Page 25 of Rescued by the Single Dad

“Heard you rescued a mermaid,” Dom said, taking a sip from his mug. “Does she still have legs, or did her fins grow back?”

Wyatt and Jagger chortled.

Clint rolled his eyes and grabbed another stool and one for Bennett. They both sat down. “She still has her legs.” And what nice legs they were.

“So ... what is the plan with Brooke?” Wyatt postured. “I’m assuming she’s going to tell the world she isn’t dead and head back to the Golden State and resume her role as Hollywood’s sweetheart.”

“She thinks someone pushed her and is trying to kill her, so she’s going to lie low for a bit until we can come up with a plan.”

Wyatt and Dom’s mouths dropped open.

“Seriously?” Dom asked. “’Cause the news is saying she jumped. That she took the breakup with that Flynn guy really hard.”

“Well, considering that she’s in my living room braiding my daughter’s hair right now, and can verify that she in fact, didn’t jump and try to kill herself, I’m going to believe Brooke over the news,” Clint clapped back. “She also says that she dumped Flynn. But because she’s not there to defend herself the—”

“Ex can change the narrative to make himself look good,” Wyatt interjected.

Clint nodded. “Exactly.”

“Was the ex on the yacht?” Wyatt asked.

“No. But his side-piece was.”

“Fuck,” Dom murmured, shaking his head and taking another sip from his mug. “It was probably her, then.”

“Brooke doesn’t think so. I’m just going to let her chill for a few days to come up with a plan. She can hide out in the house. Nobody needs to know she’s alive. Then when she has a plan, we can call her assistant, or manager or whatever and go from there. Besides, Talia likes having her around.”

A few bushy brows rose after he said that last bit.

“Just Talia?” Jagger asked, a smirk tugging at his lips beneath his thick beard.

“It’s been all of twelve hours since I brought the hypothermic woman up from the beach, drop your eyebrows and lose that look on your face that you’re all giving me. I’m helping someone who needs help. That’s the end of it.”

“A lot of protesting going on, if that’s the end of it,” Dom murmured, watching Clint intensely over the rim of his mug.

Clint cleared his throat. “Let’s discuss why we’re really having this meeting, hmm? Bonn Remmen’s land. We want it.”

“We sure fucking do,” Dom agreed. “That is primo real estate, and it’s a stone’s throw from here. It’d be easy to expand. Add more cabins, put in a beautiful pavilion and lodge so we could host weddings and other special events and shit. This place is just too small for what we want to do.”

“And it has space where we can start growing our own hops,” Wyatt added. “We need that land.”

Everyone turned to Bennett. He was the one in charge of the money when it came to their business. Clint ran the brewery, Jagger did all their PR, social media, events and anything that involved smiling while secretly gritting your teeth. Dom was in charge of the bar and front of house while Wyatt handled the kitchen. Bennett and Jagger also handled the cabins and guests.

“Do we have the money for a down payment?” Clint asked, directing his question to Bennett. But they were all wondering the same thing. Just because they wanted the land—nay, needed the land—didn’t mean they could afford it. Real estate had skyrocketed in the Pacific Northwest in the last ten years, and they’d spent every penny they had to buy the land they were on now. They were still paying steep mortgage payments every month, too.

The business was doing well. Their beer was available in restaurants, pubs and liquor stores all up and down the west coast, and they were moving east. Several places in Colorado carried San Camanez beer now, and by the end of the year, three restaurants and seven liquor stores in Montana would, too.

Bennett’s expression remained unreadable—which wasn’t anything new.

Wyatt grumbled with impatience. “He likes to keep us in suspense.”

Bennett shot Wyatt a salty glare. “I’m just doing some quick number crunching in my head.” He lobbed a sigh. “We do have the cash. But just like last time when we bought this place, it’ll scrape the bottom of the barrel. We took a hit with COVID and not getting any reservations for the cabins or any patrons in the bar. We’re still recovering from that. Beer sales in liquor stores kept us afloat, but since we decided to still pay staff, but not ourselves, things got tight. They’re still tight. Very tight.”

Yeah, that had been a collective agreement. They loved their staff and did not want to lose them. So even though they couldn’t afford to pay them their regular wage, or tips, they came up with an amount that worked for everyone. The kitchen staff, brewery staff and front of house staff still got paychecks all through the pandemic. That way, they could continue to buy food and pay rent.

“I’ll have to do some real number crunching when I get to the office,” Bennett continued. “But I think we could swing it. We’d just have to put a pin on actually doing anything with the land for a few years, though. Because we won’t have the money to build on it. We could plant hops and that’s about it.”

“Then we do that,” Wyatt said. “But we need that land.”

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