Page 16 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"And somewhere in all that I still need actual pumpkins, real ones, enough to line both sides of the street, which means a farm run I haven't had time to schedule, on top of everything else." He flips to another page, and partway through, without any visible transition, without seeming to notice he's said it until it's already out of his mouth, he glances up.

"You think the twins would want to help decorate? There's a whole afternoon of hanging lights and pumpkins that's basically made for kids."

He stops. I watch it happen in real time, the exact second the question catches up with him, his shoulders going still, his eyes flicking toward me like he's checking whether anyone actually heard what he just said out loud. It's such a small thing, four seconds tops, but it might be the loudest thing he's done since I've known him.

I don't get the chance to answer.

The door bursts open the way it always does when the twins arrive somewhere, Maggie two steps behind them with their backpacks still on, and Eli is already skidding across the taproom floor before I can process that they're here at all.

"Decorate what?"

"Lights and pumpkins," Josie says, materializing at his elbow like she's been listening from the doorway, which she probably has. "We heard through the door. Can we help? Please? I'm really good at hanging things."

"You hung one ornament on the tree last year and it fell off within ten minutes."

"It fell off because the tree was defective. Not because of me."

"Yes," Josie says, before I've managed a single word, before Rafe has said anything at all beyond the question he already regrets. "We want to help. We're doing it. This is happening now."

"This is definitely happening," Eli agrees, with the total certainty of a boy who has already mentally claimed the ladder.

I look at Rafe, half expecting him to walk it back, to say something about liability or schedules or the twenty other reasons a man like him keeps a folded piece of paper in a drawer somewhere with rules written on it. Instead he's just standing there behind the bar with his clipboard hanging loose in one hand, staring at two kids who have already decided his entire weekend for him. For one unguarded second before he catches himself, he looks like a man who can't quite believe what he just said out loud.

"Guess I'm decorating with an audience," he says finally, and it comes out rougher than it should for four words about string lights.

"Guess you are." I can't keep the smile off my face, and I don't try very hard to. "You did ask them."

"I noticed that. About half a second after I said it."

Gunny, from behind the bar, doesn't even look up from the glass he's drying. "Whipped," he says again, cheerfully, to absolutely nobody, and this time Rafe doesn't even bother arguing.

8

RAFE

Three days out from Oktoberfest and the brewery has stopped functioning like a business and started functioning like a triage unit. I've got a checklist longer than my arm, a phone that won't stop buzzing, and about forty minutes of daylight left before the tent company shows up wanting a decision I haven't made yet.

Then the keg line lets go.

I hear it before I see it, a hiss that turns into a hard spray, and by the time I get to the storage room there's already an inch of beer sheeting across the concrete and spreading fast toward the boxes of programs we had printed for the festival. I grab the shutoff valve with both hands and wrench it closed, but the damage is done. It's six inches deep in the low corner by the time I've got towels down, and the whole room smells like a brewery had an accident, which is exactly what happened.

"Gunny."

"On it." He's already hauling the wet-vac out from under the stairs, resigned in the way of a man who's seen this exact disaster before and will see it again. "Line's original to the building. I told you months ago it needed replacing."

"You've told me that about half the equipment in this building."

"And I've been right about all of it."

"You weren't right about the compressor."

"I was right about the compressor eventually. Timing's not the same as being wrong." He drags the vac closer to the spreading puddle and gets it running before I can argue the point further, which is probably his intention.

I don't have time to push back on that, because Dot's nephew is standing in the doorway to the taproom holding a rolled banner like it might bite him, and something about his expression tells me this is about to be a second problem stacked on the first.

"Where do you want it?"

"Over the bar's fine. Let's see it."