Paws and Prejudice

by Alanna Martin

“I need to go.”

  Relief swept through Ian. “Okay. How will I send you the brewery information?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll look at what’s on your family brewery’s site and email you questions.”

  Email sounded good to him. The less time spent with Kelsey and her dogs, the better.

  3

  A LIGHT RAIN had started to fall while she’d unintentionally—and then very intentionally—attempted to goad Ian, but Kelsey didn’t rush her steps back to the car. She stood in the drizzle, breathing slowly as though she could exhale the conversation. In college, she’d tried meditation for a while to help with stress, but she’d never mastered the art of clearing her mind. The best she could do was turn her focus elsewhere, and elsewhere typically involved words. If she could distill whatever was bothering her into a single word, she could better grapple with the problem.

  For Ian, the word she chose was insufferable. Kelsey liked that word for both its Austen-ish feel and the sound it made it, which reminded her of suffocate. Right now, she also liked the idea of smothering Ian with a pillow.

  That much accomplished, Kelsey climbed into her car before she got any wetter. Rain was a part of life in Helen, especially in the fall. Kelsey would have greatly preferred it to snow as much as the tourists who swarmed the city every summer assumed it did. Instead, it snowed half as much but rained twice as much. She was used to it, but she’d never liked it.

  Ian, however, she’d tried to like—or, at the very least, she’d tried to tolerate him. She couldn’t help it if he made that impossible. Not letting her dogs into the brewery had been annoying, but she could almost have overlooked that when she saw the mess in the room. After all, Ian was right when he said he had no way of knowing how well trained her babies were. If she were being fair, he’d made the right call from his perspective.

  Kelsey did not feel like being fair though. Ian already had three strikes against him before she’d officially met him today. He was part of the town overdevelopment problem, he’d previously been rude to her dogs and to Josh, and her parents—really her father—expected her to like him, or pretend to for the sake of the family. And then today he’d . . . What?

  She fumbled with that question as Romeo climbed onto her from the passenger seat and licked her face, but the husky’s kisses didn’t entirely wipe away her frown as she pondered this last point. “Down, boy. It’s only been five minutes since you last saw me.”

  Poor Romeo and his attachment issues. She’d adopted him four years ago, and he still got stressed if she left him alone. Kelsey had hoped his siblings would ease his anxiety, and they did, but only to a degree. Some dogs, like some people, were just less resilient than others. Juliet and Puck had been rescues, too, but they’d settled down with relative ease. Winning Romeo’s trust was much more difficult, but once you had it, he got stressed when you weren’t around.

  “Go on. Get in back with the others.” Kelsey patted Romeo on the butt, and the husky climbed into the back seat, swatting her face with his tail as he did.

  Males. Even the dogs had it in for her.

  Which brought her back to the topic of Ian and the word insufferable. There had to be something about him to make that particular word leap out of her subconscious.

  Yes, he’d challenged her. Ian had proved he wasn’t about to take hits from the SHS without fighting back, but normally that was something Kelsey could respect. It might even have made her like him a bit, despite him being an enemy. Yet she did not feel any more kindly disposed to Ian than she had this morning. She felt less.

  It was the Popsicle comment. Dear God. She figured it out as she put the SUV into reverse. For a second, after he’d joked about the cold, she’d had the very intense image of licking the man like a Popsicle. Of sucking on—

  Hell no. Kelsey smashed down the accelerator, trying to banish the idea from her brain with pure acceleration.

  She wouldn’t pretend that he wasn’t attractive. Kelsey didn’t remember him being so hot when Josh had pointed him out a couple of months ago, but she hadn’t been paying much attention then. Today, though, there was no denying it. He was tall, which she could take or leave, being short herself, and he had one of those genial, friendly faces that made her think of puppies. But Ian was clearly no puppy. He was very adult and very much a man, with honey-colored eyes and sandy hair and cheekbones that looked like they could slice a woman’s tongue if she kissed his face.

  Which she was totally not imagining doing.

  The jeans and sweatshirt he’d been wearing had been faded and stained with paint, and they had not detracted one bit from the pretty package. If anything, they balanced out his kind features with just enough edge to suggest he held depths, and they could make a woman question what sorts of muscles were hidden beneath them.

  Which she was totally not wondering about.

  His appearance was simply annoying, that’s what it was. Annoying because she resented being pressured into helping Ian, and because she resented the suggestion that she might want to be romantically interested in him. As a result, she hadn’t wanted to like him—and she didn’t. She also hadn’t wanted to find him attractive—but she did.

  Whether or not any of this was Ian’s fault didn’t make a difference. The end result was that he was insufferable. Leaving quickly with a plan to email him questions had been the only smart choice, even though it would take more of her time and make the whole task more difficult. But she could handle difficult. She simply didn’t want to handle Ian.

  Or, well, part of her did, and that was the problem.

  Grumbling to herself, Kelsey pulled her SUV into the lot by Lucky Hardware. This was one place in town that didn’t have competition from any of those chain stores yet. Kelsey wondered what the Lukavich family, who’d owned it for generations, thought about her father’s plans for expanding Helen. They were Porter people through and through, but she didn’t see how expansion could be anything but bad for their business.

  “Sorry, guys. You’re going to have to wait in the car a little longer,” she told the dogs. Disappointed faces stared at her from behind the windows as Kelsey shut the door.

  Whether it was drywall compound, sawdust, or paint stripper, Kelsey was getting sick of the stink of home renovation, and Lucky Hardware blended all those smells, along with other indefinable construction odors, into something that could give her nightmares. She supposed it wasn’t the store’s fault that it smelled like its products, but for the dogs’ sakes and her own, she rushed down the aisles to grab more drywall compound and keep the visit quick.

  Maggie, daughter of the current generation of owners and a friend from high school, was behind the register reading a book when Kelsey plopped her tub down. She sneaked a glance at the cover and was surprised to discover it was a romance. It wasn’t an author Kelsey was familiar with, but she recognized the cover and the name.

  That was interesting. Everyone’s reading taste—or lack thereof—was a point of interest to her for obvious reasons, but she hadn’t known Maggie’s extended to romance. Her paranoia about her job being exposed kept her from talking about books with people in real life. Online, where people knew her under her pen name, was another story, but even online Kelsey hid most of her life to protect her privacy.

  Of course, she didn’t talk to Maggie that often anyway, but hers was one of the few friendships from high school that Kelsey had maintained, and that was because Maggie had proven herself to be an actual friend.

  That was yet another problem caused by the feud. Starting in kindergarten, classes had been divided between Porters and Lipins, and to have one of those magical last names meant you were the center of the schoolyard universe. Those were the days when the ability to play nasty pranks on the Lipins without being punished for it—hell, being rewarded for it—had been fun. But the fun had lessened with age as the pranks had grown nastier, and eventually Kelsey had realized
the popularity was as superficial as her joy. For her own sanity, she’d needed to figure out which people genuinely liked her and which ones only called her a friend because they thought she and her family could do something for them. She and Kevin had worked together devising tricks to get people to expose themselves, and the results had often been disappointing.

  Maggie, however, had passed every one of Kelsey’s and Kevin’s tests. Still, even with friends, there were degrees of trust involved, and Kelsey didn’t trust anyone more than absolutely necessary. At the moment, absolutely necessary did not cover revealing a shared love for the romance genre.

  With Josh, Kelsey worried he might look down on her if he knew. With Maggie, the reason for keeping silent was different. Maggie wouldn’t mean to be careless if Kelsey told her anything, but normal people didn’t watch their every word. The last thing Kelsey needed was for news that she wrote romance to spread to the Lipins. It didn’t matter that romance was the biggest-selling genre, or that the (mostly) women who read it were smart, discerning readers, or even that many of the best romance books were wickedly feminist. Like so many fans of the genre, Kelsey could defend its merits to her dying breath, but that wasn’t the point. The point was she didn’t want to have to, and the Lipins would surely make her. All the negative stereotypes about romance readers and writers would be used as ammunition against her and her family, and no doubt some Lipin would coordinate an online attack on her books. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time either family had tried to ruin someone’s career or reputation.

  For those reasons alone, Kelsey figured she had a familial duty to hide her true career. With the feud, any worries about nasty small-town gossip had to be taken to the most extreme conclusion. It was simply another reason she was starting to find the feud less entertaining and more exhausting. And at times like this, Kelsey reminded herself that she was lucky to enjoy being a hermit and that was why she surrounded herself with dogs. Dogs were way better than people.

  Maggie must have been engrossed in her book, because it took another second before she glanced up, and she jumped slightly in her seat. “Kels, oh my God! I’m sorry. I didn’t make you wait too long, did I? I heard someone set something down, but it didn’t quite fully penetrate my brain.”

  “Interesting word choice, given your reading material.”

  Maggie grinned. “As a matter of fact, I was just getting to the good part.”

  “Well, geez, I feel bad about interrupting.”

  “You should.” She ran the drywall compound over the scanner with a sigh. “Living through fiction is about the only way I’m getting any these days.”

  “You and me both.” Although in her case, that was by choice. Kelsey hadn’t slept with a guy since Anthony, her evil college ex, six years ago. Still, it wasn’t like she missed sex. The stuff she wrote and read was way better than anything she’d experienced with Anthony, which was one of several reasons she hadn’t gone looking for it.

  Honestly, Kelsey would take book boyfriends any day over having to deal with real-life men. Judging by the comments she often got from her readers, she wasn’t alone in that.

  “Pathetic,” Maggie said. “There’s something wrong with the world when men aren’t falling at our feet.”

  Kelsey made a sympathetic noise as she swiped her credit card. Maggie wasn’t entirely wrong. She was cute, and in a fairer world, she wouldn’t be wanting for dates. Herself, on the other hand—she’d had her share of her parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents—you name it—setting her up with guys. She might not have had sex in many years, but she’d suffered through her fill of terrible first dates, mostly to make her family happy. Not one of the guys had ever warranted a second.

  “I wouldn’t have time if they did,” Kelsey said. “So I suppose that’s okay.”

  “Because the house is under construction?” Maggie nodded toward the drywall compound.

  “It’s mostly the walls left, but yeah. Between that and work, I’m swamped. And get this.” Kelsey waved her credit card around in agitation. “My father kindly volunteered me to help out the brewery guys by writing for their website. Like I have nothing else to do.”

  At the mention of the brewery, Maggie’s face lit up. “Oh, there could be worse things. I mean, yes, that’s crappy of your father to volunteer you. But have you met them yet?” She fanned herself.

  “Seriously?”

  “What? I told you—I’m in a slump. But even if I wasn’t . . .” Maggie fanned herself again. “They’ve both been in here a lot, especially Ian, because they’re doing most of the renovation themselves. They brighten up my shifts.”

  Kelsey rolled her eyes. “I’ve met Ian. He’s good-looking, I suppose.”

  She supposed. Like she hadn’t been chewing this fact over and trying to spit it out for the past ten minutes.

  “And nice and funny.”

  “And full of himself and naive.”

  Maggie frowned and shot Kelsey a disbelieving expression. “I’ve seen no evidence of either.”

  “That’s because you haven’t had a long enough conversation with him.” Part of her recognized this was ridiculous. Odds were that Maggie had actually had longer conversations with Ian, simply by shooting the shit while he was in the store. But her meeting with him today felt like it had lasted a lifetime.

  “Uh-huh.” Maggie pretended to smack Kelsey with her book. “Once a cynic, always a cynic.”

  “Are you a cynic if you’re right?”

  “Something only a cynic would ask. Wait—I just had a depressing thought.” Maggie dropped the book and leaned over the counter. “Do you think Ian and Micah are together, like in more ways than only the brewery?”

  Kelsey laughed at her friend’s distraught face. While she most definitely did not want the town to keep expanding, she had to admit there was something limiting about the current dating pool. It didn’t affect her, since she didn’t care, but she could see why Maggie might be sad if she learned that the two new men in town weren’t available.

  She considered the possibility more as she put her wallet away. “My father doesn’t seem to think they’re a couple, but then, given his initial reaction to my brother’s engagement, he might not be the best judge. All the signs could be there, and he’d probably miss them.”

  And wouldn’t that be fantastic? There would be no chance her parents could try setting her up with Ian or Micah, and no opportunity for her to cave and allow it.

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything new,” Kelsey promised.

  Conscious of her poor dogs, who’d had to spend way too much time in a car already, she said goodbye to Maggie and drove home. But the question of whether Ian and Micah were a couple lingered in her mind. First, Kelsey told herself that it was because, if true, it removed one source of potential stress. Then a better reason occurred to her.

  It was because the possibility had made her bring up her brother, and thinking about Kevin made her think about his friend Parker. A couple of months ago, Parker had been partially responsible for the rift that currently plagued her immediate family and the guilt Kelsey felt about the situation. That was because Parker, acting on her father’s idea, had launched an offensive against the Lipins by salting the wine the Lipins served guests at their luxury hotel.

  It had been a bad move. Involving guests at the hotel violated an unspoken rule of the feud, which was that outsiders were never targeted. Her father’s suggestion and Parker’s action had pissed off Kelsey to no end. But there was a useful idea in that terrible one—sabotage.

  What if she could sabotage the brewery? She didn’t want anyone to get hurt; she only wanted to make Ian and Micah decide that Helen was the wrong place to open their business. And yeah, maybe it was a way to make Ian a little less smug too. Being insufferable practically demanded being punched, metaphorically if no other way.

  She could take a cue straigh
t from Parker and put something in their beer. Parker had supposedly used salt, but the possibilities were endless. Orange juice? Chili powder? It didn’t much matter what it was. If she could keep ruining batches of beer before they could bottle it, how long would it be before Ian and Micah decided opening Northern Charm Brewing in Helen had been a mistake?

  Of course, since she didn’t know anything about beer (perhaps it was brewed in vats that would be hard to tamper with), then she could always pick a lock and leave a door open in the winter. The local wildlife would love a nice, warm place to hang out, and Kelsey would love to see Mr. Florida and his business partner try figuring out what to do when a moose parked itself inside their building. (Answer: back away slowly, especially if the moose had been drinking.)

  It would be so satisfying to be the one who convinced the men to leave. Likely it wouldn’t ruin the whole business, right? All she needed was to drive them out of town and force them to open it somewhere else.

  “What do you think?” Kelsey asked as she let the dogs inside the house. “Should we sabotage the brewery?”

  Three sets of blue and brown eyes just stared at her. Their ears were perked with interest, but something in their faces admonished her.

  Right. Because they were huskies and would therefore probably love Ian if he let them.

  “Look, it’s not like he’s ever been anything but rude to you. You don’t have to like him.” She stuck her hands on her hips, and that finally got Juliet to bark at her.

  Kelsey groaned. “You just want dinner, don’t you? Fine. Be that way, but stop trying to make me feel guilty. I’m allowed to fantasize.”

  She was, after all, good at that, and sabotaging the brewery was a far safer fantasy than any that involved Ian’s Popsicle.

  4

  SILENCE GREETED IAN as he opened the door to the rental house he was sharing with Micah, and that could only mean one thing: his best friend hadn’t gotten back from his trip to Anchorage yet. They’d lived together on and off since first sharing a dorm room in college, and Micah’s inability to tolerate quiet was something Ian had learned to adjust to. He didn’t really like it, but since neither of them could draw much of a salary from the brewery yet, sharing a place temporarily had seemed like a smart option. For a year, he could put up with Micah’s need to have music streaming or the TV blaring the entire time he was awake.