His Illegitimate Heir by Sarah M. Anderson Page A

an offhand way.
    â€œI’m having lunch with the brewmaster, Casey Johnson.”
    That got Daniel’s attention. He sat up straighter. “And?”
    And she asked me if I was like my father or my brother and I didn’t have an answer.
    But that wasn’t what he said. In fact, he didn’t say anything. Yes, he and Daniel were in this together, and yes, they were technically brothers. But there were some things he still didn’t want to share. Daniel was too smart and he knew how to bend the truth to suit his purposes.
    Zeb had no desire to be bent to anyone’s purposes but his own. “We’re going over the product line. It’s hard to believe that a woman so young is the brewmaster in charge of all of our beer and I want to make sure she knows her stuff.”
    His phone rang. He winced inwardly—it was his mother. “I’ve got to take this. We’ll talk later?”
    Daniel nodded. “One last thing. I had four resignations in the marketing department.”
    Casey had not been wrong about that, either. She had a certain brashness to her, but she knew this business. “Hire whoever you want,” Zeb said as he answered the call. “Hello, Mom.”
    â€œI shouldn’t have to call you,” his mother said, the steel in her voice sounding extra sharp today.
    How much beer could one man reasonably drink at work? Zeb was going to have to test that limit today, because if there was one thing he didn’t want to deal with right now, it was his mother.
    â€œBut I’m glad you did,” he replied easily. “How’s the salon?”
    â€œHumph.” Emily Richards ran a chain of successful hair salons in Georgia. Thanks to his careful management, Doo-Wop and Pop! had gone from being six chairs in a strip-mall storefront to fifteen locations scattered throughout Georgia and a small but successful line of hair weaves and braid accessories targeted toward the affluent African American buyer.
    Zeb had done that for his mother. He’d taken her from lower middle class, where the two of them got by on $30,000 a year, to upper class. Doo-Wop and Pop! had made Emily Richards rich and was on track to make even more profit this year.
    But that humph told Zeb everything he needed to know. It didn’t matter that he had taken his mother’s idea and turned it into a hugely successful woman-owned business. All that really mattered to Emily Richards was getting revenge on the man she claimed had ruined her life.
    A fact she drove home with her next statement. “Well? Did you finally take what’s yours?”
    It always came back to the brewery. And the way she said finally grated on his nerves like a steel file. Still, she was his mother. “It’s really mine, Mom.”
    Those words should have filled him with satisfaction. He had done what he had set out to do. The Beaumont Brewery was his now.
    So why did he feel so odd?
    He shook it off. It had been an exceptionally long weekend, after all. As expected, his press conference had created not just waves but tsunamis that had to be dealt with. His one mistake—revealing that there was a third Beaumont bastard, unnamed and unknown—had threatened to undermine his triumphant ascension to power.
    â€œThey’ll come for you,” his mother intoned ominously. “Those Beaumonts can’t let it rest. You watch your back.”
    Not for the first time, Zeb wondered if his mother was a touch paranoid. He understood now what he hadn’t when he was little—that his father had bought her silence. But more and more, she acted like his siblings would go to extreme measures to enforce that silence.
    His father, maybe. But none of the research he’d done on any of his siblings had turned up any proclivities for violence.
    Still, he knew he couldn’t convince his mother. So he let it go.
    There was a knock on the door and before he could say anything, it popped open.