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CHAPTER ONE
SAGE
It's Wet Your Whistle Wednesday. Again.
That was my idea. I still think it was a good one. This bar is a little way out, on the opposite side of town from Glacier National Park, and it's not the first choice of the transient vacationers visiting Whitefish, Montana. Or it wasn't.
I'm happy to say that I've had a hand in changing that.
It's partly due to streamlining the kitchen flow, partly due to switching up the snacks menu, partly due to some good marketing, and partly due to observing the mixologists on the job long enough to sniff out a bartender with sticky fingers and firing him. It's all down, really, to working with the manager or owner about how to really run their own business.
I don't have a real education. I have a two-year general degree, and tons of experience around town, working restaurant after restaurant, figuring out how things should operate, for the past ten years. I started working at our local steak buffet place when I was sixteen and desperate to get out of my parents' house (lest I get put to work anyway, but unpaid).
I've been tending bar at Boots 'n' All for the past three months, and I'm getting pretty tired of it. I'm tired of the actual bartending part of it, anyway: the drunk tourists, the good ol' boys hitting on me, the bachelorette party trying to get me to split a tab six ways, the drunk tourists (again), the idiot spring breakers trying to get shitfaced on beer (why didn't they just go to the beach?), and the one old guy riding a barstool and staring at the bar through his triple scotch all night... Boots 'n' All is running right these days and I'm just done.
I mean, the money's pretty good. But I'm ready to do something else with my time. I need a new challenge.
Maybe I need a new man?
But to be brutally honest, all the guys I've dated have started to run together in my mind. I don't always pick the same kind of guy. I'm an equal-opportunity dater: blond, dark-haired, ginger, bald, doesn't matter. Tall, skinny, built, average, that doesn't matter either. Professional or working-class, either is fine. Older, younger, college-educated or not, I don't care. It's always been just for fun. Nothing serious, always casual.
It's just...maybe I want something different.
I know, I know, this is me we're talking about, Miss Serial Dater. I've never had a relationship that Iwantedto continue beyond about six months. Kissed my first boy at age thirteen, and never looked back.
But I think maybe I'm at a stage where I want to meet The One.
I ask Billy--the other tender working tonight--if he knows of any restaurants in town that might need a boost. He shrugs one shoulder at me. "I dunno. I hear that new cupcake truck is doing really well, maybe they're gonna expand?"
"Not that one." Cupcakes on Wheels is where Sammi's been working all summer. And I do love my baby sis, but I already share an apartment with her. I do not want to work with her. Especially for server wages (although I think she's getting paid a little extra for doing some marketing stuff in addition to manning the truck). "Anything else?"
Billy ruminates, pouring tequila shots. "Pizza place? I hear Slice is having trouble getting enough delivery drivers."
I give Billy an eye roll. "I'm thinking more like manager, you get me? I don't just wait tables anymore."
"What job do you want, then?"
I take an order and mix a martini before I answer him. "Dude, you know what I do. I'm a fixer. I'm the person who figures out what's wrong with a place that's almost there but not quite. Then I fix it." I deliver the martini, then come back and start mixing a pitcher of margaritas.
"And then you leave." Billy shoots me a mournful glance. "You should stay and be manager."
"Not gonna happen. Ted's dad owns the place. Besides, I'm getting bored."
When I look up again, a small group of people I know are coming in the door. My sister Sammi and her new squeeze Zane are smiling into each other's eyes. Zane's old friend Clint, one of the rangers at the state park, is here with a girl who looks familiar. I think she drives for one of the food delivery services.
Oh, wait. I think she was one of the bridesmaids at that wedding a couple of weekends ago. Caleb Dumont married a girl he rescued from a spring blizzard up on Big Horn Ridge. I got to go help Sammi manage the cake table, because her boss the cupcake lady was the other bridesmaid.
While I'm pondering through all of this, one more person follows them inside, looking so burly and forbidding that I wonder for one second if some modern-day version of Hoss Cartwright has walked through the door.
Nope. It's Holt Woods.
My heart gives a jolt, and I tell it to chill, for shit's sake. It's just Holt, who I've known for twenty of my twenty-six years.
Holt, who was a senior in high school when I was in kindergarten. Holt, who walked his football-player shoulders through the halls of Big Horn Ridge Elementary in his graduation regalia, high-fiving little kids and reminding them to stay focused and graduate.
Holt, who had become a ranger at Flathead Lake State Park by the time I was a rebellious teenager sneaking out and doing all kinds of things she knew she shouldn't be doing. Holt, who happened to be on duty the night that Misty and Jackson and Willis and Cher and I went skinny-dipping in the lake.
Holt, who made us get out and go home, but not before he gave my sixteen-year-old body a quick glance and immediately tossed me a blanket to wrap up in. I mean, my tits wereright there,he could hardly miss seeing them. I saw him see me. I saw him swallow hard and then look away like he had to force himself to do it.
