Janet Evanovich - Love in a Nutshell

Ginger gave Kate a blatantly inquisitive look. “Hi.”

Kate returned the greeting, but tried to keep her curiosity under control.

“Is Chet here?” Matt asked Ginger.

“I sent him into your office. You might want to consider a bulletproof vest before you go in.”

“That bad?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Matt shot a dubious look at the closed door. “Then he knows why he’s here. I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.” He paused. “Or maybe even sooner.”

Kate settled into a guest chair and Ginger pulled open a desk drawer and brought out a semi-full bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. “Want some? They’ve got a good bite.”

“I love them, too, but I’m all about coffee at this hour,” Kate said.

Ginger nodded. “Okay.” Without pausing a beat, she added, “So, are you Matt’s new girlfriend?”

“No, I just started working for him last week.”

Kate suddenly realized how much longer it felt, and not in a bad way. No, this was more a What did I do with myself before all this craziness? feeling.

“Interesting,” Ginger said.

The conversation was starting to feel a little interesting to Kate, too. “So, Ginger, have you two ever dated?”

Ginger raised her eyebrows. “No! My dad would kill him. Dad was Matt’s high school football coach down in Keene’s Harbor. Matt was a big star, but that was ages ago. I was just a kid. And then Dad changed jobs and we moved up here.”

“Matt was a football star? Figures.”

Ginger grinned. “Doesn’t it? He was hot stuff. I guess he had a full ride to Michigan State, but then messed up his knee during baseball season his senior year of high school. He lost the scholarship and ended up working around town before he took off for a couple of years. Everything turned out fine, though.”

Just then the younger woman’s eyes widened, giving Kate an instant of forewarning before Matt’s office door slammed into the wall, and a short, heavy man whose skin color had risen to a shiny puce marched out of the office.

The purple man was sputtering so much he could barely choke out his words. “You’ll pay, Culhane,” he said.

Matt followed him out and remained admirably impassive. Kate wanted to learn how to do that, though she suspected she lacked the talent.

“I agree this is tough, Chet, but you know I’ve been more than fair,” Matt said.

The older man’s breathing was ragged, and he opened and closed his hands into fists. “Another six months wouldn’t have killed you. Instead, you’re killing me.”

“You have four weeks before I’ll be filing anything. Just work on those other possibilities, okay?”

Chet told Matt in graphic detail what he could work on, then stormed out.

DOING THE right thing and doing the easy thing didn’t seem to be lining up too well for Matt these days.

“I would have given Chet more time if I could have,” he said to Kate, who sat next to him in the truck as they headed to his next appointment. “But I need to think about my cash reserves and my business. The slow season is coming on. It’s going to hurt to take any more financial hits. I hate to be a sur [e tcash reservivalist, but it’s better it’s Chet’s business than mine, especially when he’s been in default for over a year.”

“There’s nothing else you could have done,” she said.

“But there is. I should have pulled the plug on his financing last year. I built up expectations that I’d just keep letting this slide.” He shook his head. “Big mistake.”

Kate eyes narrowed. “Does that mean you’re thinking of pulling the plug on our deal? You gave me until Thanksgiving to come up with the money, and if you try to back out, I’ll make Chet look like Gandhi.”

Matt laughed. “You caught him at an off moment. He’s not usually so purple.”

“Good news there, or he’ll be among the spirits pretty soon. One little vein in the brain goes ping, and it’s all over.”

Matt knew the feeling, even if he hadn’t yet achieved Chet’s color of purple. All the same, bringing a measure of calm and sanity into his life was now part of his game plan.

“True,” Matt said. “And the good news is that no one is purple at our next stop, though Travis is pretty tatted up.”

“And tatted Travis is…”

“The owner of Horned Owl Brewing and my newest project. Great concepts, but bad business decisions. Bart is spending today and tomorrow with him to go over his beer recipes and maybe tweak ’em where they need tweaking. Nothing too big.”

He wasn’t about to clue her into the other activity about to take place at Horned Owl. One that had occurred to him early this morning. Matt wasn’t totally up to speed on it, but he knew that surprise was crucial…

Kate felt as though her fillings were going to fall out as Matt’s truck slammed and rattled down a pitted gravel road in the middle of nowhere. “Are you sure this is really the road to the microbrewery?”

“Positive,” Matt said. “It’s also the first of three issues that have been tanking Travis’s business.”

Kate couldn’t wait to see the other two.

“Do you think maybe you should slow down a little?”

“No way. Then we’d feel every rut in the road.”

Being airborne didn’t seem much better, but Kate also knew not to mess with a man on a mission.

“Hang on,” Matt said, skittering around a hairpin turn. “It gets a little rough right here.”

Kate’s gasp was involunt ^ Matt ary, and she wasn’t real thrilled about the grin that appeared on Matt’s face in response as she fought the urge to brace her feet against the dashboard. “Very Indiana Jones of you,” she said. “I should have brought my bullwhip.”

Matt’s eyebrows raised a half inch. “Do you have a bullwhip?”

Kate smiled sweetly. Ms. Mysterious.

“Kinky,” Matt said, “but I can deal.”

He swerved around an unusually deep rut, barely missing a tree. They made a hard right turn onto a narrow ribbon of a drive. All that marked it as more than a trail was a huge, sour-faced plastic owl on a post.

“Horned Owl issue number two,” Matt said. “If you’ve got a customer ambitious enough to come back here, get a sign. Don’t scare them off with a weird fake owl.”

Now that they were traveling at normal speed, Kate took a look around. She imagined that the woods were lush and green in the summer. On this crisp autumn day, though, the maples were turning crimson and yellow, with the oaks not far behind. Only the scrubby jack pines still held much green.

“The scenery’s a good prize for making it back this far,” she said. “It’s gorgeous.”

The woods had thinned, and a meadow lay ahead. At the far end sat an unassuming double-wide home. To the right of that by a hundred yards was the most amazing barn Kate had ever seen. It might have been painted a traditional red, but the structure’s hexagonal shape and the white cupola topping it were showstoppers. Someone had also added expanses of windows and a pergola-shaded terrace that angled off one of the back sides.

Kate blew out a whistle. “Definitely not issue number three.”

“Except for the location, it’s perfect.” He parked next to a silver car that Kate had seen almost every day in Depot Brewing’s lot. “Ready to go in?”

Kate climbed out of the truck. “First, let me play tourist.”

She dug her phone from her purse and backed up until she found the perfect spot to take a picture of the barn. She liked that Matt was in the shot, too.

“Smile,” she said. And even though he was laughing, she kept the picture. “This is turning into a pretty nice day.”