Hot Moves

Portland, Oregon, 2007 "You're going to Seattle for the weekend to drink beer?" Brady McMillan looked up from the steel keg he was washing out in the pub's microbrewery and grinned at his older brother. "Pour beer, Michael" he corrected, resting a hand against one of the gleaming copper tanks lined up behind him. "It's a brewer s' festival. I'll be bonding with the masses, making a good impression for McMillan s', comparing notes with my fellow brewmasters--" "--and drinking beer," Michael finished. Brady's lips twitched as he lifted the keg to drain onto the concrete floor. Water streamed down to the grates below the funnel-shaped bottoms of the tanks. "It's a difficult job but someone's got to do it. I'm willing to suffer to give McMillan s'the best beer possible." Five feet away, on the other side of the low wooden barrier, lay the warm golden oak and leather of their flagship brewpub. Here behind the barrier was Brady's territory of malts and worts, hops and hoses. Michael folded his arms over his barrel chest. "Some people just use message boards." "There's no substitute for face-to-face contact.""Or mouth to glass." "The taste, the aroma, the mouth feel--" "The buzz." "What? I can't hear you over the noise of all the people out in the pub drinking my beer." Brady blinked guilelessly and set the keg upright. "Good thing I go to these festivals to stay on top of the trends." "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's the beer that brings them back, but it's the atmosphere in the pubs that gets em here in the first place." "No doubt. Lucky we're both good at our jobs, isn't it?" Michael was burly where Brady was lanky, darkhaired where Brady was blond, and Michael thrived on the business side of things whereas for Brady it was all about the beer and the people, in roughly that order. "I think you could start offloading some of your brewing work and pitch in on the pubs some more. Like the Odeon Theater property. We need to go over some of the numbers. The deal's supposed to close week after next and we've got to talk about the closing costs and go over some construction figures--" "Oh, hey, look, the beer needs me," Brady said quickly, lips twitching. "Wow. Bad timing. Wish I could help." Michael's brows lowered. "You're not making beer, you're washing kegs." "Sterilizing," Brady corrected. "Whatever. This whole theater thing was your idea. You can at least pretend to be interested in the remodel." "I'm the beer guy and the idea man, remember? You're the pub guy." "I'm willing to share the pub guy part.""Hah." Brady held out his hand, pointing to a thin white scar on the side of his forefinger. "See that?" "What?" "That's from the time you attacked me with your letter opener when I tried to open up QuickBooks." Michael took a closer look and snorted. "You got that playing mumblety-peg with Elliot Bingenheimer in third grade." "Oh, you can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better." Brady flexed his hand meditatively. "They tell me I'll be able to play Parcheesi again someday." "Yeah, that's why you went rock climbing last week." "It's physical therapy. Face it, Michael, you're a control freak. You say you want to share your pub guy thing but you know you don't." "Unlike you, say, who's happy to delegateoh, gee, that's right, nothing," he said lightly. "You know, you might be able to keep up brewing at four pubs, but when we add the new place, even you're going to have to let go of some things. At least if you want to keep up with your kayaking and mountain biking schedule.We should hire a brewmaster for each place." "My name's on it," Brady said stubbornly. "I want to be sure it's my beer." "Now who's the control freak?" Humor glimmered inHardy, Kristin is the author of 'Hot Moves ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373793112 and ISBN 0373793111.