Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)

Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)

Violet Duke



DEDICATION

To my Facebook fans.

I absolutely adore hanging out with you all every day.

Stay awesome.





NOTE TO READERS

Since this novel’s short prequel novella, A LITTLE COMBUSTIBLE CHEMISTRY, is not free at all the eretailers yet, I’ve included it at the start of the novel in this special combined edition. Note that it is highly recommended you read the prequel before the novel.

The prequel is a short, fun precursor to LOVE, CHOCOLATE, AND BEER that I wrote as a free gift to all of you for being such wonderful fans. Enjoy!





A LITTLE COMBUSTIBLE CHEMISTRY

(Prequel Novella to Love, Chocolate, and Beer)





CHAPTER ONE


“DANI! We’re running low on top shelf tequila; I’ve been promising the cooks indecent favors so they’ll run back to keep my red ale line on tap; and seriously, what does a girl need to do to get more ice? Where’s that new barback and why the hell isn’t he doing his job?!”

Rushing back from the brewery, Dani Dobson swooped under a waiter's tray of food and hustled over to keep her brewpub’s best bartender from indulging in a little frustration-releasing attack on a now petrified barback and his apparently twice-forewarned bro-globes.

Not that she could fire the nutty hothead either way.

Aside from being her best friend, Xoey was a veritable bartending rockstar in these parts, a wild, glorious fun-magnet adored by all, replaceable by none.

Good lord, she could sell warm beer on a hot day. Seeing Xoey dial up the flirt-tending and begin basically grifting customers into switching up to pricier liquors, Dani knew the excess of empty liquor bottles on the shelves was the reason why. Cringing, she quickly sent a waiter to assist the new barback with his restocking duties before she jumped in to help catch them up on drink orders. “Give the poor guy a break, Xo. It’s been a busy week.”

“Oh please.” Xoey snorted. “You hired me during Mardi Gras. I handled it just fine.”

“Ha! Only because the tightly bound twins on your chest were mesmerizing the men into sucking up all the drink orders you botched.”

“Slander!” she cried back with an indignant smile dipped. “It wasn’t just the men.”

Amidst the resulting four-guy pile up that crashed into the bar at that declaration, it was the droll PSA one of them made on the dangers of driving with a stick near Xoey that caused a riot of laughter all around. Amplified further when another went down on drunken knee to ask for Xoey’s hand in marriage.

Dani chuckled. She loved this new crowd that had started coming into Ocotillos lately. They were a tad younger and rowdier than she was used to but the whole brewpub seemed to feed off their energy. That was reward enough for all the social media plugging she’d been doing the past few months, a collective undertaking by the area’s entire motley crew business community to draw more folks to their little town of Cactus Creek.

Her custom-made heaven on earth.

While not without its addictive charms, Cactus Creek was...well, unique. Water-strewn desert backdrops and equally atypical residents made the town a far cry from the quaint tourist spots touted on Arizona billboards. Fancy lattes with warm slices of Americana they were not; hell, the only antiques they sold were antique arms. Instead, they boasted funky craft beers, oddball novelty shops, and down-home fusion eateries where culinary references to ‘the south’ were usually of a country between Mexico and Chile. More fun than sleepy, and comfy without being colonial, the only reason the town was often mislabeled ‘eclectically historic’ was because its stubborn-ass residents had kept all their favorite parts while still growing up with the times.

Over the years, most of Dani’s time and money had gone to nurturing the same process of selective evolution for her brewpub as well. Sure, Ocotillos was now drastically cooler than the simple tavern with a simple name her dad had run it as, but its beer remained constant. Just as Dobson as the blood in her veins, born and bred exactly as her dad had taught her to brew.

Speaking of… Dani finished tying on one of the new bartending half-aprons Xoey had designed for them, all the while sending a belated apology over to the photo of her father on the wall for not having thought to put a leash on Xoey’s creativity.

The girl was quite the dirty slogan savant.

Then again, it probably would’ve made him laugh his ass off, she mused, a wry grin tweaking her lips at the thought. As if in confirmation, his jolly photo smiled back at her, mirroring the image she held onto of him in her mind.

It had been over three years now. Three years, but a part of her still expected to see him striding in that brewery door with the unconditionally doting smile he’d always had on reserve just for her.

She missed having someone love her like that.

The sudden burst of applause trickling down from the terrace had Dani silently cursing and ducking out from the bar—and her memories. She raced up the stairs to the rooftop deck she’d built a few summers ago, bobbing and weaving through the cram-packed sea of weekend Romeos on the prowl, trendy nine-to-fivers partying their hard week away, and co-ed clusters blithely kicking off the start of their winter break with a bang.

Thankfully, the musicians had thrown in an adlib bit to give her time to hop on stage and snag the mic. “Let’s hear it again for Rylan Grey and his band, everyone!” she hollered, drawing forth a fresh wave of raucous hoots from the crowd. “Okay, it’s time for me to feed these guys, so until they start their next set, the band break power hour starts right now: half price on tonight’s food specials and BOGO on all your beers!”