Love Caters All

by Nicci Carrera

  They all settled at the rough-hewn wooden table. While he was on his second cheese sandwich, Cara took a phone call. A male voice was loud enough for him to hear. Maya cut a sharp look at Cara. Interesting. Wonder who it was. Cara stepped out onto the deck. The name, “Jason,” was audible. Maya winced. What was up with that? She didn’t like this guy?

  He washed down the last bite with some iced tea. “So...about this cabin.”

  Before he could warm to his lecture, Blanca said, “Maya is renting it for a song. Since Mama leased our house, Maya’s putting us all up here.”

  “The money should be great for Mama,” Blanca continued. “But only if she can get a handle on not treating customers as guests.” She shot her mother a stern glance. Pilar was staring at Rick, wearing an expression like she’d stolen money out of the basket at church.

  “Actually, no, I wouldn’t change a thing. People would pay extra for the personal touch. Selling is all about user experience these days. People want the virtual reality of being in a family. They yearn for genuine encounters. Experiences are the next big thing. Boutique hotels are a growth sector while the big faceless chains are struggling. All these big hotels are racing each other to the bottom on price, chasing shrinking profit margins. Meanwhile the boutique hotels are cleaning up.”

  Pilar was beaming now. Probably because he’d validated her instincts.

  “Oh,” Maya nibbled her upper lip thoughtfully, delectably, “so we should charge more, not less. And we should be featuring hominess in our marketing.”

  He tapped his nose. “You got it.”

  Maya beamed while Blanca divided a mile-wide smile between their mother and big sister. Cara moseyed back inside wearing a smile. A family who liked seeing the other members acknowledged. A family who helped each other. Spent time together. Rick was feeling settled in this little town. But he only had a dozen or so days before he returned to his sterile flat in Silicon Valley. Not that he’d ever thought of his flat in those terms before now. His gut hollowed despite the cheese sandwich.

  Before he left he needed at least to make sure the family was safe. “If you’re going to stay here, the railing really needs to be raised three feet.” Carpentry was one of the things Rick’s father had enjoyed. Rick learned it so he could spend time with Dad. “You could do with some finish work on those windows. Pine would be nice. Trim would block out some of the draft. Steps wouldn’t take too long. Probably want hardwood for those. Mahogany. I could see a heavy-duty wood mantelpiece over the fireplace, too. Keep the phone, though. Quaint.” He was referring to the slim-line sitting on the end of the kitchen counter wired into an answering machine.

  “All that’s fine if you have unlimited resources,” Maya said.

  How insensitive he’d been. Maya’s comment settled Rick back to earth. Had it really been so long since he had to work for everything? Of course, his deprivation had been by his father’s design, not reality. “Sorry. I guess I’m sort of missing the point. I just can’t help myself sometimes. I hate stuff that doesn’t work.”

  “Spoken like a true engineer.”

  His turn to stare at Maya. He was an influential game builder, but he was never called an engineer, always CEO or founder. The only other person who bothered to remember or care that he was an engineer was himself.

  Maya studied him, her face angled to her shoulder. She straightened. “Once they fix this place up, the rents will quadruple.”

  Oh, that’s what he was oblivious about. “I guess fixing it up would defeat the whole purpose.” Did that mean he couldn’t kill the landlord? “Maybe some improvements could be done without a lot of expense for the owner, though. At least to fix the danger spots. It could be done in half a day.”

  “Well, it must be nice to be handy,” Maya said. “We don’t have anyone around here who can do those repairs.”

  “I don’t have any plans tomorrow. Do you have any tools? What about a lumberyard around here?”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Maya said. “I’m not letting you do manual labor on my rental house. You’re a paying guest.”

  “I thought we went over this. I want the immersion experience.”

  “I’ll immerse you all right. You need to cool your jets, boss. This is my place.”

  “Wow,” he gazed out the window, “look at those geese.”

  Everyone turned to see. He used the distraction to do double duty, slipping the lobster-roll sandwich to Ripper’s waiting jaws. His partner-in-crime was perfectly quiet. That is until he made a completely different sound.

  “Ripper!” Maya reprimanded.

  “Don’t scold him,” Rick said. “There can be a lot of uses for a dog who can clear a room.” The thought of evacuating an uncomfortable meeting with a blast of canine flatulence made him grin.

  “You’re thinking of one now, aren’t you?” Maya said. God, she could read him.

  “I may want to bring Ripper to the next analyst’s meeting.”

  The twins tittered.

  “Do you think we could get him to do it on command?” he said, thoughtfully.

  Maya snorted, sending a spurt of iced tea out her nose. She slammed the napkin over her face. Rick chuckled. Damn, it was just too easy being with this family.

  He insisted on helping them clear the dishes, but they wouldn’t let him wash. Their crappy landlord hadn’t supplied them with a dishwasher either, of course.

  Maya walked him to the door after they’d cleaned up. “What are you doing for the rest of the day?”

  “I figured I’d head back to the house to read some of those books. Starting with the romances, of course.”

  Maya smiled. Rick refrained from suggesting she read them to him.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Shit. Busted. He lowered his voice. “About you reading the hot scenes to me.”

  Maya pushed him.

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her close. Her face flushed. Her lips looked redder than ever. He lowered his face until his mouth was close enough for her to feel his breath. “How ’bout it?”

  Her heart beat like a rabbit’s against his chest.

  “Breathe, Maya.”

  “How can I?” she peeped.

  “I don’t want to waste a day. What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Working.”

  “Where?”

  “The food truck I told you about. In the hospital parking lot.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  The next day, Maya tiptoed downstairs while the household still slept. It was easy to beat the twins out of bed; they were slugs in the summer. Not waking Mama was another matter, because Ripper slept in her room, and she had to let the dog out to do his business. Maya had learned to rub him behind the ears continuously as soon as he arrived at Mama’s bedroom door to keep him from barking.

  The covers over Mama rose and fell. Maya always checked, never again taking another day of life for granted after losing Papá so young.

  Ripper’s ears were silky beneath her fingertips. Her touch earned her a lick to the wrist. She led the tail-wagging Labrador to the back door. On the stairs, one of his paws stuck in the gap between the boards. He yelped in pain. Maya rushed to help him, but by the time she arrived, he had freed his paw. His black body moved around the yard, stopping from time to time to mark territory. She studied the stairs. They had warped further, making the gap worse. Frantically she looked around for a board so she could make a ramp for Ripper. Of course there was nothing like that just lying around.

  Ripper was coming back to her, with his arthritic limp and lolling tongue.

  “Come on, Ripper!” She waited for the old dog to reach her side. After a getting good scratch behind the ears, he followed her around to the front of the house. The front steps at least were finished. She’d write a note on the family message board to take Ripper out the front.

  Her mind beat the drum of Rick’s warnings about the cabin. Was she hurting the older members of her family
by insisting on renting out Mama’s house? More than ever it seemed like a bad idea. If she hadn’t, though, she wouldn’t have met Rick. Her breath caught at the flash of Rick’s teasing nearness, hovering over her mouth yet not quite kissing her.

  Maybe all she needed to do was make Rick their last customer. Mama could move back home. Maya’s bad idea would just have borne one fruit before being cancelled. Plus, her sisters would go with Mama. Not that she didn’t love them! She did. She missed them too, but she could see them plenty at Mama’s while still having her house to enjoy alone with Rick.

  Except you can’t move Mama and the twins back to the house until Rick leaves, you idiot. How was she going to enjoy Rick in her house when he’d be long gone?

  Maya’s heart sank. She was doing it again, though this time it was even worse. Garth lasted a summer. This affair was only going to last a dozen days. Oh well. She’d think about that later. Right now she needed to do something normal, something to get her back into her daily routine. It was tough to keep the food truck and catering business going. She needed to concentrate every day. The incident with Ripper had thrown off her routine, but she was a woman of ritual. Without it, she’d get stressed enough to start forgetting things.

  With Ripper following, Maya crept past Mama’s bedroom door into the kitchen where she started the burner under the teakettle. Next she opened the bench seat. From the collection of books stored there, she withdrew one on economics.

  She closed the bench and sat on top of it, setting the open book on the table. She propped her chin in her hands. “The Keynesian theory posits economic output is strongly influenced by…”

  Rick was so smart. And sexy. Too hard to resist. Oh well, what harm could a couple dates do? Rick was fun to talk to, though the question about college was a problem. Maya needed a ready explanation that didn’t make her look like a martyr.

  She set the book aside, returned Ripper to Mama’s bedroom, and climbed in her van.

  Ten minutes later, Maya slowed to 15 mph and turned left on Main Street. Technically it was faster to turn up First Street than Main, but that would have deprived Maya of her favorite morning ritual.

  The sun was rising above the horizon beyond Frenchman’s Bay. Orange light painted a warm glow over the town’s buildings. On the hillside across the bay, landscape lights around The Sea Crest Inn beamed a soft welcome. Lobstermen hustled in the spotlights outside McClintock and McClintock. On Pier One, they loaded gear on the trawlers.

  Movement by Claws and Effect Boat Tours caught Maya’s attention. Five women squatted in kayaks in the calm water in front of the building. The group called themselves The Mad Paddlers. The group came every summer from Bar Harbor. Robert Mathison and Sandra Godfrey, who co-owned C&E, had figured out they could make money from renting secure storage to kayakers who paddled to Lobster Cove with plans to camp at Acadia National Park. Eventually they learned there was money in renting to campers as well, and purchased six kayaks, which were in high demand.

  But now it was Oak Street. Time to turn away from the scenery. Time for work. At least when she pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, the truck already had a light on. Not for the first time, gratitude swelled for Jason, her prep cook. She hated being alone in the truck when it was still dark. Sometimes she wondered if he showed up so early to protect her. Shelter Cove was a safe place, but you never knew.

  Maya had learned caution after she and a friend were mugged in New York. Maybe that was why she had made a ritual of swinging down Main Street before work, so she could see some people around.

  There was a wholesomeness to the activity around Lobster Cove. New York was colored permanently after the three men accosted the women on their way back to their apartment after cooking school. It was a “minor mugging” because guns weren’t used and a beat cop intervened within seconds, but they never caught the men. Even if those thugs had been caught, the incident still would have left Maya unable to look at strangers in the same way again. The violence had turned her fun adventure in NYC into a homesickness to be endured for two years. Although she enjoyed school, she was tired from longing for home the whole time she was in New York. During the senior job fair, when Le Petit Boulevard had offered her a job at graduation, she had turned down a job thousands of young chefs would kill for to come home to Lobster Cove. The mugging had left her handicapped in a way, unable to live her life the way she had dreamed.

  The McClintock’s, who funded her education with a scholarship, must have been disappointed when she came home eight years ago with her tail between her legs. Surely they expected her to stay in New York, to become a famous chef, but they were really nice about it, probably because everyone in Lobster Cove knew the story of her mugging.

  Maya climbed the cage steps to the truck door. Inside, Jason was tying on his apron. The tall good-looking guy had been an all-star baseball player who graduated and made it to the majors. He was the twins’ age. The league signed him out of high school, which was very rare. He went on to become a pitching phenom who spent less than a year in the minors before playing for the Red Sox. When his mom’s multiple sclerosis symptoms worsened, the “local boy done good” quit his career to come back to Lobster Cove. Maya was surprised when Jason came to her looking for a job. So here she had someone she’d known all her life who was a hard worker, trust-worthy, and dripped in star power.

  In fact hard-core baseball fans accounted for some of their clientele. The truck had been written up in Boston papers. “Love Caters All,” one article said, “a surprising little find in Lobster Cove where you can get a quick, inexpensive, and tasty bite while at the same time meet Jason Wade.” She’d hung the framed article on the outside of the truck. He was a great employee, just not right for Cara. Cara needed to reach her potential. Jason was a player. He must have slept with everyone in high school—and all those fans must have given him a lot of women to choose from. Jason was NMM. Not marriage material. Easier.

  Maya pulled on her apron. She grabbed a bag of flour off the shelf by the door. Jason flipped the radio on before he grabbed the vegetables out of the refrigerator, throwing them in two big metal colanders in the sink for washing.

  Jason also didn’t chatter the way a female employee might have, which was good. Maya could concentrate on cooking. Today they worked to the beat of the top 40. She baked muffins. Jason prepped veggies. She hummed, he occasionally whistled. Maya didn’t think about cooking or business, though. She thought about Rick. The way he smelled. The way his hands burned on her waist.

  The first customer, Ross Bensson, showed up at six. Always the first to arrive, he was her best friend Sin’s brother.

  “Hi, Ross. How’s your uncle?” Maya smiled. She’d removed the apron. Since she handled the cash while Jason served the food, she didn’t have to worry about getting her outfit dirty. She wanted to be decent looking when Rick showed up. Excitement fluttered beneath her ribs.

  After Ross, people coming and going at the hospital kept Maya on her toes. The fishermen stopped by first for a hot snack before work. The next were the early shift of medical professionals. After eight, hospital visitors often stopped for a coffee or breakfast. Maya’s heart always ached to see Juelle and Eugenia McClintock. Sebastian McClintock was in a coma after a boating accident. Eugenia must be going through hell. Maya fought to keep memories of Papá at bay. Juelle, Sebastian’s wife, must be going through worse than hell. Especially with a young baby. Juelle would park her little green VW near the truck. Sometimes she’d stop for coffee or a muffin, before heading in to visit Sebastian. Eugenia never stopped at the truck for coffee or food. The older woman always rushed by in those perfect shoes. Eugenia’s tough, dynamic exterior didn’t fool Maya though. Underneath she must be devastated from the accident following so closely the loss of her husband to a heart attack. It was sad to see the prominent Lobster Cove family so reduced in size, practically overnight. Even pillars of the community could be knocked down by accidents or death.

  Maya shiver
ed, despite the damp heat of the truck. She pulled up her sweater, but it drooped again instantly. Throughout the day, she spent too much time studying the parking lot, looking for Rick. Jason raised a dark eyebrow once, which was not good. So she made herself look at the customers. An occasional glance to the parking lot stayed below Jason’s radar.

  At 12:31 one of the ambulance drivers, Sheila Kidman, visited. She ordered clam chowder in a bread bowl. Maya lifted the metal lid off the giant pot of soup to prepare the meal. A rush of dill-scented steam filled her senses.

  Sheila hung out on a stool while Maya handled the lunch rush. The parking lot filled as the sun arced. Still Rick didn’t come.

  “How’s it going renting out the house?” Sheila said. “You have anyone yet?”

  Forcing her eyes back from the parking lot, Maya trained her gaze on Sheila. “Yes.”

  Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “How did you arrange giving them the key?”

  “Simple. Mama insisted we wait for him until he arrived even though it was the middle of the night. She wanted to greet him with fresh homemade cookies. But that wasn’t enough. Mama went further to invite him to our family party.”

  “Him?” Sheila raised a spoonful of chowder to her mouth. With the spoon just at the edge of her pale strawberry-tinted lips, she added, “Is he cute?”

  Blood rushed to Maya’s face. “Yes.”

  “Good for Mama.” Sheila slurped the soup.

  Maya flicked her dishrag at Sheila. “Easy for you to say. The whole situation was totally humiliating.”

  “When do I get to meet him?” Sheila set the spoon down in the now-soggy bread bowl.

  “You’re quite the matchmaker for somebody who’s notorious for staying single.”

  A shadow crossed Sheila’s face, making Maya regret the teasing. What was up with that? Sheila was friendly and lovely with her long red hair she wore in a French braid. Why wasn’t she seeing anybody? Maya decided not to pursue it and chatted with Sheila about other things during breaks. At one o’clock Sheila went back to work.