Recipe for Eagle Cove, page 5
“For heaven’s sake, Natalya! What sort of a man do you take me for?”
She hesitated, then shifted back onto her heels, giving him a little breathing space. “I don’t know you anymore, Harry. I’ve barely seen you since we both went to college. But I most certainly knew the shallow troll that was Harry Slater.”
“Well,” he wished that description hadn’t once fit him so well, but there wasn’t much point in arguing. “Even then I wasn’t the sort who takes advantage of a woman under pain meds. You have my word as a member of the Bar Association on that one.” He wasn’t quite sure why he felt compelled to add that last. In New Orleans there’d been no past to live down. He’d simply arrived and made himself into the man he was today. If asked before the last two days, he’d have said he did a halfway decent job of it. But the women of Eagle Cove were definitely keeping him off balance.
“And you find Becky attractive?”
“Well yeah!” And only after he answered did he catch her change in tone. He hadn’t been ready for a friendly, casual question in the midst of a cross-examination. Hadn’t meant to speak that truth to a woman threatening him with bodily harm. “You’d have made a good attorney, Natalya.”
Natalya checked her watch and then cursed. “I’m going to be late. You take care of her, Harry. Can you do that for me?”
He raised three fingers in a Boy Scout salute, “Scout’s honor.” He’d been a lousy Boy Scout.
She rolled her eyes at him, because of course she knew that about him. Couldn’t get away with anything in a small town. Then with another curse she checked her watch again, rushed over to her Mini Cooper, and cranked it to life. She backed out of her spot until the driver’s side window was close beside where he still leaned against the van.
“Don’t blow it, Slater, or you’re dog meat!” Then with a harsh chirp of her tires, she was racing out of the lot and back onto Mission Street.
Harry headed back into the E.R.
Becky was waiting for him in a wheelchair. They must have given her a wakeup med, because her eyes were bright. That too-bright of over-medication. He was used to seeing it from his days defending low-lifers back in criminal court. He’d escaped to civil court as fast as he could, at least corporate clients didn’t try to knife you when you asked for your fee.
He didn’t like the bandage on her forehead either. She wore a denim work shirt that still sported a couple dribbles of blood that some E.R. nurse had been kind enough to try and sponge off. Her right leg was wrapped in a brace and propped up on the wheelchair’s raised leg support.
“Nice skirt,” it was all he could think to say to cheer her up. He didn’t like seeing Becky Billings looking sad as she fingered the top of the leg brace. And the skirt was nice; as different from last night’s little black dress as you could get. Bright splashes of color: reds, blues, and golds, as if she’d pulled on a flower garden.
“Valeria’s. The woman thinks of everything. Even as they were loading me into the ambulance, she knew I wouldn’t be able to get back into my jeans.” On cue a nurse handed him a bag. It contained a pair of battered work boots, socks, folded up jeans, and a set of bright blue panties covered in giant sunflowers. Which meant that under her skirt she was wearing—
Harry could feel his breath growing short as the nurse handed him a pair of crutches. Which worked as thoroughly as a cold shower.
The nurse rattled off a set of instructions about time off the leg, time on the crutches, follow-up appointments with the local doctor, and so on. He should be taking careful notes, and under normal conditions his mind was a steel trap for such information. But Becky: sad, battered, yet still alluring in a wheelchair, was the ultimate distraction to his thoughts.
“Here,” the nurse flapped a sheaf of papers as thick as a trial pleading under his nose. “This covers everything I’ve just said. Take these top two sheets to the pharmacy down the hall to get the prescriptions filled.”
“Okay.” In a daze he was wheeling Becky down the hall. The view wasn’t all that different from his first look down at her in the kitchen last night. But instead of a jaunty attack on the world, her head was tilted sadly down. He raised a hand off one handle and stroked it down the long flow of golden brown.
“It’ll be okay, Becky.”
She nodded in a very unconvinced manner.
And then, because he’d only kept one hand on the handles, he practically rammed her into a wall.
When she didn’t even tease him about his driving, he really began to worry.
Becky lay back in the passenger seat and tried not to scream at her leg. It was throbbing through the narcotic, which was making her stomach churn through the anti-nausea drug, which made her so…angry at the world.
She didn’t have time to be hurt.
The van was filled with almost a ton of malted barley, dried hops, and Asian pears at their peak of ripeness. She couldn’t afford to miss one day, never mind the ten that the nurse had told her to stay off her leg. Truly couldn’t afford it. Part of being a supplier was that her clients, taverns and restaurants, expected a steady and reliable supply. If they ran out of 5B beer, they’d just roll someone else’s keg into place and she’d have to fight like a demon to get the slot back by offering special price incentives that she could ill afford. She was being a success, but lately that was a seventy hour-a-week proposition with time off only for best friends’ weddings.
And the Asian pears didn’t have ten days either. They were picked at the moment of perfection and were now scenting the van with their soft, sweet tease. If they weren’t in boiling copper within two days, she might as well throw the whole mess away.
“Talk to me, Harry. About anything. So far you’ve just driven in silence clutching the wheel like a concentrating drunk. Anabelle is a sweet girl and only needs a light hand.”
“Anabelle?”
“Go ahead, tell me that your Beamer or Porsche doesn’t have some testosterone laden name. Max from Mad Max or Luthor, from Superman’s arch enemy.”
“Clive, my Mercedes Roadster—”
“SLK or SL?”
“SLK. The 350,” he said it cautiously. Harry looked over at her for the first time since they’d gotten her into the van and buckled into place. He hadn’t taken even the tiniest bit of advantage as they’d brushed and bumped together while figuring out how to maneuver her from wheelchair to the front seat.
“Wimp!” For two reasons, but she wasn’t going to mention the second one. Even if she hadn’t been in the mood for flirting, it would have been nice if he’d at least tried.
“I’m a wimp for owning an SLK?”
“C’mon,” she loved that her tease was working. “The SL has half again the horsepower.”
“And twice the price tag.”
“Wimp!” All that time she’d spent online daydreaming over a hot driving machine a few months back hadn’t turned out to be a waste of time after all.
Harry drove for another mile down the freeway in silence before turning once again and sticking his tongue out at her.
“Bring that here and I’ll kiss it for you.”
“Not a chance, Billings.” With that he returned his attention to the road.
Not a chance? Sure, kissing Becky Billings had been fun at a wedding reception, but not good enough for every day. Especially not for a man like Harry Slater. Double especially not now that she was broken.
Well, he wasn’t going to see her crying over it.
She closed her eyes and let the rocking of the heavy-laden van combine with the narcotic fuzziness and nausea to transport her away from this moment. Away from the heat burning in her eyes. Way far away.
The sun was well to the west by the time Harry was creeping the van toward Becky’s.
“Not the house,” she murmured, her first words in a hundred miles. It had been lonely, but he was glad that she was sleeping. Must have had a nightmare of a day and sleep was probably the best thing for her.
The house was nothing much. Just a small two-bedroom place at one end of the fields. A truck and a minivan were parked close beside it. Somehow he’d had the impression that Becky lived alone.
“Had to sell it in the early years to get going.”
Oh.
Past the house stood an old hip-roof red barn. Becky’s family had kept forty head of cattle, mostly dairy and some beef. His family’s freezer had often had half of a Billing’s cow done up as steaks, roasts, and burger. There was nothing like grass-fed beef. He’d forgotten how much he missed that flavor.
But no longer. The fields were all deep in hay from the house out to the barn near the little airstrip. The hangar with Peggy’s truck parked beside it stood only a hundred yards way.
“The barn?”
“Around the side,” Becky’s voice was rough, probably from just waking up.
The driveway led to a well-mowed and tended parking area capable of holding ten or more cars. The old calving barn had been spruced up. It was a single story extension off the side of the main barn perhaps thirty by forty feet. Cheery clumps of mums and Rosa ugose grew to either side of a broad double door with diamond-shaped glass panes. The siding had been painted the same colors as Becky’s van, dark brown with golden lettering: “Becky Billings BlueBird Brewery, The 5B’s Tasting Room.” He’d forgotten about her nickname of Bluebird.
“Do you still sing?” She’d had far and away the best voice in the school. Her Maria in The Sound of Music had been great. A little…actually a lot sassier than Julie Andrews, but it was Becky Billings after all.
“In the shower,” she bit off the admission.
“Pity.” And it was. He didn’t know much about singing that he didn’t pick up from the playlist on his phone. It wasn’t as if she should have pulled up and gone to Nashville, but there’d always been merry humming or singing whenever Becky was around. “Your singing was always a really happy sound.”
She looked at him strangely. Again his training failed him and he couldn’t make any sense of it.
This whole side of the barn had been fixed up. She waved him toward a big cargo door for loading hay that stood close beside the converted tasting room. It had a person-sized door built in.
“Back in.”
He eased the van into place, shut it down, and came around to help her. By the time he reached her she was a tangle of seatbelt, crutches, and frustration. He tugged the crutches from her hands and stood them against the side of the van. Then he unraveled the seatbelt.
She wouldn’t look up at him. Embarrassed? Sorry to have been a burden? Or just because she was hurt?
Unable to stand the tightness in his chest from watching her, he leaned in and scooped her up into his arms.
“Hey!” Becky started to squirm.
“Don’t do that, unless you want me to drop you?”
She went absolutely still for a moment and then relaxed enough that it felt as if he was carrying a woman and not a mannequin. Thankfully he’d kept her keys in his hand and was able to unlock the brewery door without having to set her down.
As they crossed the threshold, Becky reached out and flicked a light switch. Harry could only stop and gawk. The stalls had been ripped out and walls raised to create a sealed room. There were rows of gleaming steel tanks—some tall, others squat. A big copper kettle shaped like an upside-down wine glass from the bowl to halfway up the stem dominated the center of the room. Stainless steel piping connected tanks with big valve handles along the way. A control panel fit for an aircraft carrier stood off to one side.
“Holy wow, Billings!”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Beautiful? No. Scary maybe,” he made a show of peering about cautiously. “Any monster creation I should know about, Dr. Frankenstein?”
“Not a one.” For the first time since they’d left the E.R. the tease was back in her voice which was a major relief. “Well, maybe one or two little ones, just, you know, knee-high maybe. I’m still starting out.”
Harry gazed at the bewildering array of shining equipment. “If this is just starting out, I’m completely humbled.”
“It’s way easier than what you do.”
“Law? That has got to be simpler.”
“You don’t need seven years of schooling to do this. You can put me down.”
“Well sure, but they don’t teach lawyers anything about alchemy and magic, especially not with such high-tech cauldrons.” He wasn’t ready to set her down yet. She was trim. And while that didn’t make her weightless and his arms were tiring, he liked the feel of her curled against his chest.
“I do have a book of secret formulas.”
“Can I see it? I promise not to understand a single thing. I’m merely a little curious about what real-world magical formulas look like.”
“Maybe. Now put me down, Harry.”
“Sure, where?”
She pointed toward a set of rough stairs that led up to the hayloft, “I have an apartment up there.”
“You have a bum leg remember. That’s not going to happen.”
“I— You’re right. I hate that you’re right.”
“Me personally?” His arms really were aching. He spotted a battered couch that looked well lived in and set her down on the cushions.
“No, the fact that I can’t even go home,” she looked toward the stairs again and appeared about to cry.
He was certainly not ready for that.
Now he saw that the couch was part of a small living area set in the corner of the brewery. It had all of the basic amenities: couch, an equally well worn and cushy armchair, coffee table, a tiny two-burner kitchen area, and most importantly a bathroom. It was…he surveyed the area…it was for the nights when she had to pay attention to some critical stage of the brewing process. That meant that he’d set her down wrong.
He shifted some of the couch pillows and patted them. “Here,” he supported half her weight as she moved to the other end of the couch, and ended up facing her vast array of brewing apparatus.
She was scowling up at him with a look of deep concentration.
“What?”
“When did you become so observant?”
“Lawyer, remember. Part of the job description.”
“And so thoughtful?”
“Oh, well that part of it is just a mistake. I won’t let it happen again.”
That finally earned him a Becky laugh. It was a short one, but he could detect none of the earlier bitterness in her tone.
He glanced at his watch, “Oh, no!” He rushed out to the van to retrieve her crutches and her drugs. She was past time for the next painkiller and the nurse and the pharmacist had warned him about not getting behind on the pain meds for the first couple days.
Becky let him pamper her, mostly because she didn’t have a choice. Her emotions were in such chaos that she barely knew which way was up.
Harry had made it clear that he didn’t want to kiss her again. Hadn’t said a single thing during the whole drive while she fought back tears.
Then he carried her about as if she was a fairy princess rather than a broken garden gnome. And he’d admired her brewery. Not just, “That’s nice,” like most people, but he’d been seriously impressed.
What she really hadn’t been ready for was the perception that somehow told him that she would always choose to face her brewery. Then he’d rushed back in from the van as if being twenty minutes behind on her meds was an international crisis. Actually the way her knee was feeling half an hour later, those twenty minutes were at least of statewide if not national concern.
“Perhaps I should call out the National Guard.”
“Don’t need them. You have me,” Harry startled her as he came back into the brewery. He’d said that he would be right back after watching her take the meds, but then had driven away in her van and she had no idea why. Harry held aloft a brown paper bag. It smelled of…
“Oh wow!” She couldn’t keep the squeak out of her voice.
“Yes!” Harry did a little dance step. “The man nails it!”
“Forget that! Gimme!”
And in moments he had a pair of May Conklin’s burgers from the Brass Plover Pub and a massive load of onion rings spread out on the small coffee table. He perched down past her feet.
She grabbed the burger that he held out.
“I brought Cokes because you can’t have alcohol with your meds.”
She didn’t point out that she had several hundred bottles of cider, root beer, and other 5B sodas sitting on the shelves not twenty feet away.
“What inspired you to such perfection?” She took a monstrous bite and closed her eyes to appreciate the good beef, Mr. Greene’s garden-fresh tomatoes and lettuce, and May’s trademark sauce.
“Because you don’t have anything in your fridge,” he waved a hand toward her kitchenette. “Don’t forget. You’re supposed to have food with your meds.”
“My kitchen,” she mumbled around another mouthful, “is upstairs and very well stocked. Not that I’m complaining.”
Harry gazed up at the ceiling for a long moment as he chewed. “Right. Forgot about that. I’m not much of a cook anyway.”
“You just haveta have the right kitchen.”
And again with that fine perception of his, he glanced over his shoulder at the brewery rather than back at the ceiling.
“Come here.”
He eyed her carefully as if trying to gauge her intentions.
As if she could be any more obvious. It was as if she’d misread him again, but she didn’t think so.
Harry inspected his half-eaten burger but didn’t take another bite.
“If it’s not me—”
“It’s not you,” Harry cut her off.
“Then what?”
“Look,” and she could see him trying to pull on his reasonable-lawyer cloak. “You’re hurting and you’re on Schedule II narcotics. If I took advantage of that, I’d be no better than…than dog meat.”
