Page 1 of Love Is Brewing

PROLOGUE

“You don’t have to do this, Phoebe,” her mother, Grace, said when they walked around the office building they’d be leasing the first of the year.

“Yes,” she said. “I do. This is going to be my office right here.”

Her mother laughed as she looked into the large room. “Biggest office for the boss.”

“That’s right,” she said proudly. “I’m going to be the boss here.” She was rubbing her hands together in excitement. Better for her mother to see that than the fear of this change.

She'd spent a lot of her life hiding those fears and doubts.

“You’ve been the boss of the house since we were kids,” her older brother, Matt, said.

She smirked. “I had to be with two older brothers.”

Only she and Matt were attorneys like their parents. Her oldest brother, Ben, was a brewmaster for Fierce Brewery.

Sometimes she wished she had dared to go out alone to do her thing.

Now at thirty, that’s what she was going to do.

Not rely on her family name and practice, but prove she had what it took and wasn’t just a pretty face.

“You held your own,” her father said, walking down the hall to look into what would be her office. “And you’ll do it here too. The contractors are on their way. This location is great. Plenty of space to add more attorneys soon enough. You’ll need staff too.”

“I’ve got it all set up,” she said. “I presented this to you both months ago.”

More like close to a year. They had a large firm in Charlotte. One her grandfather started.

She wanted more. She wanted to be the boss, as her mother said.

Not just wait for her time to come when her parents retired and she shared that responsibility with her brother.

“You did,” her mother said. “And you sold us. We have all the faith in the world in you career-wise. I’m more worried about you living in this small town.”

“I’ll admit it has me nervous.” If she couldn’t say that to the people in this room, she’d never make it.

“What are you going to do when you want your sushi or fancy coffee?” Matt asked. “Not like there are a lot of places you can get that here.”

“Guess I’m going to have to learn to make sushi,” she said, grinning.

“That will be the day,” Matt said, snorting. “I’m waiting to see how you handle the first snowfall.”

She gave her brother a little shove. “I researched it all. Southern Pines gets about two inches of snow in January. That's it. Give me a break. I can handle it.”

“By working from home that day,” her father said firmly, staring at her.

She rolled her eyes. There they went again. Babying her.

Not that her father was being sexist like her grandfather had been.

In her grandfather’s eyes, a woman was always behind a man, and a woman attorney was just to look pretty and be a distraction rather than know what the hell they were doing in the good old boy’s club.

Her mother proved her grandfather wrong, but the old bastard would never admit it.

Her father never had that opinion. Thankfully.

But he was still protective of her.

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