Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“Sounds perfect. Can I start you out with drinks—wine, or your usual ale?”
Lucas wouldn’t be drinking much when he had to drive, but a glass of liquor that absorbed over the couple of hours it would take them to wait and eat couldn’t hurt. “A bottle of sweet red and my usual, sure,” he agreed.
Curtis agreed with a nod, and turned to leave. “I’ll be back with menus when I see you’re ready.”
“Thank you. Oh, breadsticks, too.”
A chuckle answered that. “Of course. Breadsticks, as well. I’ll bring those right along.”
Every table needed a basket.
It only seemed right.
The beep of his phone—a second, loud beep since parking the car—reminded Lucas that he needed to put the device on flight mode for the rest of the evening. Not that he wouldn’t check it for emergencies, work-wise or Jacob-related, later, but he wouldn’t be keeping a running commentary on the night with his brother.
At least, that’s who he assumed had been texting him.
Lucas figured out that wasn’t the case when he retrieved the phone from his inner blazer pocket. In fact, the separate texts hadn’t even come from the same person.
His father had messaged first to ask for a meeting at the brewery when Lucas returned to Saint John the following week while the newest, a text from his mother, asked for lunch. Neither of the two had been in contact with him in recent weeks.
Not that he minded.
He didn’t.
Lucas wished they hadn’t messaged tonight, either. The last thing he wanted to worry, or even think about, was his fucking parents. They took up more room in his head rent-free than he cared to admit.
Instead of answering back, on both fronts, Lucas simply turned the phone on flight mode like he originally intended to do and slipped the phone back into his pocket without a second thought. Penelope had become accustomed to waiting for a response from her oldest son when she did reach out while his father, on the other hand …
Well, fuck Ronald, too.
Lucas had to stop jumping through hoops to please an unpleasable man.
No excuses.
Despite putting the phone away, and his mind on pouring a glass of water to sip away the new taste of bitterness lingering on the back of his tongue, Lucas wasn’t able to stuff the shitty turn of his mood when Delaney returned back to the table. Maybe his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
Lucas tried to laugh it off as he stood to help Delaney back into her chair before pushing it into the table a bit. She placed her purse next to the chair leg when he said, “Nothing—just a reminder that I forgot to turn my phone off tonight.”
Her nose scrunched in the cutest way as she peered across the table at him as he retook his own seat. “Work?”
“In a way.”
Did his parents—and all the baggage that came with his family’s current estrangement—have to be on the table for discussion tonight?
He sure hoped not.
“I never asked you what you did for work,” she noted.
The change in topic became an olive branch that Lucas grasped onto to save him for the moment. “It’s a family business—you’d probably put it together if I gave you a couple of hints.”
Her dark brows lifted high. “Oh?”
“We distill and distribute some of the most-consumed beer in this country, actually. The family’s signature blend and a couple of licensed brews.”
“Dalton.”
Lucas grinned at the understanding he heard dawning her voice. “The Daltons, yes.”
“Oh, wow,” Delaney said, a knot forming between her brow as she gazed between him and the table in front of them while she processed the news. “The company has a major hub here, right?”
He nodded. “A call center for the supply and employee chain. It’s why I keep going back and forth every handful of weeks. Things have changed and grown over the last decade. We’re still trying to catch up, I think.”
“Is the brewery your favorite part? All that beer, I bet.”
Lucas laughed. “Do I look like the type?”
“I think it would be part of the job, no?”
Maybe.
“I like the bottling plant more than anything,” Lucas admitted, “but it was one of the first areas I remember exploring as a kid, so I might be biased.”
Nostalgia could do that to a person.
Delaney leaned into the table, elbows propped up at the edge as she inched closer to him. “And what do you do, exactly?”
“Manage and oversee the eastern arm of the company. My father handles the west. The ten-year plan is getting something set up in the middle to break up the difference.”
Or that was supposed to be the plan.
Who knew what the future held?
“At thirty-five?” Delaney asked, although she didn’t say it like his age was a bad thing. “That must be—”
“A lot,” he interjected, not wanting her to get confused about his job. It wasn’t very glamorous behind the bottles formed with the family’s company name on the necks, and their liquor being sold all across the country. The fissures and cracks behind the family’s tight-knit facade when it came to the public and even their own company twisted what it should be into something far worse for Lucas. “I rarely get a break, and it always feels like there’s something to do. I can’t catch up sometimes.”