Page 16 of Dirty Ginger

“How can you be fine?” Clara asked, arms folded over her chest, looking much like a scolding mother in her dress pants, frilly pink blouse and gorgeous black heels.

“Easy,” Amelia replied. “It turns out two weeks in the tropics and a whole lot of fun can do wonders for a broken heart.”

“I sure bet it does,” Maisie said with a grin.

Clara still grimaced. “Amelia—”

“Clara, please just stop.” Her voice came out harsher than she intended. She closed in on her older sister, her very best friend. “I’m only going to say this once, so please hear me. I don’t need you to meddle in this. I’m not even sure what happened between me and Beckett, but he is, and always has been, a good guy. For some reason, today I grabbed him and kissed him. I started this. So, please let me figure out why in the hell I did that. Okay?”

Clara’s eyes searched Amelia’s for a long moment until she heaved a sigh, and suddenly, everything hard about her went soft. “Okay, Amelia. I hear you. I’m just protective, and I’m really worried that you’re not thinking straight.”

“I know you are, and I love you for it.” Especially because Amelia wasn’t sure she was thinking straight either. She’d loved Luka and had planned a future with him. Beckett was her past, and yet today it hadn’t felt that way at all. She kissed Clara’s cheek, hoping to put an end to this conversation. “If I feel lost or need advice, you’ll be the first one I’ll call.” Done with talking about all this until she got her head straight about it all, she moved on. “Now, how about we talk about more important things, like my visit with Ronnie this morning.”

Clara headed for the coffee pot and took out the filters from the cupboard. “He texted me this morning to let me know that you’d reached out about a meeting.”

“I felt bad for leaving so abruptly,” Amelia explained, taking the chair across from Maisie at the table. “But he seemed all right with it all.”

“Of course he would be understanding,” Maisie said, her hair done in a side fishtail braid today, and her jean overalls covered in paint. She’d obviously come from the art studio she owned downtown. “I mean, if he wasn’t, what kind of jackass would he be?”

“A big one.” Amelia nodded agreement. “So, the marketing department came up with a brilliant idea.” She caught her sisters up on all that happened with Ronnie this morning and his idea for the sample beers throughout the year. “Basically, all I need to do is come up with a half dozen samples for them to choose from, beat out the other breweries competing, and we’ve got the next big push we’ve been looking for.”

“That’s an incredible opportunity,” Clara said, leaning against the counter while the coffee brewed behind her. “It’s amazing how much they’re pushing the brewery for us.”

“Truly,” Amelia agreed. “He’s really pulling for us.” She couldn’t have dreamt this up when she finished the Beer Industry Program at the university of Denver. Many of her classmates never got their beer into distribution, typically selling only locally. For Amelia that would have been fine, but Clara being the business minded one, always saw the bigger picture and drove the brewery to the success it had now. Maisie was artsy, and she got out of the brewery business nearly as quick as she got into it, but she lived out her dreams in her art studio. “Things are a little bit in disarray,” Amelia said to Clara, “but I’ll get the brewery back up and running smoothly soon enough. Then I’ll get started on the samples once I get some more Foxy Diva brewing.”

“Excellent news,” Clara said, pride glistening in her eyes. “Let me know if you need any help from me.”

Amelia nodded. “Will do.” Those were empty words. Clara had already done so much for the company. Handling the beer and the brewery fell onto Amelia’s shoulders, and she wanted to prove she could keep up her end of the deal.

Maisie said, “You know I’d offer to help, but I’ll make more of a mess.”

Amelia laughed. “You will, so thanks, I’ll pass on the help.”

Maisie chuckled and shrugged it off. She was the best artist that Amelia knew, but that was her wheelhouse, absolutely nothing else. She still did her part for the brewery by designing any new logos or graphics for the company, and whenever a big event came around, Maisie helped out. Every time.

Amelia added, “The only downside in all this is if I don’t come up with amazing samples, we lose the spot.”

Clara’s eyes searched Amelia’s for a long moment. “It’s a lot of pressure to put on you. Are you ready for this? No one is going to be upset if this is too much too soon, Amelia.”

“I’m ready,” she lied.

Maisie asked, “Do you have any ideas yet?”

No. Amelia forced a smile. “I’m working on them.” She’d never admit that she had absolutely no ideas at all. Her creative juices felt drained dry. Sure, she had some old ideas in her notebooks of ingredients to mix, but nothing stood out to her as spectacular. And these beers needed to stand out in the sea of other incredible beers.

Maisie seemed to read her thoughts and gave a gentle smile. “Well, just know if you get totally stuck, we can keep with Foxy Diva this year and look into something like this next year. I have no doubt Ronnie would understand.”

Yeah, he probably would, but Amelia wouldn’t fail her sisters. Not when they’d done so much for the brewery. “I’ll be fine,” she said, both to her sisters and to herself. She shifted against her chair and she felt something tickling her back. She reached into her back pocket, discovering a piece of paper. “Oh, that sneaky man.”

“What is it?” Maisie asked.

Amelia unfolded the check for ten thousand dollars, signed by Beckett, and showed it to her sisters. “Beckett wasn’t too happy about my paying off Luka for the surgery.”

Clara rolled her eyes. “There is no win-win here. Obviously, you weren’t going to let him go to jail. You had no other choice if he was being too stubborn to pay Luka.”

Amelia agreed with a nod.

Maisie asked, “Was it weird seeing Luka again?”

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