Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek) (12 page)

His lips tugged up on one side. “Then it was worth it.”

And just like that, the guilt she’d been feeling multiplied tenfold. His open pleasure over being part of the town just about gutting her.

Lordy, was it possible for a person to drown in guilt?

Flicking his wrist over to check his watch, Luke quickly gathered the bags of food off the bar counter. “I’d love to stay and talk more but I have Quinn’s order in here too. Hard as it is to believe, she is actually capable of getting even, ahem, ‘witchier’ when she’s hungry.”

Dani tried to keep the tension from showing in her off-kilter smile as he gave her another warm grin on his way out.
Calm down. You’re getting worked up over nothing.

Trademark Dani. She
couldn’t
just let it go. She had to know.

Pulling out her phone, she called her good friend Connor, who handled all of Noah’s legal paperwork and corporate research. If any information gathering or proposal vetting was going on in relation to her winery idea, the private investigator that Connor had taken with him to his new firm would be the one handling it. He was the best.

“Dani?” came Connor’s voice over the phone line, promptly after the first ring. The surprise in his tone was obvious, the concern as well. For good reason. She never usually called his cell phone. “Everything okay? You haven’t gotten yourself thrown in jail have you, young lady?”

She almost laughed then. Connor was only about seven or eight years older than she was but because he’d been friends with her father and most of the other brewpub workers from back when she’d still been in college, he always treated her like a niece.

“Hey Connor. No, no. Nothing like that. I just had a quick question for you.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

She tried to think of how best to phrase her question without breaching Connor and Noah’s attorney-client privilege. “Has, err, Noah mentioned me at all in the past few weeks? Like, say, after the holidays?”

Yeah…a covert CIA recon specialist, she was not.

The brief pause that followed had her holding her breath.

“Dani, tell me you’re kidding about this.”

Oh, crap. Was her plan really
that
bad? “I put a lot of thought into it, Connor. I thought it was a good idea at the time…”

“You know I’m not one to butt into other people’s choices but sweetie, trust me, this
isn’t
a good idea.”

Her heart plummeted to her feet. “But he sounded so interested in the winery.”

“Aw, Dani. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m
sure
he’s interested in you. You’re beautiful and smart, and…” His tone turned incredulous. “Wait a minute. You went to a winery with Noah? Dani, tell me you didn’t already sleep with him—ˮ

“
What?!
” Dani looked around to see if there were any hidden prank cameras around. “What in God’s name would make you think
that
?” Not that Noah wasn’t handsome as sin. He was. But he was also like a brother to her. An overly intense, domineering, and grouchy as hell one at that.

Now, Connor just sounded confused. “So you’re
not
calling me to ask if Noah’s been ‘talking’ about you?”

“Good lord, Connor. What do you think I am? Twelve? No, I’m not calling to see if Noah likes-me-likes-me. I was talking strictly in the business-sense.”

A relieved chuckle rang out over the phone line. “Do me a favor and lead with that next time. Noah’s a great guy and all, but I would have hosted an intervention if you were actually sleeping with him.” Sounding like his usual self again, Connor questioned curiously, “Okay, so what’s this business talk you were asking about? Noah never mentioned anything about a winery.”

“Nothing,” she replied quickly. Well, there was her answer. Noah hadn’t even brought her idea up to Connor, who he always ran everything past. He wasn’t pursuing it, and he hadn’t even bothered to start looking into it. “Never mind, Connor. Forget I asked. It wasn’t a big deal.”

Connor’s voice sobered again. “I’m sorry I misunderstood, sweetie. Go on and ask your question. Were you looking into some investments or something? Because I can have—ˮ

“No,” she interrupted, just wanting to get this phone call over with
ASAP
.
The winery idea is dead.
Move on.
“I was just checking into something for a friend. But I think we have enough info. Thanks though.”

“You sure?” he asked, clearly unconvinced.

“Yep. Listen, I have to get going. The lunch rush is starting. Come by and bring that beautiful new baby in with you sometime, you hear?”

That
brought forth a proud-papa smile she could hear crystal clear over the phone line as they exchanged their goodbyes. She kept it light, hoping he’d forget about the conversation as soon as they hung up. The last thing she wanted was him to mention her call to Noah and have another human being hear about her fanciful business proposal.

As she pocketed her cell phone, she pushed back the embarrassment over the situation, thinking Noah merciful now for choosing not to call her instead of making her feel even more foolish by ‘letting her down gently.’

At least now she knew. Her idea
was
pretty risky as far as investments go.

She put a hand to her belly to keep it from bottoming out as she exhaled slowly, dividing her focus between telling herself there would be other chances for Derek’s winery, and trying to convince her guilty conscience that forgetting about this whole mess was the best for everyone involved.

What Luke and Derek didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, right?

When the finality of it all sank in, however, disappointment for her brother began blending confusingly with relief for Luke. Which made zero sense. She’d only known Luke for all of what, a few weeks? The realization that she cared enough about Luke to weigh his thoughts and feelings on the same scale with her brother’s was unsettling. She tried convincing her brain that the guilt over what she’d almost done to Luke’s business was the only reason for her split loyalties.

But she’d never really been good at fooling herself.

CHAPTER TWO

DANI WAS STILL
doing her best to forget about the whole winery idea and all her mixed feelings about it when Xoey returned to the office later that afternoon and fell into the corner chair, flip-topping her head back with a tired thud. Xoey coming back to hang out here on her day-off wasn’t all that unusual; her being
this
exhausted, however, was.

Sympathetically, Dani sighed and suggested the unthinkable, “Xoey, you know you’re more valuable than gold here but I’d understand if you want to take more time off to focus on your pilates and dance classes.”

That made Xoey drag her head up with a start. “Why would I go and do a thing like that? My students are ninety-nine percent female while my bar customers are seventy-five percent male.” Her expression said there was no competition. “Like I tell my accountant, it’s really all about the numbers.”

Dani shook her head and chuckled. “Ah yes, I failed to do the math on that one.”

“Besides, that’s not why I’m beat. Like a crazy lady, I stayed up till dawn designing those T-shirts and tank-tops I told you I’d make for this throwdown.” She tiger-yawned again. “I was going to finish up on my next day off, but after I saw Desert Confection’s little twitter contest this morning, I figured I’d better power through the silk-screening today.”

Twitter? That was the second reference today. Wait, didn’t Luke mention something...

Dani shot over to her computer and opened up her twitter feed immediately. Lo and behold, there
had
been a series of tweets from Luke this morning. Mentioning her. “Why that little—”

He’d
called her out
.

On Twitter. He’d actually gone and made the first public strike. Up until now, it was just town talk and playful answers to get the buzz building.
This
was a thrown gauntlet if ever there was one. He began with a twitter link to his shop blog that first gave a quick summary of how the throwdown came to be, explaining how Dani had called his ideas about Valentine’s Day “a load of fairytale bull born from antiquated views on romance, and parented by clichés.”

Ouch
, she had said that, hadn’t she?

So chocolate wasn’t as fun or even as sexy as beer, he defended in the paragraph after, what it was instead was thoughtful, and sweet, and from the heart. The basis of romance, he maintained. Old school though it may be.

Crap
. She was in trouble.

The man even made ‘old school’ sound charming.

And though he was a newbie in town and not the neighborhood darling that Dani was, he continued—oh no, he didn’t…he played the
sympathy card
—he was still going to fight the good fight all the way until Valentine’s Day when the town votes would be tallied to see who reigned supreme in promoting more romance throughout this throwdown, chocolate or beer.

So now the contest. In the spirit of bringing back some old school, and celebrating this throwdown, he invited folks to write the most creative limericks they could come up with on how and why chocolate was more old school romantic than beer in two successive tweets, both with the hashtag #chocnotbeer. He outright encouraged
ruthless
creativity—the punk. And the ten most heavily retweeted limericks would win a $50 box of their assorted premium chocolates at tomorrow’s official grand opening. Any out-of-state entries, which he welcomed warmly, would get their prizes mailed to them express mail.

Dani felt her blood pressure rise even though a large part of her was grudgingly impressed that he wasn’t pulling his punches. Doing a search of the hashtag, not surprisingly, she found dozens and dozens of tweet entries from townies and out-of-towners alike, including one from a very familiar twitter avatar.

“Xoey!” She swung a gaping glare at her friend. “
You
entered this?!”

With a sheepish grin, Xoey shrugged. “Gotta give it to the guy—it was a fun idea.”

She read Xoey’s frustratingly catchy entry. It had
a lot
of retweets. “Can’t you
ever
use your wordsmithing for good instead of evil?”

Xoey beamed. “You’re going to love me for those very skills when you see my finished masterpieces,” she sang out excitedly as she rushed over to the boxes stacked outside of the door. “Though I might have gone
a little
overboard...”

Curious, Dani went over to peer into the boxes Xoey was shoving into the office with her feet. A
little
overboard? Incredulous, Dani looked through the stacks of novelty t-shirts and tank-tops that Xoey must’ve spent the entire day printing. “You aiming for a promotion, Xo?”

“God, no. I just figured we had to do
something
. After reading Luke’s article, I looked up the added counterpart holiday to Valentine’s Day in Japan he wrote about. Did you know that this ‘White Day’ on March 14th is a
huge
holiday there? Apparently, white chocolate is sold by like the fleet in the country on that day. And they celebrate the two linked holidays in Korea and China too. I’m telling you, this Feb 14th / March 14th holiday combo he’s wanting to import here is totally going to take off. He may say he’s old school, but his whole pitch about trying out their unique two-part holiday trend here—the one-way gifts between couples, one in February and the reciprocation in March—is freakin’ new school genius. If he manages to tie all that in to the throwdown, we’re going to have to watch our backs.”

Agreed
.
Dani had thought the same thing when he’d first told her about his White Chocolate Day marketing plan the other week.

Beyond impressed with Xoey’s work ethic and creative drive, she attempted her offer again, seriously this time, “Xo, I mean it about the promotion. I’ve been thinking I need a GM around here, and you’ve got the skills for it.”

Xoey shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that! As you well remember, the only reason why I’m your
assistant
manager now is because I lost that frickin’ bet to you.” She shook her head woefully. “How could I have forgotten your freakish tolerance to tequila?”

Dani smiled at the memory, one of her more deviously genius moves to ensure the strongest management team for Ocotillos. With Xoey looking ready to cut and run at the mere mention of the bad p-word again, Dani put a pin in their promotion discussion and instead, bent over to pull a few shirts out of the box. Immediately, she fell in love with how Xoey put ‘I VOTE BEER’ across the backs. “I gotta tell you, Xo, I know I teased you about your drunken three a.m. infomercial purchase, but that little home silk-screening machine has paid for itself a hundred times over in publicity the last few years for both Ocotillos and your classes.”