FIVE
“Faisal, Desmond needs more cilantro for the dinner course this evening. I need you to run to the grocery and pick up whatever you can find.” Janey caught Natches’s adopted son as he entered the restaurant several days later.
The young man, dressed in black slacks and a white shirt for waiting tables, moved to her quickly, his black eyes and desert-dark skin a sharp contrast to the white shirt.
“Janey, Mary Lee just called in sick,” Hoyt called out from the register counter. “I’m calling Tabitha back in if she can make it.”
Janey shoved the cash into Faisal’s hands. “Do that, Hoyt,” she called out before turning back to Faisal.
“Jane, Natches says I am to stay here. I’m not to take my eyes from you,” Faisal told her softly, concern reflecting in his dark eyes. “He will be upset if I go to the grocery.”
“I’ll be more upset if you don’t go,” she told him impatiently. “Look at this place, Faisal. Who would be crazy enough to try to attack me in this chaos?”
Waitresses were moving around preparing the tables and waiting stations. There was pandemonium, as usual, just an hour from opening.
“I need that cilantro and I need you to go after it now, before Desmond has a meltdown in the back. If that happens, I’m going to tell him it’s your fault.”
Indecision and a flicker of wariness flitted through Faisal’s dark gaze. Everyone was scared of Desmond’s wrath, even Janey.
“Go.” She pushed at his shoulders. “Natches will never know. Cross my heart.”
He went reluctantly, casting a worried look over his shoulder as he headed out. Janey smoothed her hands down her pencil-slim skirt and moved quickly to help the waitresses prepare for the first rush of customers. Once the dining room was prepared and the doors opened, it was a madhouse of keeping service and quality at perfected levels while ignoring the jibes and comments of many of the customers.
“Hoyt, we’re going to need more flowers from the florist.” She moved quickly to the register and wrote the sticky note before taping it into the memo program of the register computer. “We’ll be in sorry shape if we don’t have them first thing.”
The assortment of small flowers in a tiny vase at each table was a personal touch that she knew would be missed if they weren’t there.
“I can pick them up on my way in.” Hoyt nodded, making a note in his PDA as well. “I should have the morning clear. The nurse will be with Mother in the morning.”
A frown creased his forehead as he made the note.
“How is she doing?” Janey paused to lay her hand on Hoyt’s shoulder. He’d lost his father in Iraq several years before, and now, with his mother’s illness, the young man seemed more worn with each passing week.
“Her medication seems to be working better.” He gave her a thankful smile. “Hopefully, she’ll rest this week.”
“I hope so . . .”
“Janey, this simply will not do.” Desmond was rushing from the kitchen, a frown on his dark Italian face, his brown eyes snapping with ire as he waved a limp stalk of celery in her face. “This produce is inferior.”
“Call Faisal’s cell. He’s at the grocery.” Her lips tightened at the sight of the celery. “I’ll call the produce company in the morning and take care of it.”
Desmond’s lips thinned. “You will call a different produce company and demand a quality product,” he ordered her. “This company, they do not know quality and deliberately give us their worst.”
Story of her life.
“I’ll take care of it in the morning, but produce could be later arriving in the day,” she warned him.
“Rather later than this inferiority.” Desmond raged as he turned back to the kitchen. “I have had enough of this. I will call a produce provider.” He threw her a furious look over her shoulder. “You are too nice. You do not yell when you need to. I will take care of this.”
Janey sighed, shaking her head before turning back to the register counter and smiling at Hoyt. “He’s probably right.”
“Probably.” Hoyt’s smile was tentative.
She returned to the tables, preparing for the dinner crowd, knowing exactly why she was getting inferior produce from the local vendors. Maybe she should talk to Natches about it, but he had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the restaurant. He’d just as soon see it burn to the ground.
Besides, she had promised herself she would fight her own battles; Natches had fought enough of them when she was younger, and he had the scars to prove it.
“I’m here, Miss Mackay.” Tabitha rushed in the door and moved quickly to the waitresses’ station for her apron and to assess where she was needed the most.
From there, the restaurant was so busy, jumping from minute to minute as each of them fought to keep up with the crowd, that there was little time to think, or to consider the mess she had gotten herself into with Alex.
He’d worked her, her brother, and her cousins. She’d realized that over the past several nights, as he worked at his laptop at the table or disappeared into the room she had given him. He was still working her. Those dark, heated glances, the promise in his eyes that he was merely biding his time, that she hadn’t quite escaped him yet.
“Janey, table fifteen has been overbooked.” Hoyt rushed up to her, a frown on his face, several hours later. “The customers are lingering over desserts and the next reservation has arrived.”
“Charge the table a fifteen-dollar overstay fee,” she told him in frustration. “They know the rules. The reservation is for an hour and a half only unless they reserve for more. Have Tabitha prepare the extra table in section two and seat the others there.”
She hated being forced to set up the extra tables. It added to the hostessing and waitressing duties, and once the table was there, they had to continue to fill it, otherwise word would get around that they turned away customers when there was an extra table.
She glanced to table fifteen and sighed at the couple there. They invariably kept their table longer and then protested the fee loudly. Tabitha would likely get shortchanged on her tip as well.
Shaking her head, she gathered menus for the additional table and approached the older couple, Charlene and Don Finmore. Don was on the city council and had once been a friend of Dayle Mackay’s. At least, he had thought he was. He’d had no idea how Dayle had used him until it was over and the news of Dayle’s arrest had come out.
“Charlene. Don.” She smiled back at them as they rose from the upholstered, padded bench in the waiting area. “You’re table’s ready if you’ll follow me.”
Don was older, in his sixties. Charlene was close to his age, and Janey knew this was their anniversary dinner.
“Happy anniversary.” She smiled over shoulder. “Forty years, isn’t it?”
Charlene’s pleased smile came and went quickly. “How did you know?” She asked suspiciously as Janey seated them and Tabitha moved forward.
“Charlene, I’ve known you two since I was a little girl,” she reminded them. “Of course I remembered your anniversary. I was allowed to attend one of the parties you gave when I was a teenager, remember?”
Charlene’s face softened for a moment. “You were fourteen,” she recalled. “Your parents weren’t going to bring you, until we insisted.”
And Janey had paid for it later in a dark, cramped closet.
“I remember the cake,” Janey told her, closing her eyes as though the memory were a good one. “It was delicious.”
Don smiled then. “I had it ordered from Louisville, just for Charlie.”
“And the icing was a family picture.” Janey smiled. “I thought it was the most gorgeous cake in the world. Congratulations again, and please”—she leaned close to the couple—“dinner is on me tonight. Forty years together is a beautiful thing to see. I hope you enjoy your meal.”
She drew back, whispered the order to Tabitha that the meal was on the house and to make certain the Finmores had the proper care for this special night, then moved quickly back to the reception counter.
The memory of that party was a haze in Janey’s mind, but she had never forgotten that cake. A family picture. Parents and children and their infant grandchildren. To Janey at the time, it had seemed like watching a fairy tale come to life as she saw the family interact. And she had, even at that age, known her family was so different, monstrous even, compared to others.
The addition of the extra table allowed several walk-ins a chance at dinner, and allowed for a few extra reservation seatings. By the time the restaurant doors were closed and locked, Janey felt as though she had been through a war.
The waitresses and busboys were working to finish the cleanup, and in the kitchen Desmond and his staff were sanitizing surfaces and preparing to wash the last load of dishes.
“Go relax until everything’s ready to lock up for the night, Janey,” Hoyt told her. “We can handle the rest of it.”
Janey slipped her shoes off as she slid onto the stool at the reservation desk and stretched her arches.
“We need more help.” She sighed.
“We’ve been saying that for weeks,” Hoyt reminded her.
“Have another ad put in the papers,” she said. “I don’t want a sign on the restaurant. I’ve talked to our other girls; maybe word of mouth will help as well.”
Her waitresses made damned good tips for the most part, but the pace was a killer and the paperwork was getting out of hand because Janey was needed in the dining room as well.
“Okay, I’ll see if I can make a dent in the paperwork.” She rose to her feet, bent, and picked up her shoes, before heading to the office, where she knew what was waiting on her.
It wasn’t just paperwork, but Alex.
She pushed her fingers through her hair as she moved closer to the room. He’d be lying back on that couch, reading some kind of magazine. His head would turn to her, that invitation in his eyes.
The invitation to let him take her, to let him stroke and pet her, touch her. Over the past three days her desire for that touch had grown to the point that it was turning into a driving, addicting need. Alex was turning into a need.
She unlocked the office door and stepped in, and there he was, just as she had known he would be. Stretched out on the couch, a computer magazine in his hand. His head turned, the dark shadow of a beard making his gray eyes seem more intense, more stormy.
“Things ran late.” He sat up, legs spreading as he planted his feet on the floor.
Faded jeans and a gray shirt. Boots. Too sexy to be legal, as her friend Rogue had said.
“A little.” She shrugged as she moved to the small refrigerator for a glass of wine.
She was exhausted and riding on nerves. Alex was making her crazy.
“You’re not resting enough,” he stated.
Janey almost snorted at that observation. No, she wasn’t resting at all. She was tossing and turning, imagining Alex in the bed beside her and going crazy at the thought of the ways he would touch her.
That, added to the incessant concern Natches and her cousins were showing, was exhausting her. She loved them dearly. More than they would ever know, but she just wasn’t used to this. Getting a handle on it wasn’t easy, and she didn’t feel as though she was even being given time to breathe.
“I’m fine.” She poured her wine before returning to her desk and sitting down in the large, padded chair.
She tensed as Alex stood up and moved over to her.
“Don’t harass me,” she warned him with a sigh as she stared at the paperwork. “I have too much . . .” Her lashes feathered closed as his hands came down on her shoulders and his fingers began kneading.
Oh, yes. She almost melted. God, this was what a woman needed at the end of the day. She could have just sunk into her chair and become a puddle of goo at the intense pleasure that began to move through her.
His thumbs worked into the backs of her shoulders, then her neck. He rubbed and caressed until she would have given him anything to continue. Until she was nearly a weeping mass of relaxed sensation.
And as the stress moved out of her, another tension invaded her. His fingers on the bare flesh of her neck, his breath at her ear as he leaned close.
“Unbutton your blouse,” he whispered as he kneaded and manipulated tight, aching muscles.
She wasn’t going to argue with him. Not even.
She forced her fingers to move, releasing the tiny pearl buttons and letting the material part over the white, lacy bra she wore.
Her breasts were hard, swollen, aching. She was so ready for his touch. So ready to be stroked everywhere, taken in every way.
Her lips were parting, her head turning for him, when a hard “Natches knock” sounded on the door.
Janey’s eyes widened as Alex paused. She knew Natches’s knock. She knew he didn’t wait. She barely had the first few buttons of her blouse redone when he walked into the office from the outside door and came to a hard, shocked stop.
He blinked back at her as she flushed; then he glared at Alex before he slowly turned his back.
“One. Two.”
Fuck, he was counting. She moved to hurriedly button her blouse and restore herself as she pushed at Alex’s hands.
“Three. Four.”
She had managed the final button when he reached five and turned back. His expression was dark, accusing, as he stared at Alex behind her.
“We need to discuss your assigned duties in this little matter,” Natches growled. “Touching doesn’t come under that list.”
Alex grunted but moved back from her.
“You should wait for an invitation to enter,” Janey informed him in frustration. “Geez, Natches. You don’t just walk in.”
“My name is on the deed, too.” He used that as such an excuse and she knew it.
He moved into the room, wearing jeans and riding chaps and a thick leather jacket over the dark shirt beneath. Chaya should keep him locked on the houseboat so he didn’t cause so much damned trouble.
“What do you want?” She lifted the wine and took a healthy sip. “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you,” she assured him. “But midnight is an odd time for a visit.”
“Not when your sister has a stalker.” He flicked a look over her shoulder at Alex, then grimaced. “You know he’s too old for you, right?”
She was in serious danger of breaking her one-glass-of-wine limit and going for the bottle.
“Natches.” Her voice was warning.
He grunted.“I just came to see how you were doing.” He shrugged his shoulders restlessly. “Chaya, Crista, and Kelly are doing some kind of girl thing on the boat, and Dawg and Rowdy were pouting in Dawg’s. I didn’t feel like putting up with the pouting.”
“So they were picking on you, and you thought you would share the fun and pick on me?” she asked sweetly.
He grinned, then frowned back at Alex.
“The produce people called me today,” he finally told her. “Manager was screaming something about an abusive foreigner cursing at him over celery. Said he lost the restaurant account.”
Janey leaned back in her chair now. “So?”
He shrugged again. “The manager’s a friend of mine. I just wondered what happened.”
“You don’t want to know anything about the restaurant unless it finally burns to the ground, remember?” she reminded him. “So why are you here about this?”
His eyes narrowed. “I just told you why.”
“Tell your friendly manager to remember me the next time he decides to send out inferior produce.” She crossed her arms on her desk and leaned forward. “It was crap, Natches. I was getting the worst of the deliveries, deliberately, because of Dayle. They haven’t figured out yet that the perfect Mackay princess was just as much a pawn in Dayle’s games as anyone else was. I don’t care about the comments, but I won’t serve my customers crap.”
Natches was still, silent for long moments. His expression never changed, but she watched his eyes, watched the slow burn of his temper.
“Look, I can take care of the business,” she told him. “Desmond arranged a new supplier out of Louisville. We’ll get produce later in the day, but we’ll have it on time and we’ll get it fresh. No big deal.”
“The suppliers in Louisville charge more,” he reminded her.
“I’m sure we can weather the small jump in cost,” she breathed out roughly. “I’m not going back to your buddy for supplies, Natches.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” he told her. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”
“Why don’t you tell me every time Chaya chews your ass for being arrogant and full of testosterone?” she asked mockingly.
“But you’re my business, too, and the problems you have here because of suppliers that I know is my business,” he informed her, his voice a hard, lazy drawl. A dangerous sound. “Especially when I arranged with someone I called a friend to make certain you were given exactly what you needed.”
“Maybe he didn’t believe I needed anything better,” she remarked, before pushing her fingers through her hair in irritation. “Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s business, nothing more. I wasn’t satisfied with their product so I went somewhere else.”
He nodded abruptly, before rising to his feet once again and heading for the door. As he opened it, he turned back to them, leveling a look at Alex.
“I’m going to cut your fucking hands off if I keep catching them on her,” he growled. “Damn, find someone your own age.”
He slammed the door before either of them could retaliate.
“One of these days, I’m going to cut his tongue out,” Alex mused behind her.
“Better do it before he cuts your hands off.” She almost laughed, before turning back to the piles of papers on her desk.
God, she wanted his hands on her. But it was do this now or it wouldn’t get done at all.
“One hour,” he told her, moving back to the couch.
She stared back at him questioningly.
“One hour for paperwork, then I’m dragging you upstairs.” He picked up his magazine and stretched back out on the couch. “Better get used to it, sweetheart. Time’s counting down.”
Unfortunately, she spent more of that hour staring at his sexy body and that hard ridge under his jeans than she did focusing on her paperwork.
At this rate, Natches wasn’t going to have to worry about burning the place down. She was going to end up destroying it herself from lack of paperwork completion and an overload of fascination for the man who seemed determined to drive her completely and totally insane.