Georgie ran her free hand through her hair, which reminded her she had a perfectly good glass of wine in her other hand. She took a generous gulp. “I started falling in love with him here at Grandpa Beau’s house. At this very table. Over beer.”
And she realized it was true. She’d heard of people falling in love that quickly, practically at first sight, and thought it was ridiculous. Nonsense. But River…everything about him had broken all of her rules, all of her notions about life. And now she had lost him.
A sob bubbled up, but she swallowed it back down. She couldn’t let herself fall apart.
Adalia narrowed her eyes again. “Okay, I’m not sure which topic to focus on, so I’ll pick neither and jump to the giant elephant in the room. What was that guy talking about with Grandpa Beau’s will?”
“This was supposed to be River’s,” Georgie said with a soft cry, her heart twisting in torment, not just over her loss, but at the knowledge of how betrayed River must feel. By her. By Beau. By his own aunt. “The house. The brewery,” she choked out as she broke down. “He was supposed to inherit it all, but then Grandpa Beau invited me to visit, and after I left, he changed the will.” She looked at her, pleading. “I didn’t know, Addy. I swear.”
Pity filled Adalia’s eyes, and she reached over and covered Georgie’s hand with her own. “I know that, but apparently River’s asshole friend didn’t.”
“Finn,” Georgie said.
“Excuse me?” Adalia asked with bugged-out eyes. “Like a fish? No wonder he’s an asshole with a huge chip on his shoulder. Probably lived his entire life having to deal with stupid jokes about his name and it’s made him bitter and resentful of love.” She took a sip of her wine in a dramatic flourish to punctuate her assessment of River’s friend.
Georgie stared at her, mouth partially open, then shook it off and took a sip of her own wine. “I found out about the stipulations when Jack and I went to sign the papers, but Jack was worried that if River knew, he’d purposely make us lose the competition so he could inherit it all anyway. I barely knew River, but I was sure he would never do that, because it turns out that sometimes you meet a person and you just know them.”
Tears filled her eyes again.
“Or in my case, you don’t clue in until it’s much too late.” Adalia took another sip of her wine. “But you’ve always had a pretty good bullshit meter when it comes to everyone who isn’t Dad and Lee, when he’s acting like Dad’s mini-me.”
Georgie gave her a scowl.
Adalia held up her hands in mock surrender, still holding the wine glass in her right hand, and a splash of wine sloshed over the rim and onto the floor. At another moment, Georgie would have hastened to wipe it up. Now, she didn’t much care. “It’s true. Sure, you’ve dated assholes in the past, but I always knew why.”
While Georgie could admit that she’d dated less than promising guys, she’d never purposely selected a dud. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Georgie. It’s plain as day, and it’s twofold.” She twisted her mouth to the side and stared at the top of the cabinets from the corner of her eye. “Or maybe it’s all one and the same.” She shook herself. “In any case, you usually date men like Dad.”
“What?” Georgie screeched in horror.
“It’s true,” Adalia said with a shrug. “Lots of women do it, but usually because they adore their father and it’s subconsciously imprinted on their brains that he’s the ideal man.”
A shudder rippled through Georgie’s body. “That’s disgusting. Our father is not my ideal man.”
Adalia lifted her glass. “Cheers to that. But the truth of the matter is that, for better or for worse, you have dated men like Dad—devoted to their careers. Aloof. Detached. Emotionally unavailable. Indifferent.”
“You do realize those are all adjectives that describe the same thing?”
Shrugging, Adalia said, “I had to make sure I drove the point home.” She leaned closer, over the table. “You dated men who treated you the way Dad has treated you your entire life, because one, that’s been your experience of how a man treats women, and two, it was so much safer. If they were indifferent and aloof, you could be too. No attachment. No heartbreak.”
Georgie stared at her in shock. Was Adalia right? It fit with what she’d realized about her fear of becoming like her mother.
Her sister took another sip of wine, then said, “I wish I had my phone on me so I could take a photo of your face right now. Georgie, the woman with all the answers, in shock and clueless.”
Georgie rested her arm on the table, suddenly weary. “I don’t have all the answers, Addy. Right now I don’t feel like I have any of them.”
“No one does. But you sure do a good job of convincing everyone you do. You and Lee are a lot alike in that way.” A look crossed her face like she’d said too much, but then she tilted her head to the side. “Now why don’t you fill me in on what a Brewfest is and why we need to win it.”
Georgie told her the rest—how she’d signed without reading the fine print, thinking the signatures were simply a formality, and they now stood to lose the brewery if they didn’t place fifth or higher in the Brewfest Competition next spring.
“That’s why we need River,” Georgie said, sounding resigned as she finished her second glass of wine. “We can’t win it without him, yet if we lose, he gets it.”
Adalia pursed her lips. “And you’re sure he wouldn’t purposely throw the contest to get the brewery?”
“I am. That’s not why I didn’t tell him… It’s just, I couldn’t imagine how hurt he’d be once he found out.”
“From the looks of it, pretty hurt,” Adalia said.
Tears welled in Georgie’s eyes again. “To make matters worse, River just quit and Jack and Lee insisted on that stupid noncompete, which means River can’t get another job within a two-hundred-mile radius. If they don’t back down, he’ll be forced to leave everything he loves.” A sob broke loose.
She was being weak again. She’d have to take a stand and make her brothers rip that agreement up so River could work wherever he wanted. Except she knew in her heart that the only place he wanted to work was Buchanan. Georgie had no idea how she could restart the brewery without him, let alone win Brewfest. Maybe they should just concede and give River everything now, yet she didn’t want to do that either. She felt like she belonged at Buchanan Brewery too. The two of them together. But he’d never trust her now.
Maybe she really had lost everything.
Adalia was making a face like she was concentrating too hard and giving herself a headache. “Why in the world would you let Jack tell you what to do?” she finally asked, starting to get irritated. “You never let any man tell you what to do.”
“Because I felt bad for him, Addy. We ignored him all these years, and this was finally something from the Buchanan family he could have for himself…something he could be included in.”
“For the record, I could spout an earful about how you and Lee kept this from me,” Adalia grumbled. “But for now, I’ll focus on his desire to be a Buchanan, because come on…” She shook her head. “Why on earth he would want to be one of us is beyond me.”