C5 5

The door to the kitchen swings open, and a dark head flies past us in a flash, little limbs pumping. “You can’t catch me!” Noah shrieks.

Molly emerges behind him, her face glowing with joy as she chases her son. “Wanna bet?”

He circles back and moves to dart behind the bar, but Molly wraps him into her arms before he can pass her. She lifts him off the floor and swings him around. He giggles madly in response. “Faster! Faster!”

I’m vaguely aware of my mother beside me—the way she watches me watching Molly—and I school my expression the best I can, giving away nothing of what this sight does to me. Molly’s love of Noah transforms her face from beautiful to radiant. And maybe it’s because I was thinking about my father or because bringing Mom here has my emotions at the surface, but seeing Molly like this and witnessing the bond between her and her son does something to me. It reminds me that she isn’t just the beautiful woman I took to my room one night. And she isn’t just my employee. She’s this beautifully layered and complex human who has become one of the brightest spots in my life, whether she knows it or not.

And she’s completely off-limits.

My chest goes tight with the longing I’ve done my best to ignore since she returned to town. It’s hard to ignore something that grows with every passing day.

Molly spots us and stops spinning. She was so lost in her time with Noah that she ran right past. Some of that raw joy fades from her eyes and is replaced by caution. “Oh, hi.” She lowers her son to the ground. “Sorry, we didn’t know anyone else was here. Noah just got done at preschool, and we were having lunch together in my office before I take him to Veronica.” She holds his hand, as if trying to keep a leash on that wild energy now that they have an audience. “How are you, Kathleen?”

Noah waves at us with his free hand. “Why are you crying?” he asks Mom. “Are you sad?”

Mom shakes her head. “I’m just fine.”

“’Cause it’s okay to be sad,” Noah says, nodding solemnly. “Mom said it’s okay to cry too. Even for boys.”

Mom beams at Molly, and if my mom hadn’t already been half in love with my new banquet center manager, I know Noah’s words have sealed the deal. “Your mom’s right, but these are happy tears.”

Noah frowns as if he’s trying to make sense of that. “Why?”

“Because I have so much happiness in my heart, it bubbles up and leaks out my eyes,” Mom says.

“Oh. Okay.” Noah nods, seeming content with this answer and ready to move on to something more interesting.

“I was showing Mom the taproom,” I tell Molly. “I wanted her to see it before the grand opening.”

Molly hoists Noah into her arms, and the boy wraps himself around his mom, leaning his head against her chest like I’ve seen him do a hundred times in the few months they’ve lived here. “Have you seen the banquet rooms?”

Mom shakes her head. “This is the first time I’ve been to this location. I wanted to wait until everything was ready.”

“I can give you the tour,” Molly offers.

Mom grins. “I would love that, if you have time.”

The banquet center has its own entrance on the opposite side of the building, but Molly leads the way through the kitchen, showing off the setup she painstakingly picked out as she prepared the space. “I brought the chef on early so she could help me design the kitchen,” she says. “In addition to having a modest selection of small plates for the taproom, we want to be able to serve full meals for as many as two hundred and fifty guests at a time on the banquet side, so we needed a design that could accommodate both jobs in as little space as possible, since we’re paying for prime real estate on the water.”

Mom flashes a look to me, a single gray eyebrow arched. My siblings have made enough comments over the last few months that I can guess what she’s thinking.

“This is Molly’s project,” I say, reading the question in her eyes. “She made the decisions. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said this wasn’t going to be another responsibility on my plate.”

“Don’t believe him.” Molly laughs, shifting Noah in her arms as she leads the way to the hall that runs behind the kitchen and banquet center. “He keeps careful tabs on everything I do here, so the banquet center has definitely added work to his plate.” She shrugs. “But it’s true that he let me have the reins and gave me the final say on design. I know—wonders never cease.”

Mom huffs. “To say the least. But maybe he just needed someone like you in his—”

“I’m working on it,” I say, flashing a warning look to Mom. I’m really not in the mood to fight her matchmaker instincts today.

“Our offices are all off this hallway,” Molly says, pointing out each. “Levi’s, mine, and Brayden’s.”

“You’ve finally given yourself an office away from home,” Mom says. She squeezes my wrist. “It’s about time.”

I never wanted an office at the bar, even when Jake offered to give up his apartment for me to set up shop above Jackson Brews. It seemed easier and quieter to work from home, but not having a work space for business meetings has been an obstacle over the years. When we were designing this space, Molly suggested I could put my office here and hold meetings in the small conference room. It made sense, and it seems like it’s going to work out great.

“Down at the end of the hall is the stairwell,” Molly says. “You can take them up to get to the employee entrance of the rooftop terrace, and down to get to the locker room and break room in the basement.”

Noah wiggles in her arms. “Down,” he says, wiggling with more vigor until Molly sets him on the floor.

“On the other side of the stairwell,” she says, pointing, “is the storage room, and beyond that, a kitchenette that leads into two smaller party rooms and the small conference room. Off the hall opposite that is the main banquet hall.”