Chapter 3

“And where is Cam?”

Gott im Himmel, why was she still following this strange man?

Wren stopped and hunched his shoulders, peering at her over the thin flannel. “Sleepin’ it off.”

And off he went with his rolling step, pulling the door open and holding it for her.

She headed for the paperwork, adding as an afterthought, “He told me he does not drink.”

Wren cackled again, the dry wheeze of his laugh all at once distressing and endearing. “Nothing we got on tap here, that I can tell you.”

Wren chatted with her while she filled in the information she had not wanted to give Cam and pointed her to a Post-It note stuck under the bar with login credentials for the POS—her name and “Tr1alSh1ft”

as the password. Wren ran the kitchen, she learned, with a rusted iron fist, cooking up the sausages, potatoes, and kraut from Frankfurter Küche, his family’s restaurant on the main street.

“Moved here in the 1930s when things got all”—he waggled his fingers and eyebrows at her—“you know. My great Oma started out cookin’ at the Biltmore, teaching my Oma all she knew and my momma after that.”

“And she opened the restaurant?”

Heidi asked as she straightened a tap handle.

“Nah, bought it off a couple when they retired. Berlin folk. Kept most the menu but changed the recipes to the ones my Oma taught her, and added green sauce to the mix.”

She grinned. Wren was so delightfully American . “Perhaps we can get her to add Obatzda.”

“Oh what’s da?”

“Obatzda.”

Flipping the handle forward, she caught the first sputters of beer in a cup, clearing the line of bubbles. “Soft-ripened cheese with spices and beer. The perfect brotzeit.”

“Gesundheit.”

Wren shot her a gap-toothed grin, hopping off his bar stool as a customer wandered up to the counter.

“Y’all open?”

“Sure are!”

he hollered and sauntered out the door. “Heidi’ll take good care of you, an’ the kitchen’s comin’ right up.”

Her first shift was a dream. Customers came and went, mostly regulars, with the odd tourist popping in. She learned to recognize them quickly, from the soft smiles and hazy, happy expressions they wore as they entered the beer garden. Heidi could relate. She was fairly certain she’d worn an identical expression just that morning. After hours spent serving beers, pouring wines, tidying tables, and chatting with the customers, she felt certain she would wear the same expression when she came to work the next day.

And she did, smiling through the entirety of her shift, and the next day, and the day after that, working a full week in a hazy, happy state. Wren kept her good company, stopping by with snacks when the garden was quiet. And Cam must have filed the paperwork because on Friday morning a notarized letter waited on the bar with a Post-It note in what she now recognized as his handwriting.

He had left them for her throughout the week. A scrawled “Good job today”

and a hastily written “Flush the line on #6”. Some were signed with a looping C, and others, the complimentary ones, with a little smiley face.

This one read: “Fast-tracked an H-3, but skills like yours deserve an O-1.”

He signed with a C and a smiley face.

Heidi stared at the envelope, too afraid to open it and acknowledge the truth that had slowly been making itself apparent over the course of the week. Cam was reliable. Truthful despite that liar’s move, and even that little suspicious flick of his eyes was becoming harder to recall. A week’s pay, a job, a fast-tracked visa… if he walked into the bar right now, Heidi was fairly certain she would try to kiss him.

Which was a terrible idea, of course. Despite that dimpled smile, which she had no problem recalling, and how she couldn’t get the hard press of his body against hers out of her mind.

Shaking away the wildly inappropriate thought, she read the note again. “What is an O-1?”

“Specialty workers,”

Wren answered and rapped his knuckles on the exterior counter. “With ‘extraordinary ability’ like fancy hoteliers,”

he pronounced every vowel and consonant in the word, “executive chefs, Oktoberfest bar managers.”

“I do not have extraordinary ability.”

Heidi pressed the note to the envelope, storing both safely under the bar where they would not get spilled on. “I serve what my customer needs, that is all.”

“That type of visa’s not connected to the employer.”

He balanced a coaster on its side with the press of a finger, flicking the curved edge and watching it spin like a top. “In case you decide Black Mountain ain’t for you.”

“I—”

“Cam doesn’t like folk feelin’ stuck with him.”

Slapping the coaster down, Wren stretched a large grin across his face, revealing a few missing teeth. “That visa’s to buy you time until his friends can get you one that’s independent of any employer.”

“How do you know so much about work visas?”

“You kidding?”

A wheezy laugh left him. “Man’s been up all nights on the phone working this out and near collapsin’ in the dirt exhausted.”

Wren pushed off the bar and began his rolling walk to the kitchen. “Lort knows I ain’t had no rest, listenin’ to him work through the red tape. Least he could do is grab a bite.”

The lunch crowd that day was thin, and even the tourists straggling in during the afternoon were few and far between. She tried to keep busy, tightening barstool legs, counting coasters, and trashing the torn and water-damaged ones before arranging them in neat stacks and, finally, zoning out as she stared at the envelope safely tucked beneath the bar. She still had not opened it and could not bring herself to do so. All of this was too good to be true, and the longer she focused on that, the more she convinced herself that there was a catch, a trap, a trick to Cam and Wren and the beer garden that she had walked straight into.

“Now there’s an intense face.”

Cam’s voice, roughened by a slight rasp, jarred Heidi from her thoughts. She straightened, slamming her knee into the shelf and biting her lips at the bright explosion of pain. Grabbing a cloth, she immediately began wiping the counter. At her reaction, Cam laughed. “Easy, blue eyes. I’m your boss, but not that kind of boss.”

He slid onto a barstool and covered his mouth to hide a yawn. Again, he wore a t-shirt under a flannel with the sleeves cuffed at the elbow, this one in browns, greens, and blues that warmed his eyes. Hazel eyes. A little flat in color. Not the multi-faceted browns, greens, and golds one usually saw in the shade, but hazel nonetheless. His hair fell in a tousled mess around his face, and he regarded her with a drowsy, half-lidded look.

“Hello, Heidi.”

The deep, sleepy rasp as he said her name had Heidi squirming, the pain in her knee entirely forgotten. “Did you get your mail?”

“I did.”

She clenched the rag in her hand, unsure of what to say. A “thank you”

was in order, but would that suffice? If what Wren said was true, Cam had worked all week to get that visa. But if he was so concerned, why did he keep away for an entire week? And what was the catch? “Thank you.”

There, done. When he stifled another yawn, she could not stop herself from asking, “Did you have a good sleep?”

“Hm?”

Cam arched a brow, his sleepy expression and warm smile doing something funny to her belly. “Oh, yeah.”

“Late night?”

“Something like that.”

He folded his arms on the bar and tipped his head toward Heidi. A thick, wavy lock of hair fell over his brow, and her fingers twitched against the cloth. “Can I get a?—”

Heidi ducked below the bar, her knee protesting the movement. Gripping the edge, she took a second to center herself. Yes, he was attractive, and yes , so far, everything he said had turned out to be true, but he was her boss. Her visa sponsoring boss. She needed to focus on this job, not fantasize about brushing thick hair out of his face or wondering if he wore that lazy smile when he first woke. Grabbing a clean glass, she popped up and pointed to the taps. “Which one?”

Cam stilled, staring at Heidi as though she had grown a second head. “I’m sorry?”

“We have all been there. One drink for the hangover. Your bar, your rules, although what was that phrase you taught me? ‘Never drink at your own bar’?”

“What I was going to ask for was a bottle of … tomato juice on the bottom shelf. In the back.”

Heidi lowered her arm and slowly faced the wall, hiding the flush bursting on her cheeks. Gott, had she really just leapt to the assumption he wanted a drink? What was wrong with her?

Sleepy eyes and a soft smile. Unfairly tousled hair. That laugh .

The stool scraped against the floor, and a moment later, Cam strolled behind the bar. He shot her a quick glance before crouching in front of the fridge. His shoulder brushed Heidi’s thigh, and she sucked in a quick breath as goosebumps erupted on her leg.

When he did not move, when she did not hear the fridge creak open, she dropped her eyes and wished she had not.

Cam was still. Utterly still. Deathly still. A hand on the refrigerator door, the other braced against the bar, his head cocked to the side as if he were staring at her leg from the corner of his eye.

“Cam?”

Metal groaned and popped beneath his fingers, his knuckles blanching. She brushed his shoulder, and Cam whipped his head up. Pupils blown out, his eyes were wide and dark, swallowing what light there was behind and beneath the bar. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and beneath his lips, he ran his tongue over his teeth.

He released the bar and, faster than she could track the movement, cupped the back of her knee. His touch was cool and firm, and at the swipe of his thumb, pleasure thrilled up her leg. Heidi bit back a whimper, frozen under his touch, his stare.

“You’re bleeding.”

His fingers twitched, grip tightening, and he drew his thumb along the edge of her knee. Both of their eyes went to the half-inch gash cutting across her kneecap from slamming it into the shelf. Deep, ruby-red blood gathered at the wound, a faint dribble beginning to fall. Cam’s tongue darted out, wetting his lower lip.

Hunger .

As before, the word bloomed in her mind. A fact, sure and sound. The most true thing she had heard in days. And for whatever reason, Heidi edged closer, forcing Cam to adjust his grip to keep contact with her skin.

He swept his thumb against the fat droplet, smearing blood across her leg, and his lips parted with a gasp. Heidi’s pulse ratcheted up, a strange, jittering sensation fizzing in her arms and her legs as his eyes fluttered close. His head tilted forward, tongue flicking out?—

“Beer man’s here!”

Wren hollered from the garden, shattering the moment. Cam jerked away, landing flat on his ass behind the bar with a look of horror on his face.

“Heidi, I’m?—”

She shook her head, clearing away the heady fog that had dropped at his touch, the intensity of his gaze. Clear thought returned, and she took in the man. Pressed against the fridge, Cam looked like a startled deer, his eyes hazel once more and rounded like saucers. The word echoed through her mind again— Hunger —and she asked the only thing she could. “Do you need to eat?”

He shook his head and scrabbled to his feet, keeping a wide berth around Heidi as he darted for the door, popping his thumb in his mouth before disappearing.

Wren was in the crawlspace again, only this time, he was not cursing; he was cajoling. “Come on, just a little. Won’t hurt nothin’, and you know you want it.”

At first, she thought he was trying to bribe a cat, or opossum, or some creature stuck beneath what she had learned was the studio apartment. His voice had a high, needling note, and he was clearly trying to tempt whatever it was with a treat.

“Can’t keep livin’ like this, man.”

Something replied, a muffled sound Heidi barely caught, and Wren stomped the toe of his boot.

“Ain’t doin’ none of us any favors! You waste away and what happens to the bar? That girl?”

Okay, so not a cat or an opossum, but certainly some creature. She sat on a bench and stretched her legs out to wait. Eyes landing on the scab on her knee, her mind returned to the cool press of Cam’s palm against her leg, recalling how she heard her heartbeat in her ears and nearly melted at the hunger in his gaze.

He had fled the bar and sent Wren to handle things so Heidi could go home. And she had, after lingering for an hour and picking at a plate of weisswurst, fried potatoes, and kraut. When Cam never re-appeared, Heidi had to admit that she was, in fact, waiting for him. She gathered her envelope and rushed to the hotel, returning to the beer garden a good two hours before her shift with the vague notion of confronting Cam.

Instead, she was greeted by Wren’s boots and his argument with whatever lurked in the crawlspace.

“You gotta come outta there sooner or later,”

he hollered. “And what happens when the days get shorter, hm? Y’all’s shifts are gonna overlap. What then?”

Another muffled reply had Wren kicking both feet and then he shot out of the hole as if he’d been shoved.

“Sonuva a blood-suckin’ bitch!”

He gained his feet in a cloud of gravel and dust, charging for the crawlspace and stopping when he noticed Heidi sitting there. “Ah…”

She pasted on an innocent grin. “Problems?”

“No. None.”

He twisted a finger in his beard, eyes darting to the crawlspace, then to Heidi. “Just some stubborn critter ”—he raised his voice—“gone and got itself fixated, and now it’s stuck in the crawl.”

“So I heard.”

She rose and sauntered closer. “Sounded hungry.”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Do you think it will come out?”

Wren narrowed his eyes, scanning Heidi before turning his gaze to the crawlspace. “Later,”

he said after a long moment. “When the sun drops behind the hills. Like to see it slinking into the studio if you stick around long enough.”

Heidi stepped back, suspicion prickling as to what sort of critter, exactly, lurked in the crawlspace. Cupping a hand around her mouth, she spoke directly at the hole beneath the apartment. “I think I might.”

Hours later, Heidi lugged a fresh keg from the refrigerator and found Wren behind the bar. “Everything okay?”

“Sun’s goin’ down,”

he grumbled. “Leave that; I’ll get it hooked up.”