Page 2 of Ever After All

Blake caught my eyes. “Thanks!” A moment later, he climbed into the passenger seat. “I wasn’t paying attention when I got out of my truck. Next thing I knew, mama moose was charging at me. Damn moose can cover some ground in no time!”

“Hazards of life in Alaska,” I commented. “I’ll park over there.” I gestured to the parking area across from this one behind the brewery. We definitely needed to give this moose and her calves some time to get out of the parking lot. She pawed angrily at the ground as I continued rolling past her.

I slid my gaze to my brother. “Did you almost get trampled?”

“Closer call than I’d like. I was distracted when I got here and climbed out without checking. She was right there in the trees with her calves and charged at me. Thank fuck my reflexes are still good.”

A moment later, I parked behind the brewery. Fireweed Industries was our family’s corporation. Blake and I were the two family members who mostly worked in the old winery and brewery, the part of the business that started it all. Two generations ago, our grandmother had loved making batches of wine, beer, and mead. She started selling them at small fairs in Alaska and quickly realized she could make good money. She built the winery and brewery, opened a restaurant, and business boomed. It was at the time when oil and the money that followed it flowed in Alaska. The family invested wisely in various holdings throughout the state—land, mining, oil rights, and so on.

The business leapfrogged into an international corporation with holdings all over the world. Distribution warehouses for wine, beer, and mead, as well as expansion from the oil and mining businesses. Our headquarters had been in Seattle for a while, but our oldest brother Rhys decided to move us back to where it all began. Being online made it much easier to do business from anywhere in the world. We had closed down our headquarters in Seattle and left a small satellite office there. We’d gradually filtered back to our hometown, the last of us being my twin brother, Griffin, and me. We’d been hotshot firefighters for the previous few years, and he still was. It started because we volunteered in high school at the local fire station and loved it. We’d wanted to spread our wings from our tiny town for a little while and sought the adventure of wildland firefighting.

Blake had finally persuaded me to return and take over the head brewing position because the prior one was moving to be closer to family. After we parked, Blake and I glanced over as we climbed out to see the moose and her calves had moved deeper into the cluster of alder trees by the parking area. The mama reached up to pull the branches down for her twin calves to eat.

“Maybe we should trim those alders,” I commented as we walked across the parking lot into the back door.

Blake shrugged. “We could, but moose are all over town this time of year, no matter what.”

“Why are there moose everywhere this time of year?” a voice asked.

Blake and I glanced up to see Fiona, his wife, standing beside the small round table in the corner of the employee break room. A smile spread across Blake’s face as he approached her. He ignored her question in favor of giving her a lingering kiss. He was seriously in love. He and Fiona met when she took the chef position at our restaurant. Years into marrying Fiona and the man was still ridiculously smitten.

I smiled between them. “Since your husband can’t be bothered to answer your question, I will. Moose are around all the time, but we see them more now because their calves are young, and they’re safer from the brown bears when they’re closer to town.”

Fiona’s brows arched high as her eyes went wide. “Does that mean bears are going to come into town?”

Blake shook his head. “Not likely. They avoid people more. You’re in more danger from a moose protecting her calves than a bear,” he explained.

“Speaking of that, I just saved your husband’s ass.”

Fiona’s wide eyes shifted to Blake. “What do you mean?”

Blake cast a sheepish smile. “I parked over there and wasn’t looking when I got out. Didn’t notice there was a mama and her twins right there.”

Fiona sucked in a breath. “Blake!”

“I’m fine. See?” He gestured up and down his body. “I hopped in the back of my truck. I was perfectly safe.”

“I love Alaska,” she said. “But I prefer to see animals from a distance.”

“There you are!” one of the line cooks said as he entered the break room.

He instantly distracted Fiona as he began explaining a problem with a delay in orders for the kitchen stock. She didn’t even give Blake or me a backward glance as she hurried off.

“Let’s get to work,” I said.

He and I headed in opposite directions down the hallway as we walked out. The restaurant was toward the front of the building, with the brewery and distribution area at the back. We pushed through a set of double swinging doors, and the commotion of the kitchen carrying down the hallway was muted as the doors swung shut behind us.

“Speaking of supplies, am I keeping up on orders for you?” Blake asked.

“Absolutely. You make my job easy,” I offered with a quick sideways glance.

It had been close to a year since I’d taken over as the head brewer. Blake managed the entire distribution operation for us. Technically, he was my boss. As our CEO, Rhys was also my boss. I was one of seven siblings. If you counted our eldest brother, we were eight, but he’d passed away when he was a senior in college. I was still in high school at the time. We’d later learned we had a half-brother born before our dad had even met our mom. Chase worked for us now too in one of our offices in Willow Brook, Alaska.

Like many families, we had a tangled history. Since we were a big family, there were more messy knots in that history. While we made most of our money from selling alcohol internationally, Jake drank himself to death in college. Alcohol poisoning was a nasty way to die. Blessedly, it didn’t seem that any of the rest of us had an issue with alcohol. None of us drank much beyond the casual glass here and there.

We were stairsteps, with Jake first before he passed, then Rhys, Blake next, then a pair of twins—Adam, our CFO, and Kenan, who took care of whatever was needed at the corporation, as well as the brewery. The next set of twins was Griffin and me. He had moved back to Fireweed Harbor with me but was taking a position on the local hotshot firefighting crew. Last but definitely not least was our sister McKenna. She handled public relations for the corporation and everything that came along with it.

I enjoyed working with Blake. He was easygoing and hands-off as far as work went. Here at the brewery, we mostly stayed out of the fray of the rest of the corporation. I got to do what I loved, which was make beer, wine, and mead. We had our staples and best sellers, and Blake had given me free rein to do whatever else I wanted as far as new products, seasonal products, and so on.

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