Lightstruck: ( A Contemporary Romance Novel) (Brewing Passion Book 2) Page 5

  “Gotta go,” he said, shoving past Ross. “My woman awaits.”

  “Right,” Ross said, giving him a jaunty salute. “Give the lovely Holly my regards.” He let his hand drop to his crotch, making the brewery staff around him titter. When Brad turned and glared at him, he waved, then returned to his project, forcing a blankness over his mind. So, he wouldn’t think about Holly. The evil, manipulative, bitch.

  “Down boy,” he muttered to his dick as it began to rise to the memory of her. “Made bed. Lying in it now, remember?”

  In the five months since he’d left Evelyn, Austin and baby Rose behind for good, Ross had embarked on what could best be described as a monk-like existence. The quick discussion he’d had with Evelyn—the one he’d promised Austin—had been about as awful as he’d imagined but he’d muscled through it. Keeping a fake, wide smile plastered on his face. Giving her the reassurance that she required.

  Ross is fine.

  Ross is good.

  Ross is in no way about to move to Michigan and play three-way house.

  Despite the fact that he felt cored out, raw on the inside after the discussion knowing he was doing the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. He did it. And he got on a plane and got his job back. Not tough, considering he was the best fucking brewer out here right now. Brad would be a fool to let him go. And of all the things that Brad was—egomaniac, jerk, asshole—fool really wasn’t one of them.

  Ross paused, leaning on the table where he kept his tools, realizing those very words had been used against him, fairly recently. And from the lovely, talented mouth of ‘Brad’s woman’ herself. He shrugged. Chick must have a real masochistic streak, he figured. Jumping from his bed straight into Brad’s.

  “Stop,” he muttered under his breath, as vivid images rose in his brain—Holly’s mouth and what it could do for and to him. “Just fucking stop.”

  He turned back to the pilot system, reforming his plan for it in his head, shoving out all thoughts of Holly, of Evelyn, of women in general out of his aching brain. Two hours later he emerged into the small pub attached to the main brewery, head pounding from the close work he’d been doing, but with a sense of accomplishment he hadn’t felt in years.

  The bartender nodded and poured him one of the new stouts on nitro without asking. Ross mentally tipped his hat to the guy. He knew his shit. He sat, hunched over his beer, ignoring everything and everyone around him. His new M.O.

  After his requisite two beers, he got up and stretched again, noting the various sore spots in his muscles. Part of his improvement plan was to get into the best possible physical shape, so when he wasn’t at work, or asleep, he was at the gym or running for miles along the hills of his newly adopted home. As a result, he was in a constant state of sore—which was good, because it served to distract him from his Spartan, sexless life.

  At least a little.

  He sighed and let his gaze flicker along the bar, noting the various women with a detached, analytic eye. It was an autopilot thing and he knew it. Big difference was, once he would have zeroed in on one, culled her from her chattering group of friends, or even her date for the night and found a spot where they could share some quality alone time.

  That, too, was automatic for him and he felt his skin tingle when he saw a potential target. His usual type—tall, full-figured but not fat—he was a tits man, through and through—tight jeans, long, shining hair that he could tangle his hands in when he fucked her silly. The woman in question laughed, flipped a heavy lock of chestnut hair back, turned as if she sensed his observation of her, meeting his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

  “Stop,” he muttered to himself, turning away and shoving back into the brewery and back into his project, deflecting, distracting, distancing himself as much as possible from the Old Ross. The Old Ross had gotten into that odd, sexy, irresistible situation with Evelyn and Austin and had very nearly lost himself in it.

  No good. The New Ross was completely devoid of emotion, of physical needs below the waist. He had to get control of all that shit or he’d lose his fucking mind over missing her, of missing his friend, of giving up what could have been an amazing life.

  “Hey, you,” he barked at one the many brewery assistants. “Come here and give me a hand with this.”

  He spent the next four hours putting the pilot system back together and not thinking about Evelyn. Not thinking about Holly. Not thinking at all. Which was the whole point, really.

  Chapter Six

  The morning of her interview with Fitzgerald Brewing, Elisa Nagel sat at her tiny kitchen table, wide awake and twitching with nerves. She’d managed three hours of sleep from about one a.m., after trying everything she knew to do to relax—an hour of intensive yoga stretching, a half hour of deep breathing, a cup of a chamomile tea mix she’d concocted herself. Nothing had worked.

  She’d lain under her covers with her eyes wide open as if they were being propped by toothpicks for a solid hour before giving up and going with an old reliable method—a high alcohol IPA she’d made and stored for a year plus one of her dwindling supply of pain killers. The pills were on the verge of expiring but she’d held on to them, almost as a talisman, ever since… Well, no need to ponder that now. She finished her second allotted cup of mild coffee and made another attempt to focus her rattled brain.

  Forward motion, Elisa. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is a big day, but no bigger than any other interview you’ve aced with breweries just as big as Fitzgerald. She stepped over to the sink, washed, rinsed, dried and put her cup away. The sight of the meager contents of the dish cupboard made her pause. As she put the mug alongside its single companion, a rush of memory made her suck in a breath.

  A kitchen, ten times the size of this postage stamp, boasting miles of granite and stainless steel surfaces, the most expensive appliances money could buy, stacks of china, acres of crystal, name brand pots and pans, and—most importantly—the best set of knives any chef might want. All at her disposal every single day. With only one, tiny little string attached.

  She shook her head and turned away from her few belongings. It was how things had to be now. It was better. Because that tiny string might have been made of luxurious red silk but it was attached to something—someone—on the other end. Someone she was still running from, still woke, screaming about, and who, she firmly believed, would find her if she didn’t keep moving forward, on to the next brewery, the next job. Anything, so he couldn’t track her down and drag her back.

  Sighing, she berated herself for the millionth time. Stop living in the past. It’s been ten, almost eleven years. Get over it, as the American teenagers say a lot. Noting the time, she decided that another hour of peaceful stretching might help, so she lit a soy candle, moved the small table from in front of her futon, and unrolled her yoga mat.

  As she took her usual mind-clearing breaths to start, the voice—His voice—intruded again. Louder than usual this time, which made her grit her teeth and muscle through the hour-long practice with tears streaming down her face. She spent a longer than usual time in the shower, crouched in a corner of the small, fiberglass enclosure, willing Him out of her head so she could focus on her job interview until the lukewarm water she’d started with turned cold.

  This was the usual pattern. She’d been through it before, plenty of times. The past almost-eleven years had been full of interview stress, and first-days-on-the job nerves. She’d never not been offered a job, but she had turned down a few. For the jobs she’d taken, once she’d proven her worth as a legitimate brewer, she’d start to feel jittery and begin looking over her shoulder too much. It was always a sign to move on. Like she was doing now, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  “Forward motion, Elisa,” she said to herself in her native German. Then again, in English for good measure, as she applied a bit of powder to her flushed complexion. “You can do this. It’s only assistant brewer. You can do this job with your eyes closed.” The English words felt funny in her mouth but she force
d herself to say them again, doing the mental gymnastics of ongoing translation from German.

  She was excited about the interview, as she always got at this stage of a transition. One of her favorite things to observe was how the interviewer’s eyes would widen at the first sight of her—five foot nothing, with a deceiving slightness of build she kept well hidden under a buttoned-up professional gray pantsuit, the facial jewelry, her visible tattoos, and her unconventional hair. Without fail, said interviewer would glance at her résumé, as if certain her physical actuality didn’t match up with what she’d said about herself on paper.

  It was, as they say, a hoot.

  She smiled at herself in the cracked bathroom mirror, turning her head to make sure she’d covered all evidence of her face’s tendency to blotch red. Running her fingertips along her jaw, she lifted her chin and stared hard at the ink around neck, willing it gone, then acknowledging that it was there for a reason—as a constant reminder of what she’d once believed, whom she’d once trusted.

  The small diamond in left side of her nose caught the light and twinkled. She frowned, touched it then the matching one in her eyebrow, and the line of silver balls in the cartilage of her left ear. If she got this job, she’d need to add something else, she mused, clicking the metal in her tongue against the back of her teeth.

  After a quick inner debate, she tugged the long strands of her hair to the nape of her neck and fastened them together with a scarf. A few stubborn lengths popped free, framing her face. Deciding that softened her appearance a bit, made her somewhat less alarming, she let them stay.

  She’d laid out her interview suit—the familiar gray trousers, sleeveless silk blouse, and short, matching jacket—on her bed hours before. The one pair of shoes she owned that were not work boots or flip-flops were on the floor beside the bed. They were evil—with sharp pointed toes and a five-inch heel that put her a bit closer to most other human beings’ eye level. She sighed and picked them up, recalling the last time she’d worn them.

  That job had held her longer than any other. She’d felt so at home amongst the brewing staff and had been more than content to work as a ‘cellar man’ or beer storage manager. This put her in charge of tracking the beer after it was brewed—a job just as important as any other in a brewery as large as that one. They stored, bottled, canned, packaged and shipped out more beer in one week than some breweries produced in a year. It was a busy, fun job. But she’d left after reading something about a new restaurant opening at one of the new casinos nearby.

  And now, here she was in Michigan. A state well known for the health and robust nature of its craft beer industry and one she’d avoided until now, on purpose, due to its proximity to Chicago. The west coast had felt safest. But He’d found her, anyway. Him and his damnable bourgeoisie, money-printing, celebrity chef franchises.

  She’d given her two weeks’ notice, suffered through a gut-wrenching goodbye party, ignored one of her fellow brewers who’d tried one last time to get her to go out with him, and driven for three days until arriving in Grand Rapids—a city dubbed ‘Beer City USA’ and that housed ten different breweries with plenty of related businesses. Thanks to her innate frugality, she’d come away with a fair bit of money saved. She’d been able to sign a lease, pay an exorbitant deposit on a miniscule flat, and start applying for jobs.

  With a muttered curse at her inability to focus, she stepped out of her short robe and reached for a pair of panties. Avoiding the sight of her body in the mirror, she stepped into them, then fastened a bra around her, tugging up the straps quickly with the usual thought that she was flat-chested enough to forgo this step but it felt improper to not wear a bra to a job interview.

  A glance at her phone’s clock confirmed that if she got all the way dressed now, she’d still have an hour to sit around and stare at the four walls. Too efficient, that was her, to a T. With a sigh, she sat on her bed and pulled her second-hand laptop from the milk crate side table. It opened to the page she’d been studying for a couple of days.

  The Fitzgerald Brewing Company was a successful mid-sized operation, with an attached, full service pub, and distribution in twenty US states. Its production had ramped up fast, and continued to climb until the last couple of years. Now, the market was so saturated with IPAs, stouts, pilsners and Belgians, even reliable breweries like Fitzgerald were having to rethink their strategies.

  She knew that the owner, Austin Fitzgerald, had recently married and that his wife, Evelyn, was the one who’d be conducting her interview today. She sincerely hoped that this Evelyn knew about the business and wasn’t just some kind of acting figurehead replacement for her husband.

  That’s the sort of sexist bullshit thing you should never think. Don’t pre-suppose anything if you don’t want anyone to do it to you.

  She nodded, accepting the inner reminder from her conscience. It had been less berating lately, more supportive. Which was a lovely break from the norm.

  Fitzgerald needed an assistant brewer immediately, according to the ad she’d seen in a trade magazine online. Which worked for her as she was getting tired of draining her savings here in Michigan. This would be her fourth interview in two weeks. And for some reason, this one felt important—fortuitous, fated, even.

  Ridiculous. She shook her head so hard some of her hair escaped from the scarf. It’s just because you’re being interviewed by a woman who co-owns a brewery with her husband. Stop reading anything more into it.

  As she got up and began to dress, her mind wandered to the other website she’d found—the one for the highly recommended piercing studio. She knew that her penchant for poking holes in her body related to a need to feel pain—pain only she controlled, and would inflict herself—but she refused to over-analyze it. She was drawn to it the same way she’d been drawn to beer brewing. And she’d spent too many years of her life denying the things she wanted. Even if they hurt.

  She slipped her arms into the jacket, relishing the soft inner lining against her skin, even as it dredged up memories of silky sheets, soft blindfolds, softer kisses. All of the things that had fooled her, trapped her, and nearly killed her.

  Forward motion, Elisa, the voice snapped. No backward glances. They’re not worth the time spent.

  Elle smiled, realizing that her conscience was starting to sound an awful lot like her beloved Oma, the grandmother who’d spent more time with her than either of her parents or her much older brothers.

  Chapter Seven

  “Come in,” a voice said, after Elle gave a light rap on the office door. It opened, revealing a woman who was about as far from what Elle was expecting as might be imagined. “Hello. You must be Elisa.” The woman rose from her desk and stuck out the hand she wasn’t using to hold a baby.

  “Yes, hello. But please, call me Elle.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m Evelyn Fitzgerald.”

  Elle smiled at her as they shook hands, reminding herself that even as she was squaring the reality of the woman with her own pre-conceived notions, Evelyn was without a doubt doing the same to her.

  “Please, have a seat. I just need to settle her majesty.” Evelyn indicated a large work table that took up one side of the cavernous room. “Can I get you some coffee? Tea? Water?”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  The woman moved with a sort of competent efficiency that Elle envied as she put the baby she’d been holding in a complicated-looking seat contraption. The child let out a blat of noise, then quieted. When Evelyn moved the seat-thing closer to the table, Elle couldn’t resist a peek into the device that was making a steady whirring noise as it rocked gently back and forth. “She looks like you,” she said, running a fingertip along the baby’s plump cheek.

  “Ah, well, she looks more like her fa—” Evelyn stopped abruptly, making Elle glance over at her in surprise then sit back up, still trying to square what she’d expected and what she was seeing.

  “Okay, so,” Evelyn said, sitting down across from Elle. “I hope you d
on’t mind my assistant here.” She indicated the seat.

  Elle smiled, hoping to put the suddenly flustered woman at ease. “Of course not. I think that only Americans get wound up about bringing babies into the workplace. But…” She pointed to Evelyn’s blouse. “I’m afraid that you buttoned up incorrectly.”

  “Oh, crap,” Evelyn said, her lovely face flushing red as she corrected the error. “I probably reek of baby shit and stale milk too.” Her bright blue eyes shimmered for a second until she blinked. “This is…exhausting.”

  “I can imagine,” Elle said. “Take a deep breath. I’m in no hurry.” She glanced into the seat once more, catching sight of a pair of sweetly pursed baby lips. “What is her name?”

  “Rose,” Evelyn said.

  Elle nodded and tried not to stare at the woman across the table. Evelyn Fitzgerald was over six feet tall in her heels with a full, healthy-looking figure that would be expected after having a baby. She was just shy of stunningly beautiful, with her thick blonde hair, deep blue eyes, and the sort of perfectly proportioned facial features that Elle found fascinating. The faint aura of baby—milk with an undertone of lotion and, indeed, a touch of shit—filled the office space.

  Elle glanced over at the huge desk where Evelyn had been sitting, working while feeding her child. It held a giant computer and an open laptop. Both screens were covered in colorful spreadsheets. The chaos of paperwork on the desk rivaled anything Elle had ever seen. But somehow, she had a sense that this woman—Evelyn with her misaligned blouse buttons and model-gorgeous, flushed face—had everything completely under control.

  Elle didn’t know if she was impressed, or insanely jealous in a way she’d never, ever been about another woman.

  “So, Elle,” Evelyn said, jolting her out of her thoughts. “Your background is incredible. You’ve worked at some vastly different breweries.” She tapped Elle’s résumé which lay on the table between them.