AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER ONE
TESSA DONOVAN STARED across the parking lot of Donovan Brothers Brewery, mesmerized by the flashes and swirls of blue and red across the gray brick of the building. She couldn’t help but stare. The police lights were so at odds with the birdsong and pale sunlight of the early-morning hour.
Her brother Jamie stood between the two cop cars parked at haphazard angles near the back door. He wore a dazed expression, probably because he’d never met an early morning willingly.
She stalked across the parking lot and grabbed her brother by the collar of his rumpled T-shirt.
“Hey!” he protested.
Tessa pulled him closer, tugging him down until they were nose to nose. “James Francis Donovan,” she whispered, “what have you done?”
“What are you talking about?” Jamie asked, sounding just outraged enough that Tessa almost believed him for a second. But only for a second.
She twisted his collar tighter. “Spill it.”
“Come on, Tessa.” He yanked away from her grip and waved an angry hand at the police cars. “You’re not accusing me of having something to do with the robbery, I hope? I set the alarm, I locked the doors. This is not my fault.”
Tessa ran a suspicious eye down her brother’s body. He looked like he always did. Tall and handsome and laid-back. His jeans were worn out by a thousand washings, his T-shirt faded to cloudy gray. His light brown hair was sleep-tousled, but that was nothing new. Unfortunately, neither was the guilty shift of his eyes when she looked into them.
“Damn it, Jamie.”
“Tessa—”
“I know the robbery wasn’t your fault, but you said you were the one who found the door open. So what the hell were you doing here at seven in the morning? And why’d you call me instead of Eric?”
Eric was their older sibling, and though they all owned equal shares of the brewery, Eric had always taken the lead. He was the logical person to call to report that the brewery had been robbed. But Jamie had called her instead. Not good. Not good at all.
Jamie ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the pale blue sky. “It’s bad, Tessa.”
Her heart fell to somewhere below street level. “What’s bad? What?”
“Monica Kendall came by last night.”
“No. Oh, no, no, no.” Monica Kendall was the vice president of High West Air and the key to the distribution deal that Eric had been working on for months. “Jamie, please tell me you didn’t. Even you wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“Even I wouldn’t? Nice thing to say to your brother.”
“Jamie!” she screeched. God, she wished the cops would turn the lights off on the patrol cars. The colors were digging into her eye sockets.
Jamie finally gave up his outraged stance. His shoulders slumped. His head fell. “I don’t know what happened,” he murmured. “She said she wanted a tour of the brewery. Of course, she sampled a few of the beers and then…”
“And then?”
“She needed a ride home.”
Tessa’s sunken heart flopped weakly. She knew exactly what he meant. Women loved Jamie, and at twenty-nine, he was in the prime of loving women right back. “No,” she muttered again. “This isn’t happening.”
“I took her home,” he said. “I had to.”
