Page 61 of Worst Nanny Ever (Babes of Brewing #2)

“Must be nice to have a job,” Ross says.

I don’t have a response for that, so I head into the back, hoping they’ll down their drinks quickly. But I check on them fifteen minutes later, and they’re sitting in front of beers, talking to the bartender.

I feel it then—a goose walking over my proverbial grave.

An hour and a half later, I peek in, and they’re still there. Hannah would say I’m making this up, but I can feel dark energy leaching into the brewery, filling up the nooks and crannies like a cursed English muffin.

So I’m not surprised when Bubba interrupts me a few minutes later, while I’m doing inventory, and announces that there’s an all-hands-on-deck meeting.

Bubba’s a huge guy, tall and wide and silent, with eyes as dark and full of human kindness as raisins.

But compared to the only other brewer I’ve met, Hannah’s brother, Liam, he might as well be a teddy bear.

Liam is at least six-foot-five, and he’s an amateur boxer.

Everything about him screams I have a Y-chromosome, and I’m not afraid to use it!

He’s always been nice to me, but in a distant, cool way that makes it impossible to read him.

What I do know about him? His beer is top notch.

Way better than Bubba’s. Especially the beers Liam brews in his downtime, since everything is standardized at Big Catch.

I’ve thought about offering him a job once Silver Star is mine, but I’ll have to build up the brewery first. Make it a sweet offer he won’t want to refuse.

Someone with his talent won’t agree to work at a place where he’s forced to hand over his cell phone first thing and there are no chairs in the break area.

“My dad called another meeting?” I ask Bubba, trying not to sound defeated. These meetings have been near constant since Briar Bootcamp started, since everyone knows nothing kills the soul faster than pointless meetings.

Bubba just grunts and lifts his chin to indicate I should join him.

I fall in behind him, feeling deeply that it doesn’t show good leadership qualities. He leads the way into the warehouse space, where the beer is fermenting in its vats.

I glance around, surprised, because everyone on staff is present, even the people who aren’t working today. Not including Dad and me, there are twenty Silver Star employees now that I’ve let Cleet and Ross go.

Speaking of my father, he’s standing in the middle of them, a bemused look on his face.

“Isn’t anyone in the tasting room?” I ask.

Bubba gives me a dark look with his raisin eyes. “You know what? Cleet and Ross are out there. So we’re good. They’ll help anyone who shows.”

Now, that goose is tap-dancing across my grave.

I glance at my father. “What’s all this about, Mr. Sterling?”

Yes, at Silver Star Brewing, I refer to my father as sir or Mr. Sterling. My request. The last thing I want is to go around calling out for “Dad.”

“Bubba’s the one who called the meeting,” he says pointedly. “So why don’t you tell me ?”

He might as well have said, You want the brewery? It’s your problem.

I turn to Bubba, who smiles at me for the first time ever and pulls out a cell phone.

My father grumbles something under his breath, because, yes, technically the phone should be in the tub under his desk with the others. But I’m not going to tackle this six-foot-two man and try to steal it from him.

Bubba lifts the phone. “We figured we all wanted our phones back. You know this is the only brewery in town where people are forced to give up their phones?”

“I missed a dental appointment because of you,” someone calls out from the back, and there are other murmurs of agreement.

“But we’re done playing by your arbitrary rules,” Bubba says, glancing from me to my father, who looks amused by their rebellion. Probably because he’s already checked out, and won’t impact his life for better or worse.

Bubba fiddles with his phone, then turns on the song “You better watch out.” Giving me an arch look, he says, “Santa’s always watching, Briar. We all know what you did to Cleet and Ross.”

“I didn’t try to keep it secret,” I say, even as I feel my skin flushing pink. Damn my pale skin and its failure to keep my moods secret.

“You didn’t even have the decency to fire them one at a time. And this is coming after you cut our holiday bonuses.”

The song keeps piping out around us, oddly cheerful, as the staffers nod and mumble their agreement. My father continues to just stand there and watch the revolution.

“And you keep changing the schedule,” someone says from the back of the group.

“And rejecting time off,” another person yells.

“You’ve insulted every single Tropical IPA I’ve made over the last six months,” Bubba steams. “And you took away the seating in the break room.”

I want to point to my father, to say he did all of those things, or I did them on his orders, but he still has another couple of months to yank the brewery away from me. If he does that, all of this will have been for nothing.

So I stay silent.

“I quit,” Bubba says, lifting his eyebrows.

“And I’ve warned every other brewer in town not to take a job at this dump.

” Grinning, he turns and nods to the rest of the group, and I swear to God, they must have choreographed this ahead of time.

Because while I stand there, unmoored and incapable of saying anything other than “But you can’t,” they come up to me one by one and quit too.

The last person, an intern whose name I can’t remember and isn’t on the payroll, throws a bottle cap at my feet as a final insult.

All the while, “You better watch out” is playing in the background. It finishes and restarts—the insult added to the injury.

After the last intern quits, the whole staff leaves en masse, pouring out into the cold through the external door.

At least they’re not hanging around for beers.

I look at my father, hoping he’s going to fix this mess he coerced me into making with him.

But he gives me a broad smile and pats his belly.

“You know what, I’m going to give you the brewery early, honey.

I’ll sign the papers on Monday. If you can make it back from this one, I’ll know you’re a real Sterling. ”

And then he leaves too, and I’m left a huddling mass of a person. I want to curl into a ball and pretend the world doesn’t exist. But this problem is mine. This brewery is mine.

But there’s no brewery without a brewer, and if Bubba has been bad-mouthing me, no brewer will want to work with me. Especially not a talented one like Liam.

No one will want to work for me, period.

I stumble sightlessly out of the brewery, pausing only to flip the sign to CLOSED and lock up. Then I head toward my friends and Big Catch, my mind in a haze.

Unless a miracle happens, I’m screwed.