Mutual Release (20 page)

He pulled into a visitor’s parking spot, tucked his Ray-Bans over the visor, and smoothed his hair before jumping out and striding to the glass front doors. “Dawson” was etched in the glass, nothing more or less, as if it were a boutique law firm or ad agency. Nothing out front indicated that it was one of the most successful craft beer and domestic wine distribution companies in the Midwest.

Tucking away a shiver of intimidation, he pushed the door open and saw a small shrine to Michigan craft beer. The front receiving area was full of faux six packs, cases, kegs, and displays representing every brand, including some that were nationally known. A single desk sat near another set of doors. Through its clear glass he could see a bustling group of people, men and women, all dressed in top-notch suits, getting ready to go out on their sales day. The place oozed professionalism, even a bit of snootiness that surprised him.

But he shook it off, walked up to the stunningly attractive blond woman at the front desk. She sat frowning at a large computer screen. He stood for a few seconds, thinking she would acknowledge him. Finally he had to clear his throat to make her look away from whatever had her mesmerized.

“Oh, hello. Sorry about that.” Her smile made her already gorgeous face light up and left him slightly breathless. Looking back, he figured he must have looked like a complete ass as he stood there, unable to form coherent words, his brain awash in sensations he had not allowed himself to experience in a damn long time. She arched one perfect eyebrow. He gulped, knowing he should say something.

“Uh, so, I have an appointment?” He winced at the upturning of his sentence as if he were asking her a question. Clearing his throat, he started over, pasted on his best “Evan Adams, Charmer” smile and held out a hand. “Evan Adams, owner of Big House Brewing in Ann Arbor, here to see Mr. Dawson. I’m a little early.”

She tilted her head, then shook his hand matter-of-factly. But he had to stop himself from stumbling backwards at the thoughts coiling up in his lizard brain at her touch. His mouth dried out and an odd yet familiar roaring sound fired up between his ears. She frowned. “You okay, there, Evan?” Her lips caressed his name, making him repress a shiver.

“Yeah, sorry. So, anyway, I’ll just sit… over here… until Mr. Dawson is ready. You know, since I’m, uh, early.” He winced, marveling at the depth of his dorkiness. She put her elbows on the desk, eyeing him closely. He observed that she seemed a little overdressed for a receptionist but figured this place must have a strict dress code.

“Sit here,” she said, patting the seat nearest her desk. “Keep me company for a while.”

“Um, sure,” he said, flushing red to the tips of his ears, then moving closer to her while trying to look cool, casual, not ready to jump up and escape.

She smiled. “So, tell me about your company. You know, while we wait for Mr. Dawson.”

He relaxed and launched into the tale, thankful to have a reason to talk and not sound like the world’s oldest high school geek trying to flirt with the prom queen. She asked a lot of questions, kept him talking. And after about a half hour, he was laughing with her at his tale of trying to empty a brewing vessel full of wet grains and dumping about ten pounds of the stuff all over himself.

At one point she brushed her hair back, and his breath caught in his throat at the glimpse of her long neck and the small indent between her collarbones. He had no idea what that was, that soft spot that seemed to pulse with her heartbeat. But he wanted to put his tongue there very, very badly. Allowing his eyes to flicker over her profile, the striking angles of her face, he gulped, looked away.

Getting a grip, he pulled a business card from his portfolio and handed it to her. “I’d love to talk with you more,” he said, trying to ease his voice down from its high-pitched nervous whine to a sexier, more natural tone. “But since I don’t even know your name…” He looked at the nameplate on the desk. It was blank.

She leaned back, propped her high heels on the desk in a strange move that had him instantly on edge and practically panting with horniness.

“Uh, so,” he glanced at his watch, his nerves dancing up and down his spine once more, “if you are interested, maybe we could, you know, go out. Have a beer? Keep chatting?” He closed his eyes, unable to bear his own flop sweat another minute. “Never mind.” He slumped back in his seat. Where the “Master Dom” Evan Adams had hidden he did not know, but damned if the guy was staying there and leaving this ridiculous, stuttering loser in his place.

The silence spun out about a minute longer than was truly polite. He finally looked up at her. She was staring at him over the tops of her shoes, her head tilted to the side as if wondering why the hell he was even cluttering up her space. Finally, the doors to his left opened and a tall, good-looking guy in a suit stood there, surprise clear on his face. “Julie,” he said. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Your nine o’clock appointment isn’t here yet but…”

The woman held up a hand, silencing the man but keeping her eyes pinned on Evan’s. His heart sped up and that familiar, yet nearly forgotten, roaring sound started up in his ears once more.

Julie Dawson. J. Dawson. The person he’d been communicating with through his… or her… secretary.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

He stood, furious that she’d sat there and let him babble on like a bloody idiot for nearly forty-five minutes. “Well, that was fun,” he said, staring her down, or attempting to. But his skin was both on fire and cold at once. Something about the woman made him have to hang on to his laptop case tight, just to keep from stepping close and kissing those full red lips so hard she would be his in an instant. “Or not. Thanks for your time.”

“No, no, don’t go,” she said, getting to her feet in one fluid, sexy move. She was over six feet tall in her shoes, curvy, womanly, and sending out the sort of signals he had not intercepted in a long time – too long, if the way he was overreacting was any indication. “Really, I want to know why you think my company would be in any way interested in yours.”

He processed her barb, clenched his jaw, and poured out the reasons behind why Dawson would benefit from jumping on his bandwagon now, in the early days, so they could grow the brand in a key market together. She listened, standing behind the stupid receptionist’s desk, her assistant wildly typing notes on his tablet.

Finally, she held up a hand again. “How very… creative.” She walked around to the front of the desk, giving him an eye-popping full view of her. She was like sex on two perfect female legs, the exact body type he craved – full breasts and hips, cinched in but not obnoxiously small waist, long hair, and legs that went on and on… and on. “And, um, Evan?”

He jumped back, hearing his name again.

“Yeah, my eyes are up here. But never mind. I’m used to being ogled, and by way more successful brewery owners than you.” She held his business card between thumb and forefinger, as if it were made of dog shit. “Tell you what, why don’t you let me ponder your… proposal. And assume that your eye-fucking session won’t happen again.”

She turned from him and walked away without a word. Her assistant shrugged and followed her back in, leaving Evan breathless, furious, and never more aware of his neglected libido.

Part II: Julie

Chapter One

“But… Mo-o-o-m…” Julie let the vowel drag out as only a teenager could and still not sound like a toddler. “I hate going there. It’s smelly and hot and…” She clenched her eyes shut, closing out all the clutter and chaos of the small apartment kitchen. Her hands shook as she poured hot water onto the used tea bag, hoping to squeeze one more use out of it, capture a last gasp of the caffeine before giving up and tossing it in the trash. “Shit,” she muttered, watching the hot water stay clear and the used-up bag of generic tea leaves sit like a lump at the bottom of the chipped mug.

She looked up when her mother brushed her cheek with the typical, non-committal air kiss. Julie felt something hopeful in her chest, a brief flexing of a muscle long abandoned when it came to maternal concern. It hurt, which surprised her, this yearning for something more than a brief brush of her mother’s lips to her cheek, zero eye contact, and even less concern for the fear in Julie’s voice. The back office of the large suburban Detroit restaurant where her mother was the bar manager and hoped to soon get promoted to general manager was small. It was hot. It was smelly. But there was something worse there. Something Julie couldn’t or wouldn’t name, even to herself.

“Honey, look, I don’t want you here knocking around this place for so long without me. At least when you’re there, I know you are safe.”

Julie opened her mouth to shatter that particular fragile illusion. Then closed it again at the sound of the apartment door slamming shut. Typical. She sighed, repressing the shiver that shot down her spine at the thought of that stupid room awaiting her at the end of a long, boring, lonely school day.

After drinking the tea-flavored hot water, she grabbed an overripe banana and her backpack and headed outside to the curb. The bus was its usual chaos of overabundance. Too many kids, too much drama, too many warm bodies and hot breath, and not nearly enough deodorant, in Julie’s opinion. She flopped into her towards-the-front seat next to Amy, the one friend she’d managed to keep through her last year at yet another school. Julie smiled at her and was struck again by the girl’s apparent oblivion about the pariah-ship Julie had operated under since setting foot into high school.

Amy’s father was an attorney. Her mother stayed at home and did whatever it was to make Amy’s house always smell like a combination of fabric softener and cookies. Julie loved it there. So much so she’d begun avoiding it, in a lame effort at convincing herself that her home was okay; it was fine. That her own mother did not job surf and boyfriend hop so much Julie had not managed to live in one place longer than three years at a stretch.

“Hey, did you get the calc done or what?” Amy ran her fingers through her perfect straight black hair. A gaggle of noisy students whose sole mission in life it was to either ignore or tease her to tears twenty-four-seven poured in the bus door and erupted down the aisle. They all managed to bump into Julie’s shoulder. She sighed and looked straight ahead.

“Yeah. Do you need me to help you?” She was a math whiz, practically a prodigy if you asked her AP teachers. One of them had even contacted her mother once early in this, her senior year, to ask what Julie’s “plans” were for college. She stared out the window at the annoying, picture-perfect Michigan fall day. Julie’s plans were pretty much set and involved putting on a cocktail waitress dress and serving drinks when she wasn’t going to a few community college classes. That much had been made clear to her after her mother had put down her phone from that conversation and accused Julie and her teachers of trying to “gang up” on her. Julie would go to community college, period. It was all they could afford. Loans were out of the question.

The bus noise and stench ramped up as it lurched towards the fancy suburban high school where students like Julie stood out like a handful of sore thumbs. Students like her didn’t join clubs or play sports or act in plays. They didn’t run for student council or mentor younger students or even attend the myriad athletic, musical, or dramatic events put on by the wealthy kids. No, students like Julie came to school, tried to fade into the woodwork, be ignored – because the opposite of that for kids like her was, in the way of teenagers, brutal.

“Hey, Julie, why don’t you come over after practice?” Amy bit the side of her perfect fingernail as they ignored the disgusting sounds and insults emanating from the back of the malodorous bus. “Mom says she hasn’t seen you in a while, wants you to hang out more, like we used to.”

Julie didn’t meet her friend’s eyes. Her mother had launched into one of her epic “them against us” tirades the last time Julie had asked to sleep over at Amy’s and forbidden her from going there ever again. Luckily the woman’s schedule did not lend itself to constant oversight of Julie’s every move. So she spent her fair share of time at the perfectly decorated, always immaculate large home where Amy Terrance lived with her doting parents and adorable little brother. However, the specter of her mother’s words accusing Julie of “taking charity” from people who didn’t really see her as anything but a “poor project” never quite left her psyche.