Matt ushered her past his office, through a set of glass doors to a room with enormous stainless-steel tanks, and then through another door into a brightly lit storage room with a truck well. The kind of industrial orange, temporary lighting she’d seen sold in building warehouse stores shone up the ramp and into the back of the semi.

“A bottling line on wheels,” Matt said.

“Very cool,” she said, thankful to have something other than Matt to focus on while she regained her business manners. That done, she turned her attention to the people busy checking her out. About twenty exhausted-looking souls sat at tables someone must have dragged in from the taproom.

“Everyone, this is Kate,” Matt announced. “Kate… everyone.”

“Hey, Kate,” a few of them said. Most just raised a glass of beer in a weary greeting.

Kate fought hard not to gag at the thought of beer as a breakfast staple. She liked the idea of herself as a yogurt-and-fruit girl, but the reality was she was more the cold pizza type. Especially when she was PMSing.

“Kate’s coming to work with us as a floater,” Matt said to the assembled crew.

That brought on a little more enthusiasm.

“Good, a new victim,” a midnight black-haired young woman said.

Kate thought the employee looked too young to work with beer, except for the tattoo of a bare-chested cowboy riding a neon-colored dragon wrapping its way from her wrist up her arm. Either she’d forged her mother’s signature for that beauty, or she was at least eighteen.

“Does this mean that Hobart and I are breaking up?” the young woman asked Matt.

“For this weekend, at least.”

She squealed, then ran and hugged her boss.