Janet Evanovich - Love in a Nutshell

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 tru” a but thth 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, or 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 stricOCKt when tly 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.

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 waands 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.