Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek) (2 page)

Rylan’s drummer put his drumsticks up to his heart. “God bless higher education.”

With a chuckling headshake, Dani waited for Aidan to tuck his never-leaves-his-sight drumsticks in his back pocket before walking the group over to the table she kept blocked off for them each week, already piled high with a hodgepodge of their usual dinner favorites.

Rylan pulled a chair out for her and flipped the one beside it around for himself before taking a swig from the mug of rye ale she’d eagerly slid before him.

And then she waited.

His brows shot up midway through his first gulp, before drifting back slowly as his eyelids slid down to an appreciative half-mast. Nearly half the beer was gone before he finally set the mug back down with a satisfied whistle. “Wow. That’s one hell of a beer, sweets. You making this the official winter brew?”

Dani beamed. “Thanks to you. After what you said about the last trial batch, I added ginger to enhance the malty milk sugar and honey.” She kissed her fingertips. “Voila, the Rylan Red was born. I’m the only one who calls it that but still, feel free to be completely honored.”

“Well call me Rumplestiltskin; I done taught you to spin straw into gold.” He kissed her hand with a drizzle of country charm. “Now that you’ve named one of your babies after me, what say you change your last name to Grey as well, love? Make an honest man outta me.”

“Goofball.” She swatted his hand away. “And risk the wrath of your rabid female fans?”

A teasing voice called out, “I’d be more worried about the male ones. Shoot, they’ll yank your hair right out at the roots.” When Xoey popped her head around the corner, the guys cheered and fist-bumped her in welcome while Aidan quickly snaked her onto his lap.

Cartoon waves of steam were sizzling off the pair within seconds, Aidan’s drumsticks no longer the attention-gathering focal point where his rocker jeans were concerned.

“
Aaand
, that’s our cue to go.” Dani promptly hopped up to drag Xoey over to the safe end of the table by her belt loops, editorializing on behalf of them all drily. “You know, Xo, if you’d just seal the deal with the guy already, the rest of us wouldn’t need a cold shower just from seeing you two say hello.”

A chorus of ‘
amen’
sounded from the entire band.

Aidan’s sounding the most reverent of them all.

“Tempting.” Xoey hummed over the suggestion—or intervention rather—before sighing, “But I wouldn’t want to corrupt the poor man.” She tossed a positively carnal wink Aidan’s way. “Yet.”

The guys roared and elbowed their theatrically smitten drummer.

Dani joined the laughs for a bit before ruffling Rylan’s hair and making her exit, giving a green light for the small group of band bunnies hovering nearby to swoop in. Despite the guys’ hard rule of never getting cozy with groupies, she still liked giving them space to enjoy the bunny attention.

Zigzagging down the crowded stairwell back to the bar, Dani greeted a few regulars before heading over to her usual tending area behind the bar and sliding a sideways glance over at Xoey. “So…looks like hell freezing over hasn’t changed the temperature between you and Aidan one bit.” She snickered at Xoey’s petulant glower. “Told you that mistletoe make-out session you two had last month was just going to make everything worse.”

“And I told
you
I’m not taking love life advice from a woman who doesn’t have a life outside of this brewpub,” hissed Xoey, flicking off Dani’s teasing—literally—before coming to an abrupt halt.

Whatever riveting thing she’d just spotted made her thorny expression suddenly slow-melt away to…amusement. Highly suspicious. Dani’s eyes narrowed as Xoey began chastising her with the same ole lecture, with seemingly new objectives, “The amount you’ve been working this year is obscene, Dani. Far worse than your usual recreational workaholism. You are simply too hot to be going through an
eleven-month
dryspell.”

Dani felt color flood her cheeks as she shot a look around at everyone within earshot before sending Xoey a keep-talking-and-I’ll-kill-you look.

Ignoring it, Xoey steamrolled on, eyes alit with best friend mischief. “As the foremost objector to your recent unhealthy lifestyle choices, I’m duty-bound to point out that—” she stabbed her finger, ever so indiscreetly, at the criminally good-looking man a few tables down from them— “panty-melting chiseled goodness over there is back again. And he definitely wants you all kinds of naked right now.”

* * * * *

LUKE BRADFORD
didn’t know why the almost irrationally sexy bartender in the too-tight top was pointing at him and frankly, he didn’t much care. It was the one with the killer smile beside her, the brunette he’d caught fleeting glimpses of the last few weeks—even chatted with once or twice in passing—that gripped his attention yet again. She was tucking her sleek, dark chocolate hair behind an ear in seemingly shy reflex and he just sat there with the round he’d just bought the guys, unable to take his eyes off her.

“Holy shit,” breathed Isaac, jabbing him in the gut. “I think that goddess at the bar is pointing at you. Do you know her?”

Luke could barely hear him. Or much of anything for that matter. The echoed statement from their other friends at the table that the woman was way too much for Isaac to handle? Practically white noise. The rest of the sounds all around him? Becoming more muted by the second.

His sole focus remained on the other bartender—the hardest working one there by his estimation. Even as her friend was telling her something that obviously involved him, the woman hardly paused long enough to spare a quick glance in his direction.

Just as well. He wasn’t sure he would’ve survived a lengthier look than that. Though she’d doused it quickly, a sizzling, ultra feminine awareness had flared in her eyes in the brief moment they’d met his, and now a sweet, honest-to-god farm-girl blush was pinking her cheeks.

Man, oh man, was he in trouble.

If the girl next door had an unpredictable, feisty twin sister, this woman would be her. With her adorably stubborn frown and quiet, kitten gaze still mulishly refusing to look directly at him again, she was drawing him in—hook, line, and sinker.

Luke stopped trying to hide his interest then. He was doing a lousy job at it anyhow. He decided instead to up the blatancy level of his gaze considerably. Dare her to play. When she eventually, reluctantly,
briefly
succumbed—to politely glare him off mostly—he let his triumphant grin deploy his dimples, somehow knowing that would rile her enough to make her drop her defenses just a little bit more.

It did.

To his competitive delight, she instantly went on the offense, covertly returning his stare head-on and dropping the checkered flag for the silent game of Chicken that followed.

Hot damn.

One scorching, hard-fought minute later, victory was his.

Not just because she’d broken the connection first, but because a touch of humor had ghosted her lips when she had. Immediately following, the next hour found their gazes colliding across the room with increasing frequency. It was all more friendly than flirty but still, Luke was captivated.

And officially clueless as to what his friends had been talking about for the past twenty minutes.

The fact that the whole guys’ night out had been his idea in the first place just made his bro-code infraction that much worse. The four of them hadn’t hung out in months. He’d been stressed as hell relocating his chocolate shop to Cactus Creek, and Isaac was practically living at the new mixed martial arts gym he’d opened up this past year in Tempe. Connor had the best excuse seeing as how his now two-month-old was apparently going through diapers on the hour every night, while Connor’s brother Brian took second place honors having just gotten married a little while ago to a firecracker who was keeping life thoroughly interesting from what they’ve heard.

Yep, the guys were definitely going to ride him about this one for a long time. He quickly pardoned himself, however, when his continued lack of attention to his friends allowed him to catch his mystery bartender bending over to grab something from a floor shelf. No, his basal response to that wasn’t evolved at all, but for some reason, the biologically encoded heat swell in his gaze didn’t seem to offend her when she caught him smiling appreciatively. Instead, it prompted a nose-scrunching twitch of a smile that she tried hard to hide behind a droll eye-roll.

Damn, she was cute.

Absently, he joined in the laughter at his table over some joke Connor had made—or perhaps that had been Brian—before glancing back over again at his mystery girl.

He did a double take at the transformation.

She was frozen in place behind the bar. Stopped in her tracks, breath held, eyes intent on the vintage bar clock on the wall. Completely in her own world.

No longer even pretending to pay attention to the guys anymore, Luke leaned forward and watched in growing curiosity as she soundlessly counted down a few more seconds with the clock before tucking a secret grin away and heading to the wall phone. Her expression was serious as she made a call that lasted just a few seconds, after which, she hesitated, chewed on her lip in debate, and then slowly lifted her eyes to find...his.

He tilted his head in question.

The shy, happy smile blooming across her face was a heck of an answer. Rippling with a deep pride obviously born from cherished memories, that incredible smile sucker-punched him, drove him crazy because he didn’t know the meaning behind it.

When she went right back to working as if they hadn’t just shared a moment, he couldn’t help but frown. She was still smiling, but it wasn’t the same. He felt a pang of disappointment. Sappy as it sounded, he wanted to learn everything there was about that earlier smile, have her share it with him and him alone again. Be the one to make another one like it appear.

Whoa.
He leaned back in his seat, surprised. Pulling his eyes away from her to avoid earning stalker points, he took another drink of his Black and Tan and began dissecting his intense interest in the woman. He’d listed at least dozen unique reasons when his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the raucous sound of singing bursting out over the brewery PA system.

Weird.

Weirder still was the eruption of ecstatic cheers and wolf cries echoed all around the brewpub.

Huh, must be a thing.

All eyes flew to the glass partition to the brewery where its workers—whom he hardly saw working in these large numbers at night—were lined up on the other side, arms linked and beer mugs sloshing as they crooned out the lyrics to an infectious old school British drinking song. Their mostly off-key singing blared over an old speaker affixed above the glass, normally only used to announce brewery tours during the day. Then, as if this were some sort of musical, the entire joint was soon joining in and rocking out. A few beer-happy dudes even ran to the brewery glass like super fans at a hockey game.

Completely thrown, Luke just surveyed the deafening good cheer all around in amusement and raised a questioning eyebrow at the Sullivan brothers for an explanation, seeing as how they’d been friends with the owner of Ocotillos for years. But the waitress lowering a platter of food onto their table beat them to it.

“It’s a tradition here,” she said with an affectionate smile. “The whole thing started about fifteen years ago with Vince, the original Dobson brewmaster.” She pointed to the big, framed photo of him in its place of honor on the wall. “For every new seasonal brew he created, he’d have customers try it for a night on tap before he launched it officially. And if folks didn’t fall head over heels during the tasting, the crazy man would scrap it and start from scratch, throwing months of work down the drain.” She paused her story when a perfectly harmonized singing of the chorus rang out from the staircase, courtesy of the musicians who’d been performing upstairs. Everyone in the brewpub spun around to see the four rocker guys holding their beer mugs up in salute toward the bar; and like a surge of thunder, the crowd stomped their feet and raised the singing decibels in the place even higher.

“But in the cases like tonight,” she continued with a grinning shout, “if the customers downright loved the new beer, he’d call back to his guys and tell them to ‘have a drink’ to celebrate the birth of a new Dobson beer.” Tucking her food tray under an arm, she nodded her head over at the animated brewery workers who’d all removed their caps in respect while singing the drunken lyrics. “One year, back when this brewpub had been at the tail end of financial crisis, good ole Vince decided he wasn’t gonna go down without a fight. So, bless his heart, he poured every bit of his soul into one more brew...that ended up winning the biggest craft beer award around.”

She smiled with the far-off look of someone who’d been there. “When we found out, he and the brew boys broke out in song right there in the brewery. And this was the song they sang. From that day on, the song became an unofficial anthem, a tradition the baby of the Dobson clan, the new brewmaster here, still carries on whenever a new beer is born.”

Luke looked around the thriving brewpub with newly appreciative eyes, which riveted right back onto his mystery woman moments later when she hopped on the counter behind the bar to write
Warm Winter Rye—Red Ale
up on the chalkboard with all the other Dobson beers listed on tap. A symphony of applause rippled across the brewpub and the look of pure joy on her face vaulted straight into Luke’s chest, lodged itself pretty deep in there considering he’d never even had an actual conversation with the woman beyond the one time she’d rung up his lunch order the other week.