Page 11 of Golden Touch
“It’s a good thing you’re there,” Mitch says. “Just at the right time.”
I make a grunt of acknowledgement. Leila and my father are both hospitalized, and I’m the obvious one to step in during this disaster. I’m a brewer by trade.
My sister, on the other hand, is a preschool teacher. And she’s about to have a newborn to care for.There’s no one else, Nash, she’d said.The brewery is your family’s legacy.
Except that’s not really true. The Giltmaker Brewery is my father’s legacy, not mine. He made it impossible for me to feel any love for the place. Early on, when I’d tried to embrace the family business, he’d made it clear that all I’d ever be was an enlisted man. Never an officer.
Then, when I quit to work for the competition, I was suddenly a traitor. A corporate sellout, too. I can’t win with that man, and Idread the job of running his precious business for the next six weeks.
“Is there anything I can do for Leila?” Mitch asks me. “Anything I can send her?”
“Doubt it,” I assure him. “Unless you know what kind of baby gift she wants. She’s in good hands, though, and I’ll keep you posted. I’m on my way back to the brewery. Hopefully nobody will call 911 this time.”
“Hopefully,” Mitch says with a snicker. “I got bail money if you’re hard up.”
“Good to know,” I grumble.
We hang up, and I buy a sandwich at a Montpelier deli. Then I swing onto my bike for the trip back to the brewery. It’s located just north of Colebury—the town where we went to high school.
At least it’s a pretty ride out of town. The road winds between the river and a pine forest. The air is clear, and there’s no traffic. Just me and the bike and the road and the springtime sunshine. I feel my mood lift.
By nature, I’m a happy guy, and these are my old stomping grounds. I raised hell in these hills as a teenager. My fondest memories are sneaking a case of beer and a radio into the woods with my friends. We’d drink and party until the batteries and the beer ran out.
It was cheap beer, of course. We could never afford Daddy’s beer, and I wasn’t stupid enough to steal it. My friends used to tease me. “All that beer. A whole warehouse full. Where’s ours?”
They didn’t understand. Who wants the specter of his father at a party? Not me. And the people who say that the beer is my legacy ought to remember that legacies can be both bad and good. The Giltmaker Brewery is a source of family pride, but also the source of our pain. So many sacrifices. So many arguments.
By the time I was twenty-one and legal to drink my father’s prized beer, I decided I didn’t want a thing to do with it. Still don’t.
But here I am, gunning it toward the place. There’s a millionthings I need to do. Meet the brewers. Study the recipes and the brewing schedule. Take samples of the beers in the tanks. Check the supplies on hand and report it all to Dad.
Then I’ll have to listen to him chew me out for one thing or another. Unlike Mitch, I’m always failing him.
But first things first. I need to eat my sandwich and stake out the bunkroom in the pumphouse. The plan had been for me to stay at my sister’s place tonight and then move into the bunkroom tomorrow. I don’t even know if the place is ready.
I could have stayed at a hotel in Montpelier, but the commute would suck, and six weeks is a long time in a hotel room. I can’t stay with my sister and her man. That sounds crowded, especially if there’s a new baby in the picture.
Leila had told me that Dad’s assistant lived in the pumphouse apartment. And that she wouldn’t mind if I kipped upstairs in the bunkroom. Maybe my sister didn’t think this all the way through, though. Livia didnotlook happy to meet me.
I roar up the two-lane road and try not to notice how sweet the Vermont air smells. I don’t want to miss this place. I don’t want to feel the pull.
Six weeks, and I’ll be history. It’s better that way.
CHAPTER 6
LIVIA
By noon, I’m taking a lunch break in my apartment, poking at the salad I made for myself and wondering if I’ll be here long enough to use up the groceries in the fridge.
Yesterday, my greatest fear was that Lyle Giltmaker would die of his heart condition and make me jobless and homeless.
But now I have a new fear. Lyle’s stupidly attractive son hates me now, and if he decides to do a little digging in my employee file he’ll probably fire me on the spot.
Then I’ll really be out of options. Few people are willing to hire a woman for cash, and also give her a place to live. I can’t use my social security number or any of my credit cards, because they’re potentially traceable by my ex, who’s both smart and devious.
If I lose my place here, I’ll be living in my car or asking a women’s shelter to help me get a fresh start. Except I’m not an innocent woman with children to shield. I’m someone who’s made a lot of mistakes and has to pay for them. Charities aren’t meant for women who should really know better.
In the middle of this mental doom loop, I hear a motorcycle approaching. My stomach lurches, and I put down my fork.
