AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What are you talking about?” Jamie growled.
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Just…” He waved a hand at the oven. “Just don’t burn the place down, all right?”
“Eric,” Jamie started, but Eric stole out the open door and into the shade of the afternoon.
He didn’t know where he was going. Just away. Anywhere but there.
He drove for miles, and it felt good. It felt free. But would he keep driving even if he had the chance? Where would he go? Even in his imagination, his mind always turned back to Donovan Brothers. He loved that place. It was all he knew, and despite all his doubts and resentments and anger, he could never think of anything he’d rather do with his life.
Maybe, instead of worrying that he wasn’t needed anymore, he should be making damn sure he was invaluable. Jamie was right about one thing. Eric had been sulking like a kid who hadn’t gotten his way. So he didn’t want to turn the brewery into a brewpub. Big deal. He hadn’t wanted to take over the whole operation at twenty-four, but he’d done it and he’d done it well.
“Screw this,” he muttered, pulling a U-turn on the deserted county highway. If his plans for the future of the brewery weren’t good enough, then he’d come up with new plans. And Eric suddenly realized just where he’d gone wrong.
He’d been concentrating too hard for too many years. He’d put his head down and forgotten to look around. More importantly, he’d forgotten to look back. He had boxes of Michael Donovan’s old files in the spare bedroom of his condo. And even though his goal for the past thirteen years had been to run the brewery just as their dad would’ve, he hadn’t looked through those boxes since the day he’d packed them up a decade before. Maybe it was time to look again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BETH HAD BEEN NICE ENOUGH to bring dinner, and Eric had carefully laid out plates and silverware and wineglasses on his small table. But the bags of takeout sat unopened on the kitchen counter and one of the plates lay cracked in half on the dining room floor. The other plate was wedged under Beth’s naked shoulder. Eric, still buried deep inside her body, tried to catch his breath while he prayed to God she hadn’t landed on a fork.
“You okay?” he asked, lifting her enough to slide the plate free.
“I’m all right,” she said with a sly grin. “How about you?”
He stood straight, and Beth gasped when he slid farther inside her. Despite the fact that he’d come already, he was still half-hard. “You sure you’re done?” he asked, when she stretched and took him a little deeper.
“For now.” She sighed.
“Are you hungry?”
“Famished. I somehow forgot to eat lunch today.”
He was more than half-hard when he finally pulled out, overwhelmed with images of what she’d done with her mouth over her lunch hour. But when her stomach growled, he decided the reminiscing could wait till later. Though not much later if their recent past was any indicator.
When they finally sat down to eat lukewarm Chinese food, Eric found himself smiling as he chewed.
“You’re in an awfully good mood,” Beth said.
He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “I’m going to feel a little insulted if you’re not.”
She laughed. “I admit I’m still a tiny bit stressed. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that before.”
“Well, I’ve never had sex on a dining room table before.”
“No?”
“I won’t ask if it’s your first time, but I don’t mind telling you it’s mine.”
“And how was it? A little scary? Were you nervous?”
He chuckled as he reached for his wine. “Like a teenage boy, my eagerness overcame my nerves. In fact, just like a teenage boy, I forgot to think about your needs.”
“That’s odd. I seem to recall a pretty intense focus on what I needed.”
“Yeah, but utensil danger didn’t occur to me until after we were done.”
Beth laughed until she had to wipe tears from her eyes, and Eric realized she had been tense, even after the sex. “Are you worried about the store?” he asked.
She nodded and took a long drink of wine.
