Page 20 of His Pickle Her Jam

I squeaked, and he turned towards me, his perfectly arched eyebrows raised.

It’s not that I was cheap, but the guy was being surly. Still, I appreciated a good tipper. I reached into my pocket determined to give him a ten dollar bill for my half of the tip.

“I’m not taking your money, Jan,” he said, when I offered him the money.

“But we should split it.”

“You can get it next time,” he said, but somehow, I doubted he meant it.

I nodded anyway, biting my lip.

“So, I got mostly fruits and herbs, but I also ordered some veggies,” I said, showing him my order.

“Shit. Me too. From what I can tell with just a glance, they didn’t bring everything,” he said, frowning.

I’d been surprised such a huge company was willing to take small orders like mine, but that was all part of Kent Global’s new farm to table distribution policy.

No order was too small. But, of course, they fucked it up. I mean, there were bound to be learning curves when a company did something new.

I just didn’t like that it was happening to me.

I frowned as Buck pulled out his phone and started to compare what was being delivered to what he’d ordered.

“I ordered the blueberries,” I said as we hauled the boxes in.

“I ordered them, too,” he told me, showing me his screen.

Fuck.

“Cherries?” he asked, and I nodded.

It looked like wherever our orders crossed paths, we only got one case or bushel instead of two.

Shit.

That was going to be a real problem.

I knew he had to prep his veggies for pickling today to get his contest samples finished in time.

But so did I.

“Let me call the people at Kent Global, see if they can’t rush the rest of our orders,” he murmured, and grabbed his cell phone.

I nodded, trusting him to take care of that while I opened each case and peeked at what was inside. Everything was fresh and healthy looking, at least.

I frowned as I went over my list.

Everything was there. Only, I had a feeling our ingredients were going to cross paths more than just twice.

I bit my lip and waited while Buck spoke on the phone. He turned to me, his expression unreadable.

“So,” Buck said once he ended the call, “their rep confirmed human error. The person responsible for manually checking orders assumed they were duplicates, since the address was the same.”

“Well, can they send what we need later today?”

“Afraid not. The next order coming this way isn’t for days. Maybe we could drive to the restaurant supplier,” he murmured.

“No, it won’t be as good, and we really don’t have that kind of time.” I shook my head, automatically rejecting that idea.

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