Page 2 of Fierce-Baker

But she turned the screen over anyway.

A picture filled the display. Shane with his arms wrapped around another woman. Two young kids smiling in front of them, the four of them crouched together like a perfect little family.

And the name of the caller flashing across the top:

“Wifey.”

1

HANDLE IT JUST FINE

Two years later

“Welcome to Fierce Brewing,”Tasha said as she unlocked the door to let in the long line of waiting customers to purchase their tour tickets. “We hope you enjoy your time here. Please, come in and we’ll get your tickets purchased. The first tour starts in ten minutes.”

“How many people are on a tour?” someone shouted from the middle of the line.

“We do thirty people at once,” she said.

The person was counting heads ahead of him. “Dang it. I’m twenty-nine and my wife and buddies are after me. Any way we can all go at once? You know, letting a few more on?”

“Sorry,” she said, smiling. Good lord, it was worse than her fifth graders trying to get some extra time at recess. She was scanning credit cards of the people while she talked and handed over red bracelets for them to put on. “We have to follow the rules. You know, the code enforcers and all don’t like when you break them.”

It was only a white lie. The code enforcer was Mason Fierce and there was no way she was not doing what she was told.

Her best friend, Margo O’Malley, who was married to Mason Fierce’s first cousin Liam, the head chef at Fierce-The Pub, was how she got this summer job. She wasn’t risking it. Not when it was the perfect summer job to work around her daycare needs.

Something she had to pay for year round to keep her spot as it was, so might as well look for another job to fill her time.

“Does that mean we can go ahead of them?” someone else asked as the line moved through.

The bands for each tour were already color-coded so she didn’t have to count. Once the colors were gone, the number was filled. If she had some left over, she tossed them in a bin to not mix up when that color rolled around again.

“If they will let two people pass, sure,” she said. She wouldn’t ask, because the one time she did that, people threw a fit.

“Go ahead,” the first guy’s wife said despite her husband’s frown. “I want us to go as a group. It’s only twenty minutes before the next one.”

“That’s right,” Tasha said. “We’ll give you your colored bands and you can wait in the bar and have a drink before your tour is called.”

“Really?” the guy asked.

“Yes. See, sometimes it pays to have to wait for the next one.”

That seemed to make everyone happy. She got bands on the next group of thirty within ten minutes and let them into the bar and held the line there for thirty minutes like she was told prior.

“This place is huge,” the next man in line said to her.

“It is. Have you been here before?”

Tasha liked to talk to the customers. Most asked questions she struggled to answer. Or not as much now after Mason’s wife, Jessica, gave her a crash course in beer knowledge.

“No. This is our first time. We are from Savannah on vacation.”

“I’m sure you’re going to enjoy your time here,” she said.

“Have you worked here long? This would be my dream job.” The woman behind the guy elbowed him. It was the way he asked. As if he were hitting on her in a bar.

She was used to that too and would ignore it for now. No reason not to be polite and friendly. She had no fear here. Never did.