His Illegitimate Heir

They’d even given a wide-eyed college girl the chance to do something no one else had—brew beer.

But the memo in her hand reminded her that this wasn’t the same brewery. The Beaumonts no longer ran things and the company was suffering.

She was suffering. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d strung together more than twenty-four hours of free time. She was doing the job of three people and, thanks to the hiring freeze the last CEO implemented, there was no relief in sight. And now this. She could not afford to lose another single person.

She was a thirty-two-year-old brewmaster—and a woman, at that. She’d come so far so fast. But not one of her predecessors in the illustrious history of the Beaumont Brewery had put up with quite this much crap. They’d been left to brew beer in relative peace.

She stormed to the CEO suite. Delores was behind the desk. When she saw Casey coming, the older woman jumped to her feet with surprising agility. “Casey—wait. You don’t—”

“Oh, yes, I do,” she said, blowing past Delores and shoving open the door to the CEO’s office. “Just who the hell do you think you...are?”

Two (#ulink_18358bd9-30f2-56a9-91cd-a4c37c34856f)

Casey came to a stumbling stop. Where was he? The desk was vacant and no one was sitting on the leather couches.

But then a movement off to her left caught her eye and she turned and gasped in surprise.

A man stood by the windows, looking out over the brewery campus. He had his hands in his pockets and his back turned to her—but despite that, everything about him screamed power and money. The cut of his suit fit him like a second skin and he stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, as if he were master of all he saw.

A shiver went through her. She was not the kind of girl who went for power suits or the men who wore them but something about this man—this man who was threatening her job—took her breath away. Was it the broad shoulders? Or the raw power wafting off him like the finest cologne?

And then he turned to face her and all she could see were his eyes—green eyes. Good Lord, those eyes—they held her gaze like a magnet and she knew her breath was gone for good.

He was, hands down, the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Everything—the power suit, the broad shoulders, the close-cropped hair and most especially the eyes—it was a potent blend that she felt powerless to resist. And this was her new boss? The man who’d sent out the memo?

He notched an eyebrow at her and let his gaze travel over her body. And any admiration she had for a good suit and nice eyes died on the vine because she knew exactly what he saw. Underneath her lab coat, she had on a men’s small polo shirt with Beaumont Brewery embroidered over the chest—and she’d sweat through it because the brew room was always hot. Her face was probably red from the heat and also from the anger, and she no doubt smelled like mash and wort.

She must look like a madwoman.

A conclusion he no doubt reached on his own, because by the time he looked her in the eyes, one corner of his mouth had curved up into the kind of smile that said exactly one thing.

He thought she was a joke.

Well, he’d soon learn this was no laughing matter.

“Congratulations,” he said in a voice that bordered on cold. “You’re first.” He lifted his wrist and looked down at a watch that, even at this distance, Casey could tell was expensive. “Thirty-five minutes. I’m impressed.”

His imperious attitude poured cold water on the heat that had almost swamped her. She wasn’t here to gawk at a gorgeous man. She was here to protect her workers. “Are you Richards?”

“Zebadiah Richards, yes. Your new boss,” he added in a menacing tone, as if he thought he could intimidate her. Didn’t he know she had so very little left to lose? “And you are?”

She’d worked in a male-dominated industry for twelve years. She couldn’t be intimidated. “I’m Casey Johnson—your brewmaster.” What kind of name was Zebadiah? Was that biblical? “What’s the meaning of this?” She held up the memo.

Richards’s eyes widened in surprise—but only for a second before he once again looked ice-cold. “Forgive me,” he said in a smooth voice when Casey glared at him. “I must say that you are not what I was expecting.”

Casey rolled her eyes and made no attempt to hide it. Few people expected women to like beer. Even fewer people expected women to brew beer. And with a name like Casey, everyone just assumed she was a man—and usually, they assumed she was a man like Larry. Middle-aged, beer gut—the whole nine yards. “It’s not my problem if you made a set of erroneous assumptions.”

The moment she said it, she realized she’d also made some erroneous assumptions herself. Because she had not anticipated that the new CEO would look quite like him. Oh, sure—the power suit was par for the course. But his hair was close-cropped to his head and his eyes... Damn, she just couldn’t get past them.

He grinned—oh, Lord, that was not good. Well, it was—but in a bad way because that grin took everything hard and cold about him and warmed him up. She was certainly about to break out in another sweat.

“Indeed. Well, since you’re the first person to barge into my office, I’ll tell you the meaning of that memo, Ms. Johnson—although I’d hope the employees here at the brewery would be able to figure it out on their own. Everyone has to reapply for their jobs.”

She welcomed his condescending tone because it pushed her from falling into the heat of his eyes and kept her focused on her task. “Is that a fact? Where’d you learn that management technique? Management ‘R’ Us?”

Something that almost looked like amusement flickered over his gaze and she was tempted to smile. A lot of people found her abrasive and yeah, she could rub people the wrong way. She didn’t pull her punches and she wasn’t about to sit down and shut up just because she was a girl and men didn’t like to have their authority challenged.

What was rarer was for someone to get her sense of humor. Could this Richards actually be a real man who smiled? God, she wanted to work for a man she wouldn’t have to fight every step of the way. Maybe they could get along. Maybe...

But as quickly as it had appeared, the humor was gone. His eyes narrowed and Casey thought, You’re not the only one who can be condescending.

“The purpose is twofold, Ms. Johnson. One, I’d like to see what skill sets my employees possess. And two, I want to see if they can follow basic instructions.”

So much for a sense of humor. Men as hot as he was probably weren’t allowed to laugh at a joke. Pity. On the other hand, if he smiled, it might kill her with handsomeness and the only thing worse than a CEO she couldn’t work with would be a CEO she lusted after.

No lusting allowed. And he was making that easier with every single thing he said.

“Let me assure you, Mr. Richards, that this company did not spring fully formed from your forehead yesterday. We’ve been brewing beer here for—”

“For over one hundred and thirty years—I know.” He tilted his head to the side and gave her a long look. “And you’ve only been doing it for less than a year—is that correct?”

If she weren’t so pissed at him, she’d have been terrified, because that was most definitely a threat to her job. But she didn’t have time for unproductive emotions and anger was vastly more useful than fear.

“I have—and I earned that job. But before you question how a woman my age can have possibly surpassed all the good ol’ boys who normally brew beer, let me tell you that it’s also because all the more experienced brewers have already left the company. If you want to maintain a quality product line, you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.” She waved the memo in front of her. “And I don’t have time to deal with this crap.”

But instead of doing anything any normal boss would do when basically yelled at by an employee—like firing her on the spot—Richards tilted his head to one side and looked at her again and she absolutely did not shiver when he did it. “Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why don’t you have time to respond to a simple administrative task?”

Casey didn’t want to betray any sign of weakness but a trickle of sweat rolled out from under her hat and into her eye. Dammit. He better not think she was crying. She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. “Because I’m operating with a bare-bones staff—I have been for the last nine months. I’m doing the work of three people—we all are. We’re understaffed, overworked and—”

“And you don’t have time for this ‘crap,’ as you so eloquently put it,” he murmured.

Was that a note of sympathy? Or was he mocking her? She couldn’t read him that well.

Not yet, a teasing voice in the back of her mind whispered. But she pushed that voice away. She wasn’t interested in reading him better. “Not if you want to fulfill production orders.”

“So just hire more people.”

Now she gaped at him. “What?”

He shrugged, which was an impossibly smooth gesture on him. Men should not be that smooth. It wasn’t good for them, she decided. And it definitely wasn’t good for her. This would be so much easier if he were at least 70 percent less attractive. “Hire more people. But I want to see their résumés, too. Why let the new people off easy, right?”

This guy didn’t know anything, did he? They were screwed, then. This was the beginning of the end. Now she would have to help Larry write a résumé.

“But...there’s been a hiring freeze,” she told him. “For the last eight months. Until we can show a profit.”