Love in a Nutshell (14 page)

“Sorry this is taking so long,” he said. “I need to take advantage of the time I can be up here. Travis isn’t hot on listening to Bart, so I have to be the enforcer.”

“No problem.” She slid Travis’s brochures closer to Matt. “I’ve been keeping myself busy. I cleaned up the copy and kicked up the language.”

Matt gave her a funny look. “Your face is kind of red. Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

Or at least she thought she was. Kate touched a hand to her cheek. She
was
hot. Like a core-temperature-reaching-lethal-range kind of hot.

“I think I’ll step outside for a second,” she said.

Whatever Matt had to say in return was left in the dust as she bolted toward the door. Once outside, she climbed into Matt’s truck and flipped open the passenger’s vanity mirror.

“Oh, man!”

The whole beer issue was coming back to her now. That youthful flirtation had ended not because she’d drunk too much and made herself sick, but because beer was her Kryptonite, something akin to severe lactose intolerance.

She wasn’t red. She was Chet-colored.

Kate sat back and fanned her face. She knew what was coming next. Her internal temperature would kick up even higher, her stomach would begin to ache, and finally she’d emit a rumbling last heard at Mount St. Helens. She had an hour and more in the truck with Matt on the way back to Keene’s Harbor. No way could she pretend for that length of time that she had no idea where those noises might be coming from.

Damn.

Kate hopped from the truck to catch the October wind. If she could cut the heat, maybe she could kill the whole vicious cycle.

“Calm thoughts, cool thoughts,” she coached herself as she headed upwind. “You can beat this.”

Once she’d made the outer edge of Horned Owl’s parking area, she pushed up her long sleeves and held out her arms for optimal wind exposure, slowly rotating like a deranged wind turbine. Still, she could feel sweat collecting between her breasts.

“I am so screwed.”

She shot a look at the brewery’s door. Thank heaven all was quiet and still. The guys could talk while she cooled. She returned to the truck and used the open passenger door as shield.

Kate pulled her arms from the sweater’s sleeves. Inside the sweater’s protection, she reached back and unhooked her bra. Those miserable years of middle school gym class had served a purpose, after all. She could still remove her underwear without showing a square inch of skin.

One hot-pink bra with black lace overlay was history in three seconds. Kate chucked it onto the truck’s seat, then jammed her arms back through her sleeves.

“Please, please, please,” she murmured. Just who outside of her own rebelling body Kate was begging, she didn’t know.

Her digestive system emitted a groan that silenced the chickadees up in the trees. Temptation grew. One polite burp that no one other than her feathered friends would hear might fix the whole issue. But then she flashed back to her last beer episode. She’d been sucked in by that whole “one burp” theory, and the aftermath hadn’t been pretty.

She pulled on her sweater’s neckline until she got some good air between herself and the knit fabric. Then she took the sweater’s bottom, looped it up through the top, and drew it back down. The rig held, even though her posture made a gargoyle look good. She turned and just about smacked into Matt.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Long enough,” he said. “Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not.”

“You’ve been gone awhile,” he said. “Bart and Travis wanted me to come out and check on you.”

Which was a lie. They were negotiating the terms of a winner-takes-all arm-wrestling match over the pumpkin brew recipe. A rabid fox dropped into the middle of the room wouldn’t have distracted them.

“As you can see, I’m kind of having a problem.”

“Either that or you’re into some voodoo ritual. What’s up with your face, though?”

“My face?” Kate’s voice rose an octave in alarm. “What’s wrong with my face?”

“You’ve gone from red to spotty. Is it possible that you have an allergy to something in beer?”

She clamped her hand over her mouth in what he would have said was an expression of shock, except for the way her chest and shoulders heaved.

“You’re not going to hurl, are you?” he asked.

Hand still over mouth, she shook her head no.

In Matt’s estimation, whatever else was about to happen appeared to be equally bad.

“Hang on,” he said. “Let’s get you back to town.”

She nodded her head a frantic yes.

*   *   *

MATT RETURNED
to the barn, where Bart and Travis were going mano a mano.

“I upped the stakes,” Bart said without turning his dead-eye glare from Travis. “If Travis loses, he’s spending the next month of Wednesdays coming to Keene’s Harbor for poker night and then he works for me on Thursdays.”

“Sounds good,” Matt said. Adding Travis to poker night would bring a new, if warped, dynamic. But Matt had more important stuff to deal with right now. “I’ve got to head out now. Bart, I’ll catch up with you on Monday. Travis, you’re not going to take him in any kind of match. And even if you do, when it comes to your beer, he wins. Got it?”

“Dude, that is so not fair,” Travis said.

“When you can pay me back, we’ll talk about fair. Until then, it’s all about leverage.”

Bart slammed Travis’s hand to the tabletop, winning the match and illustrating Matt’s point.

“Just like that,” he said.

Back outside, Matt found Kate waiting for him in the truck. As he climbed into his seat, a pink-and-black bra went flying into the back. He’d witnessed a bra toss before, but not in these circumstances.

“I think it’s the hops,” he said rather than comment on the projectile. “I’ve seen it happen to people before—the redness you started out with, at least—just not this bad.”

Kate snorted, or maybe wheezed. “Great. Put it on my tombstone. Kate Appleton. Went to hell in a hops basket.”

“So you’re not feeling any better?”

“I’d give that a no.”

He started the truck. “Let’s get a move on, then.”

“Gently, and unlock my window control, could you?”

They started down the road, Kate with her head out the window and hair rippling in the breeze. And Matt feeling really bad she was so sick but thinking how great she looked with her hair wild, blowing all around her face.

*   *   *

KATE NEVER
thought she’d be so grateful to work for a man who’d bought a kitschy, not to mention mostly dilapidated, motel.

“Are you doing okay in there?” Matt called through the bathroom door in the manager’s tiny apartment.

Kate was still toweling her hair from the long and chilly shower she’d taken. “Better.”

“I’m glad I had the utilities turned back on this week. Sorry there wasn’t much hot water.”

“It was perfect.”

Actually, it had taken a while before she’d felt safe to go near the shower. First had come the belching with enough gusto to win a frat boys’ contest. From her side of the bathroom door, she’d heard Matt saying that he’d be taking off for a while. Kate had figured he’d been engaging in chivalry or self-preservation. Either way, he’d missed the worst of the episode.

“I’ve brought you some stuff I thought you might be able to use,” he called.

She opened the bathroom door enough to reach out her arm and grab a plastic sack. “Thanks. That was really nice of you.”

Though, again, it still could have been self-preservation. Keene’s Harbor remained over an hour away, and her stomach still sounded demonically possessed. Kate riffled through the bag. Antihistamines, as promised, plus antacids.

So much for Matt Culhane ever being tempted by her again, she thought. She was gross—inside and outside. Arms wrapped around her bloated midsection, she regarded her spotty reflection in the bathroom mirror. This was what she wanted, right? Not to have to worry about any hot and messy sexual entanglement that took place outside the privacy of her imagination. Now that she faced that reality, the answer came back an edgy maybe not.

“Can I bring you anything else?” Matt called.

“No, thanks.”

After antacids, what was left?

*   *   *

MATT BELIEVED
in choosing his moments and in letting others choose theirs. When Kate decided to stick on her bug glasses and pretend to sleep most of the way back to Keene’s Harbor, he’d respected that choice.

“Hey,” he said when she finally stirred.

“Hi.”

“Feeling any better?”

“Yes.”

“Are you up to having a conversation longer than one syllable?”

“No,” Kate said.

“All the same, can I ask you something? Did that happen to you the last time you drank beer?”

She didn’t answer immediately. “Kind of, I think. I mean, I sort of recalled discomfort, but it wasn’t this bad.”

“In that case, I’m sorry. I never would have asked you to try it if I’d known this was what happened to you.”

“My fault. Even with that vague memory, I shouldn’t have risked it, except…”

“Except what?”

“Except I also did it because
I
wanted to, and because it seemed important to you. I mean, this is what you do. You’ve got great reason to be proud of all you’ve accomplished. Then, here I come and turn up my nose. I wanted to be … I don’t know…”

“Nice?”

She sighed. “Yes, nice. You deserve that.”

“So do you, Kate.”

“I know, but it’s been so long. It’s like I can hardly recognize it. That long without nice in your life … and I don’t mean that I was abused or anything … it was just the absence of nice. But, anyway, you forget how it feels.”

He didn’t know where she’d been, other than geographically, before she’d landed in Keene’s Harbor. All he knew was that he liked it when she was happy.

“Okay,” he said. “So, nice it is. And I’m moving you to the taproom on Monday. I need to have you someplace where you can keep an eye on Jerry when I’m not there. You were right. He takes off, and I don’t know what he’s up to. And Laila’s going to be out a minimum of this next week with her ankle sprain.”

“I can do that,” she said.

TEN

Early Monday morning, Kate pulled into Depot Brewing’s parking lot. She was exactly on time for the training session Matt wanted to get in before the rest of the staff arrived. Matt, however, was not. With not a heck of a lot else to do, Kate exited her Jeep and meandered toward the building’s front entry. She smiled down at the mosaic of Chuck and allowed herself a moment of yearning for Stella. She missed her dog every single day.

Pushing doggie thoughts from her mind, she glanced into the Depot’s interior through the narrow window to the right of the front door. The large potted tree in the entry lay on its side. Kate moved closer and peered into the lobby. Opposite the tree, the low table that usually held brochures had been upended. She could have bought one tipped thing as an accident, but not both.

Running on sheer instinct, she pulled on the door’s large bronze handle. The door swung outward. And because she was terminally curious, she stepped inside.

“Hello?” She paused to bring the tree upright. “Anyone here?”

Apparently not. She set the table on its feet, scooped up the brochures and replaced them. She also picked up a bit of string or something that the cleaning person must have missed. She tucked that into the front pocket of her khakis, along with a crumpled cocktail napkin. If she was going to tidy up, she might as well do it properly.

As she left the entry, Kate was greeted by a stale beer aroma she’d last smelled in Bagger’s Tavern. Except unlike Bagger’s, this place was all clean slate, wood, and ceramic tile. There was no obnoxiously absorbent carpet to be found.

Kate followed her nose to the taproom.

“This is
so
not good.”

Every table and chair had been flipped. Beer was running, but with no pitcher or pilsner glass to catch the brew. She sprinted behind the bar and realized that not only had the taps been left running but every keg had been shot full of holes. A note had been spray painted on the mirror behind the bar in giant red letters:
You’re Next
.

One foot hit where the rubber mats should have been, but weren’t. Momentum carried her forward. The wet floor brought her feet out from beneath her. And then she went down. Hard.

*   *   *

KATE WASN’T
the most predictable woman on Earth. Still, Matt felt pretty sure if her Jeep was in the lot, she couldn’t be too far away.

“Kate?” he called before he unlocked the brewery’s employee door.

No answer. Odd, he thought. She wasn’t in her Jeep, she wasn’t waiting at the door, and she hadn’t answered his call. He was hit with a shot of protective male concern. He walked from the kitchen down the short hall, being drawn to a sound he’d caught plenty before, but never at this hour. A beer tap was spitting, then blowing. He hustled to the taproom and stopped dead at the bar’s back side.

“What the—”

Kate sat propped on her elbows, feet splayed out in front of her.

She looked up at him. “It’s a little swampy back here.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Everything but my tailbone and dignity. I was just working my way back to my feet.”

“Let me help you.”

Matt scooped her up and held her tight to his body. He reached around her with his free arm and pushed each of the eight beer taps back into their closed positions. The act was a formality, since all the barrels were now drained. No wonder Kate had gone down. The keg system’s drains couldn’t handle the volume, and that floor was damn slick.

“You’re soaked,” he said.

“Half of me, at least.”

He grabbed a clean bar towel from the stack on the counter and began to mop her off. He was somewhere in the vicinity of her backside when she took the towel from him.