Page 9 of Smoked

Too late.

Oh boy.

CHAPTER 3

WADE

Somewhere east of Billings, I finish my coffee.

I set the cup back in the holder and turn up the volume. The narrator is doing the voice of Donut, the talking cat, and I'm a couple hours into a chapter that's just escalating chaos in a dungeon full of sentient furniture. Maybe I shouldn’t be this invested in whether a house cat figures out how to weaponize a recliner, but I so am.

The cab is my second house. First, if we're counting hours. Fourteen of them today, most of it I-90 and I-94 with nothing but wheat grass and sky and the low drone of the engine. I've got a load of agricultural equipment bound for a distribution center outside of Bismarck, and after that I'm deadheading back empty, which means I'm burning fuel for free.

The glamorous life of a contract hauler.

The only things keeping me company are this audiobook, two BBQ manuals with sauce stains on the covers wedged behind the passenger seat, a spiral notebook full of rub ratios, and a half-eaten bag of jerky Riley would scold me over if she saw the cheap brand.

My phone jingles against the dash mount, and I see it’s Sloane.

I pause the book and consider letting Sloane go to voicemail, because she’s been suspiciously quiet since the charity cookout. I expected to be hounded with questions about how I liked Tess right after I left, but nothing.

I answer anyway, since it could be an emergency, and I’d never forgive myself if Ike needed me.

"Hey, Sloane. Everything okay?"

"Hi Wade. Yes, everything’s fine. Are you driving? Am I interrupting?"

"I've been driving for ten hours. You're the most exciting thing that's happened to me since a rest stop outside of Forsyth."

She laughs and I wait.

"I have something to ask you," she finally says.

"No."

"You don't even know what I'm going to say."

"I have a pretty strong hunch."

I swear I can hear Sloane choosing her words carefully, which means I’m right.

"Tess wants to be your partner for the Big Sky Smoke Off competition over Labor Day."

I exhale through my nose and watch a mile marker slide past. "You couldn't leave it alone, could you?"

"Wade—"

"I told you and Ike. I’m not interested in being set up with anybody, no matter how nice she is, or pretty, or how often you shove her at me.”

"This wasn't me, Wade." Her voice drops and the playfulness is gone. "Honest. I didn't bring it up to her, not once. She watched you work the cookout. She asked me about the competition—what it takes and all. She came up with this herself."

A semi passes me going the other direction and it rocks the cab a bit. "Why don’t I believe you?"

"Her exact words were, the rest of the month is open and he needs an extra pair of hands and I'd like to learn."

I chew on that a while. Sloane is a bad liar. And regardless of her burning need to find me a woman, she does sound genuine. Which sucks. Because if Sloane engineered this, I could say no and blame her meddling. If Tess came up with it on her own, I'm saying no to a woman who offered to help because she really wanted to…for whatever reason.

"She has zero experience," I say. "She's never worked a pit, never pulled an all-nighter on a cook, doesn't know a turn-in box from a shoe box. And I'm only a few weeks out from something that could change my life. I'm not running a training program."