Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(27)

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.”

Flipping the shirts around, she saw they had fun gender-specific slogans printed on the fronts. Classic Xoey. Grinning, Dani read one out loud.

AFTER A HARD DAY, THE ONLY THING AN ICE COLD CHOCOLATE WOULD CURE IS PMS.

Oh, that was so wrong. She could think of at least a dozen guys who’d wear it.

Xoey fished out some racerback tank-tops with the slogans strategically placed across the front, about boob high. “And for our college crowd...”

IT’S TRUE. BEER MAKES YOU SMART.

Ah yes, one of Xoey’s more popular sales pitches from behind the bar. No doubt those tank tops were going to sell like hotcakes. Especially since the other side of the tank-top had a smaller tattoo-style design between the shoulder blades that read: THE MORE I DRINK, THE SMARTER YOU GET.

Dani chuckled. “Don’t tell me, this entire clothing line is made up of Xoey-isms.”

“Pretty much.” With a wicked grin, Xoey straightened up and peeled back her jacket to reveal the spaghetti-strap tank she had on today. “And the pièce de résistance.”