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trying to delay another confrontation with Casey.
    Unsurprisingly, the brewhouse was warm, and emptier than he expected. He saw now what Casey had meant when she said most of the process was automated. The few men he did see wore white lab coats and hairnets, along with safety goggles. They held tablets and when Zeb and Delores passed them, they paused and looked up.
    â€œThe staffing levels two years ago?” Zeb asked again.
    He’d asked that question at least five times already. Two years ago, the company had been in the capable hands of Chadwick Beaumont. They’d been turning a consistent profit and their market share was stable. That hadn’t been enough for some of their board members, though. Leon Harper had agitated for the company’s sale, which made him hundreds of millions of dollars. From everything Zeb had read about Harper, the man was a foul piece of humanity. But there was no way Zeb ever could’ve gotten control of the company without him.
    Delores tapped her tablet as they walked along. The room was oddly silent—there was the low hum of machinery, but it wasn’t enough to dampen the echoes from their footfalls. The noise bounced off the huge tanks that reached at least twenty feet high. The only other noise was a regular hammering that got louder the farther they went into the room.
    â€œForty-two,” she said after several minutes. “That was when we were at peak capacity. Ah, here we are.”
    Delores pointed at the floor and he looked down and saw two pairs of jeans-clad legs jutting out from underneath the tank.
    Delores gave him a cautious smile and turned her attention back to the legs. “Casey?”
    Zeb had to wonder what Delores had thought of Casey bursting into his office earlier—and whether or not Casey had said anything on her way out. He still hadn’t decided what he thought of the young woman. Because she did seem impossibly young to be in charge. But what she might have lacked in maturity she made up for with sheer grit.
    She probably didn’t realize it, but there were very few people in this world who would dare burst into his office and dress him down. And those who would try would rarely be able to withstand the force of his disdain.
    But she had. Easily. But more than that, she’d rebuffed his exploratory offer. No, that wasn’t a strong enough word for how she’d destroyed him with her parting shot.
    So many women looked at him as their golden ticket. He was rich and attractive and single—he knew that. But he didn’t want to be anyone’s ticket anywhere.
    Casey Johnson hadn’t treated him like that. She’d matched him verbal barb for barb and then bested him, all while looking like a hot mess.
    He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued.
    â€œ...try it again,” came a muffled voice from underneath the tank. This was immediately followed by more hammering, which, at this close range, was deafening.
    Zeb fought the urge to cover his ears and Delores winced. When there was a break in the hammering, she gently tapped one of the two pairs of shoes with her toe. “Casey—Mr. Richards is here.”
    The person whose shoe she’d nudged started—which was followed by a dull thunk and someone going, “Ow, dammit. What?”
    And then she slid out from under the tank. She was in a white lab coat, a hairnet and safety goggles, just like everyone else. “Hello again, Ms. Johnson.”
    Her eyes widened. She was not what one might call a conventional beauty—especially not in the hairnet. She had a small spiderweb scar on one cheek that was more noticeable when she was red in the face—and Zeb hadn’t yet seen her not red in the face. It was an imperfection, but it drew his eyes to her. She was maybe four inches shorter than he was and he thought her eyes were light brown. He wasn’t even sure what color her hair was—it had been under the hat in