Love in a Nutshell

  Kate stepped over the image, feeling that the dog had suffered enough without being trod upon. “You’re a pretty cool dude, three legs or not.”

  “His name is Chuck, and he’s my dog,” Culhane said, suddenly standing in the open doorway. “Well, the real one is. That one’s tile, so I don’t think he’ll be answering you.”

  She couldn’t work up a single word in reply. The man was flat-out gorgeous. A muscled, dark-haired, blue-eyed, one-dimple-that-he-could-apparently-produce-at-will kind of gorgeous. She’d noted this yesterday, too, but anxiety had kept her on her game. If she’d babbled in the face of male hotness, she would have walked away empty-handed. Today, she had a job and her words were fleeting.

  “I—I like dogs,” she finally managed. She thought of her former dog, Stella, and felt a little lump forming in her chest.

  “Good. And I like dog people. Why don’t you come on in?”

  Kate did, trying hard to cut back on the staring. She was sure he was wearing the same slightly faded chambray button-down shirt and pair of well-fit jeans as yesterday afternoon. New to his features was the shadow of a beard. His dark brown hair looked either tousled with sleep or the lack thereof.

  “You’re seriously tall,” she said.

  He laughed. “To you, maybe.”

  Pull it together, Appleton, she thought. Get a grip!

  “Point taken,” she said. “From the vantage point of just over five feet, pretty much every guy’s a giant. You look tired, too.”

  Matt ruffled a hand through his hair. “We pulled an all-nighter.”

  “An all-nighter doing what?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t, because the answer might be personal. Her long-dormant libido stirred at the possibilities.

  “Come this way and I’ll show you,” he said. “It’s not all that exciting.”

  Cross orgy off the list.

  “We just got into bottled beer in addition to kegs and growlers, so we don’t have a regular bottling line yet,” he said. “That means we have to rent a portable line every couple of months until I think sales justify the expense of a permanent one. It will take another addition or a move of the whole facility to do it, so for now, we make do. And we also do it after hours so that our regular business can cruise on.”

  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.

  “It’s up to Jerry if Kate stays there, Amber,” Matt said, gently unwinding her and taking a step back. “But you worked hard last night, and I know you’re sick of Hobart.”

  Who the heck is Hobart? Kate thought, scanning the crew for a guy who looked remotely like he might have the misfortune to be named Hobart.

  Matt turned to Kate. “Let’s go to my office. We might as well get the paperwork out of the way. Then you can report to Jerry.”

  “So he’ll be my direct supervisor?” she asked as Matt ushered her back the way they’d come.

  He nodded. “He manages food services, which will include you for the time being. He’s the guy you met out front during our unscheduled job interview yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oops. I sort of bulldozed right past him. I probably didn’t make the best first impression.”

  “Jerry can be pretty forgiving, and you’ll like the rest of the crew, too. About half of the people you saw back in the storage room work for me, and the rest are temps who come in for the bottling. We finished up over two hundred cases just a little while ago. Most of the other employees, except the summer staff, you’ll meet today.”

  Matt opened his office door. “Come on in. It shouldn’t take long to get this squared away, then we’ll get you a uniform.”

  Kate glanced around, taking in the framed photos on the cubicle-style walls, which didn’t quite make it all the way to the ceiling.

  “My family, mostly,” Matt said. He waved one hand toward another shot of a pack of helmeted and uniformed men bearing sticks. “And my hockey team.”

  She smiled. “That, I’d figured out.”

  Kate pulled her driver’s license and social security card from her wallet and handed them to Matt. “You need these, right?”

  He settled in behind his desk. From its front, she guessed it was a vintage oak piece that had been left to molder in the closed-down depot. Its top looked as though a file cabinet had disgorged itself onto it. Working in a measure of chaos definitely didn’t throw this guy.

  Kate sat and watched as Matt studied her license.

  “Turn it over,” she said, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “I’m divorced. My name is changed back to Appleton on the back.”

  He glanced up at her. “Divorced? Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “It was for the best.”

  Except for that messy little glitch whereby both she and the ex, Richard, had lost their savings. The McMansion he’d so desperately wanted had turned out to be worth less than a soggy chicken patty when they’d gone to sell it. Even tougher on Kate had been handing over their poodle, Stella, to the ex because he’d ended up in a place more suitable for dog ownership and the court had awarded him guardianship. Kate had fought hard to keep Stella, but the truth was, Richard had a more expensive lawyer, and she lost. She couldn’t bear to think of Stella too much these days.

  Matt pulled a form from one of the stacks of folders covering his desk. “Yeah, well, from what I’ve heard from friends, it had to be a pain to go through.”

  “Well, it’s survivable, but let’s just say I’m convinced that if you look in the mirror and say Richard Slate three times, he’ll magically appear and kill you with annoying small talk. Although that wasn’t what ended the marriage. I trusted him completely, and he cheated on me. Even after I caught him, the weasel denied the whole thing. You know what he said after I told him I wanted to leave? Nothing. He just shrugged his shoulders and went back to his sudoku puzzle.”

  “So your married name was Kate Slate.”

  Kate winced. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. How about you? Ever married? Dating anyone?”

  He glanced up. “Why? Interested?”

  “Not a chance. I’ve got enough complications to handle without dealing with men.”

  “What kind of complications?”

  Kate pushed her hair back. “Well, for starters, my parents have given me four months to turn our broken-down lake house into a B&B, o
r else they’re going to turn it over to the jerk who bought the mortgage. I have a $10-per-hour job and $15,000 worth of repairs. I’m going to be a homeless dishwasher if I can’t make this work.”

  Matt admired an entrepreneurial spirit, especially when it was nourished by an impractical dream. Everybody had rolled their eyes when he announced he was going to build a brewery.

  “I know you’ve got the stuff,” he said. “And the lake is a great place for a bed-and-breakfast. Just put one foot in front of the other.”

  Easy for him to say.

  * * *

  “KNOCK, KNOCK,” a guy said from behind Kate.

  Matt looked over and gestured him in.

  “This is Jerry,” he told Kate. “But then, you’ve already met.”

  “In passing.” She gave Jerry an apologetic smile.

  Jerry looked tired and overworked, though he was a good-looking guy. He was probably somewhere in his midthirties, and of medium height, with dark brown hair and a goatee. But at the moment, even that goatee was slumping, and his brown eyes looked worried.

  “She practically knocked me to the ground,” Jerry said. “It was sort of embarrassing.”

  For both of them. Kate didn’t believe in flattening guys, except when strictly necessary. And even though Jerry-as-a-victim had been unavoidable in her quest to get to the big boss, she could still feel the Appleton Curse of a neon blush rising. When she’d been little and playing Go Fish with her mom on The Nutshell’s back porch, the blush had been the tip-off to a fast move on her part. And now it only grew brighter under Matt’s steady gaze.

  He smiled at her. “Kate, why don’t you wait for Jerry out in the taproom? He and I have a couple of things to cover.”

  Kate recognized a gift when handed one. She said her thank-yous, saved her fence-mending with Jerry for later, and beat a hasty retreat.

  * * *

  SO KATE Appleton blushed. Matt liked that about her. There was something fascinating about being bold enough to run over a guy and yet a day later, be contrite enough to blush.

  “She’s presentable and all that, but kind of pushy, don’t you think?” Jerry asked Matt as soon as Kate had cleared the room.

  “I think she’s going to do great. And you’re twice her size and her supervisor. If she can pull one over on you again, you deserve it.”

  Jerry looked a little brighter at that thought. Considering the matchup, Matt wasn’t one hundred percent sure he should look so happy.

  “So Amber says you want Kate with Hobart this weekend.”

  “Yeah. Amber could use a break, but after that, you can move Kate around as needed.”

  Jerry stroked his goatee. “Huh. Anyplace.”

  Matt began recalculating the odds on that particular matchup. Kate might have Jerry in the gutsiness department, but Jerry was nothing if not a dogged and steady guy. And he could also be a little sneaky, in a good-natured sort of way.

  “So go to it,” Matt said.

  After Jerry took off, Matt looked at his weekend schedule and sighed. He had just enough time to head home, shower, and change before he had to drive an hour north to Traverse City for the weekend. He was getting tired of being on the road all the time, even if it did mean his business was growing in a tough economy. Much as he was proud to keep so many people employed year-round, he wanted his life back. He wanted some romance in his life, and maybe even love. He had a good feeling about Kate. She was going to help him find his saboteur, and maybe a lot more.

  TWO

  By the time Friday’s lunch rush hit full swing, Kate knew too well what Hobart was. Instead of being paired with an unfortunately named coworker, she stood in front of Depot Brewing’s noisy, sloppy, and steamy commercial dishwashing machine. Hobart had been named for its maker. It had a four-foot-long stainless-steel prep counter running at a right angle to its boxy entry and a staging area for clean racks of dishes at the exit. The machine was bulkier than her Jeep. More demanding, too.

  “Hot!” called one of the line cooks as he dropped a dirty skillet onto the end of the prep area.

  “Thanks,” she replied from her side of the counter, but he had already hustled back to his station.

  Every inch of the white tile–walled kitchen had been designed for food production, and the staff worked it to the max. Elbow-to-elbow, the three line cooks held their territories in front of the stove, grill, and fryer. Servers darted in to pick up orders, the barback hauled glassware, and pretty much everyone brought Kate more work. Her job was to clear the food debris and paper trash from the gray plastic bus tubs delivered to her. Then she had to rack all the dirty ware, send it into Hobart, and circulate the clean stuff back out for use.

  “You’ve never done this before, have you?” a male voice asked.

  She glanced up from her duties to see Steve, one of the servers, watching her. Tall and slender, with a dark tan and blond highlights in his hair, he looked like a surfer dude.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Definite bummer, but you’re gonna have to speed up. We’re almost eighty-six on forks.”

  “Eighty-six?”

  “Out of.”

  “Gotcha,” Kate said, moving a silverware rack into the cleaning line.

  Jerry, who was currently MIA, had demonstrated the job to her well enough. In fact, it had seemed easy before crunch time came. But Jerry must have left something out of his instructions, because this just wasn’t working out the way it should. In the battle of woman versus machine, the machine was kicking her butt.

  “Do you have any tips on how I can go faster?” she asked Steve.

  Steve’s mouth widened into a goofy smile. “Nothing much I can say right now.”

  Something was up. Something no one had shared with her. Not that she could do much about it, other than feed more dishes through Hobart. Without thinking, she used her arm to wipe sweat from her forehead, forgetting that hot sauce and ketchup were smeared on that particular arm.

  “Careful, there. You don’t want it to end up in your eyes,” Laila, the most senior of Depot Brewing’s servers, said as she made room for another tub of dishes. The silver-haired woman pulled a clean napkin from her server’s apron, and handed it to Kate.

  Kate wiped her forehead. “Thanks.”

  “I’ve been in this business a lot of years,” Laila said. “Worked most everyplace in town, too.”

  Kate nodded. She’d seen Laila’s plump and smiling face in an old staff photo behind the bar at Bagger’s, right next to Harley Bagger’s vintage lighter collection.

  Laila adjusted her apron and patted Kate on the shoulder. “Over the years, I’ve collected some nuggets of wisdom, and I’d like to share three with you.”

  Kate brightened, despite the fact she probably still looked like an accident victim. “Really? What?”

  “First, don’t go anywhere with empty hands. There’s always something that needs tending.”

  “Okay.”

  “Second, comfortable shoes are a must.”

  Kate looked down at her food-speckled, white leather sneakers. “Got that covered. What’s the third?”

  Laila grinned. “How about we let you stew on that until you get caught up?”

  Yup, Kate smelled something, and it wasn’t just the hot sauce she’d been wearing. The scent was that of a rookie dishwasher being roasted. But she could appreciate a little gamesmanship as much as the next girl. And when inspired, she could engage in some, too.

  * * *

  THE CLOCK on the wall opposite Kate inched its way to three P.M., one hour before her quitting time. The kitchen’s rhythm had slowed from its earlier frantic beat to a busy yet congenial hum. The line cooks cracked jokes and laughed with one another. The servers took brief breaks, chugging soft drinks and counting their tip money. And Kate finally caught up.

  “Awesome job! I can see the counter,” Steve said as he approached with a heavy load of dirty dishes.

  “But not for long,” Kate replied. “Where was this stuff hi
ding?”

  “Hiding?” He set down the bus tub. “Dude, it wasn’t hiding.”

  Just like Steve wasn’t hiding another goofy grin. Now, at least, she knew what was up.

  “No biggie,” she said. “I’m game. Bring it on.”

  And he did. Two more tubs soon joined the first.

  “Is that the end of it?” she asked.

  “Dunno. There might be more,” Steve said before ambling off.

  “How’s it going?” Laila asked when she arrived with yet another stack of dishes a couple of minutes later.

  Kate gestured at the mess. “Could be better. I’m not sure I get the rhythm of this place.”

  “And that, my new friend, is where the third nugget of wisdom comes in.”

  “Which is?”

  The older woman smiled as she added her contribution to the mess. “Ask Steve once you’ve caught up.”

  Another dishwasher might have whimpered, but not Kate. She was made of sterner stuff. Craftier stuff, too. After feeding another couple racks into Hobart, she took a quick glance around the kitchen. The servers and the cooks were all out front, too wrapped up in their current conversations to be paying attention to her. She quickly stowed the three remaining unwashed tubs on the floor, in the open area beneath Hobart’s exit ramp.

  She’d barely had time to hide her grin, too, when Steve arrived with another load. He did a double take at the clean counter.

  “Wow! Did you really get through all those dishes, Tink?”

  “Tink?”

  “Short for Tinkerbell. You made that stuff disappear like magic.”

  Tink wasn’t the sort of nickname she wanted to encourage, but she’d have to deal with that later.

  “Just doing my job,” she said, knowing that his view of the dirty tubs was blocked. “And Laila said you’d share her third restaurant hint with me as soon as I was caught up. So how about it?”

  “No can do,” he said with a nod to the dishes he’d just delivered.

  She’d been expecting this.

  Kate gave Steve her best smile. “You know, that’s one awesome-looking orange-and-white VW van with all the old surf shop stickers out in the employee parking area. It’s yours, right?”