"Pretty sure they don't give a damn what anyone thinks they know how to do, if that helps anything," Owen said with languid amusement. Far be it for him to try and decipher how shadow managing a wish-fulfilling company would even begin to correlate to running a pub. It didn't, aside from some smaller technicalities, and maybe that was part of the whole point.

He took a deep breath, an inverse sigh, and let it out slowly. "That would be me. Owen Bates," he introduced. He steadfastly ignored the twisting in his gut that insisted it to be so natural when his head murmured that something was wrong. It didn't feel wrong.