His Illegitimate Heir. Sarah M. Anderson

other man he’d seen in the brewhouse. But she hadn’t let that stop her.

      Because she was, most likely, unstoppable.

      He hoped the employees thought highly of her. He needed people like her who cared for the company and the beer. People who weren’t constrained by what they were or were not supposed to be.

      Just like he wasn’t.

      “She’s young,” Delores finished.

      Zeb snorted. Compared to his assistant, almost everyone would be.

      “But she’s very good,” Delores said with finality.

      “Good.” He had no doubt that Casey Johnson would fight him at every step. “Make sure HR fast-tracks her hires. I want her to have all the help she needs.”

      He was looking forward to this.

Four

      “Thank you all for joining me today,” Zeb said, looking out at the worried faces of his chief officers, vice presidents and departmental heads. They were all crammed around the conference table in his office. They had twenty minutes until the press conference was scheduled to start and Zeb thought it was best to give his employees a little warning.

      Everyone looked anxious. He couldn’t blame them. He’d made everyone surrender their cell phones when they’d come into the office and a few people looked as if they were going through withdrawal. But he wasn’t about to run the risk of someone preempting his announcement.

      Only one person in the room looked like she knew what was coming next—Casey Johnson. Today she also looked like a member of the managerial team, Zeb noted with an inward smile. Her hair was slicked back into a neat bun and she wore a pale purple blouse and a pair of slacks. The change from the woman who’d stormed into his office was so big that if it hadn’t been for the faint spiderweb scar on her cheek, Zeb wouldn’t have recognized her.

      “I’m going to tell you the same thing that I’m going to tell the press in twenty minutes,” Zeb said. “I wanted to give you advance warning. When I make my announcement, I expect each and every one of you to look supportive. We’re going to present a unified force. Not only is the Beaumont Brewery back, but it’s going to be better than ever.” He glanced at Casey. She notched an eyebrow at him and made a little motion with her hands that Zeb took to mean Get on with it.

      So he did. “Hardwick Beaumont was my father.”

      As expected, the entire room shuddered with a gasp, followed by a rumbling murmur of disbelief. With amusement, Zeb noted that Casey stared around the room as if everyone else should have already realized the truth.

      She didn’t understand how unusual she was. No one had ever looked at him and seen the Beaumont in him. All they could see was a black man from Atlanta. Very few people ever bothered to look past that, even when he’d started making serious money.

      But she had.

      Some of the senior employees looked grim but not surprised. Everyone else seemed nothing but shocked. And the day wasn’t over yet. When the murmur had subsided, Zeb pressed on.

      “Some of you have met Daniel Lee,” Zeb said, motioning to Daniel, who stood near the door. “In addition to being our new chief marketing officer, Daniel is also one of Hardwick’s sons. So when I tell the reporters,” he went on, ignoring the second round of shocked murmurs, “that the Beaumont Brewery is back in Beaumont hands, I want to know that I have your full support. I’ve spent the last week getting to know you and your teams. I know that Chadwick Beaumont, my half brother,” he added, proud of the way he kept his voice level, “ran this company with a sense of pride and family honor and I’m making this promise to you, here, in this room—we will restore the Beaumont pride and we will restore the honor to this company. My last name may not be Beaumont, but I am one nonetheless. Do I have your support?”

      Again, his eyes found Casey’s. She was looking at him and then Daniel—no doubt looking for the family resemblance that lurked beneath their unique racial heritages.

      Murmurs continued to rumble around the room, like thunder before a storm. Zeb waited. He wasn’t going to ask a second time, because that would denote weakness and he was never weak.

      “Does Chadwick know what you’re doing?”

      Zeb didn’t see who asked the question, but from the voice, he guessed it was one of the older people in the room. Maybe even someone who had once worked not only for Chadwick but for Hardwick, as well. “He will shortly. At this time, Chadwick is a competitor. I wish him well, as I’m sure we all do, but he’s not coming back. This is my company now. Not only do I want to get us back to where we were when he was in charge of things, but I want to get us ahead of where we were. I’ll be laying out the details at the press conference, but I promise you this. We will have new beers,” he said, nodding to Casey, “and new marketing strategies, thanks to Daniel and his extensive experience.”

      He could tell he didn’t have them. The ones standing were shuffling their feet and the ones sitting were looking anywhere but at him. If this had been a normal business negotiation, he’d have let the silence stretch. But it wasn’t. “This was once a great place to work and I want to make it that place again. As I discussed with some of you, I’ve lifted the hiring freeze. The bottom line is and will continue to be important, but so is the beer.”

      An older man in the back stepped forward. “The last guy tried to run us into the ground.”

      “The last guy wasn’t a Beaumont,” Zeb shot back. He could see the doubt in their eyes. He didn’t look the part that he was trying to sell them on.

      Then Casey stood, acting far more respectable—and respectful—than the last time he had seen her. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I just want to make beer. And if you say we’re going to keep making beer, then I’m in.”

      Zeb acknowledged her with a nod of his head and looked around this room. He’d wager that there’d be one or two resignations on his desk by Monday morning. Maybe more. But Casey fixed them with a stern look and most of his employees stood up.

      “All right,” the older man who had spoken earlier repeated. Zeb was going to have to learn his name soon, because he clearly commanded a great deal of respect. “What do we have to do?”