Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(15)

“Give it a rest. The cooks and I overheard your interview,” seethed the woman. Hostility filled her voice, holding nothing back. “Insulting the way some folks like to spend a night out in our brewpub doesn’t make your only-in-the-movies lame excuse for romance look any better than what our business has to offer couples. All it does is make you look like an ass. An ass trying to sell a load of fairytale bull.”

Quinn backed up another step.

“Oh, and those very specific interviewees?” continued the woman. “They’re called ‘our customers.’ You’re specifically targeting them to use what they say against us. Frankly, you’re lucky I’m not already kicking your ass. So why don’t you take advantage of this unnecessary restraint I’m exhibiting and get your Reporter Barbie ass out of here before I really get pissed.”

Quinn was stunned. She felt so terrible she could barely talk. “I – I didn’t mean for it to come off like that, I swear. We were just trying to show a contrast. We didn’t mean to insult you.”

The woman scrutinized her for a second and took a slow, steadying breath. “Okay, let’s suspend reality for a moment and say I believe you didn’t really mean any harm; you're kidding yourself if you think this was all so innocent. You used our customers, plain and simple. What’s worse, you used them to try and make the nightlife that we provide them look unromantic in comparison to the cheesy night at home eating chocolate and drinking champagne in red lacy lingerie. That’s your fairytale portrait of romance, right?” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, feel free. Just don’t drag our customers or our business into it. If I catch you harassing our customers or making us look bad out here again, you’ll be sorry.”

With that, the woman spun on her heel and stomped back into Ocotillos.

Quinn quickly helped a mildly traumatized Evan put away his camera gear. She felt awful. Never had it been her intent to put down another business to promote Desert Confections. That wasn’t what she’d been trying to do at all. She detested commercials that used such petty marketing techniques. It was cheap and unseemly, and completely insulting to the standards she held to as manager of Luke’s shop.

Completely flummoxed, she had no idea how to proceed. Desert Confections had clearly just made their first enemy in town. An irate, pissed-with-a-sawed-off-shotgun one. Alerting Luke of that fact was priority number one.

She went back in the shop to sound the Defcon 3 alarm.




YIKES. Raise the siren to Defcon 1.

Quinn jumped when the door of Desert Confections opened with a bell-jangling shove nearly a half hour later, courtesy of the same angry worker from Ocotillos.

Hell, even the big, buff granite counter guys steered a wide berth around her. As the woman charged through the store, right into the back, Quinn automatically began fumbling for her cellphone. Who she was planning on calling, she had no idea. The Coast Guard was the fastest, but the Marines could probably take this five-and-a-half-foot walking powder keg.

Maybe.

It was fair to say Quinn didn’t scare easy, or at all usually, but good lord, this woman was like a dainty little vial of dangerous chemical you just weren’t sure about messing with.

Quinn just barely resisted the urge to hit the deck when the woman came up and slammed a piece of paper next to the register. With a deathly silent, spittin’ mean glare and not a single word, the woman stormed back out the same way she came. Somehow, Quinn managed to maintain her composure. Until the bell above the door stopped quavering, that is. Then and only then did she allow herself to expel the breath she’d been unknowingly holding the entire time.

Hooooly shit.

Feeling a migraine building, Quinn picked up at the furiously delivered letter and opened it slowly, cringing as if it had a ticking red clock on it.

Not quite. But close.

The letter, written on Ocotillos stationary, had a single, waspish paragraph, addressed to the owner of Desert Confections. It demanded that he or she attend to: 1) the unauthorized videotaping and resulting abuse of Ocotillos’ patrons via underhanded advertisement goals that weren’t fully disclosed to participants, 2) the insulting and offensive display of unprofessional business ethics, inclusive of but not limited to slander, and 3) the overall questionable treatment of a fellow business in the neighborhood that would be considered actionable with the town commission.

The sentences following went on to describe, in detail, just how hellish life could quickly become for them in Cactus Creek if they didn’t take this official grievance seriously.

Quinn squeezed her eyes shut and unloaded a string of words she never got to use around her four-year-old son.

“Luke is going to kill me.”



*



DANI PLUNKED down into her office chair and stared at the Phoenix address business card in her hand. Rewinding the last hour in her head, she tried to wrap her brain around all that had happened since she’d stomped out of Desert Confections.

Did that really just happen?

In one impromptu meeting, did she really just find the missing key that would unlock a way to make her brother’s dreams of a winery a reality? Her eyes widened in continued disbelief as she replayed the blur that had been the last hour with Harold Jameson, the devoted town business council member and longtime family friend who—together with his citified, intensely stoic son Noah—owned most of the commercial property in Cactus Creek.