Blackmailed by the Billionaire Brewer

Piper’s hands stilled over her plate. “Take any names or details?”

Sophie shook her head as if her big sister was crazy. “No way, I have no idea what to say to people about your business, so I didn’t pick up.” She took a big swallow of soda and smiled. “Which reminds me, I did some internet shopping for baby stuff today, and it looks like your business email inbox is crammed too.”

“Must be the people who didn’t get through on the phone.” Piper quashed a sudden sense of foreboding and put it down to irrational paranoia and hangover. “Any clues as to what’s been coming in?”

“I’d never read another person’s emails!” Sophie wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Honestly, what do you think I’m like?”

“Holy crap.” Piper stared with horror at the computer printout her supervisor had slapped onto her desk, and then flinched as she accidentally knocked a stack of Passion Creek Brewery beer coasters onto the floor. “Please tell me this is a first-day-in-the-office joke. You do this to all the new temps, right? It’s not for real?”

“Sorry, kiddo, this is all too real. You’ve been here three hours and have somehow managed to pay every supplier we owe in Japanese yen instead of dollars.” The older woman adjusted the box of reindeer-shaped bottle openers she was carrying. “And our biggest hops supplier has been yelling down the phone at the boss already.”

“No…” Piper had been preoccupied by all the phone messages and emails she’d discovered from Matt DeLeo the night before, and it was seriously looking like she’d had a one-night stand with a stalker. He hadn’t been threatening, but he’d said he needed to speak with her about something important, something that had to be done face-to-face. He said the same thing over and over again via every method of communication. It was a matter of urgency, apparently.

“Yup. And it gets worse. The boss is here. Just got back from a research trip and he’s furious. The big guy wants you in his office now.”

“Perhaps it would be better if I just got my coat and left?”

The supervisor, known affectionately in the office as Super, shook her head. “Try that and he’ll set the security dogs on you. He can’t stand cowards.”

“I’m no coward!”

“Great. Then get up to the boardroom PDQ and take what’s coming.”

“PDQ?”

“Pretty darned quick.”

“We meet again. Piper Reilly. Hard to believe we’ve been living in the same city for the last few years.” His eyes were penetrating, his smile deadly, and her blood ran cold. “Welcome to my team.”

Matt DeLeo.

“For fuck’s sake.” Her immediate instinct was to walk straight out, but she still needed this job and, like it or not, he was now her employer. Piper held her breath. This couldn’t be happening, it was too bizarre. Matt DeLeo was an itinerant barman in Florida with tycoon fantasies, not the boss of a Colorado brewery in a designer suit. She must be hallucinating. He looked seriously angry, and those brown eyes were darker than she remembered. He also looked seriously sexy, all shaven and smart.

“That should be my line,” he said, and ran a hand through the black silk of his hair. “Do you know how much your currency screw-up is going to cost me?”

She fisted her hands behind her back and did her best to control the confusion and anger welling up inside her. “If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with some lunatic stalker leaving messages s for me all over the place, I might not have been so distracted!”

“I only wanted to talk to you.”

There were so many questions buzzing around her mind that she didn’t know where to start. “Well, guess what? I didn’t want to speak to you, but now you have me cornered, and I’d love to know how you managed that. Perhaps you can tell me what’s so damn important. It was one night, Matt, not the beginning of anything, and I want it to stop right now.”

“Please, sit down.”

She felt sick to her stomach. The currency error, the fact that she needed this job to pay the mortgage, and Matt DeLeo looming large before her were all enough to make anyone’s knees wobble. She’d get through this latest pile of crap. “I’ll stand.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “Fine.”

The dark way he was looking at her made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. “Is there any reason why you can’t ask the bank to reverse the incorrect transactions?”

Her voice sounded brittle and she wanted to shiver at the way he was staring at her. Matt DeLeo. In Passion Creek, lording it behind a great big boss man desk. Sheesh.

“No, no, no. It doesn’t work like that, Red.”

She didn’t remember him being this exasperating, but then she hadn’t been exactly sober the last time they’d spoken. “My name’s not Red. Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like being walked out on before I’ve made breakfast.”

He wasn’t going to mince his words, that much was obvious. She softened her tone in the hope he might be placated. “That was very thoughtful, but I didn’t want breakfast.”

“I don’t like being walked out on, period. Leaving like you did was damn rude.”

He looked so hot in that suit…

She gave herself a mental shake. “I had a plane to catch.”

“Ignoring my emails and phone calls was rude, too.”

He was right, she had been rude, but no way was she going to admit it. “Look, I’m here in a professional capacity. What happened between us in Florida was a mistake, fun as it was, and me ending up in your finance department is the most cataclysmic coincidence.”

“I see what you mean.” He stroked his chin. “Very awkward.”

“I want to put things right if I can, and obviously I’ll leave immediately if that’s what you want. Just tell me what I can do. I am sorry.”

“There may be something you can do to fix this.”

“It would be really great if I could.” Piper felt sweat prickle on her top lip as he shot her a cold look.

“I have a solution,” he said.

“You do?”

“I’m going to hire a new accounts payable clerk immediately.” His dark eyes glowed. “You get a shiny new job.”

She willed herself not to feel any kind of relief or hope, because she could sense she was on a hopeless losing streak. “Doing what?”