Page 47 of Love Is Brewing

“You’ve got this sappy look on your face,” Talia said. “I’ve never seen it on you before, but I’ve seen it on my other brothers that now have wives or fiancées.”

Fuck.

Guess he didn’t hide that as well as he had thought.

“Maybe,” he said.

“And you don’t want me to tell Mom?” she asked.

There was the tilt of his sister’s chin again.

“I’d prefer not since it’s new.”

“What are you willing to pay?” she asked.

He squinted one eye at her. “Brat,” he said. “See. Are you blackmailing me?”

“Noooooo,” she said. “Just want to do more with helping people. Blackmailing is such a nasty word.”

He rolled his eyes. “I told you to give me a plan. That’s letting you do that. And until then, we are going to walk into the plant and you can see how orders are filled and brought out, then given to paying customers.”

“Fine,” she said, bumping her shoulder into his. “I can pretend I don’t know for now.”

Hours later, he was in his office, and his sister was helping fill the orders. She hadn’t put up as big of a stink about it as he’d thought.

He finally got around to reading the text from Phoebe asking how his day was going.

He’d been dying to see her but knew it wasn’t always so easy and they had done little more than a few texts each day since they talked on the phone Sunday.

He was missing her more than he thought he would.

More than he had any other woman he was interested in.

He could talk quicker than text but figured she was busy and replied that he’d like to tell her about his week over dinner if she was available tonight.

He put his phone back down and got to answering emails.

One was from his brother Foster stating they were going to be doing a software update tomorrow after hours.

If Talia knew then he had to make sure at least one of his other siblings knew he was interested in a woman too.

Foster hated to talk on the phone but would answer if Elias called.

“Hey,” Foster said on the fourth ring.

“Got a minute?” he asked.

“Sure,” Foster said. “I had just walked back to my office before I answered. Got a question about the software update? It won’t affect anything. They will complete it after business hours.”

They didn’t take orders before nine a.m. and they stopped at six p.m. This allowed for software issues to be resolved or updated but also didn’t let orders pile up overnight.

He changed his available beer daily and that was done at six in the morning once they saw what was available and the quantities.

It was a dynamic business model.

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I wanted to tell you something since Talia found out.”

“And she threatened to tell others if you didn’t?” Foster asked. “She’s been doing that since she first understood how to get her way.”

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