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  It took only the quickest tutorial to get Kieran up to speed, and he and Marlowe fell into a rhythm, clearing out all the backed-up orders. She noticed his Irish brogue got thicker whenever he handed over food, especially to female customers.

  “It’s wildly unfair that you can do that,” Marlowe complained as the rush died down. “Using your accent to charm people into not being angry with you.”

  “Shouldn’t complain, should you? Since I’m using it to save your arse.” He threw a dish towel over one shoulder and grinned at her. “Besides, it’s not like you Southern girls don’t do the same thing every chance you get.”

  “Hey, babe.” Steven stepped onto the truck behind her. “Don’t tell me you’ve replaced me already.”

  He came up behind Marlowe, letting his arms snake around her waist. She could smell the beer on his breath.

  “How’s it going here?”

  Marlowe pushed his hands away and reeled on him. “Where the hell have you been? Where are Chantelle and Natalie?”

  “Still drumming up business. Doing a killer job, I have to say. Everyone loves them.”

  “Great. Except you left me short-handed. Marketing doesn’t help if there’s no one to cook the food and ring up the customers.”

  “Looks like you did okay.” Steven nodded at Kieran. He extended his hand. “Steven Sherlock. How you doing?”

  Kieran’s hand went out automatically, then paused. “Wait. Steven Sherlock… Of HomeSource?”

  “That’s right, I was. Now I have my own operation. Sherlock Homes. Get it?” Steven grinned, pulling a business card from his pocket and extending it with a flick of his wrist.

  “I get it.” Kieran ignored the card.

  “I’m also co-owner of Life of Pie.” Steven smoothly returned the card to his pocket. “I consider myself sort of a Renaissance investor.”

  “We’ve never met in person,” Kieran said, face cloudy. “But I bought one of your properties. Off Edgewood. There have been…some maintenance issues.”

  Steven’s brow furrowed. “Oh, right. Back when I was with HomeSource. One of my associates did the closing.” His gaze flitted to Marlowe for a split second, just as a cluster of people were gathering to look at the menu. “Thank God for due diligence, right, Kevin? Gives the responsible buyer time to have everything inspected…”

  “It’s Kieran.” His voice was a grunt.

  “Sure. Well, nice to meet you. Guess Mar and I better get back to business here. Big night for us, you know.” He nodded his head at the group of women approaching the window.

  The inside of the food truck suddenly felt ten times smaller.

  Kieran tossed Marlowe the dish towel. “I’ll try the pimiento balls another time,” he said. “Got to get back to my own job.”

  Marlowe touched his elbow as he passed her on the way out. “Kieran, I can’t thank you enough—”

  “Don’t mention it.” And then he strode back toward the pub, not glancing back.

  She turned to Steven. “What the hell was that about?”

  “No idea.” He leaned out to greet the newcomers. “Evening, ladies. How can we satisfy you tonight?”

  The women tittered, and Marlowe turned back to the kitchen, rolling her eyes. She would find out more later. But for now, she’d let him do his thing and keep money coming in the door, so she could focus on the food. At least she wasn’t stuck in here alone.

  Still, as the night wore on, her thoughts kept returning to how nice it had been having Kieran lending her a hand, how quickly they’d fallen into a rhythm helping the customers.

  Kieran was moody and arrogant, and Marlowe didn’t pretend to understand him. But there was something solid and familiar about him, despite the fact that she’d only known him for a few days. Even when they closed for business and Steven stayed behind to help her clean up the truck, she found her mind wandering across the parking lot, where the sounds of laughter and music could be heard at intervals as people came and went through the old wooden door, and the cheery yellow lights of the pub flickered in the growing dark.

  9

  It was nearly eleven when Marlowe finally kicked Steven out. A few hours ago, she’d have given her favorite spatula for some help in the kitchen, but now all she wanted was to finish up in peace. Maybe if Steven went home, the camera crew would get bored and follow suit. At the moment, they were set up at the edge of the parking lot, camera on a tripod, doing some kind of time-lapse thing the production guy said would make sense later.

  “I’ll stay with you.” Steven put a stack of dirty pans on the griddle Marlowe had just finished scrubbing clean. “I promised to help tonight, and I will.”

  “It’s fine. I’ve got this.” Marlowe glanced at a picnic table where Chantelle and Natalie (who’d apparently only been hired for the time the truck was open) were holding court with a group of guys with beers at one of the picnic tables. “Why don’t you take the neurosurgery twins with you? Go have a good time.”

  “Awww…sweetheart.” Steven put both hands on her shoulders. “Don’t be jealous. You know they couldn’t hold a candle to you.”

  Glancing at the camera trained on them, Marlowe shoved his hands off . “What is with you?” She tried to speak quietly, without moving her lips. “Why are you so touchy-feely all the sudden? I thought I made it clear this was a business arrangement, not a personal one.”

  “It is. I just thought it would go smoother if we were on friendly terms.” He touched her back. “And I miss you, okay? I’m not too proud to admit that.”

  She opted to ignore this last part. “This would go smoother if you actually help with the business. Like, hiring people who are qualified to work in a restaurant, not models auditioning at Hooters.”

  “Hey. That’s not fair.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “If they worked at Hooters, they’d know what the hell they were doing.”

  “How many times do I have to apologize, Marlowe? What happened with Katie was a mistake. But it shouldn’t mean you become irrational every time there’s a beautiful woman around.”

  “Irrational…” Marlowe bit down on her lip. No. She wasn’t going to do this again. The days when he could bait her into these arguments—where she would get so worked up and dizzy that they’d end up having sex because at least that made sense—were long over. She wouldn’t give him that power.

  She turned to face him, catching the irreverent smile and swoop of blond hair that used to make her knees buckle. “Look, Steven. I’ve got it from here.” She put a hand on his arm and forced the words out. “I really appreciate your help tonight, and you certainly drummed up more business than I would have on my own.”

  “See? I told you!”

  “And we can talk about what it means to hire qualified staff later. But this”—she gestured at the equipment behind them—“is my thing. It’s my first time closing up my food truck, and I want to get the hang of it before the Dogwood Festival…”

  “Which is going to be major. I have so many ideas.”

  “And we can talk about those tomorrow. As long as those ideas include hiring help that will actually help. Right?” She stayed as calm and gentle as possible. She’d known Steven long enough to know that fighting only energized him.

  He looked around the truck, which still held a few stacks of dirty items and leftover food. “You’re sure you’ve got this?”

  “I’ve never been surer of anything. Go. Have fun.”

  He leaned in as if to kiss her good-bye, and Marlowe angled away, nearly toppling into the cash register in the confined space.

  Steven shrugged. “Worth a try.” As he exited the truck, she heard him say, “Neurosurgery twins. Hilarious.” He joined the other revelers at the picnic table as Marlowe closed the service window and turned back to the dirty baking dishes.

  When she finished an hour later, the parking lot and the picnic table were empty. Marlowe flipped off the lights and went around back to unplug the truck from the Tipsy Trucker’s power.
Was it her imagination, or were there way more parts to the plug than there had been in the daytime? Did she flip the main switch first, then unplug from the adapter? Or was it the other way around? The truck dealer had instructed her to do it a certain way and cautioned her about blowing the entire electrical system, but that lesson seemed so long ago. And honestly, she’d been a tiny bit more focused on the way the logo looked and the shiny new cooking equipment inside the truck at the time.

  Marlowe glanced around at the other shuttered trucks and began skulking toward them, hoping to discreetly catch someone else powering down their truck. But as she passed Grape Expectations and the Bun Also Rises, they were neatly buttoned down and silent, no power cords in sight. When she found Crepes of Wrath in the same state, it was a bit of a relief. She’d gotten the distinct impression Bobby and Lynette wouldn’t rush to help her.

  Perhaps Kieran would be willing to help her out again. Marlowe thought of the rush he’d been in to leave her truck earlier, the look on his face when Steven showed up. And how desperately she wanted to prove to him that she could handle this herself. She realized her fists were balled up so tightly that her knuckles were beginning to ache.

  Still. It was a simple question. It wasn’t as if he’d have to run out here and waste his time helping her. She’d just play it casual. “Howdy, Kieran,” she would say. “Thanks for helping me out earlier. I’ll take a pint of your finest beer and can you tell me what the sequencing is for the electrical? Thanks ever so much.”

  Ugh. Why did “casual” sound like a bad Spaghetti Western in her head?

  Shaking off the rehearsal, Marlowe headed for the pub door and pulled it open with all the confidence she could muster. But Kieran wasn’t behind the bar. Instead, there was a woman with a long red ponytail, in rapt conversation with a middle-aged couple at the end of the bar. Marlowe paused, realizing she had no Plan B.

  “Well, it’s about damn time,” Bobby’s voice called from a nearby table. “It’s not enough that she ran around poaching our customers all night, but she’s keeping us here all hours, too.”

  Marlowe turned to see the Food Truck Mafia, huddled together over their empty glasses at the far end of a table, with Bobby facing her from the center. As if they’d been waiting for her.

  “Sorry…” Marlowe said, trying to process what he’d just said, and which part to address first. “For poaching your customers?”

  Next to him, Lynette squared her shoulders, lifting her considerable bosom off her crossed arms. “Yes, ma’am. Sending those half-naked girls around, handing out coupons for free food that way undercut our group specials. We had over a dozen people leave our line when they got them.”

  “It’s tasteless,” said a second woman with a yellow-blonde bob and a maroon T-shirt with The Bun Also Rises scrawled across it. Cindy, Marlowe thought. “Everyone knows you don’t take customers out of someone else’s line. It’s bad manners.”

  “I didn’t know—” Marlowe started. Her fists curled, short nails pressing into her palm. Steven. Damn him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know my marketing team was doing that. I never would have—”

  “Yeah, right,” Bobby said. “You didn’t know your boyfriend was using pretty girls and free food to steal business from the rest of us. That’s not how we do things here. This ain’t a reality show.”

  “I agree, of course…” Marlowe began again, but the conversation was taking on a life of its own around her.

  “Like you could ever be on a reality show, Bobby,” said a quiet brunette woman with cat-eye glasses, seated closest to Marlowe’s end of the table. “You’re too ugly. You’d get canceled the first episode.”

  “I liked the girls,” said a thirtyish man with dreadlocks and a Caribbean accent. “I think we should use them for our group promotions, Lynette.”

  There was a middle-aged Asian couple across from him Marlowe hadn’t met, both in bright-red A Wok to Remember T-shirts. “Me, too.” The man grinned across the table. “Effective marketing.”

  The woman elbowed him, and his grin promptly evaporated. Marlowe would have found all of this funny and charming if she didn’t feel positive the whole group was going to hate her for the rest of her life.

  “I think not.” Lynette straightened and gathered an imaginary shawl around herself. “We don’t need to use sex to sell our food. It’s good enough on its own.” She gave Marlowe a pointed glare.

  “Again, I didn’t hire those women, and I would never…”

  “Speak for yourself, Lynette.” The Caribbean man spoke up, laughing. “My food needs all the help it can get. I’d bring those girls back anytime.”

  “Except those girls weren’t selling your food,” Cindy put in. “They were giving away food just for Marla and her boyfriend. They got all the business, and we lost money tonight.”

  “It’s Marlowe,” she corrected automatically. “And Steven isn’t my boyfriend. He’s just an investor, and he was acting without my permission.”

  Lynette snorted. “He told everyone he was your boyfriend. I know because I tried to get him to stop handing out coupons to people in other truck lines. I explained that isn’t how we do things.”

  Marlowe cringed. “And what did he say?”

  “He said business is business and there’s a new game in town. And we should all be grateful you’re here, drawing TV crowds for us.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Bobby picked up the thread, “if you’d move your magic reality TV truck out of the way so we can all go home. Some of us have to work real jobs tomorrow. First truck in line has to be the first to leave. You’re blocking everyone.”

  Marlowe flushed and glanced around. Still no sign of Kieran. Obviously done rescuing her for tonight. “Well, that’s the thing… I finished cleaning, and I just need to unplug the power, and I…” She looked at her shoes, which she’d just noticed had a collard leaf stuck to the top of one foot. “I’ve forgotten how to unplug the adapter.”

  The cackle Bobby let out, with his head thrown back, was enough to get the attention of the few other patrons still in the bar, as well as the redheaded bartender. “You don’t know how to unplug your own damn truck? Jesus. It is amateur night, isn’t it?”

  Perhaps in response to Bobby’s outburst, Kieran appeared in the doorway behind the bar that led to the office. He looked at Marlowe, muttered something in Irish, and went back through the door, shaking his head.

  All she needed now was a hole big enough to crawl in and die.

  The woman with the cat-eye glasses sighed and stood. “I’ll give her a hand. Bobby, pay my tab, would you?”

  “Thank you,” Marlowe said as she and the woman walked toward the door. “I’m so sorry for everything that happened tonight. I had no idea—”

  “Don’t mind them,” the woman said. “There’s nothing that group likes more than being pissed off about something. Wait until there’s a lettuce recall, or a new food safety law. You’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Simple as it was, it was hard to describe the relief the woman’s kindness brought her. “I hope I can convince them I haven’t been trying to harm anyone else’s business. Steven means well, but sometimes he uses a bulldozer when a shovel would be better.”

  The woman laughed, and Marlowe pulled out her phone to shine the light on her truck’s plug-in. “I can see why you were confused,” she offered kindly. “Yours is the newer model. You flip this switch first, then there’s this safety bracket that comes off before you can take the adapter out.”

  “I’m an idiot,” Marlowe said. The truck guy had showed her this at least three times. “I guess I was nervous.”

  “Don’t sweat it. We were all starting out once, even if my brother conveniently chooses to forget that.”

  “Your brother? So, you’re…?”

  “Barbara Payne.” The woman extended her hand. “I own the Princess Fried.”

  “Oh God. You’re the one who was supposed to get this spot. You must hate me.�
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  “I don’t hate anyone,” Barbara said. “Business is business, and I know Kieran needed the boost for the bar. This way, I can do festivals when I want, and I don’t have to be stuck with that crowd unless I want to be.” She jerked a thumb toward the pub, but Marlowe sensed the woman was just trying to soothe her feelings.

  “It didn’t occur to me I was blocking everyone in,” Marlowe said. “I’m not batting a thousand on my first night here.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Barbara said gently. “Like your man said, we’re expecting you to bring in lots of traffic.”

  “He’s not my man.”

  “You might want to tell him that, then. He was definitely peeing all over his territory, if you know what I mean. Even came inside a little bit ago and said something to Kieran, if the rumor mill is accurate.” When they got to the end of Marlowe’s truck, Barbara walked on with a wave. “Nice to meet you, Marlowe. See you around.”

  Marlowe watched almost wistfully as the woman walked back into the bar, wishing she’d had more time with the only person who’d shown her kindness tonight, but knowing she wasn’t welcome in the pub at the moment.

  Well, not the only person…

  She took a last look at the small window near the back of the pub, presumably the office where Kieran was working. Just another puzzle to solve, Marlowe supposed, and her plate was full of those already. She’d start by moving her unwieldy new business out of the way of her rivals-slash-coworkers and—finally—getting some sleep.

  10

  When she returned to the pub a few days later, Marlowe wasn’t sure what to expect. It was late Sunday afternoon, and the sun glinted off a smattering of cars in the Tipsy Trucker parking lot.

  Marlowe gripped the takeout container of her famous pimiento cheese balls, hoping they were still warm from the fryer at the prep kitchen. Technically she wasn’t renting there today, but when she’d swung by with a basket full of new ingredients and a cold six-pack of beer, the guys from the corporate caterer using the space had let her slip in to try out a few new recipes. The fact that she passed around everything she was testing out for their opinion probably didn’t hurt either.