Read Online His Illegitimate Heir by Sarah M. Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

politics will apply to beer, as well.” But even as he said it, he wondered why he felt the need to explain his managerial decisions to her.
    Evidently, she wondered the same thing, as she held up her hands in surrender. “Hey, you don’t have to justify it to me. Although it might have been a good idea to justify it to the marketing department.”
    She was probably right—but he didn’t want to admit that, so he changed tactics. “How about your department? Anyone there decide I was the final straw?” As he asked it, he realized what he really wanted to know was if she’d decided he was the final straw.
    What the hell was this? He didn’t care what his employees thought about him. He never had. All he cared about was that people knew their jobs and did them well. Results—that was what he cared about. This was business, not a popularity contest.
    Or it had been, he thought as Casey smirked at him when she took her seat.
    â€œMy people are nervous, but that’s to be expected. The ones who’ve hung in this long don’t like change. They keep hoping that things will go back to the way they were,” she said, catching his eye. No, that was a hedge. She already had his eye because he couldn’t stop staring at her. “Or some reasonable facsimile thereof. A new normal, maybe. But no, I haven’t had anyone quit on me.”
    A new normal. He liked that. “Good. I don’t want you to be understaffed again.”
    She paused and then cleared her throat. When she looked up at him again, he felt the ground shift under his feet. She was gazing at him with something he so desperately wanted to think was appreciation. Why did he need her approval so damned bad?
    â€œThank you,” she said softly. “I mean, I get that owning the company is part of your birthright, I guess, but this place...” She looked around as her voice trailed off with something that Zeb recognized—longing.
    It was as if he were seeing another woman—one younger, more idealistic. A version of Casey that must have somehow found her way to the Beaumont Brewery years ago. Had she gotten the job through her father or an uncle? An old family friend?
    Or had she walked into this company and, in her normal assertive way, simply demanded a job and refused to take no for an answer?
    He had a feeling that was it.
    He wanted to know what she was doing here—what this place meant to her and why she’d risked so much to defend it. Because they both knew that he could have fired her already. Being without a brewmaster for a day or a week would have been a problem, but problems were what he fixed.
    But he hadn’t fired her. She’d pushed him and challenged him and...and he liked that. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of him. Which didn’t make any sense—fear and intimidation were weapons he deployed easily and often to get what he wanted, the way he wanted it. Almost every other employee in this company had backed down in the face of his memos and decrees. But not this employee.
    Not Casey.
    â€œOkay,” she announced in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t going to finish her earlier statement. She produced a tablet from her lab-coat pocket and sat to his right. “Let’s get started.”
    They went through each of the ten Beaumont beers, one at a time. “As you taste each one,” she said without looking at him, “think about the flavors as they hit your tongue.”
    He coughed. “The...flavors?”
    She handed him a pint glass and picked up the other for herself. “Drinking beer isn’t just chugging to get drunk,” she said in a voice that made it sound like she was praying, almost. She held her glass up and gazed at the way the light filtered through the beer. Zeb knew he should do the same—but he couldn’t. He was watching her.
    â€œDrinking beer fulfills each of the senses. Every detail