More Than Willing by Laura Landon

Author:Laura Landon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Fiction, Historical, General
ISBN: 9781601547613
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2010-05-01T01:52:51+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“You’d better take it easy, Delaney,” Chester Murdock hollered from somewhere below the ladder where Gray fixed a latch on a second-story window in the cooling area. “If Miss Bradford finds out I let you climb around on a ladder before you’ve been back to work even one week she’ll have my hide.”

Gray ignored Murdock’s warnings and tightened the screws that held the window open. It was obvious they’d been stripped from the wood, just another menacing problem to plague the brewery over the past month.

“Bring me up more screws,” Gray yelled down. The brewery overseer ran into the cooperage where the coopers cleaned and repaired used casks, then rushed up with the metal pegs in his hand.

“How many windows did they tamper with?” Murdock asked, handing the first screw through the upper floor window.

“All of them on this side of the building.”

“Blast them to hell and back!” Murdock hissed. “The cold air coming through the windows is what cools the wort when it comes from the hop-boil area. We could have lost weeks of brewing time if you hadn’t noticed that the windows were closed.”

Gray looked at the long length of windows on the upper level, all standing open now to let in the cold winter air. This was one of the reasons breweries brewed their ale in the winter months, so the wort that came from the hop-boil area could cool quickly. Slowing the cooling procedure could bring the entire brewing process to a halt and cause a brewery to lose days of productivity—and revenue.

“Do you think Miss Bradford’s cousin could be behind this?” Gray asked. “After all, everyone knows he wants to marry Miss Bradford. What better way to seem indispensible than to cause one disaster after another to make her think she needs him to protect both her and the brewery.”

Murdock shook his head. “I did in the beginning, when things first started happening. It’s possible he turned up the fires to ruin the wort, and started the fire in the stable. And everything else that happened.” Murdock paused. “Until you got shot.”

“You don’t think he could have shot me?”

“I’ve met the man and I don’t believe he has the nerve to shoot an animal, let alone a human.”

“Not even for the brewery that could be his if he married Miss Bradford?” Gray asked.

Murdock shrugged his shoulders. “He’d have to be a darned good shot to hit you. Especially at night.”

Gray thought about that while he fixed the rest of the latches on the north side of the brewery. Then he handed his tools to Chester Murdock and climbed down the ladder. Gray’s shoulder was nearly healed, but holding on to the ladder while fixing the latches caused a strain he wasn’t quite up to yet. Without thinking, he rolled his shoulder and rubbed the spot where he’d been shot.

“You’d better hope Miss Bradford doesn’t find out what you’ve been up to or your ears will burn as bad as that shoulder does.”

Gray laughed. “Don’t worry.

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