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Cameron blinked at her and then smiled so wide, that crooked tooth was revealed. She glanced away to read the price of ground beef per pound, her hand to her stomach, which had twisted in the face of that smile.
“What do you say, Mateo?” Cameron asked.
“Come on,” Mateo said, wiping a hand across his shiny head. “No one’s going to care what I’ve got to say.”
“I don’t know,” Cameron said. “I think the television producer might be on to something.”
“Okay,” Mateo finally said, still seeming nervous. But the endearing kind of nervous. Excited and pleased to be asked. “Right now?”
“No, you’re busy,” Cameron looked around at the customers, who were watching them.
“Nah, my kids got it.” Mateo pointed over to the thin young men helping other customers. They looked like teenagers.
“You are too young to have kids that old.” Cameron said.
“Well, me and Mich started young. When you know what you want, why wait? So?” he asked. “You want to go in back? The lighting is good, but it’s not as pretty.”
“Right there,” Josie said and pointed over at the old butcher block that stood between two cold cases. It was the block Mateo’s great-grandfather had used to cut up the cows and sheep and goats that area farmers would bring him.
Cameron gave her a look she couldn’t read. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
Cameron and Mateo started to set up.
Adjust that light, she thought just as Cameron reached over and tilted a wall sconce slightly away from Mateo so the light wouldn’t reflect off his glasses. Ask him about the butcher block, she thought, just as she heard Cameron say, “I’m going to ask you about your great-grandfather’s butcher block. Tell me the whole story. Don’t be your usual modest self.”
“I’ll try to get my brag on,” Mateo joked, looking handsome and serious.
This was going to be a good one. The best part, and she wondered if Cameron had figured it out, was that until now he hadn’t interviewed anyone who knew him very well. There had been some female guests who gave the impression that they were going to get to know Cameron real well once the camera was off. But no one like Mateo.
And then Cameron and Mateo started, and they were joking and telling old stories, and the sound of their laughter pulled everyone’s eyes to them. Where they stayed for twenty minutes.
“Can I help you?” One of Mateo’s sons asked.
When you know what you want, why wait?
Funny how that advice could backfire.
“I’m here for the Riverview Inn order,” she said.
A half hour later, after Cameron and Josie made promises to stop in at Mateo’s annual Boxing Day open house at his place by the river, they finally got back out to the truck where Josie had already loaded the turkeys and roasts, the specially cut bacon and the smoked ham.
“I didn’t think you would be sticking around for Boxing Day,” she said. “And since when did everyone around here start celebrating it?”
“Since it extended the holiday,” Cameron said. “Alice got the British Christmas vibe and was able to charge top price for eggs.”
“Come on, really?”
“You know Alice, always looking for a way to make something special.”
“And cost more,” she said. “But you’re sticking around? For the day after Christmas?”
“My plans are loose. And we’re going to do some butchering for the second part of his episode. It’s worth sticking around for. But what about you? Don’t you have to get back to the city?”
She entertained the thought of actually going to that open house with Cameron. They’d take a bottle of wine; he’d put his hand at the small of her back while they talked to people. She’d laugh at his jokes. It would be like an alternate reality. Who they would have been if that night hadn’t happened. “I do,” she said. “I’m leaving Christmas morning.”
“That was a really good interview,” Cameron said as he started the truck.
“You’re a good interviewer.” She pushed the vents to blast their bodies with warm air. The sun had gone down while they were in the shop and the temperatures had dropped hard. They’d had a long, laughing argument over the best cut of steak and how Mateo’s father had taught him to butcher a pig when he was ten. It had been a somewhat bloody conversation.
“It didn’t occur to me to ask him. That was all you.”
“Cameron,” she said. “I do know something about reality television.”
“Congrats on the new job,” he said, glancing sideways at her. “Executive producer.”
“How do you know about that?’ she asked, and all at once she felt every barrier that had been abandoned the last few hours rise back up, ready to protect something she didn’t want to talk about. Protect something, even though she didn’t totally understand why she was protecting it.
