“No time. You’re going to have to put them aside and help set up. The early comers are starting to trickle in.”
Kate looked at her watch, which she’d set on one of the table’s edges to avoid most of the pumpkin carnage. “But the party isn’t supposed to start for another half hour.”
“Free beer tends to make for overly prompt guests.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. All the same, I’d really like a shot at finishing. I swear, with my new minimalist approach, I’ll be done with the last three in a flash.”
C=”jem”x201C;Okay, then. I’ll gather up some help to have the finished ones taken out, and you keep carving. Everything needs to be done before Shay arrives. The good news for us is that she always arrives late,” Laila said, filling a cart with grinning heads and leaving Kate alone in her pumpkin kingdom.
Figuring the time had come to kick the assembly line into high gear, Kate grabbed the big butcher knife she’d borrowed from the kitchen and stabbed it into the top of the first of the three intact pumpkins. It sunk in quickly and deeply. The act was weirdly satisfying. She seemed to be developing a very real disrespect for pumpkins.
“You look like a natural.”
Kate glanced up to see Matt watching her from the doorway. She pulled on the knife, but it had gone in too deeply and wasn’t coming out. She tried to rock it back and forth. No luck. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
He approached her. “Problems?”
If one counted among them a heady overappreciation of a man dressed in something as simple as a black polo shirt and jeans, she had exactly two at the moment.
“The knife is stuck.”
“Let me see if I can help.”
Matt came around to her side of the table. Wow, but he smelled good. She caught a hint of woods and green fields. And, unlike her, he didn’t have a bit of pumpkin slime on him.
Kate moved her hand away from the knife, but not quickly enough. They touched, and she swore she felt an electric tingle as her hand involuntarily began to close around his. The sensation was far more satisfying than stabbing into a pumpkin. Good news on the mental stability front.
Matt wrapped his hand around the knife’s handle and winced.
“Sorry,” she said. “I guess everything’s a little messy at this point.”
With his free hand, he brushed a fleck of pumpkin from her cheek. “So it is,” he said, “but it still looks good.”
He turned his attention back to the pumpkin and pulled the knife free with an ease she envied.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you get a bunch of these outside to line the front walk, and I’ll finish up the last three?”
Kate shook her head. “No, you don’t have to do that. It’s my job, and I’m all about finishing what I set out to do.”
“You’re not just talking about pumpkins, right?”
“I moved to Keene’s Harbor for a reason. To start a new life and build something I can be proud of.”
“And I’m the guy trying to take that away from you? It’s not personal. It’s business. And it was in the works a long time before you even moved t C evryio Keene’s Harbor.”
Kate crossed her arms. “Look. I know that. But that doesn’t mean I like it. And I’m going to find your saboteur, collect my $20,000 bonus, and buy back
Kate didn’t want to even think about the fact that a contractor had spent an entire day at her house trying to locate and fix her water leak. She didn’t have the money to pay him, either. Yet. And she wasn’t about to ask her parents for help. She wasn’t even sure they had the money, what with her father retired and living on long-held investments.
“Right now, all I want to do is carve a pumpkin,” Matt said. “Cut me a break here.”
“Well, since you put it that way, I could use a break, too. I’m pretty much pumpkined out.”
He smiled. “Consider yourself sprung.”
Kate grabbed a cart and loaded it with four jack-o’-lanterns. She made her way to the front of the house, where costumed beer lovers had already gathered. Once there, she slowed her pace enough to check out the guests. The event, like her emotional state, was high school all over again. The women had taken the borderline bawdy path to apparel, while the men had gone for minimal effort. Among the male ranks, there looked to have been quite a run on Grim Reaper costumes. Kate counted five of them in the crowd already. Two Grims were tall and skinny, and the other three of more well-fed dimensions.
The taproom was in full Halloween mode, too. The front windows were edged with strands of orange lights that glowed warmly against the dark wood trim. Tealights adorned each table, adding to the festive look. And an appetizer bar had been draped with orange linens and decorated with absurdly grinning skulls that shone from within. Kate wished she could stay and mingle, but there was work to be done.
She thanked one of the tall-and-skinny Grims as he held open the front door for her and the pumpkin cart. A sharp blast of wind greeted her. No doubt a storm was brewing out on the lake. Chilled, she hustled the cart over the mosaic mural, then hung a left to the end of the jack-o’-lantern line that Laila had already started.
Once Kate had her pumpkins in place, she patted her pockets for a light. She had none, of course. She turned her back to the wind and headed to the bar to snag a pack of matches. Inside, she spotted Laila chatting with a Grim Reaper. Market owner Marcie Landon was with them. She was very fittingly costumed as a tape measure. The bit of tape showing from the front of the bright yellow box was probably marked to perfect scale. The tall-and- skinny Grim definitely liked Laila, hovering close enough to be in her personal space. Laila didn’t seem to be objecting, either. She was laughing at something the Reaper had just said. Kate smiled, waved, and moved on.
Outside again, she hunkered down by the first jack-o’-lantern and pulled out her pack of matches. Two sputtered and died even before she could get them to the tealight waiting inside, and the next two were snuffed by a draft coming through the pumpkin’s eyes.
“Okay, then,” she said to herself and sat down cross-legged on the sidewalk. Clearly, she would be Cshejusthere awhile.
“You need a lighter.”
Kate looked up past a pair of sensible white server sneakers and standard Depot uniform to Laila’s serene face.
“I don’t suppose you have one?” Kate asked.
Laila pulled out a rectangular silver lighter adorned with what looked to be crystals. She flipped it open with a distinctive click, bent down, and did in two seconds what Kate hadn’t accomplished in four matches.
“Sometimes the old things are the best,” Laila said.
Kate smiled. “Obviously, you haven’t seen my house.”
AT ELEVEN that night, Kate lay in bed, unable to sleep. The contractor had found her leak. Evidently, when Junior had regrouted the shower tile in her master bathroom, he hadn’t inspected the shower pan. It had completely failed. Even worse, he’d reset the toilet without a proper seal, and raw sewage had swept underneath her bathroom floor. The water damage from the shower and toilet had infiltrated her living room, causing her floor to warp. The contractor was coming back tomorrow to pull up her water-damaged floor and tile. Kate had tried to call Junior several times but he wasn’t answering-probably in his best interest, given the problems he’d caused.
The good news was that it seemed like a pretty simple fix, and the contactor thought he could do it for a couple thousand dollars. More than Kate had but doable, especially with the bonus money she planned to earn.
Kate set aside the magazine she’d been leafing through. An article on “Ten Ways to Drive Him Wild” wasn’t what she needed to get Matt Culhane out of her head. Indulging in each of those ten with him might do the job. But she wasn’t going there.
Kate’s cell phone rang, and she jumped at the unfamiliar sound. She hadn’t received too many phone calls since her big move away from the city.
“Hello?”
