by Violet Duke
That did it. Rylan might as well have pulled out Excalibur because he’d accomplished the immortalizing feat of enamoring Quinn right then and there. Wide-eyed, she gazed up at him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Rylan gruffly. “I’m not that noble. Believe me, most of me really wants you to climb just as you are so I can check out your legs for the next hour.”
Pleased, a grin teased the corners of Quinn’s mouth, and the effect transformed her face.
While Rylan just stood there, visibly reeling from the effect of that smile, Quinn put in a little addendum to his offer. “Thumb wrestling sounds fun. But how about we make it interesting? If you win best out of five, I’ll agree to climb one wall just like this…and all you have to do is promise not to look up my skirt. Deal?” Laughing lightly at his incredulous expression, she headed off to pop a squat in a secluded corner without waiting for his answer.
Which was pretty much just a heartfelt groan.
Luke chortled and thumped Rylan on the back. “Good luck with that one; you’ll need it.”
Rylan nodded over at Dani, who was crawling sideways up one wall already, clearly in no rush to make it to the top like everyone else. “Ditto for you, buddy. Ditto for you.”
* * * * *
RYLAN TOOK A SEAT next to Quinn on a low brick wall next to the ice cream shop they’d all gotten dessert cones from after their post rock-climbing dinner in town. Since the owner of the little shop was a fan of Luke’s chocolates, she was more than happy to oblige when Luke ran back to Desert Confections and brought over some of his best chocolates to use as the toppings she chopped up and mixed in to create the rich ice cream concoctions this shop was known for.
Now, Rylan had tasted a few Desert Confections chocolates during their opening week, so he already knew they were great on their own, but good lord, having decadent old-fashioned slow-churned ice cream swirled with three of Luke’s specialty chocolates—loganberry bourbon bonbons, hazelnut butter cream squares, and the coffee fudge roll—was a religious experience.
By all visible and audible evidence, Quinn undoubtedly thought so too because she was basically worshipping at the altar of chocolate-mixed ice cream in a way that had Rylan taking huge bites out of his own ice cream in pure self-defense.
He used the resulting brain freeze to counter the effect of seeing the woman savor a dessert as only she could.
Talk about a religious experience. Sweet Jesus, if she didn’t look so adorable doing it, he’d swear he was watching porn.
Her eyes fluttering shut as she savored the flavors was bad enough, but with her tongue venturing out to catch drops of melted cream on her lips and her humming that whispery little sigh of pleasure every so often, the effect was enough to make any red-blooded man go nuts.
Eventually, Rylan gave up eating altogether and just stared.
It was possible he might’ve quietly sworn after that last nearly-silent moan she’d made because Quinn jumped and popped her eyes open wide. Seeing his expression, she lowered her brows in bewilderment bordering on aggravation. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He blinked and shifted his gaze back to his ice cream before answering with the truth, his voice understandably low and rumbly. “You’re making a G-rated activity climb up a few letters.”
She froze at the comment, mouth and tongue poised in front of the cone, mid-lick.
Rylan flicked his eyes to the sky and said a silent prayer.
“Excuse me?” she sputtered.
“When you eat, sugar, you look and sound like you’re having sex.”
Quinn’s face flushed. “No, I don’t!”
“Uh, babe, you really do. So unless you want me to embarrass myself, you might have to scale it back just a bit for me.” Please don’t, his mind beseeched silently, not truly wanting it all to end.
Quinn frowned at her ice cream. “This is ice cream; everyone looks sexy when they’re licking something,” she argued, making a concerted effort then to take just a demure bite.
“Maybe. But you do it whenever you eat anything good. You did it at the Japanese restaurant earlier too. When you tasted that sesame beef tartare the chef made, you were all bedroom eyes over buttery moans and purring sighs. I swear you had the college guys at the next table drooling.” Rylan left out the part about him being in just as bad a state at the time.
“You’re exaggerating.” The tone of her voice was unsure, however.
“No I’m not. It’s so sexy you’re making me a little nuts here. All I can think about is what you’ll look and sound like when you’re rounding the bases to the big O.”
Quinn’s morbid embarrassment at his teasing suddenly dissipated and her expression changed, locked, sank into a deep reflection. Until she became statuesque.
“Aw, hell. I was just playing, sweetness. No need to go shy on me now.”
She didn’t look like she’d even heard him. Instead, her eyes boggled and then narrowed with cold, murderous intent. “LUKE!” she screeched.
From the bench a few dozen yards away, Luke shot to his feet in startled concern. “What’s wrong, Quinn?” He immediately glared at Rylan. “What the hell did you do to her?”
Rylan threw his hands up in the air—he had no idea.
Quinn jumped up and stalked over to Luke swallowing the courtyard pavement outside of the ice cream shop with fuming, ominous stomps. “All this time?” she growled at Luke. “ALL THESE YEARS you let me think you were just referring to baseball bases in your Quinn chocolate tasting scale?!” She gasped in fury. “Ohmigod, that’s why your friends were all staring at me that one time they saw me taste testing your caramel ganaches!”
“Oh shit!” Luke whipped Dani a caught-fugitive look. “Dani, baby, it’s time. I’m heading to the border. Come find me one day.” He jammed a hasty farewell kiss to her lips and took off running.
Quinn dashed after him, cursing up a storm.
Puzzled, Rylan walked over to Dani. “Do you know what that’s all about?”
Dani grinned. “Sadly, yes.”
“Huh.” Rylan sat down to enjoy the show while he finished his ice cream, chuckling when he saw Quinn launch, with amazing accuracy, the rest of her ice cream at Luke’s back.
That was going to leave a stain.
From wherever they’d been ‘innocently’ MIA for the last ten minutes, Isaac and Xoey reappeared to join Dani and Rylan to watch the unfolding spectacle. Together, they all headed over to the grassy slope Luke had run down in hopes of getting Quinn off his tail. From Rylan’s vantage point, it did look like Luke was earnestly trying to get away.
But with ire as her fairy godmother, Quinn was showing Olympic speed in her pursuit.
“Are we wanting her to catch him?” asked Xoey curiously.
“I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell am,” replied Dani, to Rylan’s surprise.
Women. They banded together on the strangest causes.
A few seconds later, they watched as Quinn got close enough to clobber Luke with her purse.
Unlike the females around him, Rylan had no such gender-specific union to support. He laughed his ass off. Having personally felt how heavy that mom-purse of hers was earlier in the night, he was sure Luke was seeing stars right about now.
Meanwhile, Dani sang out, “Here it comes.”
Quinn lunged and tackled Luke.
To the soundtrack of thunderous applause echoing out from the courtyard. Female and male.
CHAPTER SIX
LUKE WAS halfway out of the shop when the sound of an elderly couple quarreling over which gift box set to buy gave him pause. “Hey Rissa,” he called out to the ASU grad student who’d been with them as their one and only employee for the past year and a half, back when they’d just started to get really popular in Mesa. “Why don’t you give this nice couple samples of...” he checked to see which box sets they were considering, “the Brulee Bonbon, the Dark Hazelnut Buttercream, and the Juniper Whip.”
The couple turn
ed around in surprise and came over to thank him personally.
“My pleasure,” he assured them warmly. “Enjoy.”
Now for his favorite part.
From the corner of his eye, he watched as the sweet old couple tasted the samples and began gushing over the unique flavors. Luke ducked his head and beamed a little. It never got old. Seeing folks taste his chocolates for the first time always made his day.
Luke entered Ocotillos from the brewery entrance a minute later and scanned the vast metallic maze in search of Dani. It took a while, but he finally found her with a few of the beer boys hosing down one of the larger beer vessels and looking pretty darn cute in those big rubber brew boots of hers. When her animated laugh echoed out over the quiet industrial hum of the giant machines all around, Luke couldn’t help but smile. She really looked in her element back here. So, rather than scooping her up and kissing her the way he’d been thinking about all morning, he instead decided to hang back for a bit to study another puzzle piece that made up the enigma that was Dani.
While Dani always displayed a vibrant joy for her work, whether she was tending bar or out front running the brewpub, when she was back here as brewmaster, she seemed to exude this deep, soul-refreshing passion that was inspiring to witness. He admired that type of dedication, felt a kindred bond with her for being as excited about her life’s work as he was about his.
Plus, after another week of overloaded things-to-do lists on both their parts, thanks largely to the growing hype of the battle between their businesses, he was missing her something fierce. What could he say? He was addicted to the woman. And the once rare phenomenon of being able to at least be in the same place at the same time had grown to a near impossibility.
At least they had their nightly phone ritual though.
Every night, for the one hour a day the stars in their chaotic schedules aligned after Dani finished her night shift and before Luke went into the shop at four a.m., they’d lie in the dark in their respective beds and talk about anything and everything on the phone until his work alarm went off. Luke had started the ritual simply because it was the best imaginable way to start his day; Dani said she loved having his voice be the last thing she heard before she fell asleep.
But as great as these phone talks were, actually being in the same room with Dani was on the top of his agenda, preferably for a meal, ideally at a socially acceptable time for that meal. So, he’d suggested a quick power lunch and Dani had been all for it. They’d even agreed not to count it as a pre-date to make it even more low-key—just two friends hanging out between chocolate deliveries and beer-boiling schedules. Still, it was a reunion for them in their quasi long distance relationship, so far built on phone calls, sexts, and jibing twitter fun.
“Pop quiz time, Mikey,” he heard Dani’s voice call out cheerfully as she descended the brew vessel ladder and waved over the newest addition to the crew, the ASU student who’d started coming in once a week to train since the start of the semester. Luke knew Dani’s love for outreach brew education had roots with her father. He’d been a strong advocate for home and craft brew training, a pioneer in his time. Growing up, she’d actually helped him start up the daily brewery tours for customers interested in the brewing process as well as the internships they now had for anyone, young or old, wanting to learn more about the business.
She was a damn good teacher, too, from the looks of it. Mikey hung on Dani’s every word, barely blinking while she imparted some brew basics wisdom. Luke stayed out of Dani’s sightline the whole time so as not to interrupt the lesson as she led Mikey over to the small brew system he’d been standing next to unnoticed for the past ten minutes now. If he remembered correctly from the tour, this was the ‘Baby D’ system, the one used for recipe experimentation.
“Tell me, which malts did we use for this batch and why?” she asked the bright-eyed kid.
“The caramel and roasted ones,” answered Mikey quickly and confidently. “For the richer flavor and redder color.”
“You didn’t even break a sweat on that one!” she praised. Tapping a thoughtful finger on her chin, she smiled and fired out, “Okay, here’s a tougher one. During the mashing of the beer in this recipe—no looking—what temperature did we heat the water in the mash tun and why?”
He took longer with this one. “Um, 152. To...get the most out of the malt in the wort?”
“It’s also for balance. This one was between 152–154 degrees, so good job. Hmmm, oh, I know—you’re on kettle duty for my newest brew today, so what’s the hop schedule?”
Mikey’s eyes floated to the ceiling to jog his memory. “I do the smaller first batch of hops in the beginning for bitterness, and then later add whole leaf hops for aroma and flavor.”
“When later? Be specific.”
“After the whirlpool. I run it through the hopback so it can percolate after the boil.”
“Nice. Okay, last question. What’s dryhopping?” She’d just taught it to him last week.
“Dry hopping...uhhhh.” His forehead wrinkled. “Oh! That’s when we pour the pellet hops into the fermenter after about ten days to bring out the flavors even more.” He beamed.
She nodded proudly and stuck her fist out for him to bump. “Nicely done, Mikey. There’s hope for you yet. Alright, you have my notes and brew log. When Jim gets back, I’m afraid it’s more cleaning duty for you. The trub in the last batch of lager made it a bit cloudy; we don’t want our customers complaining of hangovers. After that, however, you can ask him to show you how to adjust the temperature and pressure on the serving tanks for the front tap. That’s what’ll prevent it from over-carbonating with CO2 and dispensing foamy.” She tapped his baseball cap bill sternly. “And eat an actual meal today, will you? Chips and soda don’t count.”
“Yes, mom.”
Luke grinned. He’d used that same tone on his own mother many a time during his teen years. When he looked over to see Dani’s reaction, he saw that her eyes had gone soft, mothering and doting over the six-foot-tall ‘kid’ even as she continued to bust his chops.
That single expression right there sent an arrow of hope through his heart that maybe, just maybe she wasn’t totally closed to the idea of at least an off-white picket fence in her future.
Suddenly, he could picture that fence so clearly—and the cute house on the other side of that fence with Dani in the kitchen wearing the same smile she had on now while spying on an adorable kid with her honey-colored eyes surreptitiously hiding his green beans under a napkin.
And he saw himself in that picture too. Standing right there beside her.
Luke blinked in surprise, scattering the wishful thinking into a thousand pieces in his mind. Well, this was a first. While admittedly he’d pictured all his serious girlfriends as his someday bride —women didn’t hold the exclusive on wedding daydreams—never had he found himself imagining one as the mother of his children as well. Until now.
A rush of emotions coursed through his veins over that fact, intensified threefold when he caught the exact moment Dani discovered him standing there on the other side of the machine. Was it no wonder he pictured her in his future? He’d consider himself the world’s luckiest guy just to be greeted with that smile of hers every day for the rest of his life.
Of course, in one of life’s ironic, sobering slaps in the face, the first words out of her mouth after that smile were, “Hey, Luke. Sorry, do you mind waiting a bit? I’m almost ready.”
Logically knowing she only meant that in the context of their lunch today, in his mind, he was nodding in reference to their relationship as well. He’d wait for her until she was ready.
Immediately following that short but lasting transgalactic flight of fancy, Luke quickly headed back out to the brewpub to do his waiting…lest he accidently blurt out one of these long-term fantasies and send his favorite commitment-phobic brewmaster screaming for the hills.
Once safely out front, he grabbed a seat at the bar and noticed for the first time
a list of all the past Dobson beers, carved into the wall off to the side behind it. After studying the long list, he started to see an interesting trend. “Hey, Sam,” he called over to the bartender on duty. “How come your seasonal brews have only been in the summer, fall, and winter? Why not spring?”
Sam’s answer sounded very...careful. “Fall, summer, and winter are all easy seasons for brewers—more robust beers for winter, light ones in the summer, and of course the malty brews during the fall months. Spring has less…brewing standards.”
Luke frowned. What an informative way not to answer his question. Even more curious was the way Rylan, who was eating at a nearby table, was avoiding looking at him altogether.
Then Xoey, who’d been in the middle of dropping off more t-shirts, cupped a hand on the side of her mouth and stage whispered, “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”
“Oh stop, you guys,” shushed Dani, finally joining them. “It’s not like it’s an NFL superstition or something.” She turned to Luke. “Folks around here call it the Dobson curse.”
Luke’s curiosity piqued. “Should I be wearing a vial of holy water around my neck?”
“Not that kind of curse, goofball. Just the unlucky kind. For as long as I can remember, my dad couldn’t make a successful beer in the spring. They’d always flop. Pretty horrendously. The ones that came close to being decent would always run into problems during the trials—too flat, fermenting gone awry, etc. Eventually, he just stopped trying to make a spring beer.”