The Time of My Heist

Chapter One

ONE

A cruise ship had to be in, because the pizzeria was flooded with tourists in floppy hats and fanny packs, showing off their purchases of joke t-shirts that could be bought anywhere in the world with such winning slogans as Dad Jokes?

I Think You Mean Rad Jokes! and complaining about the cost of a Key Lime Coolada.

Ten bucks for sixteen ounces was a better deal than anything else they were likely to find on Perfection Avenue, but arguing with cruise people was like hammering a nail into the wall with your bare fist, so Shepherd hid out behind the bar and let his employees handle it.

A few months ago, this wouldn’t have been a problem.

But a few months ago, Ginny Kent hadn’t moved into the apartment upstairs and picked up a few shifts working for him.

Which turned into most shifts working for him.

And Ginny Kent, unlike his other employees, did not suffer in silence and let him get away with it.

“Noah,” she’d sing-songed to the bartender after clearing out a table, “do you happen to know what the Spanish word for coward is?”

Noah said, “Uh,” and kept drying glasses.

She, of course, wasn’t actually talking to Noah, so Shepherd put his hands on his hips and waited.

“Cobarde. In French, you ask?” Ginny raised both her shapely red eyebrows and stared at Shepherd.

“I did not.”

She answered anyway. “Lache.”

“How about Japanese, huh?” Shepherd asked. “You got coward ready to go in Japanese?”

“Koshinuke.” Ginny smiled, her ice-blue eyes sparkling in the light of the Edison bulbs above the bar. “Don’t ever underestimate the power of an Ivy League education, Mr. Shepherd.”

“And yet, here you are. Selling pizzas for a living.” Shepherd leaned his forearms against the sticky varnish of the bar and clasped his hands together.

He could feel himself smiling too, in that annoying, big way his face kept doing around Ginny that made his cheeks hurt.

Every morning before work, he practiced grinning in the mirror in a normal way.

A sexy way. A way that wouldn’t cause him physical pain by the time he was closing up shop.

But it hadn’t worked the entire time she’d lived upstairs.

“Working for me, I might add, so as long as you’re on the clock, you go and deal with all these yahoos, huh?

I’ll be here. Watching. Supervising, if you will. As is my God-given right.”

She laugh-snorted. “The only right God gave you was to be an unmitigated asshole.”

Shepherd nodded once, decisively. “That’s right. And don’t you forget it.”

“You’ve mentioned an Ivy League education before,” Noah said, “but you haven’t said what Ivy League school. I went snooping for it in your résumé, but then you didn’t have a résumé.”

Ginny shrugged. “I didn’t give Shepherd one.”

“Yeah, she didn’t need one. I hired her ’cause she’s cute.”

“OK, admitting that is workplace harassment,” Ginny said. “One that worked in my favor, I didn’t have to type up an updated résumé, but still. Maybe don’t put too fine a line under that.”

Shepherd grinned, but Noah groaned. Shepherd glanced at his long-time bartender. The shorter man had two still-damp glasses pressed against his forehead like he was planning out a Halloween costume, droplets of water dripping on to his green Shepherd’s Pies shirt.

“In front of me? Really? I’m trying to work here, guys. Can you two please just get a room? Hey, go upstairs! Ginny’s room is literally right there, and then maybe I could go through a shift without throwing up in my mouth a little bit.”

Shepherd tried to guffaw in disbelief, but something was caught in his throat, the back of his neck beading with sweat.

Noah glared at the both of them and walked away to help a customer covered in a layer of thick white sunscreen, waving him down for a refill on his coolada.

Shepherd was at a complete loss for words, something that almost never happened to him. He stared at Ginny, knowing his mouth was hanging open, but quite unable to do anything about it.

She smiled. “While I will admit that you are the exact type of asshole I typically find charming, I have a strict Don’t Date Your Boss rule that I will never, ever break.”

Shepherd breathed in. The scent of fresh garlic knots and tomatoes roasted in house for their special sauce centered him. He returned Ginny’s smile and moved to stand up straight. “He said get a room—nothing about a date.”

“Aw.” She tapped his cheek with the flat of her palm. “It’s so cute how you think you have a chance with me. But even if you weren’t my boss, you’re still a coward. Cobarde. Lache. Koshinuke. And I would never hide behind a bar instead of facing my fears.”

Ginny tapped his cheek again and, with a wink, spun around towards the hostess station.

Then she made a weird squealing sound, dropped to her haunches, and crawled back behind the bar.

“Uh, Ginny?” Shepherd looked down as the waitress came to squat by his feet. “What, uh, what are you doing?”

“Don’t say my name!” she hissed. “Don’t look at me! And don’t look up! Don’t look anywhere! Just … just stand there, and maybe she’ll leave.”

Shepherd, ignoring her orders, looked up because he wasn’t about to stand around with his eyes closed in his own restaur-ant.

An older woman, exceptionally well dressed for the vacation--casual area, strode over to him, an expensive-looking purse cradled in the corner of her arm and a look of disgust at the myriad of shopping bags hindering her path on her too-tight face.

“Hello,” she said, and looked him up and down. Her ice-blue eyes were startlingly familiar. “Would you be the Shepherd of this, hmm, Shepherd’s Pies?”

“Sure am. How ya doing? Whatcha drinking?”

“Oh, no. I was wondering if you make a habit of talking to yourself?”

Shepherd froze, speechless for the second time in as many minutes.

“Or is that my daughter hiding under your feet?”

Ginny popped up, her hands on her earlobe.

“Got that earring! Man, that was a close one. Mom! I didn’t know you were coming!

” She darted out from behind the bar and embraced her mother warmly.

“You should have called!” They let go of each other, smiling in a way that didn’t reach either of their matching eyes. “Seriously, why didn’t you call?”

“Would you have answered?” The mom’s smile didn’t falter.

Neither did Ginny’s. “Eventually. With a text message. A tasteful GIF.”

“We need to talk, Virginia.”

“I’m working, Mom. As you can see, we’re very busy.”

“Yes. I saw that the Walmart of the Seas was parked outside.”

Ginny patted her mom’s shoulders. “I have to get back to work. I’ll talk to you when the rush dies down, OK? Sit down, have a drink. The Key Lime Coolada is delicious.”

She fled to the furthest table waiting on refills, leaving Shepherd alone with her mother. He smiled winningly and nodded at the bar.

The mother sighed and took a seat, her chin up and her mouth twisted. The bracelets on her wrist lightly clicked against the bar as she looked for an appropriate place to set her purse. It went in her lap. “I suppose I’ll try that colada.”

“That’s cool-ada,” Shepherd said, both hands going into a double-guns motion, and immediately regretting it.

The mother had not been charmed by being corrected.

The tips of his ears went white-hot so fast he worried he was about to get struck by lightning.

Her ice-cold stare chilled the back of his neck, as he cleared his throat and made their signature drink.

Shepherd slid her the coolada and flashed his patented charming smile.

Ginny’s mother took a sip of her drink without blinking. “You know that a shepherd’s pie is not a pizza, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Shepherd, “I know that.”

“Why did you name your restaurant something so ridi--culous?”

“Well, ma’am, it’s a pun,” Shepherd said.

“No,” she said, “it is not a pun. A pun is when you take something that sounds like something else and change it. What you’ve done is just give words a new definition. That is not a pun.”

Shepherd’s mouth twitched in a desperate attempt to keep up a smile. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “I have to go bus tables.” All of a sudden, the customers that he feared seemed safe.

A couple sitting at one of the outside tables flagged him down through the lightly tinted windows that bore his restaur-ant’s name.

Shepherd went out to them, the bell on the door ringing as he stepped outside into the humid day.

It was warm out, maybe high eighties, a welcome relief from the usual almost one hundred degrees they often saw in July.

But the heat was secondary to the humidity, which immediately coated his skin and made his clothes stick to his body.

The warm air was blowing in from the west and brought with it the sulfuric, rotten-egg scent of sargassum.

When it switched to the east, the choking scent of the diesel used to keep cruise ships running, which the town council assured everyone were definitely not polluting their waters—don’t believe your own eyes, believe us instead—wafted in.

Shepherd’s restaurant was located at the heart of the Laguna Key Harbor, on a cobblestone street made only for walking or bike-pulled buggies.

At one end of the street was the dock where cruise ships came and went every day of the week.

At the other end was the beach. Gulls squawked overhead, swooping down occasionally to steal bits of food from the chickens that never quite left the outdoor tables alone.

The pizzeria was located at the halfway point between the ships and the beach.

The building was a pale blue color, the name of it written in white script font across the windows.

A chalkboard stood sentinel in front of the door, Ginny’s handwriting announcing the day’s specialty pizza and the bargain price of their signature drink.

Shepherd had barely managed to approach the table when Ginny was on him, grabbing at his arm and pulling him aside.

He asked the couple for one moment and turned. “What?”

Ginny’s slender fingers wrapped around his wrist. They were as cold as her mother’s stare. He had a thought to wrap his hand around them to warm them up, but shook it away. The man at the table that he had brushed off made a “harrumph” sound, and Shepherd grimaced an apology.

“I need your help,” Ginny said. “Please, Shepherd. I need you.”

Shepherd sucked in a breath and looked at his beautiful employee, who only moments ago had been calling him a coward. “What do you need me for?”

“She’s here to take me home. I can’t go back home! Please. I need your help.”

“So you’ve said, but you haven’t explained how.

” She also hadn’t let go of his wrist. Not that he was focused on the feel of her cool fingers on his warm skin, sticky from the humid air.

“You are a grown-up. You can tell your mom to shove off. Granted, your mother is terrifying. But you still have the right to do whatever you want.”

Ginny simultaneously rolled her eyes and blew her bright red bangs off her face. “You don’t understand. They sent her.”

“They? Who the hell is they?”

“My family!” She yanked his wrist, pulling him off balance.

Shepherd wrenched his arm away and set his hand on her shoulder. “Easy, easy. Come on now, what’s wrong with your family?”

“Are you kidding?” She shoved both hands in her hair and pulled. “You didn’t google me when you hired me?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, you’re cute. That’s all the references I need.”

“Gross,” she said. “And thanks. But it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that my family is crazy.

And I don’t mean in a funny way. Like, oh, we drive each other crazy but we do a hilarious white elephant gift exchange every year and laugh over pumpkin pie.

I mean, legitimately, my family is insane.

Working for them led to my viral breakdown, which put me in a bougie rehab facility for a month before moving away to work here. ”

Shepherd furrowed his brow. “Viral breakdown? What’s that—like, herpes?”

“No, not like—ugh.” The hands that had been pulling at her hair were now wiping down her face. “Someone filmed it and put it on the internet, and it went viral.”

“Filmed what?”

“My breakdown! God, Shepherd!” She tapped her fingers against her plump lips.

“Could you please focus right now? I worked for my family as a lawyer. OK? My family are all lawyers. Defense attorneys. And I ended up having a nervous breakdown in a conference room, and one of the aides or secretaries or somebody filmed it and put it up on YouTube as ‘Ginger Chick Goes Crazy.’ I can’t go through that again, Shepherd! I can’t!”

The customer that Shepherd had blown off was laughing at his phone screen, a quiet almost tinny sound playing from the device in his hand. “Oh, man,” he said, flashing the phone at his girlfriend, “she’s not kidding. This is hilarious.”

Ginny glared at the customer and pulled Shepherd slightly further away from the table.

“Just one more minute,” Shepherd said.

“Hey, no worries,” the customer replied. “This is brilliant.”

Her fingers were much warmer now against the inside of his wrist. Shepherd twisted around in her hold until they were palm to palm. “What do you want me to do, Ginny? Your mother is terrifying. She said that my restaurant name wasn’t a pun. But it is! It is a pun, Ginny!”

“I know it is, I know.” The pads of her fingers tickled his hand. “It’s one hundred percent a pun. Why did she say it wasn’t?”

“Apparently, a pun is where you take a word that sounds like something else and change it, and what I did was change the definition of words.”

“Shepherd’s Pies is a play on words. You think, oh, it’s that mashed potato dish English people eat, but surprise! It’s pizza! That’s a pun, Shepherd.”

“I know! Tell her that!”

“We have gotten wildly off track. I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to move back home. I don’t want to work for my family. Definitely not now. Maybe not ever again.”

He moved his hand away from hers, flexed it at his side. “So why don’t you explain to me how I can help?”

“You need to be my boyfriend.”