Chapter 17
Gregor
As soon as I heard August coming up the stairs, I started removing the thick foil coverings on the containers that contained our feast. Places were already set, dipping sauces in a trio of shallow dishes alongside our plates. Napkins and wet wipes rested in the middle of the table, since the boiled shrimp would need to be peeled. I hadn’t forgotten anything.
I cracked the bottles of cider open as he dropped into his chair, serving spoons already in the containers so he could get started.
“This looks amazing,”
he moaned as he spooned fried scallops onto his plate.
“I’m glad you approve.”
I passed him a cider and sat across from him with mine, waiting for him to finish filling his plate before I dove in.
“I got an appointment,”
August said as he deposited a heaping scoopful of boiled potatoes and corn on the cob on his plate. “I wanted to tell you that before we started talking about the other thing.”
I passed him my phone so he could enter the date and time, while I munched on one of the shrimp. There were crab cakes, too, and melted butter I’d kept piping hot.
I drizzled butter on one and added a smear of spicy tartar sauce before digging in.
“Is it too early to start asking how you’re feeling?”
I asked once I’d swallowed.
“Probably. How about you save it until I’m round and waddling, then you can inquire all you want, since the answer will probably change every five minutes.”
“Fair enough.”
“Did things stay steady after I left?”
I asked, curious and a bit in awe of the way he’d gotten people in there.
“It sure did. People asked about the soda pop taffy all the way until closing. We’ve already brought in another portable register in preparation for the morning rush, and my cousins Kitty and Bren are going to come in and help Stella run them so I can keep refilling the cases.”
“Nice!”
“Yup. We’ll see what the numbers say tomorrow, and start inputting them into the spreadsheet, that will create a bunch of charts we can compare before we launch a new line of candy. There’s supposed to be a sweet spot between when the novelty of the previous candy begins to die down, and when the market is ripe for a new product to not just catch but hold customers’ attention. Once we figure out what the wave looks like we’ll be able to plan further into the future. Right now, everything is a bit random and on the fly. I just mix up batches of things when I get inspired, but for long-term sustainability, as well as time and resource management, a bit of planning is in order.”
“Whoa, okay, hold on. I might want to start bringing a notebook to the table so you can school me on all the things I should be thinking about in regard to my own shop.”
“Are you serious right now?”
he asked, eyeing me from across the table.
I’d already come about halfway out of my chair, my hands clutching the arms while I tried to decide if I’d be better off slinking away as fast as I could and hurrying back or sinking back down in my seat and pretending I hadn’t said anything.
“Unless it will piss you off for me to leave the table in the middle of the conversation, I’d love to grab my notebook,”
I replied, going for the truth and letting him tell me which was acceptable.
“Grab it, I’ll wait,”
he said, the pinched frown gone from his face. “And stuff my face with more of this amazing food.”
As I hurried down the hall, it dawned on me that he truly hadn’t been sure if I was kidding or not about grabbing the notebook. That was fair. It could have been interpreted different ways. I’m glad he didn’t mind me wanting to learn from him. When I’d opened the shop, it had been without any consideration for all the things I didn’t know.
When I returned to the table, he repeated his previous statement so I could write it down while he kept munching. When I finished, I left it open by my hand while I dug back into my plate. I had no intention of picking his brain, I just wanted it handy in case he said something that resonated with me.
“The whole inspiration thing is what had me in the kitchen two hours early every morning that you were gone,”
he explained.
“Are you sure it wasn’t just that you missed me?”
“Ohh, it was a whole lot of that, too. But lying in bed and listening to the waves without having to hear your snoring had a lot to do with it, too,”
he replied, winking at me from beneath spiky bangs.
“So, were you back in your kitchen when everything took place in the chocolate shop or were you closer to the action?”
“I was in the bakery, getting lunch,”
he explained. “I didn’t see Olly’s mom head in there because my back was to the door while I was waiting in line to grab breakfast, but I heard her when I went to poke my head in to see if Ever was planning to take a break soon or if he wanted me to order something for him before I headed back to my kitchen. I walked in on the tail end of her telling Ever that Olly was needed at home and that he was much too young to think about mating with anyone. Then she really got nasty and said that she’d ruin Ever’s business and see to it that he needed to move far away from here to ever outrun the things she’d tell people if he didn’t stay the hell away from Olly.”
“Damn,”
I muttered, running my hand over my head. “I-I don’t have words to describe her. Unhinged? Delusional? I don’t know if Pops can legally make someone do something about her, since he was never married to her, but someone needs to see to it that she gets a mental health check before she does some real damage to someone.”
“I hope he’s looking into it.”
“He is.”
“I’m glad Olly chose to move in here and create some distance,”
he said. “If she’s not ashamed to say such nasty shit in public, then you know she doesn’t hold back at home.”
“That’s why Olly moved in with my folks,”
I explained. “He told the judge that he hated living with her and that she always yelled at him and called him names whenever anything went wrong. He said he wanted to live at our house where there was never any yelling unless someone was cheering for a game. Olly said the judge asked him who his favorite team was and when he said Toronto, he asked Olly how he thought they would do against Vancouver that year. When Olly started telling him all of the things he’d learned about the sport when he was at our place and how our uncles had taught him to skate and helped coach the peewee hockey team he played on, he said that the judge leaned in and really listened. In the end, the judge decided in favor of the people who were actively participating in Olly’s life, and at that point, she just dropped out of sight and rarely bothered to reach out and check on him or send a card for his birthday or holidays and shit.”
“And he still rushed to help her when she got hurt? Why?”
“He’s her only kid, a fact that she loves to hold over his head. He let her make him feel obligated, despite the fact there had been plenty of times over the years when Olly really would have appreciated her showing up for him,”
I said. “I hate it, but the fastest way to get him to shut down is to start talking to him about his mother. That’s one of the few times he truly gets stubborn.”
“You did a good thing letting him stay with us.”
“I should have asked instead of telling, though,”
I pointed out.
It had only hit me that I’d done that when I’d been back at the shop taking over Olly’s duties so he could get his things moved in.
I watched him freeze with a scallop touching his lip and slowly lower it as he blinked at me and cocked his head.
“You did do that, didn’t you?”
he muttered, looking thoughtful.
“Yeah. Not my finest moment. I’ll do better.”
“I know,”
he said. “You already are. You recognized your mistake before I had to point it out to you. Hell, you recognized that you’d made a mistake before I caught on that you’d done it. I’d say that’s a hell of a lot better, wouldn’t you?”
“I love the way you think.”
We fell silent for several minutes, enjoying the variety of seafood that still remained in the containers. When I’d looked up at all the choices and requested an Old Time Captain’s Feast for three, since I was willing to bet my mate had skipped at least one meal today, I’d expected to be underwhelmed by the portions they included.
No fuckin’ way had been my first thought when I’d seen the mountain of containers waiting on the counter for me. My second had been to wish I’d brought a car. Fortunately, my cousin Destiny’s mate had the same idea about what she wanted for supper, so I waited with her until her food was ready and we carried everything out together. It still took us three trips to collect everything we ordered, and she’d been giggling by the third time we’d slunk past a line of the same people.
She told me on the ride back that after seeing us, they probably assumed that we were the reason the kitchen was backed up. She grumbled out comedic commentary describing the whispered conversations that had probably been going on as we’d been running in and out.
“I mean, I’m sure we contributed in some degree, especially ordering the same thing back to back,”
I remarked as we left the place in the rearview.
“Oh my gosh, we’re those people,”
she said in her snottiest tone, right before we cracked up for half a block.
“Okay, why are you a lot more fun to hang out with now than a year ago when we tried to go to Bali?”
she asked a few blocks from my place.
“I dunno,”
I said, shrugging and turning to look at the houses go past. “Maybe it’s because we found our mates and we aren’t competing to be the first to introduce ourselves to the next new person we met?”
That’s how we’d called dibs on the guys, since she was bi. Whoever introduced themselves first got a chance to see if they were compatible before the other person got a shot. Sometimes it meant missed opportunities, and left us snapping at one another, so yeah, maybe it was easier to be around one another now that we weren’t searching for forever in the same dating pool.
“There may be some truth to that,”
she replied. “Remember the volleyball player from Australia, with the strawberry hair and killer serve?”
“Zane,”
I replied, his image immediately popping into my head. “Who could forget us playing two on one against him and getting destroyed because he’d declared that whichever of us scored the most points would be the one to take him out that night.”
“I’ve got a scar from that!”
“Just one? I’ve got three of them! From when you sank your claws into my ankle and yanked my leg out from under me.”
“You tripped.”
“Tripped implies that there was something in the sand to cause it to happen. The only thing in the sand was your hand right before you grabbed me.”
“Like you said, there was something in the sand, my hand, therefore, tripped.”
Considering that her logic was as sound as mine and we’d both gotten it from our grandfather, I considered the matter dropped and thanked her when she dropped me off.
“Holy shit, why are the garlic rolls all the way over there?”
August asked, startling me. “Why am I just seeing garlic rolls when we’re almost finished eating?”
“Because I forgot about them,”
I said, shrugging sheepishly.
“Uh huh, you forgot about them until you went to reach for one. How many of them have you eaten, anyway?”
My eyebrows shot up as I set the roll I’d taken on my plate so I could peer inside the container before passing it over. “There are two left.”
“That so doesn’t answer the question.”
“I didn’t look to see how many were in there at the start,”
I admitted before taking a big bite out of the one I’d snagged. “They’re too tasty to think about, I just eat them.”
“No shit,”
he said, happily accepting the remaining rolls while I nibbled what was left of mine. “Okay, so, you asked about how the chocolate played in.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re still trying to find proof that it’s tied together, but it’s too much of a coincidence that it happened the day she issued that threat.”
“Okay, what exactly did happen?” I asked.
“Some lady came in with a box of chocolates she bought earlier in the day. No one is disputing that she bought them there, they were not only in one of our boxes, but they’d been shaped in one of Ever’s signature molds. We’re disputing how the ants got in there, perfectly placed, when the mixer Ever uses to whip the fluff filling until it’s the right consistency is seriously heavy duty. There is no way that ants made it into the filling intact.”
“Seriously, it was just a whole ant in there?”
I asked, also unable to see how that was possible.
“Try three whole ants, one of their antennae wasn’t even crushed. Talk about some bullshit right there. A whole lot of pictures were taken and the whole shop shut down, which is why it was still closed this morning. Everything had to be disposed of, and the cases sanitized. This is going to put Everett behind by at least a week, not to mention how much in lost revenue and sales it’s cost him.”
“As well as the stress of having to start all over from scratch,”
I pointed out.
“Exactly, it’s a lot. If we can prove Olly’s mom was behind it, then we have grounds for a lawsuit,”
August explained. “He lost a new client over it, too, which meant the loss of a big event and a chance to have his creations seen by a lot of people. Exterminators did an inspection and found no sign of ants anywhere, so once the sanitation process is finished, and the health inspector comes in, he can start filling his cases again.”
“I don’t even want to think about how long it takes to fill cases that size with a variety of chocolates,”
I replied, because just trying to picture it was overwhelming.
“Too long,”
August murmured, a sigh slipping from between his lips as he slumped against the armrest. “I wish there was some way to help my brother.”
I did, too, because I hated to see such a defeated look on my mate’s face and knew he had to be hurting for his brother, but also because I saw how hard August worked and could easily imagine Everett working just as hard on his chocolate creations. To have someone sabotage his work had to be as devastating to Everett’s creative side as well as his business one.
Then it dawned on me, who might have some insight into Dana’s behavior, and he was right downstairs.
“Hey, Olly!”
I bellowed as I rushed to the railing, leaned over and shouted all the way down the spiral staircase. “Can you come up here for a minute?”
When he appeared, his eyebrows were furrowed as he shook his phone at me.
“Dude, you could have just texted at that point.”
I glanced from the one on the table to the one he held of a similar model, shrugged and didn’t even try to look ashamed of myself.
“Oops,”
I shrugged and motioned for him to follow me to the table.
“Ohh, seafood,”
he purred, reaching for a shrimp only to be swatted by my mate.
“Ohh, you reach for that seafood again and you’ll pull back a nub,”
August told him. “There’s some pizza in the fridge, you’re welcome to it.”
“Thanks.”
“After you warm that up, maybe you can tell us what the fuck’s going on with your mom,”
I blurted.
I might be smiling a little more these days, but tact would never be my strong suit. I could tell I’d startled him, from the way his shoulder’s clenched and he paused, like he’d forgotten what he was reaching for.
“I hope you’ve got time on your hands,”
he said as he set the box on the counter.
“All night if that’s what it takes,”
August declared, while I stared at my mate, one eyebrow raised.
What? he asked inside my head.
You might regret that in the morning.