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“I’ll be damned. Miranda Sweet, is it you or is my glaucoma acting up again?” Ruby Sue sat her glass down on the Formica countertop with a clank. “You always did know how to make an entrance. Who do you think you are, the Queen of England?”
The tension ebbed out of Miranda’s shoulders at the sound of Ruby Sue’s pack-a-day roughened voice. “Stick to what you know. Isn’t that what you always said?”
The very definition of elderly petite, Ruby Sue slid gingerly off the stool and shuffled around the counter. Her bony but deceptively strong arms locked around Miranda’s waist and squeezed. The Sweets had few allies in Salvation, but Ruby Sue headed up the pack. And for the first time since Miranda had crossed the train tracks, Salvation felt like home.
The tips of Ruby Sue’s tight, white curls tickled Miranda’s nose and she wondered, not for the first time in her life, how a woman that smoked as much as Ruby Sue did always smelled like chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven.
“I heard that crazy old uncle of yours left you and your sisters the brewery.” Blunt and brassy, Ruby Sue hadn’t changed a bit. “What’s left of it after the old bat let it slide downhill.”
“It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, Ruby Sue.” The words were serious, but it took effort to fight the upward curl her lips wanted to make.
“When in the world have I ever been nice? Anyway, Julian Sweet tried to talk me into serving pot brownies. If that’s not crazy, I don’t know what is.”
Miranda couldn’t help but laugh. “It would probably increase food sales.”
“That is exactly what Julian said.” Ruby Sue shook her head and led Miranda over to an empty stool at the counter. “Bring me two teas, Ellen.”
The waitress at the other end of the counter nodded her head and grabbed two glasses from the drying rack before disappearing into the back. Many older women in Salvation protected their biscuit recipes with the devotion of a Knight Templar standing guard over the Holy Grail. Ruby Sue couldn’t care less about biscuits. For her, it was always about sweet tea and pecan pie.
“Where are those sisters of yours hiding? I know it ain’t at the brewery.”
“What makes you say that? They could be armpit-deep in hops and malt.”
Ruby Sue snorted. “Natalie may have her nose in a book about beer, but I’d bet my sweet tea recipe that she’s never set foot in that brewery. As for Olivia, the last I saw of her was her boobs hanging half out of an itty bitty excuse of a swimsuit on a Sports Illustrated cover a few years back.”
“You’re right. Natalie’s in California, and Olivia’s in Missouri. They’ll get here as soon as they can, but they’re tied up with work, and I told them I wanted to try this on my own.” Miranda didn’t blame them a bit for not rushing home. Most of Salvation had looked down on the Sweet triplets since the day they were born in the backseat of their parents’ sedan in the Shop and Sip’s parking lot. Once they’d left for college—or in Olivia’s case, Harbor City’s catwalks—none of them had ever wanted to come back.
The waitress put two tall glasses of whiskey-colored tea on the counter in front of her and Ruby Sue. Condensation dripped down the sides. Part of Ruby Sue’s tea recipe—and the only part that was public knowledge—was serving ice-cold tea in warm glasses.
Miranda picked up the glass emblazoned with a picture of a kitchen sink. Heat from the glass seeped into her fingers. She took a big gulp that left her gasping for air and almost gave her senses whiplash. The frigid tea was enough to make her teeth chatter, but damn it tasted good.
“You know people are worried you’ll set fire to the brewery and collect the insurance money,” Ruby Sue deadpanned.
The pronouncement of her presumed criminal intent constricted her throat and sent the mouthful of tea down the wrong pipe. The resulting coughing fit had her lungs bouncing off her ribcage like a toddler in a bounce house. Her eyes watered, either from the oxygen depletion or Ruby Sue’s palm whacking her on the back. The woman was old, but she still had fight in her. Finally, a thin thread of air found its way into her desperate lungs. Slowly regaining her equilibrium, Miranda eased her greedy gulps of air until her breathing returned to its normal pre-shock rhythm.
“I am not going to commit insurance fraud.” The words scraped against her raw throat as well as her tweaked ego.
“Well, you can’t blame ‘em for wondering. It’s not like you ever showed any interest in the brewery before.” Ruby Sue ripped open five sugar packets and dumped them in her tea. “Plus your grandma did go all firebug on the DMV when they wouldn’t renew her license.”
“She was never charged.” Miranda dabbed ineffectively at the brown wet spot soaking through her favorite white shirt. “The building had faulty wiring.”
“Mmm hmmm.” Ruby Sue shrugged her shoulders.
The old familiar weight of being a Sweet in Salvation weighed down Miranda’s shoulders, and she bit back a nasty comeback just in time. Ruby Sue was just being her normal, blunt self. If anyone in this closed-minded little town was in her corner, it was the feisty old lady with the sugar addiction.
Miranda’s attempt to eliminate the tea stain had only served to spread a damp spot across her chest. She needed to go rinse the shirt before it was ruined. “I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick, but I promise, I’m not going to hurt the brewery.” She grabbed her briefcase and jacket from the next stool, then stood up. “I’m going to make it better than it ever has been.”
Mind focused on what her next move should be for financing the brewery’s turnaround—maybe it was time to put out an SOS to her sisters—Miranda paid little attention to the handful of customers filtering into the private dining room next to the bathroom. But instead of the numbers coming together clearly in her head, all she kept seeing was Logan Martin. The asshole looked even better than he had in high school, and that was saying something. Not that she cared about his muscular arms or his square jaw or the way his butt had looked in his perfectly tailored suit pants.
The restroom door had barely swung shut before Miranda looped her briefcase and jacket onto the counter,
engaged the sink’s small stopper, stripped off her white shirt, and held it under the tap while the basin filled with water.
The tea had soaked through to her ivory lace demi bra, too, but there was no way she was taking that off in a public women’s restroom. She could live with a stained bra. It’s not like she’d shown anyone the results of her lingerie shopping addiction lately, or would any time soon.
The creaking of the door’s well-worn hinges caught her attention, and she jerked up her gaze.
That’s when she spotted the white urinal reflected in the mirror above the sink.
