  Books by Liz Crowe

  Title Page

  Legal Page

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Trademark Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Read more from Liz Crowe

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  About the Author

  Books by Liz Crowe

  Single Title

  FireBrew

  Brewing Passion

  Tapped

  Lightstruck

  Conditioned

  Adjunct Lovers

  Gravity

  Infusion

  SWEET BITTER HONEY

  LIZ CROWE

  Sweet Bitter Honey

  ISBN # 978-1-78651-704-3

  ©Copyright Liz Crowe 2019

  Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill ©Copyright February 2019

  Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

  Pride Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2019 by Pride Publishing, United Kingdom.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.

  Pride Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.

  One + one + one more = perfection.

  Ryan Shannon’s life has finally hit a smooth patch. He’s reached the point where he believes he’s mastered the single-dad challenge. He brews beer and owns his own brewery with his brother, Quinn. The brewery is so successful they need to hire someone to manage their burgeoning sales.

  When Quinn surprises him with the announcement that he’s fallen in love with someone and she has a brother—a hot brother—named Cole, Ryan is sceptical of the setup. But Quinn begs him to join them for a dinner so that his girlfriend won’t worry about her brother feeling left out.

  After one hookup, Cole claims he isn’t interested in anything more. Which is when Ryan hires the brewery’s new sales director—Lynette Williams, a woman fresh out of MBA school with plenty of debt, desperate to find her own way in life.

  That’s when things really get complicated. Not to mention very…very hot.

  They all claim that their connection is nothing more than really great sex. But Ryan, Cole and Lynette find themselves depending on one another in ways they never imaged they’d want or need—or ultimately love.

  Dedication

  To my ever-patient friend, editor and advisor, Rebecca.

  Trademark Acknowledgements

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson

  Batman: Time Warner, Inc.

  Bell’s: Bell's Brewery, Inc.

  Bluetooth: Bluetooth Special Interest Group

  Catcher in the Rye: J. D. Salinger

  Chapstick: Pfizer Inc.

  Craigslist: Craigslist Inc.

  Dogfish Head: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

  Ford: Ford Motor Company

  Frisbee: Wham-O Toys Inc.

  Gremlins: Amblin Entertainment

  Harry Potter: J. K. Rowling

  Hopped Up lager: Deluxe Brewing Company

  Humvee: AM General LLC

  IHOP: Dine Brands Global Inc.

  Jeep: FCA US LLC

  La Fin du Monde: Sapporo Breweries

  LEGO: Lego System A/S

  LEGOLAND: Lego System A/S

  Lifetime: A&E Television Networks, LLC

  LinkedIn: Microsoft Corporation

  McDonald’s: McDonald's Corporation:

  Moonlighting: Disney–ABC Domestic Television

  Nurse Ratchet: Ken Kesey

  Of Mice and Men: John Steinbeck

  Oprah: Harpo Productions, Inc.

  Optimus Prime: Hasbro, Inc.

  Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen

  Ray-Ban: Luxottica Group S.p.A.

  Red Bull: Red Bull GmbH

  Stone Brewing: Stone Brewing Company

  The Blind Side: Michael Lewis

  The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald

  The Old Man and the Sea: Ernest Hemmingway

  The Stand: Stephen King

  The Tipping Point: Malcolm Gladwell

  Toy Story: Walt Disney Pictures, Inc.

  Wonder Woman: Time Warner, Inc.

  Chapter One

  A strange, thin wail broke through Ryan’s fog of exhaustion. He pulled the pillow over his head and willed the bizarre dream out of his subconscious. His body ached from his hair to his toenails, a familiar feeling from the days when he used to work out daily to improve at his scholarship sport. But the weak noise got stronger, piercing his eardrums and making his heart pound with a newly familiar anxiety.

  He rolled onto his stomach, breathing in a lung full of the ubiquitous scent of brewery. The ever-increasing noise, now a distinct shriek of fury, and the smell of his life working as an assistant brewer for the Charleston Brewing Company all clashed around in his half-dreaming state. When the brain-numbing shrieking stopped, as if a switch had been flipped, he sat straight up, his newfound radar pinging.

  Throwing off the covers, he stumbled over boots and jeans jumbled at the bedside and nearly broke a toe on the doorjamb in his haste to get out of the room. “Shit! Fuck! Hell! Goddamn it!” He hopped down the hall and slid to a stop outside the second bedroom door.

  “Ryan James Shannon, I did not raise you to curse like a sailor.” His mother stood, cradling a small bundle in he
r arms, frowning at him. She was fully dressed, made up and coiffed the way she always had been for as long as Ryan could remember, even at this ungodly hour. “You’ll hurt the poor wee man’s ears.” She snuggled the impossibly tiny infant against her cheek. “Isn’t that right, young James? Papa must watch his language or fear for his immortal soul.” She frowned at him once more when she passed him in the hall on her way to the kitchen, crooning singsong nonsense into his son’s ears.

  His son.

  Ryan slid down the wall, covering his eyes, ignoring the piles of half-packed boxes and general chaos that ruled his world. The room reeked of shit and sour milk. In the six weeks since he’d walked into that hospital a single man and walked out a single dad, he’d operated on less sleep and more stress than he’d ever experienced in his entire existence. But a renewed sense of purpose kept propelling him forward. A bizarre, almost counterintuitive feeling of empowerment had filled him from the moment the small boy had been handed over, along with a mind-boggling hospital bill. It had kept him buoyant and focused. For that, he would be eternally grateful.

  Although he’d be the first to admit that this whole newborn-baby thing was a nightmare of the highest order. The second he’d realized that the doctor who’d called him that morning was not kidding, that he was not being punked by a fellow beer slinger from the pub where he worked, he’d experienced two simultaneous emotions—terror and elation. When he’d held his son for the first time, all awkward elbows and hands and fear, and looked into the child’s deep blue eyes, a calm had settled over his nerves. Until he’d got the kid home, of course, and the crying had started and had not ceased until Ryan’s mother raced to their rescue after his brother, Quinn, broke the news.

  “Ryan,” his mother called out over the baby sounds of bottle consumption.

  He looked up from an apparent nap on the floor into her eyes. She smiled. “Go on, son, get a few more hours’ sleep. I’ve got our little man here. We’ll be just fine, won’t we, my fine boy?”

  To her credit, Moira Shannon had asked no questions when presented with her third grandson. She’d been missing the twins since Quinn’s ex had decamped to California with them. Ryan’s mother had walked in the door of his miniscule apartment, put down her suitcase and held out her arms for the baby. While he packed up in preparation for the trip back to Michigan, Ryan let her take over. He had to—he had absolutely no knowledge of what to do and had bungled making bottles—too hot—and changing diapers—too wet—to the point that the kid was red at both ends and had cried so much he’d been hoarse by the time of the Grandma rescue.

  He drifted off, letting his fevered brain calm for a few more moments, replaying the doctor’s words the second he’d walked into the neonatal intensive care unit. ‘Mr. Shannon, meet your son,’ the man had said without a single shred of irony. ‘He needs a name, and I need to know who will be responsible for this bill.’ The nurses had been a bit more sympathetic and let Ryan hold the baby—too small to come home for at least a couple of weeks, but by all expensive testing accounts, healthy.

  ‘Jamie,’ Ryan had whispered, still in shock that day. ‘James Quinn Shannon,’ he’d recited to the woman writing it all down and making it official. He’d stood and stared down at the boy for what felt like hours when one of the nurses had gowned and gloved him and handed his son into his arms.

  He’d called his younger brother, Quinn, when he’d figured out exactly what this all meant.

  ‘Hey, uh, I need your help.’

  ‘Really,’ Quinn had said. ‘Funny, I keep asking you to come home and help me with this brewery, and you keep saying no. Why would I be inclined to—’

  ‘Shut up a minute, Quinn, and listen. Carrie…I…we…shit.’

  ‘I thought Carrie was long gone. What happened?’

  Ryan recalled the very real sensation of needing to sit down and have a good cry at that precise moment. ‘There is…a baby.’

  ‘Holy shit. Is she, I mean…wow.’

  ‘Yeah. And, no, she is not here. She took off, left my name and number with our…’ He’d had to gulp back emotion. ‘Our son.’

  Quinn had blown out a huge breath then done exactly what Ryan had counted on—taken over. ‘I’ll send Mom,’ he’d said. ‘And some money.’

  ‘I’ll come home,’ Ryan had blurted out. ‘I’ll work with you at the brewery. I’ll do whatever you need me to do—clean, sell, whatever. I gotta get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d say so, my brother.’ Quinn had laughed, making Ryan both relieved and pissed off—a typical reaction to his brother’s smug perfection, which had also gone a long way toward calming him. ‘And if it took Crazy Carrie dumping a kid in your lap to get you to see the light and get your ass home, well, good for her.’

  Ryan dozed but woke within the hour, his newly discovered intuition telling him something was wrong. Sure enough, his mother was pacing, jiggling and singing to no avail. Jamie would not calm. Ryan strapped on a carrying device that felt like a military-issue parachute but was really a simple baby holder. He plopped the whining boy into it and went out into the early morning light for the long walk that seemed the only thing that would calm the kid lately. By the time he got back, his mother had the kitchen almost packed and a giant breakfast on the table for them both.

  “Thanks, Ma,” he said, kissing her cheek before unhooking the straps and laying Jamie in his crib, still in the carrier but finally asleep. He sat, ate his mother’s famous healthy start-to-the-day-breakfast and smiled, hoping now that he could really begin his life and stop pretending. The moving truck was due the next morning and he was more than ready to get back home, to his brother’s brewery, to start his life over again.

  Chapter Two

  “Damn it, Quinn, I can’t keep up this pace. Not and handle the new distribution contracts and every other thing.” Ryan sucked back more Red Bull then focused on yet another busted piece of equipment. The Ypsilanti Brewing Company that he had joined five years ago, bringing along his nascent commercial brewing experience and infant son, was going gangbusters. So much so he could barely keep up. Neither, apparently, could their existing brewing system, if the way shit kept breaking down was any indication.

  They needed a bigger brewhouse, more fermentation vessels, a bigger cooler. But more than any of that, they needed more warm bodies. He needed another assistant brewer and a cellarman, and someone to get a handle on sales on the back end now that a half-decent pub manager was in place. They had to find someone who’d work as hard as they did, for next to nothing and no insurance, either, at least until they could wrap their heads around that commitment. He groaned and ran a hand through his hair.

  Quinn closed his laptop, stood up and stretched. “I know. I know we need more people, blah, blah, blah. I get it, but you get it, too, right? I can’t afford to bring anyone else into this yet. I’m stretched every month paying the five employees we have. We gotta sell more—”

  Ryan held up a hand. “We won’t sell more, Quinn, not unless someone besides me is managing both the brewery and the sales efforts. Period. And we fire the lame-ass distributor. We have to cut them loose and find a better one while we’re at it.”

  “Ryan, I know you don’t want to accept this, but there is no money right now for another employee. Stop asking me. And you know firing a distributor is practically impossible. Stop making it sound so fucking simple.” Quinn’s dark eyes were hard, angry. Ryan tried to remain calm.

  Ryan knew his younger brother—the man who’d once succeeded at everything he did no matter what—could sense failure breathing down his neck. He’d failed at his first marriage, and he was teetering on the edge of something either really great or terrible with this brewery venture.

  Another thing Ryan realized about Quinn was that he hated being less than perfect at everything, and these last few years had been a pure exercise in seat-of-the-pants learning curves, mistakes and screwups. All while he attempted to remain a presence in his young sons’ lives from a distanc
e. Ryan had never known his ex-sister-in-law very well, but that was his own fault. He’d kept his distance for years, letting a slow-boil jealousy at Quinn’s apparently successful life—rich stockbroker with a big house, expensive car and nuclear family—drive a wedge between them. The bonus of Quinn scoring a drop-dead gorgeous wife had served as only the hammer to that wedge. The little that Ryan had been able to drag out of him hadn’t given any hint of the real reason for the split other than ‘ongoing, irreconcilable differences’. Which was Quinn-speak for ‘mind your own fucking business and help me with this brewery instead’. So he had.

  He sensed that they were emerging into the light. He had a handle on their strengths and weaknesses, was focusing on three brews they bottled and had plans for one more of them before the year was up. But he needed help, and Quinn needed to make their lazy distributor snap to and start up-selling their product. Traynor Wholesalers was old-school—had too much invested in the macro brews they represented and were a bunch of order takers, not the sales people that Ryan needed to get his new products into the market.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Quinn demanded.

  Ryan put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. It felt beyond strange being the one who was calm, the one who could make the right choices for success, but he was resolved in this thing now. He wanted Ypsi Brewing to take the next step and Quinn was being tight-fisted about another employee when he didn’t need to be.

  “Take off the bean-counter hat a sec, Q. You know as well as I do that someone who really knows how to sell, who can come up with a coherent marketing plan that encompasses both the wholesale and retail side, will be worth every penny. If we troll around up at Eastern Michigan U, I’ll bet we can find a starving MBA grad eager for a paycheck. Right?” He leaned down, trying to catch his brother’s gaze.

  “Yeah.” Quinn shrugged him off, sat and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re right.” He sighed and stared into the middle distance.