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“She needs a replacement,” Liam supplied. Fortunately, he had just the right replacement in mind.
“She does. And it needs to be somebody good. Or there’s no use in getting rid of Barbara Jean.”
Liam nodded. “Right.” Peaches needed a place where she could bake, and she’d probably turn out some goat cheese creations that would elevate the Salty Goat into the culinary heavens. Assuming she could be convinced to move on.
“Do you know anybody?” Carol gave him an expectant look.
“Yeah. I do. But I don’t know if she’s really available. Let me do some investigating.”
“Don’t waste too much time. Barbara Jean’s liable to walk out any day now. And when she does, Mom’s gonna freak out.”
Liam narrowed his eyes. He needed a little more information than he was getting so far. “Can I ask what your interest is here?”
Carol gave him another of those good imitations of innocence. “Maybe I just want my mom to be happy?”
“Nice of you.” He managed not to sound too cynical.
Carol shrugged. “She needs something to get her mind off things.”
Things. Including her daughter? Liam raised his eyebrows, but Carol had apparently had enough of the conversation. She pushed herself to her feet, brushing off the dust she’d picked up from the chair. “I’ll talk to you when you’re further along with your plans.”
Plans? What plans?
…
Ruth carried the last round of cheese to the aging shelf at the back of the cheese room. They didn’t make much aged cheese, since the Salty Goat’s customers generally preferred their goat cheese fresh and soft, but they did produce a couple of products that had a considerable following.
Bec followed her out the door with another load of cheese logs. Ruth was fine with flexible hours, which meant that Bec could do one set of chores at the brewery and then spend the rest of the day making cheese, which is what she’d been doing that afternoon.
Ruth turned back toward the cheese room, swinging open the door for both of them. “What site do you use to make airline reservations?”
Bec shrugged. “Depends on where I’m going, I guess. Travelocity or Expedia, usually. Not that I’ve done a whole lot of flying lately. Why?”
“David’s invited Carol to visit him in California.”
“Your ex-husband?”
Ruth gave a colander draining cheese curds a hard shake, wishing it was David. “He was supposed to visit her in Colorado Springs when she was at his parents’ house, but he didn’t make it. Now he wants her to fly out to California by herself.”
She dumped the curds into a mold, packing them in tightly. “She’s only been on an airplane once, and that was a couple of years ago. And now he wants her to fly into one of the biggest airports in the country.”
“How does Carol feel about it?” Bec picked up a colander of her own.
“She thinks it’s a great idea. But she doesn’t know David as well as I do.” Ruth shoved the mold onto the shelf. “He’s likely to get the wrong date or the wrong time or, hell, the wrong airport for all I know. Or forget all about it because ‘something came up.’ He does that a lot.”
“He’s really that scatterbrained?” Bec sieved up a load of curds from the whey. “I thought he was some big-time Hollywood type. Doesn’t he have assistants to take care of him?”
“Oh, he’s got assistants out the wazoo.” Ruth placed the mold on a rack over the sink to allow the last drops of whey to drain off. “But he usually hires them based on their boobs and how willing they are to sleep with him. Or that’s the way it used to be. I’m guessing it still is.”
Bec paused, one hand still pressed against the curds in the colander. “I remember. You said he cheated on you.”
Ruth nodded. “I left him because he cheated on me with his PA when I was pregnant.” Her smile twisted slightly. “To be fair, he also cheated on me with various assistants when I wasn’t pregnant. He was pretty much a serial cheater.”
The door of the cheese room swung open slightly and Carol’s head appeared. “Barbara Jean says she needs more cheese.” She gave her mother an assessing look.
