His Illegitimate Heir Read Free

handed over the paper as if he’d suddenly discovered it was contagious, and he stepped back. “What am I going to do, boss?”
    Casey scanned the memo and saw that Larry had pretty much read verbatim. Every employee, no exceptions.
    She did not have time for this. She was responsible for brewing about seven thousand gallons of beer every single day of the year on a skeleton staff of seventeen people. Two years ago, forty people had been responsible for that level of production. But two years ago, the company hadn’t been in the middle of the never-ending string of upstart CEOs.
    And now the latest CEO was rolling up into her brewery and scaring the hell out of her employees? This new guy thought he would tell her she had to apply for her job—the job she’d earned?
    She didn’t know much about this Zebadiah Richards—but he was going to get one thing straight if he thought he was going to run this company.
    The Beaumont Brewery brewed beer. No beer, no brewery. And no brewmaster, no beer.
    She turned to Larry, who was pale and possibly shaking. She understood why he was scared—Larry was not the brightest bulb and he knew it. That was the reason he hadn’t left when Chadwick lost the company or when Ethan Logan tried to right the sinking ship.
    That was why Casey had been promoted over him to brewmaster, even though Larry had almost twenty years of experience on her. He liked his job, he liked beer and as long as he got regular cost-of-living increases in his salary and a year-end bonus, he was perfectly content to spend the rest of his life right where he was. He hadn’t wanted the responsibility of management.
    Frankly, Casey was starting to wonder why she had. “I’ll take care of this,” she told him.
    Surprisingly, this announcement made Larry look even more nervous. Apparently, he didn’t put a lot of faith in her ability to keep her temper. “What are you going to do?”
    His reaction made it clear that he was afraid she’d get fired—and then he’d be in charge. “This Richards guy and I are going to have words.”
    Larry fretted. “Are you sure that’s the smart thing to do?”
    â€œProbably not,” she agreed. “But what’s he going to do—fire the brewmaster? I don’t think so, Larry.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, okay?”
    Larry gave her a weak smile, but he nodded resolutely.
    Casey hurried to her office and stripped off her hairnet. She knew she was no great beauty, but nobody wanted to confront a new boss in a hairnet. She grabbed her Beaumont Brewery hat and slid her ponytail through the back. And she was off, yelling over her shoulder to Larry, “See if you can get that drainage tube off—and if you can, see if you can get it flushed again. I’ll be back in a bit.”
    She did not have time for this. She was already working ten-to twelve-hour days—six or seven days a week—just to keep the equipment clean and the beer flowing. If she lost more of her staff...
    It wouldn’t come to that. She wouldn’t let it. And if it did...
    Okay, so she’d promised Larry she wouldn’t get fired. But what if she did? Her options weren’t great, but at least she had some. Unlike Larry, she did have an updated résumé that she kept on file just in case. She didn’t want to use it. She wanted to stay right here at the Beaumont Brewery and brew her favorite beer for the rest of her life.
    Or at least, she had. No, if she was being honest, what she really wanted was to be the brewmaster at the old Beaumont Brewery, the one she’d worked at for the previous twelve years—the one that the Beaumont family had run. Back then the brewery had been a family business and the owners had been personally invested in their employees.
    They’d even given a wide-eyed college girl the chance to do something no one else had—brew