Love in a Nutshell

  “The last four years of my life are worth more than twelve grand.”

  “I can’t deny that,” Matt said. “But that’s the price of a start-up. Hell, I did the math on what I was earning per hour after my first year and almost crawled under my bed. It was depressing and unfair. But you have to look at it from my side now. If Horned Owl fails—and I don’t think it will—all that money buys me is some recipes, beer names, and label art.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  Travis still looked skeptical, and Matt didn’t blame him. This was a big step.

  “There’s no scam here and no motive other than to get your beer out there for people to find,” Matt said. “I’m going to have a place for that soon, and you are straight-up the best brewer for the spot. And like I said, you remind me of me.” Minus the tattoos, the piercings, and the attitude. Okay, add back in the attitude. Ten years ago, Matt had been happy to brawl for the sake of brawling, just as Travis was.

  Matt gave the idea a final push. “Tell you what, think about it for the rest of the weekend, and if you’re interested, give me a call on Monday. I can have my lawyer draw up the paperwork for you to take a look at. For now, let’s catch the end of the game.”

  Travis settled in, and both men drained the last of their Rail Rider ambers. Matt had done all he could. If Travis Holby was the man Matt estimated him to be, he’d take this deal even if it chafed his pride, and he’d also pay back the money as agreed.

  “No need to wait until Monday,” Travis eventually said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Okay,” Matt replied.

  Though he’d kept up a mellow front for Travis, Matt was feeling damn good. Someone had once bailed him out, and now he got to pass along the favor and make a few bucks in the bargain.

  THREE

  At ten on Monday morning, Kate lobbed an open case of uncooked chicken wings into the Dumpster behind Depot Brewing. Misfortune had sunk its teeth into Matt Culhane. Or at least into his walk-in cooler.

  “I’m telling you everything was okay when I left last night,” Kate said over her shoulder to Jerry.

  Jerry’s face was locked tight with anxiety, a muscle twitching at the side of his jaw. “Can you prove it? Someone screwed up and hit that cooler’s power switch. I’m betting it was you.”

  She turned back to grab something else to toss from the cartful of spoiled food. Jerry wasn’t looking much better than the tray of tepid slider patties. Having had her work life pass before her eyes on a couple of occasions, she knew the expression of someone staring down unemployment. And because it must suck to be him at this moment, she decided not to take it personally that without cause or investigation he’d pinned the blame on her.

  He’d also called her in five hours early. Niceties such as hairstyle and matching socks had fallen by the wayside as she’d scrambled to get to the brewery.

  “Jerry, I know I had the least experience of anyone last night, but honestly, my lack of experience makes me even more careful. I’ve told you what I saw. What happened after that, I don’t know.”

  Before last night, she also hadn’t known that Jerry was in the habit of leaving the kitchen and taproom in the hands of the crew and disappearing when Matt was elsewhere.

  “Someone has to have seen something,” he said.

  Kate lobbed a five-gallon jug of mayonnaise that was now both heart attack and food poisoning by the tablespoon. It made a satisfying thud as it hit the bottom of the Dumpster.

  “Possibly,” she replied, though she had her doubts.

  Jerry sighed. “I need to go in and clear more food. Just keep tossing.”

  Kate couldn’t begin to imagine how much money Depot Brewing had lost overnight. She couldn’t put the cooler incident down to carelessness, either. Not only had the unit’s power switch to the right of the door been turned off, but the door had been left open, too. From what she could gather from the brewery gossip, without both of those events, the cooler would have held its temperature within the allowable range until morning.

  She also knew that the walk-in’s door was tough to leave open. Kate had scared the bejeezus out of herself Saturday evening when she’d wheeled in a cart with the bins from the salad prep area and the door had shut. On the bright side, her panicked scream had made the cooks’ nights. So what if her brain had shut down when the door slammed? So what if there was a latch on the inside, too? Everyone had issues, and maybe hers was a touch of claustrophobia, especially when trapped inside a giant stainless-steel refrigerator.

  Her attention was drawn by the clank and rattle of a cart being wheeled across the asphalt. Steve and Amber had arrived with more spoiled food for the Dumpster, and Kate knew this was prime sleuthing time. She kept her head down and continued to clear her cart.

  “So where do you think Matt is?” Amber was asking Steve.

  “I’m thinking more about what he’s gonna do when he gets here. Someone is dead meat.”

  Amber grimaced. “I’m glad I got cut early. I’m off the hook.”

  Steve nodded. “And the dude trusts me, for sure.”

  “So where do you think he is?” Amber asked again.

  Steve shrugged. “Maybe he has a secret girlfriend. Like a married one.”

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” Amber said, turning on her heel and huffing off, back to the building.

  “Another babe under the spell of Matt Culhane,” Steve said to Kate. “I’ve been asking Amber out for weeks. She always says she’s too busy, but I know if he was asking—”

  “I find it hard to believe he would date an employee,” Kate said.

  Steve shrugged. “You never know in the restaurant business. Late nights. Lots of beer and parties. And, he’s got one or two women hanging around here who are borderline stalkers.”

  Kate thought it sounded a little like jealousy on Steve’s part, but Matt was a pretty hot ticket. “Are you saying Amber might have sabotaged the cooler because she’s obsessed with Matt?”

  Steve looked shocked. “No way! She just has a huge crush on the guy. But who doesn’t? I mean, every female in a hundred-mile radius drools over him.”

  Matt stepped forward to take a tub of blue cheese from Kate and pitch it into the Dumpster. “Talking about me?”

  Kate hadn’t realized he was there. She allowed herself a glance to see if his sex appeal had diminished over the weekend. She decided it definitely hadn’t and looked back to Steve before she turned to stone or salt or whatever a woman did when staring into the face of temptation.

  “We can handle this,” Matt said to Steve. “How about you head inside?” He waited a moment and grinned down at Kate. “Interesting look you’ve got going on. I didn’t know you were into tractors.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. “Tractors?”

  “Your choice of headwear. It makes quite the statement.”

  Kate absently touched the crown of her head. All she’d been able to find in the way of hair protection when Jerry had ordered her to the brewery had been a fluffy feathered hat of her mom’s or a green-and-yellow John Deere tractor–emblazoned bandana that she’d unearthed in the linen closet. She’d chosen the bandana.

  “I was short on time, and Jerry sounded borderline hysterical. Desperate times and all that. Speaking of which, you know this wasn’t an accident, right?”

  “Yes. I’m just glad it’s not the weekend. We’ve got a fighting chance to pull it together for a Monday crowd. If this had happened on a Saturday, we wouldn’t have had time to prep the volume of food we’d need.” He paused. “How’d you survive the weekend?”

  “I have a new boyfriend named Hobart. He and I have become very close.”

  Matt smiled. “I’m going to hate to break you two up.”

  “Don’t even think about moving me away from Hobart. Everyone’s back there at one point or another, and all of them talk. You move me, I miss all of that.”

  “You’ll have to tell me what you’ve heard.”

  “I
will, when we can find the time alone.”

  “Let’s step into my office when we’re done here.”

  “Your office? The one whose walls stop about six feet shy of the ceiling? Think not.”

  “Then come to the market with me. I have to pick up food to cover us until the frozen stuff thaws and our replacement shipment arrives this afternoon.”

  “Harborside Market?”

  “Yes, why?” He hesitated. “Are you worried about the way you look?”

  “No, even though maybe I should be a little. What’s worrying me is that anything I know about the locals in this town, I learned from Marcie at the market. Harborside is the place to see and be seen. If I go there with you, people will think…” She rolled her hand, sending him on to what she felt was an obvious conclusion.

  “That we’re shopping?” he asked.

  “No, they’ll think we’re more than employer and employee.”

  His grin widened.

  “What?”

  “You are a summer person, aren’t you? Among the locals, you don’t have to do anything to start gossip. It’s self-seeding. The second I hired you, it started.”

  “But it’s unsubstantiated.”

  “I don’t think a trip to the market constitutes a marriage proposal.”

  “We do need to talk, but I want it to be away from town,” she said.

  “How about the public parking lot in Frankfort?”

  Frankfort was a fifteen-minute drive south, but worth the effort if it kept their conversation off the record.

  “What time?”

  “Midnight. Hoot like an owl if you think you may have been followed.”

  “You’re making fun of me!”

  “Only a little.”

  “Okay, we’ll compromise,” she said. “How about a ten-minute head start for me, and then we meet at the market?”

  “So we’re just bumping into each other?”

  “Totally casual.”

  * * *

  FIVE MINUTES later, Kate pulled into an open parking space near Harborside Market, which was weirdly named, since it stood seven blocks from the water. After grabbing her keys and hopping from her Jeep, Kate walked past Keene’s Wine Bar/Bookshop, with its pastel-bright and cheerful Victorian façade. The sporting goods store, with its canoe-shaped sign and manly dark wood exterior, had a placard out front advertising its evening fly tying class. She skirted around that and moved on.

  Kate arrived at the quaint market, which still had an original leaded-glass panel of intertwined green vines and red roses above its broad plate-glass window. Inside, she saw the usual gathering of locals, some shopping and some just shooting the breeze.

  The market’s automatic door opened as she approached. Even if she hadn’t agreed to meet Matt, the scent of freshly baked cookies would have lured her in. And as always, everything in the store was perfectly faced, stacked, and alphabetized. Kate had heard the occasional first-time visitor whisper that it was a little eerie, but she liked it. It gave her comfort to know that someplace in the world, everything was down-to-molecular-level aligned, because in her life, random ruled.

  She grabbed a basket from the rack at the door and started down the first aisle just like a normal, non-cloak-and-dagger shopper would. She had no idea what she needed back at the house, but she had to buy something in order to maintain her cover. She reached for the first item that caught her attention and stuck it in her basket.

  “It’s quirky-looking, but it tastes the same as regular cauliflower,” a woman’s voice announced from behind her.

  Kate turned to see Marcie Landon, the market’s owner. Marcie had ash-blond hair cut into a sleek bob and had been blessed with classic features that left people guessing her age. Not that she held still long enough for a guess to be made. The woman zipped around so quickly that it seemed she was everywhere at once.

  “What does?” Kate asked.

  “The cauliflower,” she repeated as she came to stand beside Kate. “It’s purple, but the flavor isn’t any different.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Since I started carrying it a few months back, all you summer people have raved over it.”

  “Great,” Kate replied, amused that she was still lumped with the summer people long after summer had gone. She’d heard somewhere, though, that it took three generations of full-time residency to be considered a townie, and she was well short of that mark. But speaking of townies, she wondered where Matt was.

  “They’re all about the same weight,” Marcie said.

  Kate blinked. “What are?”

  “The cauliflowers. You’re staring at them. I did worry that there was a certain hypnotic quality to this display. Maybe I should…” She trailed off and gave an appraising look around the produce aisle. “But if I move the cauliflower, then I’ll have to move the peppers, and after that, it’s anarchy.”

  “Oh, no. The display is perfect. I’m just distracted.”

  The market door opened. Instead of Matt, Junior Greinwold, the town’s beloved but totally inept handyman, shuffled in. As always, balding, slope-shouldered, and bulky Junior carried a blue six-pack cooler. He’d been helping Kate patch up her house, fixing broken toilet seals, regrouting leaky showers, and other minor assorted broken things until she could afford to hire a real contractor. She still didn’t know what he kept in the cooler.

  Kate had begun checking out brussels sprouts still on the stalk when the door swung open again. This time, it was Matt. He grabbed a cart and headed her way.

  He pulled his cart even to her. “Funny meeting you here.”

  “Amazing coincidence.”

  “So what do you say we shop together?” he asked.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  He closed his hand around her basket’s metal handle. “Here, let me take that for you.”

  Kate grasped her basket tightly. “No, I can carry it.”

  Matt grinned, “Are you sure? Letting go can be a helluva lot of fun. Good for you, even.”

  “Are we still talking about my basket?”

  Marcie popped up at Matt’s side. “Well, look at you, Matt. Aren’t you the chivalrous one, taking Kate’s basket.”

  Kate let go of the basket and Matt took an involuntary half step backward. Marcie gazed speculatively, first at Matt and then at Kate. “So how long have you two known each other?”

  Matt was seemingly oblivious. “Since I hired Kate last week.”

  Marcie settled a hand against her heart. “So, no long-ago romance rekindled? That means you felt a spark right away. How sweet.”

  “There was no spark,” Kate said.

  A bold-faced lie, of course. But her feelings were hers and she wasn’t sharing her spark with the whole town. Or even Matt.

  “Nonsense,” Marcie said. “I have an eye for these things. I could tell immediately with each of Shay VanAntwerp’s three husbands. There’s always a spark.”

  “Cheese. I need cheese,” Matt said.

  Kate figured that was as good a change of topic as any. She whirled around and took off for the deli counter, followed by Matt.

  Matt stopped dead halfway to the counter. Junior Greinwold was peeking out at them from behind a soft drink display.

  “Hey, Junior,” Matt said.

  Apparently, Junior didn’t spy often. He stammered something, grabbed a couple of plastic two-liter bottles, and bolted.

  Kate turned to Matt. “You know Junior? He’s been working at my place. He seems like an okay guy, but I have to say the way he holds on to that blue cooler like it’s made of gold is a little creepy.”

  Matt resumed walking toward the display case filled with cheese. “He’s a good guy. Hangs out at the brewery. The cooler’s probably filled with my beer, but nobody really knows for sure. And don’t worry about Marcie, either. People love to talk in this town.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t care about the gossip. What I care about is having my job made tougher.”

  “Tougher how???
?

  “Tougher, as in nobody is going to talk trash in front of me about you or Depot Brewing if they think we’re an item.”

  “I could give you back your basket,” he offered. “You know—the symbolic handing over of the cauliflower to mark the end of our affair?”

  Kate tried not to smile. “Funny. But I’m being serious here. There’s no point in handicapping myself.”

  “True,” Matt said. “I should have thought about that.”

  They’d arrived at the deli counter, as had Marcie, Junior, and a couple of women Kate had seen at Bagger’s Tavern every now and then. Somehow, she doubted they all craved cold cuts.

  Marcie hustled around the counter and nudged aside the teenage boy working there. “I’ll take care of this.” She gave Matt a cheery smile. “What can I get you?”

  “Three pounds of Swiss and two of American, sliced medium, please.”

  Marcie didn’t move. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you dating anyone, Matt.”

  “Work keeps me busy,” he said.

  “Then it’s nice to have found someone right there at work, isn’t it?”

  Matt was unfazed. “About the cheese?”

  “Sammy, three Swiss, two American, medium,” she called to her helper without letting her gaze waver from Matt. “Really, I’ve never seen you look at any woman the way you do at Kate.”

  Kate tried to respond but had to pause to catch her breath first. Was that true?

  “I am not dating Kate,” Matt said. “I have no plans of dating Kate. She’s an employee and that’s all.”

  That might have been true, and even what Kate wanted, but darned if the words didn’t feel harsh. She glanced at her watch and pretended surprise at the time. “Speaking of which, I need to go home and get cleaned up for the dinner shift.” She retrieved her mutant cauliflower and focused on Matt. “I guess I’ll see you at work this evening?”

  “No, I have dinner with my family tonight.”

  “Good,” she said, and she meant it, too.

  Kate needed some time to get her “this is only work” attitude in place. It was that or give in to the spark she refused to feel.

  * * *