by Meg Benjamin
“I beg your pardon?”
“Saison. That’s what would go well with Ruth’s cheese. A nice saison with some herby overtones. Basil, say, or maybe coriander.” He could almost taste it—the light, fizzy Belgian beer with the fruity overtones and the hint of spice.
“Coriander’s more traditional, but I suppose basil would work.”
Liam paused. “We used to do a saison. Have you thought about doing another?”
Bec shook her head. “There isn’t a lot of it around here. A porter or a milk stout would be more in line with people’s tastes in Antero.”
“Maybe you could do a small batch.”
“All of our batches qualify as small batch. I’d rather concentrate on stuff I know there’s an immediate market for. We need to build up inventory and our rep, pump out stuff that’s going to sell, at least for the time being.”
Liam frowned. He wasn’t sure why he was making a point of this, but he suddenly wanted to take a stand. “What if I made it? Very small batch. Just a try-out. Maybe Wyatt would take it, or maybe I could sell it to Stanton.” Although Stanton would undoubtedly try to drive the price down to pennies.
Bec narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me for saying it, but you haven’t made any beer on your own for years.”
He felt a quick pinch of irritation. That doesn’t mean I can’t. “I know. But I’ve done saisons as home brew, and I know how to make it. I used to make beer all the time back in the day, and I’ve been helping you for quite a while. I know how it should be done.”
Bec held up a hand. “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to insult you. Of course you know how to make beer. You made good beer back when we were starting out, and you’ve been a lifesaver around here since last year. I just meant that it’s been a while since you designed a beer from the ground up. And saison isn’t exactly easy, even if you did make it as home brew once upon a time. The balance is tricky—you can’t make it too hoppy or too malty, and you need the spice to be there but not to take over.”
“But it’s bottle-aged, and we could use the big, champagne-style bottles so it wouldn’t duplicate the other stuff. And it uses the pilsner malt you’re using for the IPA, so we wouldn’t have to special order it. I’ll start small to get the spice balance right, then do a bigger run when I get it to work. And I won’t do anything drastic until you sign off.”
Given that he’d only just come up with the idea of a saison that would match Ruth’s cheese, this was a lot to promise. But thinking about it stirred a certain excitement in his gut. Maybe his first genuine excitement about brewing since Colin Brooks had taken off and Antero Brewing had gone to hell.
Even if he never got anywhere with Ruth, he’d have the saison. And he was going to get somewhere with Ruth. On that, he was set.
Bec looked skeptical, but finally, she shrugged. “Okay, go ahead. At the most, we’ll be out some money for malt and hops, but like you said, it’s not like we’ll be ordering anything exotic.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not thinking of anything exotic, are you?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Just basil and maybe coriander. Although I wonder how mint would work.”
Bec gave him a quelling glance. “No mint beer. Not on my watch. Basil would probably work. And let me taste after it’s through the initial stages.”
“Absolutely.” He was willing to let her be brewmaster. As long as he got to try brewing again on his own. “It’ll be great. Or anyway, it’ll be drinkable.”
“Right. Now I need to get the fermenting kettle ready for some beer we can actually sell.” She headed off toward the next set of equipment.
Liam watched her go, ignoring his own quick flash of annoyance. It didn’t matter if Bec didn’t have any faith. He did. As soon as the idea for the saison had waltzed into his brain, he’d known he had a winner.
Saison and goat cheese and Ruth. He was betting on a winning trifecta.
Chapter Six
The glow of the saison idea stayed with Liam through the first hour of work. Not that he was doing a lot of bartending at two in the afternoon. Once again, the lunch crowd was more into iced tea and lemonade than lager and cocktails. He’d cleaned the bar, prepared enough setups for the rest of the day and most of the evening, and was now considering rearranging the glassware just to have something else to occupy his time.
Peaches wandered through occasionally with goodies—fries, a bowl of chili, and a fried pie that looked awful but still tasted good. “That oven doesn’t work for baking,” she said fretfully, “and frying a pie just goes against my instincts.”
“Try an empanada,” Liam suggested as he licked his fingers. “They’re fried pies, too, sort of.”
Peaches nodded. “That might work. I’ll see if I can find a recipe online. I still miss baking, though.”
Liam was pretty sure Stanton would never go for a new oven, particularly since he was paying for kitchen equipment for the new steakhouse he was opening. “The packaged cookies we sell aren’t all bad.”
“They’re not good. They taste like preservatives.”
Liam wasn’t sure what a preservative tasted like exactly, but he was willing to believe Peaches had an advanced palate. He’d described Carol’s sandwich to her, and she’d gotten a dreamy look. Then she shook her head. “It would never work with the goat cheese we’ve got here. It doesn’t have the right texture—too chalky. I could maybe do something with cream cheese.” She raised a hopeful eyebrow.
“Wouldn’t be the same. That goat cheese Ruth makes has the texture and the taste. I don’t think cream cheese would do it.”
She sighed. “Let me think about it. Maybe I’ll sneak down there for lunch sometime.”
“Just make sure you go for the goat cheese sandwiches. The burgers don’t measure up.” Although he couldn’t say that for sure. Maybe Barbara Jean was a whiz at diner food. Somehow he doubted it. She might not have developed a disposition that sour if her food had been an unqualified success.
He poured a couple of beers a little later and even mixed up a few cosmopolitans for a “girls’ day out” group. But it still wasn’t an active afternoon.
Around three, someone climbed onto a stool at the end of the bar. He turned toward the new customer and saw Carol.
“Hi.” She gave him a determined grin.
“Kid, you can’t be in here,” he said flatly. “No unaccompanied minors allowed.”
“Well, I’m here to see you. Doesn’t that make me sort of accompanied?” Carol widened her eyes in a good imitation of innocence.
“Nope. Nice try, though.”
She blew out an annoyed breath. “Can you come outside? I’m guessing the ‘unaccompanied minor’ thing doesn’t count if we’re on the front porch.”
He did a quick assessment of the room. Nobody looked like they needed a refill any time soon, and the majority of the people were still drinking iced tea.
“Okay, I’ve got a few minutes. But I’m on the clock, so it has to be quick.”
Carol headed for the front door.
She dropped into one of the dusty captain’s chairs that Stanton kept for picturesque purposes along the front porch. Liam didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone sit in one of them before.
He leaned against the porch railing across from her. “Now, what’s up?”
She shrugged. “I want to talk about you dating my mom.”
Right. He’d been wondering if she’d go back to that again. “What’s your general plan here?”
Carol folded her arms across her chest. “Have you asked her out?”
Liam nodded. He had no idea why it was any of her business, but hell, why not?
“Did she say yes?”
Which time? This discussion was beginning to slip into slightly murky waters, so he stuck to his most recent attempt to get Ruth to go out. “Nope.”
Carol sighed. “Didn’t think so. She feels like she doesn’t have time to do anything but work, which is sort of true, I guess. You need to help her find some more time. And
then she’ll be able to go out with you.”
Liam nodded. “Makes sense. Sort of. How are you suggesting I go about doing that?”
Carol chewed on her lip, as if she was working the strategy out in her mind. “First of all, you need to find her a cook.”
“Instead of Barbara Jean?” That struck Liam as a good idea. “Does your mom want to get rid of Barbara Jean?”
“Everybody wants to get rid of Barbara Jean. But if you just get rid of her, then Mom will have to cook as well as make the cheese, and she’ll have no time at all.”
“She needs a replacement,” Liam supplied. Fortunately, he had just the right replacement in mind.
“She does. And it needs to be somebody good. Or there’s no use in getting rid of Barbara Jean.”
Liam nodded. “Right.” Peaches needed a place where she could bake, and she’d probably turn out some goat cheese creations that would elevate the Salty Goat into the culinary heavens. Assuming she could be convinced to move on.
“Do you know anybody?” Carol gave him an expectant look.
“Yeah. I do. But I don’t know if she’s really available. Let me do some investigating.”
“Don’t waste too much time. Barbara Jean’s liable to walk out any day now. And when she does, Mom’s gonna freak out.”
Liam narrowed his eyes. He needed a little more information than he was getting so far. “Can I ask what your interest is here?”
Carol gave him another of those good imitations of innocence. “Maybe I just want my mom to be happy?”
“Nice of you.” He managed not to sound too cynical.
Carol shrugged. “She needs something to get her mind off things.”
Things. Including her daughter? Liam raised his eyebrows, but Carol had apparently had enough of the conversation. She pushed herself to her feet, brushing off the dust she’d picked up from the chair. “I’ll talk to you when you’re further along with your plans.”
Plans? What plans?
…
Ruth carried the last round of cheese to the aging shelf at the back of the cheese room. They didn’t make much aged cheese, since the Salty Goat’s customers generally preferred their goat cheese fresh and soft, but they did produce a couple of products that had a considerable following.
Bec followed her out the door with another load of cheese logs. Ruth was fine with flexible hours, which meant that Bec could do one set of chores at the brewery and then spend the rest of the day making cheese, which is what she’d been doing that afternoon.
Ruth turned back toward the cheese room, swinging open the door for both of them. “What site do you use to make airline reservations?”
Bec shrugged. “Depends on where I’m going, I guess. Travelocity or Expedia, usually. Not that I’ve done a whole lot of flying lately. Why?”
“David’s invited Carol to visit him in California.”
“Your ex-husband?”
Ruth gave a colander draining cheese curds a hard shake, wishing it was David. “He was supposed to visit her in Colorado Springs when she was at his parents’ house, but he didn’t make it. Now he wants her to fly out to California by herself.”
She dumped the curds into a mold, packing them in tightly. “She’s only been on an airplane once, and that was a couple of years ago. And now he wants her to fly into one of the biggest airports in the country.”
“How does Carol feel about it?” Bec picked up a colander of her own.
“She thinks it’s a great idea. But she doesn’t know David as well as I do.” Ruth shoved the mold onto the shelf. “He’s likely to get the wrong date or the wrong time or, hell, the wrong airport for all I know. Or forget all about it because ‘something came up.’ He does that a lot.”
“He’s really that scatterbrained?” Bec sieved up a load of curds from the whey. “I thought he was some big-time Hollywood type. Doesn’t he have assistants to take care of him?”
“Oh, he’s got assistants out the wazoo.” Ruth placed the mold on a rack over the sink to allow the last drops of whey to drain off. “But he usually hires them based on their boobs and how willing they are to sleep with him. Or that’s the way it used to be. I’m guessing it still is.”
Bec paused, one hand still pressed against the curds in the colander. “I remember. You said he cheated on you.”
Ruth nodded. “I left him because he cheated on me with his PA when I was pregnant.” Her smile twisted slightly. “To be fair, he also cheated on me with various assistants when I wasn’t pregnant. He was pretty much a serial cheater.”
The door of the cheese room swung open slightly and Carol’s head appeared. “Barbara Jean says she needs more cheese.” She gave her mother an assessing look.
Ruth sighed. “I’ll get her some. Just give me a minute to finish up here.”
Carol disappeared back into the deli.
“Why can’t Barbara Jean get her own cheese?” Bec asked.
“She claims she doesn’t know what kind I want her to use, even though I’ve showed her what kind at least five times.”
“Barbara Jean doesn’t create problems. Barbara Jean is the problem.” Bec picked up a cheese mold.
“Don’t let her hear you say that. If she quits, my life will become a nightmare.” Ruth dropped the gloves on the table by the door then headed out into the deli.
Only two more hours in Barbara Jean’s shift and then the rest of the afternoon and then home. Ruth was ready for home. She needed several hours of uninterrupted quiet.
A few hours later, she settled into her easy chair in the study with a glass of wine. Carol was watching TV, the evening dishes were done, and for once she didn’t have any paperwork to take care of. Tax season had been insane, and she wasn’t looking forward to the next one.
She ran through her mental checklist, wondering if she’d left anything undone that she needed to work on. Undoubtedly she had, but by the time she got home these days, she was usually too tired to push herself into doing anything that didn’t have to be done. It was already early summer and she was still trying to catch up.
She leaned back in her chair, sipping her wine and trying not to think about David or Barbara Jean. This wasn’t the best way to relax. She should probably try reading one of the books she’d downloaded onto her e-reader. A good murder mystery, for example, preferably one with a male victim.
“Mom?” Carol leaned into the room.
“What?” She put down the wine, ready to go do something. Well, not ready so much as resigned. Maybe she could finish her wine later.
“Why don’t you fire Barbara Jean?”
And another problem rears its ugly head. “Because I don’t have a replacement for her, and I don’t have the time to look for one right now. And because if she leaves, I’ll have to do all the cooking.” And because they definitely needed the money from the deli lunches since it accounted for a good chunk of their profits.
“If you found a replacement, would you get rid of her?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. Are you still mad about her running you out of the kitchen?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not why I’m asking.”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because maybe I can find you a replacement for Barbara Jean.”
“If you’re looking for something to do, I have lots of things you could work on.” She rubbed her eyes. “But I really need you in the deli at coffee-break time and lunchtime. I don’t want to run the cash register, and I don’t want to teach Sue how to do it.”
Sue was her teenage waitress, who would probably have to quit when school started again. Yet another headache since Carol wouldn’t be around, either. She’d probably have to find a waitress and maybe a salesperson for the deli.
“It would help if I could slice the cheese and meat,” Carol said hopefully.
Ruth shook her head. “Not until you’re older. It’s too dangerous.”
“I saw this chain-mail glove on Amazon. I could use that, and then even i
f I screwed up, I wouldn’t hurt myself.”
Ruth found herself picturing Carol in a chain-mail gauntlet, maybe with a broadsword strapped to her waist. Probably the gloves she was talking about weren’t that big. “I’ll look into it.”
“Good, because I think that would solve one problem. Of course, it won’t take care of the problems with Barbara Jean.”
Ruth narrowed her eyes. She ought to be used to Carol sounding like she was forty rather than twelve, but it was still disconcerting when it happened. “Barbara Jean isn’t your problem, kiddo.”
“But if I could find you someone to replace her—”
Ruth shook her head. Firmly. “No, Carol. I appreciate your interest, but the day-to-day operation of the Salty Goat is my concern. I don’t want you to get involved. There’s already bad blood between you two, and I don’t want to have to deal with any more arguments.”
Carol’s brow furrowed. “What does bad blood mean anyway? I’ve heard people say it, but it sounds kind of yucky.”
And just like that, she was back to twelve again. Being a mother could give you whiplash. “It means you’ve got issues with each other. I don’t know where the phrase comes from exactly. You could look it up.”
“I’ll Google it. Don’t forget about the chain mail. It’s really cool.” She disappeared from the doorway, presumably headed back to the living room with its blaring TV.
Ruth sighed. Now she’d probably have to buy her daughter a set of chain mail. Either that, or face an endless discussion about why the chain mail hadn’t been purchased and how much it would simplify things if it had.
There were times when she wished Carol were just a little less precocious. Yet, having a daughter who was occasionally too smart for her own good didn’t rank high on her list of problems.
Barbara Jean, on the other hand, was right up there with David in terms of making her life more difficult. Maybe she should start checking around to see if any other cooks were available.
She should definitely get going on that. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever she had a little extra energy to spare, unlikely though that seemed.
She took another sip of her wine, knowing she shouldn’t fall asleep in her chair, but letting her eyelids droop anyway. A fifteen-minute nap wouldn’t be out of the question, would it?