Love in a Nutshell - Janet Evanovich [5]
That brought on a little more enthusiasm.
“Good, a new victim,” a midnight black–haired young woman said.
Kate thought the employee looked too young to work with beer, except for the tattoo of a bare-chested cowboy riding a neon-colored dragon wrapping its way from her wrist up her arm. Either she’d forged her mother’s signature for that beauty, or she was at least eighteen.
“Does this mean that Hobart and I are breaking up?” the young woman asked Matt.
“For this weekend, at least.”
She squealed, then ran and hugged her boss.
“It’s up to Jerry if Kate stays there, Amber,” Matt said, gently unwinding her and taking a step back. “But you worked hard last night, and I know you’re sick of Hobart.”
Who the heck is Hobart? Kate thought, scanning the crew for a guy who looked remotely like he might have the misfortune to be named Hobart.
Matt turned to Kate. “Let’s go to my office. We might as well get the paperwork out of the way. Then you can report to Jerry.”
“So he’ll be my direct supervisor?” she asked as Matt ushered her back the way they’d come.
He nodded. “He manages food services, which will include you for the time being. He’s the guy you met out front during our unscheduled job interview yesterday afternoon.”
“Oops. I sort of bulldozed right past him. I probably didn’t make the best first impression.”
“Jerry can be pretty forgiving, and you’ll like the rest of the crew, too. About half of the people you saw back in the storage room work for me, and the rest are temps who come in for the bottling. We finished up over two hundred cases just a little while ago. Most of the other employees, except the summer staff, you’ll meet today.”
Matt opened his office door. “Come on in. It shouldn’t take long to get this squared away, then we’ll get you a uniform.”
Kate glanced around, taking in the framed photos on the cubicle-style walls, which didn’t quite make it all the way to the ceiling.
“My family, mostly,” Matt said. He waved one hand toward another shot of a pack of helmeted and uniformed men bearing sticks. “And my hockey team.”
She smiled. “That, I’d figured out.”
Kate pulled her driver’s license and social security card from her wallet and handed them to Matt. “You need these, right?”
He settled in behind his desk. From its front, she guessed it was a vintage oak piece that had been left to molder in the closed-down depot. Its top looked as though a file cabinet had disgorged itself onto it. Working in a measure of chaos definitely didn’t throw this guy.
Kate sat and watched as Matt studied her license.
“Turn it over,” she said, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “I’m divorced. My name is changed back to Appleton on the back.”
He glanced up at her. “Divorced? Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “It was for the best.”
Except for that messy little glitch whereby both she and the ex, Richard, had lost their savings. The McMansion he’d so desperately wanted had turned out to be worth less than a soggy chicken patty when they’d gone to sell it. Even tougher on Kate had been handing over their poodle, Stella, to the ex because he’d ended up in a place more suitable for dog ownership and the court had awarded him guardianship. Kate had fought hard to keep Stella, but the truth was, Richard had a more expensive lawyer, and she lost. She couldn’t bear to think of Stella too much these days.
Matt pulled a form from one of the stacks of folders covering his desk. “Yeah, well, from what I’ve heard from friends, it had to be a pain to go through.”
“Well, it’s survivable, but let’s just say I’m convinced that if you look in the mirror and say Richard Slate three times, he’ll magically appear and kill you with annoying small talk. Although that wasn’t what ended the marriage. I trusted him completely, and he cheated on me. Even after I caught him, the weasel denied the whole thing. You know what he said after I told him I wanted to leave? Nothing. He just shrugged his shoulders and went back to his sudoku puzzle.”
“So your married name was Kate Slate.”
Kate winced.