Love in a Nutshell - Janet Evanovich [25]
By 5:30 P.M., Kate no longer cared how she smelled and her artistic impulses had begun to sputter. No more tiny tools for her, just a nasty, sharp filet knife.
“Almost done?” Laila asked as she entered the storeroom.
“Just three more to go.”
“No time. You’re going to have to put them aside and help set up. The early comers are starting to trickle in.”
Kate looked at her watch, which she’d set on one of the table’s edges to avoid most of the pumpkin carnage. “But the party isn’t supposed to start for another half hour.”
“Free beer tends to make for overly prompt guests.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. All the same, I’d really like a shot at finishing. I swear, with my new minimalist approach, I’ll be done with the last three in a flash.”
“Okay, then. I’ll gather up some help to have the finished ones taken out, and you keep carving. Everything needs to be done before Shay arrives. The good news for us is that she always arrives late,” Laila said, filling a cart with grinning heads and leaving Kate alone in her pumpkin kingdom.
Figuring the time had come to kick the assembly line into high gear, Kate grabbed the big butcher knife she’d borrowed from the kitchen and stabbed it into the top of the first of the three intact pumpkins. It sunk in quickly and deeply. The act was weirdly satisfying. She seemed to be developing a very real disrespect for pumpkins.
“You look like a natural.”
Kate glanced up to see Matt watching her from the doorway. She pulled on the knife, but it had gone in too deeply and wasn’t coming out. She tried to rock it back and forth. No luck. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
He approached her. “Problems?”
If one counted among them a heady overappreciation of a man dressed in something as simple as a black polo shirt and jeans, she had exactly two at the moment.
“The knife is stuck.”
“Let me see if I can help.”
Matt came around to her side of the table. Wow, but he smelled good. She caught a hint of woods and green fields. And, unlike her, he didn’t have a bit of pumpkin slime on him.
Kate moved her hand away from the knife, but not quickly enough. They touched, and she swore she felt an electric tingle as her hand involuntarily began to close around his. The sensation was far more satisfying than stabbing into a pumpkin. Good news on the mental stability front.
Matt wrapped his hand around the knife’s handle and winced.
“Sorry,” she said. “I guess everything’s a little messy at this point.”
With his free hand, he brushed a fleck of pumpkin from her cheek. “So it is,” he said, “but it still looks good.”
He turned his attention back to the pumpkin and pulled the knife free with an ease she envied.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you get a bunch of these outside to line the front walk, and I’ll finish up the last three?”
Kate shook her head. “No, you don’t have to do that. It’s my job, and I’m all about finishing what I set out to do.”
“You’re not just talking about pumpkins, right?”
“I moved to Keene’s Harbor for a reason. To start a new life and build something I can be proud of.”
“And I’m the guy trying to take that away from you? It’s not personal. It’s business. And it was in the works a long time before you even moved to Keene’s Harbor.”
Kate crossed her arms. “Look. I know that. But that doesn’t mean I like it. And I’m going to find your saboteur, collect my $20,000 bonus, and buy back my house.”
Kate didn’t want to even think about the fact that a contractor had spent an entire day at her house trying to locate and fix her water leak. She didn’t have