Page 15 of Renaissance Bear

"Yeah, me either. I figured you'd be sticking to the fairgrounds, I guess. I don't know why." He smiled at her. "Maybe because I know everybody in town who does the Faire, so seeing people I only knowfromFaire in town seems all backwards to me."

"Like students seeing their teacher at the grocery store," Alis said, relaxing into a smile of her own. Her stomach rumbled and she put her hand over it, embarrassed. "Sorry. I really am hungry."

"I don't see how that's possible," Jon said with admiration. "I thought me and my brothers ate a lot, but I think you've already put Bill to shame, and he's the biggest of us. And you're coming back for more?"

"Well, you know," Alis said vaguely. "Faire's a lot of work. And I get tired of turkey legs."

Jon laughed. "Spoken like a true Faire regular. The commoners only get them as a novelty, but I'm sick of them by halfway through the season. But my family's pub is right over there?—"

As he gestured, Alis nodded. "I saw it on my way in. I love the log cabin look."

"You should see the inside. My cousin's really brought it to life in the last year. Anyway, our house is the next road over, so I come here for breakfast a lot."

"'Our' house?"

"Mom and Dad's. They retired to Arizona a few years ago and Laurie and I are still in the house."

Alis's eyebrows went up. "Wow. That must save on rent. There are moments I consider moving back home because I don't know how else I'll ever save up for a house of my own."

"Hah, yeah. The folks paid off the mortgage before they left, so we basically pay the property taxes and household maintenance and stuff, but yeah. I know how lucky I am. I've been looking at buying, but there hasn't really been a compelling need." Up until now, Jon thought. He would be thrilled to buy a house for Alis to come home to.

Which was getting way ahead of himself. "Do you still live in Maryland?"

"Nooo, um, I'm living in New York now. Teaching in Syracuse. It's not convenient for coming to faires out West but it's beautiful." Alis glanced toward the windows and the view of the not-so-distant Rockies before smiling back at him. "Different kind of beautiful."

"Oh, Syracuse! That's only a couple hours from where my brother ended up. Do you know Virtue?"

Alis's eyebrows rose and Jon laughed. "New York. Virtue, New York. I am not asking about your personal relationship with virtue."

"My virtue and I are comfortable with our relationship," Alis said with a quick grin, then shook her head. "I don't know it, but—oh, no, wait! Is that the town Zane Bellamy's from? They had that big fashion designer contest a couple years ago and some woman who lived there won. I remember that because she was a school teacher, too."

"Iiiii don't have a clue who Zane Bellamy is, but there's probably only one Virtue, New York, so: yeah? The whole family went out there last year for Steve's wedding. It really is pretty. Imean, upstate New York in general, but Virtue is what I saw the most of. Oh, those look good," Jon added as Connie appeared with plates and plates of food. The waffles she settled in front of him were fluffy and light, though as Connie left again and he tried one, he did lean over the table to murmur, "Don't tell Connie, but my sister-in-law, Steve's new wife, she's a chef and her waffles aresomuch better than these."

"Well, waffles aren't like beer," Alis said. "It's harder to mass-produce them at quality levels." She paused. "I assume. I have no real idea if beer is better in small batches, too."

"It's—different." Jon had to take a bite of waffle to keep himself from launching into a lecture.

"Different how?" Alis, eating her second breakfast with as much gusto as she'd eaten the last bites of her first, gestured with her fork. "I don't want to know everything, but tell me something."

She really was perfect. Jon tried not to beam too idiotically. "Well, okay, so big companies are going for consistency, right? You always want a Budweiser to taste like a Budweiser, and there's this whole process it goes through to maintain that. Smaller breweries like Thunder Bear have more room to play around. We still want our big sellers to be pretty consistent, but if this year's batch is more malty or—" He waved his fork. "Citrusy. Earthy. Whatever. Because of the weather conditions, or something, we can absorb that and feature it instead of considering it a loss. So it's not exactly the same as mass-producing waffles, but it's not all that different in some ways, either."

"Well." Now Alis pointed with her fork, first toward his waffle, then toward the kitchen. "So your sister-in-law is doing, like, super small-batch waffles for the family, maybe. This place is doing large-scale production like your beers: not everybodyis going to get exactly the same quality of waffle but they'll be better than the real mass produced toaster waffles. Right?"

"Yeah, that seems fair." Jon grinned at her. "How do you make talking about beer and waffles so interesting?"

"It's my personal flair." Alis tossed her hair, although it was worn up in a curly, knotted twist that didn't really toss. She looked incredibly cute in jeans and a white t-shirt, a totally classic combination, and she had eaten more food than he would have thought possible even if shehadn'tbeen polishing off the last of several plates when he'd arrived. "So will you be at the tavern after the fights this morning?"

"Unless there's somewhere else my lady fair requires me to be, yes. Is there somewhere else?" Jon asked hopefully.

She grinned. "That still depends on how well you do in the fights, so eat up, you'll need your strength. No, seriously, though, there's a set piece around five this afternoon, after the armored fighting, where each lady of the court is supposed to declare her champion for the rest of the faire. If you can be there, I'll choose you."

Jon's heart thumped. "What if I do badly in the lists today?"

"Then my true and trusting faith will see you through the final fights. Do you joust?" she asked, and although it followed the line of conversation, Jon startled.

"No. No, Laurie and I used to want to when we were kids, but Mom saw too many people break arms or legs when they got unhorsed and was like 'nope.' I think she didn't care if we got a broken leg so much as she didn't want to have to deal with us?—"

He broke off, suddenly realizing he'd been about to say that their mother didn't want to have to deal with them being forced topretendthey were hurt for weeks, in the way Laurie currently had to. But saying that meant explaining why they wouldn't actually be hurt for all that long. Even if he thought Alis was ready to hear that, explaining it in a diner was not a good idea."…she didn't want to deal with us complaining at her all the time." That wasn't a lie, even if it wasn't the whole truth.

---