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“They come pick-up,” Clarissa said.
“Right, I know, but I have to have them ready for that. This says deliveries are from eight to nine in the morning.”
“But only three days a week,” she said, looking at her Monday-Thursday-Saturday schedule of who came, what time, and what their usual order was.
“How long does it take you to prep this?” He tapped the schedule again, his finger staying on Monday’s deliveries.
With those six orders, Clarissa moved over one hundred gallons of milk on Monday morning. “An hour,” she admitted.
“So I’m out in the milk parlor at seven a.m. three days a week,” he said. “I work with the pick-up people for an hour. Then I have an hour to make whatever the shoppe needs, then I tend to the shoppe, then I have farm chores after that? Or before?” He shook his head, and he didn’t seem too happy. “This feels like two jobs.”
“You’ll have to talk to the boss about that,” Clarissa said.
“I don’t know how to make cheese,” he said.
“Some of the stuff I do while the shoppe is open,” she said, ignoring his attitude. “We’re not like the grocery store, Spence. There are long stretches where no one comes in.”
“Great,” he said. “So I’ll be bored out of my mind.” He sighed and ran his hand up his face to his hair. He took off his hat and inhaled again. “I’m not sure this is the job that was advertised.”
“Again, that’s something you’ll have to take up with the boss.” She snapped her binder closed, because she didn’t want to explain anything else to him.
“So no lunch hour in the shoppe.”
“I never struggle to find a time to sit down and eat,” she said. “It’s not a problem, but no, there’s not a scheduled, close-the-door-and-lock-it time for lunch.”
“What about today?” he asked. “Would you close the door and lock it and go to lunch with me?” He resettled his cowboy hat on his head and looked at her, no shame or anxiety in his expression at all. After a few seconds passed where Clarissa couldn’t formulate a response, he grinned. “We never did get to go to dinner a couple of weeks ago.”
“I can’t close the store on a Saturday,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you that you can’t bring lunch into the shoppe. It’s a free country, after all.”
“Mm, that it is.” He smiled at her and retrieved his phone from his back pocket. “It’s almost ten now. How about I come by with lunch later, and then I can stay and help in the shoppe?”
Clarissa had just told him she wouldn’t object to him bringing lunch, but that didn’t feel like telling him yes to a date. “All right,” she said, which wasn’t a yes either. At least not the word “yes.”
It meant the same thing, and Spencer’s grin turned a bit arrogant. Still handsome as ever, and Clarissa got to her feet. “I have to go. You know where the shoppe is.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I sure do.”
He’d dragged out his words and added that Texan drawl on purpose, but Clarissa didn’t roll her eyes this time. She’d just accepted a date with the man, and she really needed to get her head checked before she opened the shoppe and had to deal with Mrs. Peay, a woman who came every Saturday for the homemade pimento Clarissa stocked the refrigeration units with on the weekends.
* * *
The bell rangon the outside door, and Clarissa finished packing the spreadable cheese into the tub, snapped the lid on, and tapped the screen of her tablet to get the label to print. She then stepped over to the door and said, “I’ll be two seconds.”
“No problem,” a woman said, and Clarissa returned to the stainless steel counters in the kitchen and stuck the label to the top of the lid, which proclaimed what this spreadable cheese was—garlic and dill.
She loved putting savory flavors together, and she wanted the freedom to spread her wings and fly, fly, fly in a real restaurant. She wanted to work with proteins and vegetables—and cheese.Anythingmore than cheese.
She bustled out to the front of the shoppe and opened the fridge next to the door. “Hey, there,” she said. “I’ve got some fresh spreads here. Can I help you find what you’re looking for?”
“I bought some pepper jack cheese here a couple of weeks ago.” The woman turned from the other fridge along the wall with the table, and Clarissa recognized her.
“Oh, hey, Bea.” Clarissa hesitated to go hug the woman, but her Texas roots wouldn’t allow her not to. So the result was a strange, awkward half-hug that left her smiling like a fool. “There’s some pepper jack in the back if there’s none out here.”
“I don’t see any.”
Clarissa stepped past her and peered into the fridge. There wasn’t any white cheese in the fridge at all. “I probably sold it all this morning. Give me two shakes.” She bumped through the black plastic door to the back of the shoppe again and pulled open the freezer.
After turning to get a wire basket, she filled it with more shredded cheese and took it out front. “It’s frozen,” she said, “But by the time you get home, it’ll be ready to use.” She reserved a bag of pepper jack and handed it to Bea Matthews.
