Page 21 of Any Luck at All

That stung. “Both, I guess.”

Jack picked up a discarded bottle cap and twisted it between his thumb and forefinger, studying it. “So…about the brewery… what changed your mind?”

“I really liked Grandpa, Jack, and I’m disappointed that I won’t get the chance to know him better. I feel like I wasted so much time. I can’t help but think that keeping the brewery is another way to get to know him.”

“Just like that?” Jack asked. “You can drop everything in your life and run a brewery?”

“As you probably heard, I recently sold my business, and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next. This might as well be it.”

Jack gave her a deadpan look. “Even though you know nothing about beer?”

Her back stiffened. “What I lack in beer knowledge, I make up for in business knowledge. I know how to launch a product.”

“This isn’t the same as starting from scratch,” Jack said. “It’s rebuilding an established brand. One that people see as a relic of the past, judging from what I heard tonight. People loved Beau, but they don’t see Buchanan making it. To succeed in brewing, you’ll need to make it hip. Trendy.”

“You keep sayingyou,” Georgie said. “I thought you wanted to keep it too.”

“I do, but I want to be a partner, Georgie. I want to help run it, not just collect the profits, not that it has any. It’s been running in the red for a couple of years.”

Georgie flinched. Why hadn’t she thought to look at the books? But did it matter? The business was established. Fully furnished with equipment and employees. They just needed to figure out how to freshen up its image. Make it competitive again.

“You want to help run it?” Georgie asked. “Last I heard, you live in Chicago.” Yeah, she’d stalked him on social media for a week after learning about his existence, but it would have been stranger if she hadn’t. All she’d found was a little used LinkedIn account with no photo and no job history. She’d only known it was him because there was apparently only one Jack Leopold Durand in the United States, and also because the man with the LinkedIn profile had the same birthdate and year: March 8. “You’d have to quit your job and move here. And if the company’s really in the red, you won’t get a paycheck for some time. I can live off my savings. What about you?”

A hard look filled his eyes, and Georgie wasn’t sure if he was upset that she’d known where he lived but never attempted to contact him or insulted that she’d questioned his ability to live without a paycheck. “Let me worry about my finances. You’ve never been concerned with them before. Why start now?”

“Hey,” River said, sitting up in his seat. “That was uncalled for.”

“No,” Georgie said softly, overcome with shame. “He’s right. I never reached out, but can you imagine how awkward it was for me—and Lee? I didn’t know if you even knew we existed. What if your mother had told you that another man was your father? I didn’t want to destroy your world too.”

“Too?” he asked with plenty of attitude.

“Look,” Georgie said, running a hand over her forehead. “My father wasfarfrom perfect. He only cared about having a son, so I was a disappointment from the start. That’s why he named me Georgie—not Georgia or Georgina, just Georgie. I never, ever measured up for him, even if he pretended otherwise to the world. But he loved my mother. And I trusted in that. Finding out about you meant the one thing I’d believed my father and I had in common was a lie too.” As she finished the last sentence, she realized she’d said too much, and her face flamed with embarrassment. She’d never even told any of her previous boyfriends any of that, let alone a stranger. No,twostrangers. She cast a glance to River, who was giving her a sympathetic look.

Then she saw the look on Jack’s face—the gleam in his eyes—and realized what she’d said.He only cared about having a son.

Just not this son.

She wanted to say something to him, but she doubted he’d want sympathy from her. Not after everything. So she took a deep breath and did what she did best: focus on the task at hand. “All of that is neither here nor there. We’re here to discuss the future of Buchanan Brewery. You say you want to be a full, working partner. How soon can you be here?”

His eyes widened slightly. “A month. Maybe a week on either side.”

“Okay. We’ll need to figure out what to do to update the brewery.”

“I’ve already been talking to Dottie and some of the staff,” he said, his shoulders relaxing. “First, you need to know that Lurch quit tonight.”

“Lurch?” she asked in confusion.

“The brewmaster. He told Dottie he had no desire to work for stuck-up pricks—his phrasing, not mine,” he said with a grin.

She grimaced. “He’s not far off.”

Jack’s grin spread, and Georgie couldn’t get over how much he resembled Lee in the rare moments when her older brother actually looked happy. She hadn’t seen it before because of their different coloring, but it was there in his smile. Something she hadn’t seen Lee do in a long, long time.

“So we’ll need a brewmaster,” she said.

“Not just any brewmaster. We need a good one,” Jack said. “No, agreatone. Our brewmaster will be the key to making Buchanan Brewery great again.”

“So where do we find a brewmaster?” Georgie asked, then immediately recalled River’s phone conversation with his friend.

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