Page 34 of Legacy

She let out a shaky breath, then rolled her shoulders back.

“Anyway. Let’s get everything set up for the next big event, and then I want to try a beer.”

“Didn’t you used to say you were a wine girl?” I tried to lighten my voice because I knew there were reasons our family didn’t talk about things. The more we did, the more it hurt. And talking about the fact that our mom was dead, and our dad was probably the one who had murdered her, wouldn’t bring Mom back. It would only bring more resentment because the cops hadn’t been able to do anything. Just like we didn’t talk about the fact that our stepmother had walked away from us and had never come back. Was she dead? We would never know. And deep down in my heart, I had a feeling that my dad had something to do with it, but nobody could prove it, and so here we were, pretending the Ashfords weren’t the town messes and my dad wasn’t the town drunk.

“You’re thinking about Dad again.”

I blinked at Teagan’s words. “What?”

“You’re thinking about Dad. And since you are, you’re going to get tan lines in between your brows from frowning like that.”

I barely resisted the urge to rub my forehead to check if those lines were indeed carved into my skin. “Fuck you. Come on, I’ll go get you that beer. We have family dinner tonight anyway.”

“Oh, yay,” Teagan said dryly, and I threw a balled-up piece of paper at her.

“You’re the one who wants to continue to have family dinners in such abundance. We could just go to any one of the siblings’ places. But no, you like it at my house.”

“You have the bigger house. You can fit all of us. And you’re closest to Bodhi, so we can drag him down.”

“One day we should just show up at his cabin and annoy the fuck out of him.”

“He would probably shoot us and ask questions later,” she added, and I wasn’t quite sure she was kidding.

I shook my head as we headed to the tasting room. There were a few people milling about, but the big rush wouldn’t happen until later. I nodded at a few locals and went to pull a draft for Teagan.

“Are you going to tell me what the new one is?” she asked, kind of fluttering her eyelashes.

“You don’t want to be my bookkeeper anymore, so maybe I won’t tell you.”

“I’m just saying Felicity would be better at it.”

“Felicity would be better at what?” Rune asked as he walked into the tasting room, a pile of large and smaller boxes in his hands.

Teagan leaned forward to help with the smaller box on top of Rune’s pile. “I think that Callum over here should hire Felicity to work on the books. It just makes more sense.”

“You should. And if you don’t, I’ll feel like you don’t trust my baby sister, and then we’re going to have words.”

Trusting his little sister wasn’t the problem. And he was going to have words with me if he ever knew what ran through my mind. Or the fact that I knew exactly what she tasted like.

I cleared my throat. “What are you bringing me?”

Rune rolled his eyes. “An empty box or four. I’m here to buy more.”

“More empty boxes?” Teagan asked, her tone so polite that I just snorted.

“I need a couple more packs. People are in the mood for bottles rather than just on draft. Which is ridiculous because everything tastes better on draft.”

“Fuck yeah,” a customer said as he lifted his glass.

I tilted my chin at him in thanks, then looked over at my team member. We had a limit on how many drinks a person could have, and while I didn’t think this person had reached it yet, they were a little too bleary-eyed for my liking.

The team member immediately went to smile and chat with the other group, and I looked back at my best friend.

“When did I last give you stock?” I asked while running my hand through my beard.

“You would know that if you looked at this notebook. And I don’t know, maybe hire a bookkeeper who knows what they’re doing?”

I sighed. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”