Chapter Fourteen
Summer
When I walked in, Sharon was fixing her hair and reapplying her too-orange lipstick. It really didn’t go with that fire-red hair of hers, but I doubted she cared.
“Hey, darlin’.”
I smiled and hung up my purse. “Hi, Sharon.”
“Ready for your first night?” She glided over and put an arm around my waist, pulling me close. “I was gonna teach you all the ropes.”
I laughed. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“Nonsense!” She showed me the time clock with its archaic punch system and then gave me a quick tour of the restaurant, introducing me to cooks, and wait staff and dishwashers along the way. “We’re all like family,” she kept saying. Everyone was really nice and I couldn’t have asked for a better pool to be diving into, headfirst.
The café was about half-full and Sharon gave me the run-down on how the hostess’ split up the tables. It was basically one for Sharon and one for the other waitress, Kenzy. “I’ll keep you close at my side for the first half of the night, then I’m turning you loose on customers.”
The way she said it sounded like it was a huge treat, but I was already sweating, thinking about having to handle it all on my own. I really wanted to make her proud. I smiled and nodded even though my knees were trembling. Kenzy waved as she went by with drinks for one of her tables and I barely had time to respond before Sharon took off to tend to her section. We checked in with every table and she had me run drink refills while she put a new order of onion rings into the wheel above the cooks.
Three hours flew by. I had no idea how many tables we handled, but it felt like a thousand. My feet were hurting and I was exhausted. Before I knew it, the closed sign was showing in the window. I started filling the salt and pepper shakers and rolling silverware so Sharon would be ready for the first customers the next day.
Sharon brought over a giant chicken sandwich and a dripping-with-cheese bacon burger and sat down. “Which one ya want?”
I bit my lower lip. God, they both looked so good. “Burger?”
She slid it over. “Thank goodness! I was about burgered out.”
I laughed and piled the last set of silverware in the big bucket.
“So, you gonna come back or was that too much for you?” she asked with a laugh but I could tell she was hanging on my response.
“Of course I’m going to come back!” I said incredulously.
“That’s my girl!” she said with a big, relieved smile.
I took a bite of the huge burger and a dribble of grease ran down my cheek. I dabbed at it and nodded, then swallowed. “For sure. This was great!” I really meant it. Life at Brady’s was awesome, but here, it was different, fast-paced. They both had a definite appeal, but there was something about the café that was just really welcoming. Plus, there was the whole making money aspect of it.
***
“Good morning!” Rue opened the front door wide as our first guests arrived. She and I had been running around like crazies for the previous three hours making sure everything was perfect. I was kind of nervous and stood back from the door, trying to muster my best “hostess” smile. Rue said this family was from Manhattan and I was sick to my stomach as soon as I considered that I might have crossed paths with them at one of Daddy’s parties, or yachting events, or—God forbid—an eventing show. I’d spent my fair share of time in Manhattan…
The mother appeared a bit rigid as she walked into the house, but I watched Rue work her magic and the tension and overwhelming need to be perfect melted off the woman as Rue pulled her into an embrace. The woman’s arms fluttered at her sides, then she lifted them to Rue’s waist.
I know, I wanted to tell her. It’s like the tractor beam-pull of an alien mothership. The sooner you give over to it, the better life will be.
Rue let her go and she straightened, then introduced us to her equally uptight family. “I’m Marlene and these are my children. The tall one here is Gracie. She’s headed into seventh grade next year and she helps me keep us all organized.” Her hand moved to the shoulder of Gracie’s younger sister, also equally beautiful in an almost porcelain doll like way. “Caitlyn is a year younger, and is working toward playing tennis at Wimbledon, and Sara is next and is our artist. She’s ten. And these two...” She squeezed the two boys at her sides. “These are my twins, Max and Marcus.”
As to the kids’ ages, I quickly did the math in my head; twelve, eleven, ten and two six-year-olds. Wow. My mother couldn’t even handle one kid, and Marlene had five of them—three that were barely a year apart.
The kids were magazine cover perfect and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and ruffle their hair, just to remind them they were kids. And maybe there was some part of me that wanted to reach deep inside myself and ruffle my own hair. Because I was these kids. I’d been raised exactly the same way—to be sophisticated with impeccable manners. Now, as I stood here in my mostly clean boots, starchless shirt and broken-in jeans, I realized what I’d been missing and what these kids were missing.
Fun.
Well, if I had anything to do with it, these kids wouldn’t wake up one day, twenty years later, and realize they’d wasted their lives away. I smiled and stepped forward to introduce myself to Marlene. “Hi, I’m Summer. Welcome to Springhill Ranch. We’re all really happy to have you here.”
“Thank you.” She straightened her shirt and smoothed an invisible wrinkle off her son’s shoulder. “It’s just us,” she started, as if thinking I was wondering why there were only six of them. I wasn’t. “Their father won’t be joining us.” Her face fell but she quickly recovered. “He had something come up at work.”
Don’t they always? I just smiled and nodded. “That’s no problem. We have lots of fun things planned for you.” I glanced over the children’s heads at Rue, who was standing there all content like a mother hen as she told Jake to go tend to their luggage.
My gaze clashed with his and I abruptly turned away, feeling heat spreading across my cheeks. I hadn’t heard him come into the room and I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised to see him. “Let me give you a tour of the house. Then you can relax in your rooms and we’ll take the rest of your day at your pace,” I said.
Marlene let out a tiny sigh. “That sounds wonderful. I think the children will be hungry in about an hour. Is it possible to have an early lunch? We’ve been traveling all day.”
“Of course,” Rue piped up. “I’ll set out some snacks, and you just let me know when you’re ready and I’ll get you all fed.”
There was something about this family that reminded me of my own. Well, except that they were nice to each other. But the way they talked, the look of them... it made me nostalgic, homesick even. But the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous I realized it was because I’d never really had a home. Not in the loving family sense. I’d had my dad. He’d been my home.
I took the boys’ hands and turned away from the door. We quickly toured the house and they seemed equally interested in the cowboy look of the place but at the same time, they seemed nervous about all the dust. Yep, these kids needed a makeover and then some. They needed to learn what it meant to be kids and that meant they needed to learn how to get dirty.
The kids started exploring their rooms once we reached them, picking up everything with an examining eye. As I watched the boys, Jake came around the corner with their suitcases. “Mom goes in that room there.” I pointed to her door. “And the kids, here.”
Jake nodded and dropped off the suitcases. As he walked behind me, his fingertips brushed my spine and he whispered, “I was really looking forward to lunch.” I wasn’t sure if he was still making fun of the horrible dinner I’d made and the fact that we’d joked about leftovers for lunch but I had a feeling he wasn’t. He’d seemed earnest in the way he’d said it—like he was looking forward to seeing me.
By the time I got my bearings straight and caught my breath, he was gone, off to grab cows with Brady.
While the kids unpacked and changed, I wandered the small hallway, reliving the feeling of Jake’s touch like a complete fangirl. The twins burst out of their room, followed by the girls. They were all in matching cowboy outfits and they looked a lot more like kids. It was a look that suited them.
“You guys ready?” I asked with a big smile as I tried to wrestle images of Jake out of my head. But, damn, there was something about that man that made it tough.