Chapter Seven
Hannah
Once a month,Hannah hosted a ladies’ night at the taproom. It was always on a Wednesday, tickets had to be bought in advance, and attendee numbers were increasing steadily. She used it as an opportunity to test and promote a particular beer and she put a lot of thought and effort into its theme.
Tonight, she’d settled on Prohibition and they were going to play Texas Hold’em. Twenty-three women had registered. She had a small batch of stout she’d aged for a few months in a Canadian whiskey barrel made from maple wood for them to sample. The alcohol content was high so she’d serve it in snifters. She usually hired a bartender so she could participate and enjoy a few drinks, too. What better way to get to know the women of Grand than over a specialty beer?
The beer wasn’t her only reason for choosing this particular theme. Her sister-in-law haunted consignment stores and she’d found a sequined Gatsby dress for Hannah that Hannah was dying to wear. Jess had a good eye for style and it fit her as if it were tailor-made. Hannah had ordered black elbow-length finger gloves and a black satin headpiece online and bought low-heeled Mary Jane shoes to go with it. It was fun to dress up every once in a while.
At five-thirty, she was busy hanging posters protesting the Eighteenth Amendment and favoring the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform when someone rapped on the taproom’s window. It was Dallas, with his hands cupped around his eyes and his face pressed up to the glass.
He wore dress pants and a white shirt so he must have come straight from work. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows and his tie hung askew as if he’d run his finger under his collar one time too many.
At first glance, he offered up an illusion of an everyday office worker. The strong bulge of tendons running the length of his forearms, combined with the tight fit of his shirt across his shoulders and the tanned skin, suggested part-time outdoor laborer, too. A country doctor likely wouldn’t be anyone’s first guess when they met him, but it wasn’t a stretch either.
Billionaire, however?
“Let me in,” he mouthed, and pointed toward the door.
She dropped the packet of poster putty on a table and hurried over to disengage the dead bolt. The warmth of late afternoon sunlight poured in along with him. His hazel eyes beamed. The pounding of her heart threatened the integrity of her ribs—purely because he’d startled her and not because she was happy to see him.
“Hey.” He looked around, taking in the tables she’d moved and the posters she’d hung. “What’s going on?”
“Ladies’ night. We get together once a month to play poker,” she said. “I make a few small batches of specialty brews to plan for future production and this gives me an opportunity to taste-test them.”
“Sounds like fun. When is guys’ night?”
Hannah lifted one brow. “Are you accusing me of sexism?”
“No, no, just curious,” he said, although his eyes strongly suggested he was laughing at her. “It ties in nicely with why I’m here, though.” He perched on a stool, one long leg braced on the floor and a heel hooked on a rung. “How would you feel about hosting a fundraising event for the new free clinic?”
Ideas immediately began bouncing around in her brain. She forced herself to be practical. “The taproom doesn’t have a whole lot of space. I can only seat thirty people.”
“Thirty is plenty. This is Grand, not New York City.”
She really, really wanted to do this. She wanted it to be for the right reasons, however, not because he was trying to help her boost business, and she was a little suspicious as to why he’d choose the taproom, when there were fancier spots. “I thought the Endeavour Ranch was funding the clinic.”
“It will. But it’s a community clinic. The public should be allowed to pitch in and make it feel like their own.” Dallas grinned at her. “It was Ryan’s idea. I asked to buy emergency room equipment so I don’t have to send people who can’t afford it to the hospital and he told me to raise the money myself. It seems I have a ‘budget’ to follow.” He used his fingers as air quotes as he said it. “Not that I don’t plan to make a sizeable private donation too, mind you. But apparently the IRS has rules around that sort of thing.”
“Imagine that,” Hannah said. The only IRS rules she was even remotely familiar with involved them taking her money, not her giving it away. Nevertheless, she thought it was a great gesture on his part. “I’d be happy to help. I can’t offer anything fancy, though,” she felt compelled to warn, suddenly remembering that his idea of a fundraiser likely differed considerably from hers.
His look of horror immediately dispelled her concerns. “If I’d wanted fancy, I would have asked Ryan for help.”
Her cell phone vibrated on one of the tables where she’d left it while she hung posters. She checked the number. It was her bartender, Ford. He never called her at the last minute like this. She crossed her fingers and hoped nothing was wrong.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I have to take this call.”
“I’m so sorry, Hannah, but I can’t make it tonight,” Ford said. He had a last-minute, out-of-town job interview that evening, which left her on her own.
“Don’t worry about it. Good luck with the interview,” she added, because she liked Ford and he needed the steady work. She wished she could afford to hire him full time, but she’d deliberately started her business out small and was a year away from being able to afford permanent staff.
“Trouble?” Dallas asked as she set her phone down.
“Not really. My bartender had to cancel, but I can manage without him.”
Dallas’s face brightened. “I could fill in for him, if you like.”
Dallas, in a roomful of women?