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Chapter
Four
Grant Turner walkedinto The Mad Mango, ready for a delicious fruit smoothie with a healthy scoop of protein powder to help him through the rest of his day.He came to a stop right under the blowing air conditioning, because the end of the line stretched that far.
“Oh, brother,” he said to himself, shifting left and looking past the couple standing in front of him.Only Cara worked making smoothies, while Oliver took orders at one end of the counter, slid the ticket into the queue for Cara, and then jogged behind her to ring up the people she’d managed to make orders for.
On his next job, Oliver smiled at the row of customers.The man had a smile made of sunshine, and none of the customers here would leave.He had a magnetic personality too.Much like the sun drew planets and asteroids toward it, he could achieve the same with that winning smile and his deep, bass voice that said, “We’re gonna get to all y’all, folks, I promise.”
Most shops with lines this long before mid-April would be offering discounts for waiting longer than fifteen minutes—and Grant would easily be in this line for twenty-five—but not Oliver.Not The Mad Mango.There was a reason people lined up before the doors even opened in the morning, Grant included.
“Grant,” Oliver boomed, his eyes landing on Grant.“Get over here, bud.”
“No, thanks,” Grant said, holding his ground.
“Ten minutes,” Oliver said.“Your smoothie’s on me.”
“It will be on you anyway,” Grant called, because he’d rented one of his properties to Oliver’s latest girlfriend free of charge.She hadn’t been neat either, and Grant had joined his housekeeping crew just to try to get the coffee spills out of the grout in the tile in the kitchen.He’d hated that grout and that tile, and the fresh stains had given him a good reason to finally rip it out and replace it.But Oliver didn’t need to know that, and Grant had said he owed him big.Very big.
Free smoothies forever, Oliver had joked.To Grant, it was no joke.
“Thanks,” Oliver said to the couple who’d just paid, and he threw Grant another look, this one filled with pleading.The bell on the door behind him dinged, and Grant sighed as the family trying to edge into the shop behind him didn’t have room.Which meant the door would just stay open, flooding the shop with the heat and humidity which had already arrived on Hilton Head Island.
“Fine,” Grant said, stepping out of line and moving to go behind the counter with Oliver and Cara.“Am I taking orders?”
“Do you know all the things we have?”Oliver asked.
“Enough to take an order,” he said, eyeing the cash register.He had no idea how to work that thing, as all of his bookings for the rentals he managed around the island happened online.Credit and debit cards either went through or they didn’t, and he periodically had to make a phone call to get a future tourist to pay their bill.
“Wash your hands,” Oliver said as if Grant were four years old, and while he wanted to snap at his friend, he simply turned toward the sink and soaped up.
Down at the end of the line where the crowd waited to put in their orders, Grant hitched a smile to his face and looked at the first gentleman.“What can I get for you?”
“Is there anything here with no banana?”His eyes roamed the huge menu that spanned the upper wall behind the counter.
“Not really,” Grant said pleasantly.“They don’t use a lot of fats.There’s no ice cream or yogurt, so the banana acts as the emulsifier.”See?He could totally work here and take orders.He should be making fifteen bucks an hour for this conversation.
The customer frowned and asked, “Can I get half a banana?It takes over all the other flavors.”His blue eyes bored into Grant’s, and he decided he didn’t care.
“Sure,” he said.“Half banana.”The dude’s smoothie wouldn’t be so smooth, but hey, if he wanted it a bit icy, Grant wasn’t going to argue.He took the woman’s order with him, stepped two feet, and put the order on the tray for Cara.
Over and over he did that, even repeating the banana question a couple of times.What was with people not liking bananas?Didn’t they know they were the fruit of the gods?
Grant’s stomach rumbled as the line didn’t seem to dwindle at all.When he glanced at the clock, he dang near fell over.“I have to go,” he said, twisting to look at Cara like she was the boss and could dismiss him.
“No,” a woman said in a near-bark from the other side of the counter.“I need to put in my order.”
He turned and met a pair of dark blue eyes that reminded him of deeper waters off the shores of Hilton Head.The kind he’d fish in when he went out trawling with one of his friends who owed him for letting his mother stay in the best condo on the island for a weekend girls’ trip.
“Excuse me?”
“Did I hear you say I can’t get anything without a banana?”she asked, those eyes flying across the wall behind him.“They’re a really strong flavor profile.”
She wore her hair in a pixie cut, with fashionable bangs that hung in shaggy layers across the very tops of her eyebrows.In any other situation, Grant would classify her as beautiful, and if he held a drink in his hand instead of a blasted blue ballpoint pen, and if the music pumped through a tiki bar instead of wafted along the air conditioning currents in a smoothie shop, he might try to get her number.
“They’re what makes your smoothie smooth,” he said, irritation blipping through him.
“Fine,” the woman said with a sigh.She hitched her rustic, spotted-cow-purse higher on her shoulder.He did smile at that bag, wiping the gesture away quickly when she lifted her eyebrows and asked, “Are you ready to take my order?”
