Marrying the Wrong Man (8 page)

“I hope he rots in jail.”

“Peter!” The man’s dinner date reached across the table and grabbed his wrist.

“No, I mean it. That bastard fixed bids and cost me a small fortune in lost jobs.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “He let a lot of people down.” His daughter included.

“Your appetizers are up.” Corbin touched a hand to her back as he passed. That little bit of warmth bolstered her.

When she returned to the kitchen, Charlie’s back was to her. A plate of flash fried escarole and a hummus platter waited on the counter. She grabbed them both without saying anything. Silence was better than angry words.

Back into the fire she went. By now, lots of people were looking at her, but she couldn’t care. She owed Charlie the helping hand. Besides, she finally had a job and a way out of Harmony Falls. She could handle this knowing it was only temporary.

Morgan set the appetizers on the Plants’ table. “Here you go.”

“What is this?” Jessica pointed to the pile of greens kissed with a crunchy coating.

“Flash-fried escarole.” Morgan glanced at the flap of her notepad to double-check.

“I wanted escargot.”

“Oh.” She looked at the notepad again. “I don’t believe we have escargot. Did your menu say escargot?”

“
You
said escargot was the special.”

“Escarole. They’re similar sounding but very different things.”

Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to explain.”

“Can I help over here?” Again, Corbin touched Morgan’s back.

“She said escargot was on special, but she brought us a pile of weeds instead.”

Corbin picked up the plate. “I apologize for the mistake. Unfortunately, we don’t have escargot. How about I take this off your bill and comp you a free appetizer and desserts instead? Charlie Cramer makes the best chocolate cake around.”

“I really am sorry about that.” Morgan forced a smile. What she really wanted to do was scream,
I said escarole. It’s not my fault you heard escargot.
Escargot. In a Harmony Falls bistro. Who did these people think they were? But, at least one good thing came from being raised by image-obsessed parents—Morgan knew when to bite her tongue. She knew how to play the game, and she wasn’t about to make Charlie resent having her here any more than he already did.

“If you want, I’ll switch tables with you.” Corbin fell in step with her as they walked away. “Table two. They’re my parents. They’ll be nice and easy.”

They were.

And when the last customer finally left the building, Morgan was convinced that, after a good night’s sleep, she’d be ready to do this all over again.

Charlie’s office phone rang as he cleaned up the kitchen. He glanced at the wall clock.
After ten.
Who was calling here? Probably a wrong number. He could always check Caller ID. Or, he could ignore it.

He wiped the prep space until it shined. Once Morgan and Corbin finished in the dining room, Charlie was going to thank her for her help, pay her in cash out of the register drawer, and tell her she didn’t need to return.

Every time she walked into the kitchen, the air thinned. Every time she smiled, he blanked. And that couldn’t happen. He needed to keep his mind clear around her—otherwise he’d end up burned again.

The restaurant needed help, but it couldn’t come from her. No, he needed someone he could trust to stick by him. He was done with people who ran away.

The phone rang again.

Somebody wanted to get a hold of him. He walked into his office on the third ring, and saw
Unknown Caller
on the display. If it was a wrong number, he could just hang up. “Hello.”

“Charlie.”

Will.
Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and covered his face with his free hand.

“Guess where Kory and I had dinner tonight?”

He was not in the mood for guessing games. “I don’t know. Where?”

“At the Caldreas’s house. You can imagine our surprise when Hannah came home crying and saying she quit her job at the bistro because she didn’t want to be a waitress.”

“I didn’t yell at her. You told me to be nice, and I was nice.” He’d barely spoken to her all evening to make sure.

“I don’t know what happened, Charlie, and I don’t care. You have one person helping you now—Corbin. I’m starting to agree with my mother; rescinding our financial support and putting that money into a bakery would be much less hassle.”

Charlie sniffed. Without the Mitchells’ help, he’d be as good as closed.

Voices sounded in the kitchen.
Corbin and Morgan.
Wait! Technically, he had more than one person helping him. It wasn’t perfect, but if it saved his ass … “I already have a replacement for Hannah.”

“You hired someone else on your own?”

“No, your mother did. Morgan Parrish.”

Silence.

Charlie sunk into his desk chair. Good God, things had just gone from bad to crazy. Now, he was going to have to work with Morgan until they found her replacement.

“Wow,” Will said. “I did not see that coming. What the hell was my mother thinking?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Is she any good?”

“She managed. End of the night, and she’s still here.”

“Hey, that’s more than we can say for most of them.”

Charlie dropped his head to the desk. She was still more than capable of walking out on him tomorrow or the next night. Maybe he should take bets on when.

“Okay. Then I’ll try to get Hannah back to hostessing since Morgan’s going to waitress,” Will said.

At least something good should come of this.

When he’d hung up the phone, he buried his face in his hands. If he weren’t sober, he’d be drunk by now. He opened the bottom desk drawer and grabbed a bottle of spring water. He polished it off in five seconds flat.

“Night.” Morgan stood in the doorway. She tipped her head and settled her gaze on the bottle in his hands.

“Water.” His defensive streak was still so strong.

“I know.” She smiled softly. “Thanks for giving me this chance.”

He nodded and tossed the empty bottle into the trash. He didn’t want to give her any chances to let him down again, but he needed her—temporarily—or he was going to run this place into the ground. He couldn’t afford to go it alone just yet.

“If you want, you’re welcome to stop by and see Charlotte tomorrow. She’s feeling much better now.” She tipped her head to the other side. “Thanks again for everything you did that night.”

Did it make him a bad man to wish he hadn’t done a damn thing? Then, maybe she wouldn’t be staring at him like there weren’t miles of stagnant water between them.

He grunted like none of it mattered. Maybe that made him a jerk, but if he had to work with Morgan every night except Sunday and Monday, he had to maintain some emotional distance. And he wasn’t sure about seeing Charlotte tomorrow, either.

Self-preservation was the name of the game. He had to put himself first. After everything she’d done, he couldn’t trust Morgan to do that.

• • •

“Morgan Parrish, is that you?”

Three tables into her second night waitressing at Char
-
Grilled Bistro, Morgan hated that question enough to dream about quitting.

“Yes, it is,” she said, smiling at the woman who looked familiar, but not familiar enough to prompt a name.

“You’ve gained weight,” the woman said. “Don’t you think?” she asked the man across the table from her.

The man offered Morgan a weak smile. “I don’t notice those things.”

“Oh, sure you do. Morgan Parrish used to look like a supermodel. Men notice
those
things.”

She wanted to crawl in a hole, but there were no tips in a hole, and she needed tips to make this nightmare worthwhile.

Miraculously, the couple managed to order without any more insults, and Morgan moved on to fill the water glasses at table eight.

Bruce Carter, the local logging baron, lifted a stainless steel cup of whipped butter from the bread basket. “This is real butter. Could I get some margarine? I’ve got to take care of the ticker.”

“Of course.”

Instead of a “thank you” when Morgan filled her water glass, Karena Carter offered the same patronizing sneer she’d been wearing since she sat down.

What was the advice Corbin had given her last night while they’d been cleaning up?
You’re here temporarily. They’re mean permanently. Pity them, not the other way around.
Yeah, that.

When she reached the kitchen, Charlie stood with his back to the door, shaking a frying pan over the stove. Dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans with his tattoos on display and a skullcap covering his head, he looked more like a renegade biker than a chef. She’d always been drawn to that lack of propriety.
Yum.
What was it about those bad guys?

But Charlie wasn’t a bad guy—even though he’d been giving her some serious cold shoulder. No, he was a good guy, who ran to the pharmacy for a child he’d just met, and while he’d been there, he’d purchased a KitKat bar for a woman who’d lied to him. And now, he’d acquiesced to giving that woman a job, under his feet.

Hell, he wasn’t just a good guy; he was a saint.

He reached above him for a bowl, and his bicep flexed.

She pressed a hand to her chest, because saints didn’t look like that. And then she stuck her head in one side of the mammoth refrigerator, hoping to cool herself down.

“What are you doing?”

“Table eight wants margarine.”

“I don’t have margarine.”

She glanced at him. He was hunched over lamb chops like a culinary mad scientist. “Really? Well, you should have margarine for people who are worried about their arteries.”

“No, I shouldn’t. Margarine is one fucking molecule away from crude oil. How’s that good for anyone’s arteries?”

Was he serious? She shut the fridge and stared at him. “You don’t have to eat it or cook with it, but it would be nice to have it for people who do.”

He glared at her. “Don’t tell me how to run my kitchen. Get your ass back out there and tell table eight we don’t do margarine here.”

Her jaw dropped. Was this display just for her, or was this the man who’d been chasing everyone away? “Charlie, I know you’re mad at me, and on some level I deserve the attitude, but please tell me you don’t talk to other people like that.”

“If you don’t like it, sweetheart, then leave.”

Eww.
Her father had been patronizing, too. “I’d love to leave. I really would, but that wouldn’t do either of us any good. You’d be down one waitress, and I’d be struggling to find a way out of this God forsaken town … again.”

Charlie frowned. “I just want to be left alone so I can cook.”

“Then cook at home, Charlie, because cooking here means you have to learn to compromise or you’re not going to be cooking here long.”

He turned his back on her.

So much for sainthood. She glanced at the clock on the wall above the door as she left the kitchen. Four more hours and she was out of here—at least for tonight.

After she told Bruce Carter they were out of margarine, she delivered table seven’s orders, and then cleared table nine. Not until she reached the register, which was separated from the main dining room by a burlap curtain, did she realize Jack Kelley hadn’t included a tip. In the space where numbers representing the customary fifteen percent of the bill should’ve been was the message:
Get your tip from your father, since he robbed me blind.

She crinkled the receipt and drilled it into the garbage can. How could her father have robbed the town sheriff blind? It would’ve been one ballsy move. Then again, her father was a narcissist being held without bail in a federal prison. That pretty much indicated he was capable of anything.

She retrieved the receipt, smoothed it out, and slipped it into the register. As much as she wanted to erase the words, she couldn’t screw Charlie out of the income.

“Can I get in here?” Corbin pressed behind her.

“Yep.” She stepped aside and saw him smile.

“Table eight’s meals are up.”

He was such a sweet guy. At least somebody around here with a penis was.

Back in the kitchen, Morgan grabbed table eight’s plates from the edge of the stainless steel counter. Charlie glanced up from the pasta he was tossing. Their eyes met for a second, but that was it.

Four more hours—less than
, she reminded herself, trying not to be discouraged by the fact that tomorrow she had to do it all over again. It would get easier. There would be good nights and bad nights. Eventually, she wouldn’t need this paycheck, and Charlie wouldn’t need her help. They’d be even then.

When she stepped into the dining room, Bruce and Karena Carter were waiting for their sea bass. She could handle them—including Karena’s bitchy smile. She’d get over Jack Kelley not tipping her, too. But seeing Hannah seat Justin and Alice at table nine just about did her in.

Morgan pawed at the collar of her blouse. Corbin needed to trade tables with her again, because there was no way she could wait on Justin and Alice.

Chin up. Shoulders back. Deliver the Carters’ sea bass, and then pull Corbin aside.

But her brain didn’t quite get the memo. When her upper body moved, her legs dragged, and the toe of her sensible black flats caught on the unvarnished oak planks.

Thud.
Two pieces of sea bass slid off the plates and splattered on the floor.

Sound ceased. Time froze. She peeled the food off the floor and stumbled to the kitchen.

Charlie was waiting for her at the door. “What the hell happened?”

“I need two more sea bass.” She shoved past him and locked herself in the bathroom.

• • •

Charlie knew exactly what had happened the minute he saw Alice and Justin at table nine. This night just kept getting better.

“I can handle it, Chef,” Corbin said.

But Charlie waved him off.

Hannah stood at the hostess podium looking like she was ready to bolt again.

He needed a waitress more than he needed his sister’s patronage. What the hell was she thinking coming in here?