Mistlefoe Match (Hot Shots of Huckleberry Creek #3)
Chapter 1
ONE
POWELL
I didn’t lose the coin toss.
I volunteered.
Not that I’d ever tell Moose that, or anyone else at the station. I’d rather eat a hose clamp.
The morning felt like Christmas had sneezed all over downtown Huckleberry Creek—twinkle lights strung from one lamppost to the next, wreathes on every door, the big cedar tree in the middle of the square dripping with ornaments hand-painted by the elementary school.
The Monday after Thanksgiving, and the town had shifted to full-on holiday cheer mode. It should’ve made me smile.
Instead, Moose elbowed me in the ribs as we headed down the sidewalk. “Boy, you look like you’re walking into your own funeral.” He paused, considering. “Which, given the way Jess Donnegan looks at you, might be accurate.”
“She doesn’t look at me,” I said. “She looks through me. Or around me. Or like she’s wishing she had laser vision to melt me into the pavement.”
Moose grinned. “That’s practically affection.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jess Donnegan hating me is a town tradition at this point.”
“And yet,” Moose sang under his breath, “you still volunteer for the coffee run. Curious.”
I walked faster.
Pour Decisions glowed ahead of us—Jess’s pride and joy, a vintage retrofitted Airstream.
Her holiday decorations were always a little overboard: red ribbons on every corner, a string of golden jingle bells on the service window, snowflake stencils misted onto the metal siding.
The scent hit us halfway across the square—fresh espresso, caramelizing sugar, and cinnamon drifting out into the cold.
My stomach did a happy little flip.
Unfortunately, so did my heart.
Jess looked the same as she always did this time of year—hair in a messy bun that appeared to be secured with a pair of candy canes, cheeks flushed from working over hot steam all morning, a red apron tied tight around her narrow waist, accentuating that hourglass figure that spent way too much time as the highlight of my dreams. She was smiling at the customer in front of her when we stepped into line.
Then she saw me, and all that warmth dropped away into something practically subarctic.
Moose whispered, “Aaand there it is,” like he was narrating a nature documentary.
I ignored him and stepped forward. “Morning, Jess.”
Her eyes flicked over me like she was checking for defects. “What do you want?”
“The usual,” I said.
She stared at me without a smile or a blink. Definitely not happy I existed.
Behind me, Moose stage-whispered, “She means the drink order, big guy.”
Jess didn’t crack even a partial grin. The woman had an Olympic-level deadpan. If she could play poker worth half a damn, she’d have a solid second career.
She turned to the espresso machine and started pulling shots. That gave me a second to breathe in the scent of freshly ground beans and wonder—not for the first time—what the hell I’d ever done to deserve a decade of eyebrow daggers from Jess Donnegan.
I’d asked her out once in high school. She’d turned me down with frigid politeness. Despite the fact that I’d thought we’d been circling something real, I hadn’t pouted. I hadn’t stalked. I hadn’t even brought it up again. So what the hell had I done?
Moose leaned his massive frame against the counter of the service window, forearms braced on the metal surface, and called into the truck with the kind of grin that usually preceded trouble. “Hey, Jess, any chance you can make his extra bitter? Fits his personality to a tee.”
The espresso machine hissed and gurgled as she worked, her voice floating back through the window, dry as month-old sawdust left in the Alabama sun. “Every time he opens his mouth, I consider it.”
I choked on a laugh before I managed to stop myself, the sound catching in my throat like I’d swallowed wrong. I couldn’t help it—even when she was being mean, she was funny.
She returned to the window with two drink carriers, both loaded down with an impressive array of holiday drinks—peppermint lattes topped with whipped cream and candy cane dust, gingerbread mochas that smelled like Christmas morning, and holiday cappuccinos decorated with cinnamon art for half the firehouse.
The seasonal drinks were Jess’s specialty, and even I had to admit they looked like something out of a coffee shop magazine.
She handed the first carrier to Moose like she was passing him a container full of live copperheads, her movements slow and deliberate.
The second carrier she placed in front of me with the kind of exacting precision usually reserved for defusing bombs, each cup perfectly aligned, as if she was daring me to so much as breathe wrong and spill a single drop.
“And here’s your…” She paused, eyes narrowing as she looked at me like I was an annoying puzzle she didn’t know how to solve. “Whatever it is you drink.”
“Black coffee.” I reached for the carrier with what I hoped was a grateful smile. “You know I always order the same—”
“Don’t care.” The words came out flat and final as a judge’s gavel.
Moose elbowed me again, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Man, I love her. She’s like a porcupine with a PhD in sarcasm.”
Jess rolled her eyes so hard I worried she might strain something vital.
Before I thought of something clever—or at least something that wouldn’t make me sound like a complete idiot—to say back, one of Jess’s part-time workers came jogging up the sidewalk, her breath puffing in little white clouds. Kelsey, I was pretty sure.
“Sorry I’m late!” she called out, voice a little breathless as she hustled toward the side door of Pour Decisions. “My car wouldn’t start in this cold, and I had to get my roommate to jump it, and then the traffic on Highway 72 was backed up because of that accident near—”
She grabbed the metal door handle and yanked upward with both hands, expecting it to swing open like it was supposed to.
Nothing happened.
The door didn’t so much as budge.
Kelsey pulled harder, her cheeks turning pink from both the cold and the exertion. Her Santa hat slipped down over her eyes, and she had to push it back with one hand while maintaining her grip with the other. “Jess? The door’s jammed again.”
“It is not jammed,” Jess snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. Her sharp forest green eyes dared me to say one single syllable about the malfunctioning door.
I raised both hands in the universal gesture of surrender, palms out, trying to appear as innocent as possible. Which, given my size and the history between us, probably wasn’t very convincing.
But my mouth had other ideas. “You really should—”
“Don’t.” She held up one warning finger, pointing it at me like it was loaded. “Just. Don’t.”
Kelsey tried the door again, throwing her whole body weight into it this time.
The metal handle creaked ominously, and the door shook in its frame like it was having some kind of mechanical seizure.
But it refused to budge an inch, like it had decided to stage a one-door rebellion against the concept of opening. It might as well have been welded shut.
Jess muttered something under her breath that no doubt wasn’t appropriate for public consumption and stomped over to the door.
She grabbed the handle with both hands, set her jaw, and pulled like she was trying to rip the entire side panel off the truck.
Her knuckles whitened with the effort, and I saw the muscles in her forearms strain against the fabric of her long-sleeved shirt.
The door screamed open with a screech of protesting metal that echoed off the courthouse brick like a banshee wailing its last breath. Every person within a three-block radius turned to stare, including Mrs. Henderson, who was stepping out of Bloomsday and dropped her bouquet in surprise.
Jess closed her eyes and blew out a long, controlled breath that spoke of years of practice in not completely losing her cool in public. When she opened them again, her expression was composed, but frustration simmered just beneath the surface.
“See?” Her voice was tight enough to snap. “Not jammed.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted copper, because the words “Uh-huh” were right there on the tip of my tongue. Along with about fifteen other observations about the obvious mechanical problems with that door latch that would get me banned from coffee for life.
Kelsey slipped inside, mumbling apologies, and tried to shut the door. She had to pull it down three times, each attempt requiring more force than the last. The metal groaned with each tug, like it was personally offended by the concept of closing.
On the third try, it clicked into place.
Barely.
The sound was more of a reluctant whisper than the solid thunk a properly functioning latch should make.
Jess marched back to the service window. Beneath the surface composure, she vibrated with don’t-you-dare energy. “Anything else for you two?” The artificial sweetness of her voice told me she was imagining creative ways to dispose of our bodies.
“No, ma’am,” Moose said, immune to the tension crackling in the air. “Thanks for the laughs and the entertainment.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.” Her tone could have frozen the Tennessee River solid.
“That’s what made it funnier,” he said with the kind of oblivious grin that had gotten him in trouble since kindergarten.
She stared at him with the intensity of a hawk sizing up a particularly stupid field mouse. Moose, to his credit, shut up.
Then she turned that laser focus on me. I tried to soften my tone, to sound helpful instead of condescending. “Seriously, Jess. That door latch—”
“Is fine.”
“It’s obviously—”
“Fine, Powell.”
“It’s not safe.” The words came out more forcefully than I’d intended, edged with the kind of professional concern that came from years of dealing with equipment failures and safety hazards.
“Fine.” She slapped my coffee into my hands so fast I had to scramble not to spill the scalding liquid. The plastic lid popped slightly loose, and steam escaped in an accusatory wisp. “Have a nice day.”
That last bit sounded like a threat.
Moose clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to jostle the drinks. “Come on, man. Before she murders you in front of half the town square as witnesses.”
“He would definitely deserve it,” Jess muttered as we turned away, her voice carrying just far enough for us to hear.
But when I glanced back over my shoulder—just a quick flicker—she wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was already helping the next customer, her professional smile sliding back into place like a mask. The transformation was so complete it was almost unsettling.
“Donkey,” Moose warned beside me, his voice taking on the patient tone of someone who’d had this conversation before. “Do not go back over there and try to fix that thing.”
“I’m not,” I said, though even I heard the lack of conviction.
“You’re thinking about it. I can see the gears turning in your head.”
I sighed, adjusting my grip on the carriers. “Yeah. I am.”
He shook his head with the long-suffering expression of a man who’d been dealing with my particular brand of stubborn helpfulness for years.
“Son, if the apocalypse ever hits Huckleberry Creek, it’s not the zombies we gotta worry about.
It’s you and that woman’s unresolved sexual tension reaching critical mass. ”
I didn’t dignify that with a response.
But as we walked across the square, juggling twelve perfectly crafted holiday lattes and my single, lonely black coffee, I couldn’t stop hearing that awful screech of protesting metal.
Or thinking about how that faulty lock could trap someone inside that truck.
Or picturing Jess stuck in that confined space with no way out, no one hearing her calls for help, no escape route if something went wrong.
Jess Donnegan was a lot of things—stubborn, infuriating, sharp-tongued, and unwilling to accept help from me—but she didn’t deserve to be trapped in a metal box because of a mechanical failure she was too proud to acknowledge.