Goodbye, boring old Ruthie with the crooked glasses, the temporary back brace from when she’d tripped in front of her dad’s truck, and the acne that had tormented her from middle school onward.
Hello, semi-glam Ruthie with the waves of less-carroty hair and a smile she’d been told could be “bewitching.” Also, Ruthie with the master’s degree and the experience of living in lower Manhattan. Would that count for anything with Ralphie Reed? She had no idea, since she didn’t know what the adult Ralphie was like, other than his reputation.
Chrissie hurried away, back to the ten million details that went with managing the property she’d inherited from her grandfather. Ruthie adjusted the lottery tickets in the vase to make sure they could be seen at first glance.
She tended to be obsessive about details like that, which was one reason why she was such a good researcher, and also one reason why she drove people crazy.
Like Alastair Dougal, for instance, who tapped on the door just then. He held a tray filled with some of his famous appetizers. She knew for a fact that Ralphie liked them because she’d double-checked with his mother. And then triple-checked with Toni Del Rey, who’d been friends with Ralphie for years.
Alastair’s hazel-green eyes held their usual hint of something between amusement or irritation, but she was used to it by now. He was the chef in charge of food at the new Lighthouse Brewery, while her job was to transform the lighthouse itself into a museum. One would think that with two such different areas of expertise, they’d stay out of each other’s way.
Nope. They’d gone from clashing over every little thing to accepting each other’s boundaries, and now she considered him a close friend. They actually joked about being each other’s “work spouse.” Since her pay at the museum was so low, she worked a few shifts a week as his sous-chef.
Alastair could be a grouch sometimes, mostly when he was in chef mode. Also, he had a tragic past, which she’d learned about in bits and pieces. But once she’d gotten past his reserve, she’d discovered him to be wry, funny, and best of all, accepting of her neuroses.
“Are you planning to propose to this bloke?” he asked with that Scottish burr that all the women gushed over.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” When he raised his eyebrows, she explained, “We were six. There was a green twisty. I’m sure he doesn’t remember.”
Alastair stepped inside, letting the heavy door thud closed behind him. The lighthouse was perched on a granite bluff and constructed to withstand countless Alaskan winter storms. Nonetheless, she fretted about her artifacts.
“Why do you always drop the door like that? My partial orca skeleton gets jostled every time.” She came toward him and took the tray of appetizers.
Alastair glanced up at the skeleton suspended overhead. “Looks fine to me. Very romantic. Not surprised you want to have a date in here.”
She caught his dry tone and made a little face at him. “Ralphie likes skeletons as much as I do. We found the remains of a baby otter once on the beach.”
“When you were little kids,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but he was really excited and we tried to recreate its skeletal structure as much as we could, before his dog decided to bury it.”
“Sounds to me like the dog had more sense than both of you.”
“Whatever. You wouldn’t understand. It’s a Ruthie-and-Ralphie thing.” She took the tray over to the table and carefully unloaded the plates of potstickers, sushi rolls, and bacon-wrapped shrimp.
“A Ruthie-and-Ralphie thing, is it? I can’t decide if that sounds more like a brand of hipster messenger bags or goat milk soap.” Hands in his pockets, he ambled past the table to the angled glass windows, which offered a stunning view of Misty Bay and the mountains of Lost Souls Wilderness. “Now this is the kind of view I’d prefer on a date.”
“I guess it’s good that you and I aren’t on a date, then,” she said cheerfully. “Ralphie sees this kind of thing all the time. He’s a fisherman and he knows the Gulf of Alaska like his own backyard.”
“I do know the bloke.” Again, that hint of irritation. “You don’t have to keep filling me in on the glories of Ralphie Reed.”
“You don’t have to be jealous.” She came up next to him and pinched him on the cheek the way her grandmother had always done to her. “You’re still my one and only work husband.”
He glared down at her, and a mighty frown it was, too, with all of that black hair and evening stubble. His Highland warrior roots were showing. “I’d better be, at that. I don’t approve of cheating on a spouse, even a work spouse.”
“Then we’d have to have a work divorce and that could get ugly. Good thing we have that never-nuptial agreement.” She gave him a cheeky smile and went back to fussing over the table.
“Ruthie, if you don’t mind me asking, how many dates have you been on?”
“That’s a funny question. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I know Ralphie, and he seems like a casual bloke. The kind who’d be just as happy with a beer and chips as a plate of potstickers.”
“These aren’t your ordinary potstickers. These are Alastair Dougal creations. You really ought to give yourself more credit. I believe I saw someone propose over a plateful the other night.”
“Ahh, so that’s your plan. Soften Ralphie up with some potstickers and pounce.”
“Would you stop with that? There will be no proposals tonight. I simply haven’t spent any time with Ralphie since I left for college, and this seems like a good opportunity.”
“So you got him flowers. And what are those?” He leaned forward to peer at the lottery tickets. She moved in front of him to block his view.
He cocked his head to listen to the music floating from the iPod. “Ralphie loves The Bangles?”
“They’re so underrated.”
Firmly, he planted his hands on her shoulders and fixed her with his green-eyed gaze. Honestly, if she weren’t so obsessed with Ralphie, she’d find Alastair very attractive.
Even more honestly, she did find him attractive. But that was the unwritten rule of being a work wife—don’t acknowledge the attraction.
“Ruthie, I feel obligated as your friend and your work husband to point out that you’re going a little overboard. You don’t want to scare him off, do you?”
“You think he’s afraid of The Bangles? His mother told me he still has a poster of them in his bedroom.”
“His mother told you that, or you found out yourself when you snuck in?”
A guilty flush crept up her cheeks. “Sneak is a very loaded word. His mother let me go into his room to leave him my invitation.”
“I knew it.” The grin that split his face looked almost piratical in the middle of all that dark scruff. “Intervention time.”
He tried to step around her, but she followed his movement and blocked his path. “What are you doing?”
“Intervening.”
“How? Why? You have no right—” He managed to dodge around her and she chased after him, grabbing the back of his sweater. “If you do anything to mess up my plans, I swear I’ll— I’ll—”