There was something not right at nine fifteen in the morning when Janice finally came in to work at the coffee shop. At that point, Melody had been at work since four. She was already tired. They had been slammed with customers, and she was doing her level best to keep a warm smile on her face while she mixed coffee, chai tea, smoothies, and other morning staples just as fast as humanly possible.

Allie wasn’t there, but that wasn’t entirely unusual. Sometimes Allie did not work as many hours as Melody or more than a few of the other full-time employees. She tended to work half as many opening shifts as Melody, but usually she would come in by noon to work the afternoon closer shift. Melody tried not to think about Allie and her renewed issues with Ryan the loser boyfriend from hell. It wasn’t Melody’s problem. The only thing Melody had to worry about was what would happen when Allie’s brief fling with Ryan crashed and burned and Allie needed someone to help her crawl back out of the gutter where Ryan would inevitably leave her.

“Melody, I want to see you in my office, please?”

Melody turned to see Janice standing in the walkthrough between the front and the back of the shop. Janice had her hands planted on her narrow hips, and her face was arranged into a glower. She did not look happy, which did not necessarily bode well for Melody.

Melody forced herself to smile sweetly at Janice. “Let me just finish this line of customers, and I’ll be right back to chat with you. I don’t want to leave poor Chris hanging.”

“Fine. But make it quick.”

Janice turned and stalked off, and Melody shared a glance with Chris. It was just the two of them. Nobody had come in at ten, but sometimes Janice did that with the scheduling on Monday to cut costs since it was generally a slower crowd on Monday’s midmorning.

“Do you know what she wants?” Melody whispered to Chris as she scribbled an order on the side of a cup and passed it to him.

Chris pursed his lips. “I think it has something to do with you just leaving yesterday without being cut.”

“I wasn’t cut?” Melody snorted. “I had already worked over sixty-five hours this week! I couldn’t stay. Not only that, I couldn’t stay because I had somewhere that I had to be. It’s not my fault that someone else didn’t show up. That’s the manager’s problem, not the other employees’. Don’t you think?”

Chris only shrugged. “I’m just telling you what she was spouting off to Nancy last night. Nancy had to come in and cover Allie’s shift. Allie never called or showed up.”

“Never?” This was starting to be concerning. Melody could not help but wonder what had happened to her friend. “Did anyone talk to her?”

“Not that I know of.” Chris finished a drink and put it up on the bar. Then he picked up the next cup that Melody handed to him. “I think Janice is getting tired of Allie not showing up and you working so many hours that you can’t even help out in an emergency.”

“Okay.” Melody tried to decide what that would mean. Her heart was pounding and her palms were sweating. “I guess I’d better go back and find out what Janice wants,” Melody muttered. “I’ll be back in a few.”

“I hope so,” Chris said ominously.

That didn’t help Melody’s frame of mind any. She made her way back to Janice’s office feeling nervous as hell and worried that she was about to lose her job. What if she got fired? What if that actually happened? It would suck, that’s what! Jobs where you could get sixty-five hours a week were hard to come by. The fact that the coffee shop opened at four in the morning and closed at six was perfect even though it was exhausting.

“Janice?” Melody called out in what she hoped was a non-frightened and very friendly tone of voice. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Sit down.”

Janice gestured to the second chair in her tiny shoebox office. The desk was cluttered as hell with all kinds of paperwork. A schedule lay half-finished on top of the stack. And Melody could see employment applications that had been filled out just sitting there as though Janice had been reading through them.

Melody sat, but she was so nervous that she was perched on the edge of her chair. “What’s up?” It was more of an attempt to sound confident and to hurry things along than anything else.

“What happened yesterday was totally unacceptable.” Janice’s face was set in a stone mask that told Melody she was really pissed off. “You left me here without someone to take over your shift.”

“I swapped shifts with Allie,” Melody pointed out quietly. “We are allowed to do that in case of an emergency. I merely swapped her open shift for my close shift. It wasn’t like we switched days. I know in the past that has really upset your schedule, so we make an effort not to do that.”

“You aren’t hearing me,” Janice said through gritted teeth. Whoa. Melody had never seen her that mad before. Ever. “You left, and there was no one to cover you. That’s not acceptable. Ever.”

“I had to go. I had worked a full eight-hour shift already,” Melody pointed out. She was having trouble breathing. Her head felt hot and her body was ice cold. Her fingers were freezing in her lap. “I wasn’t scheduled to do a double. In fact, Sunday is the only day that I don’t pull a double shift. I had to be somewhere. Since Sunday is my only half-day off, I had made arrangements. I could not change them. I’m very sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Janice snapped. “Allie still hasn’t shown up or called!”

“I know she’s out of minutes on her phone,” Melody mumbled.

Janice froze. She had known Allie for a good number of years. Unfortunately, that meant Janice knew what it meant when Allie’s phone had no minutes left and it was only the middle of the month. “You’re kidding me. She let him come back?” Janice groaned. “Why? Is she a fucking idiot?”

“I don’t know.” Melody refused to comment any more than that. It felt disloyal. “I’m not sure what’s going on with Allie. All I know is that she was glad that she wouldn’t have to get up early and she agreed to be here by noon. It actually made my shift longer and hers shorter. It was to her advantage.” Dammit. Melody was rambling. She only did that when she was nervous about something or feeling like she was in the wrong. She wasn’t in the wrong. She was in the right. Sort of.

“I can’t take a chance of that happening again,” Janice told Melody quietly. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t have you so maxed out on hours that you can’t stay at work to cover a shift when someone doesn’t show up.”

“What about when I have to be somewhere else?” Melody burst out. She quickly covered her mouth, but she felt as though Janice was being grossly unfair. “I just have to work until someone actually shows up even if I have to cancel a commitment that I made on my personal time?”

“That isn’t my problem.” Janice gave an unaffected shrug. “Your personal time is only your personal time when the shop doesn’t need you. That’s the way it goes. So, I’m cutting you back to forty hours and hiring another employee to prevent that from ever happening again.”

“Forty hours?” Melody gaped. “You’re taking twenty-five hours away?”

“You should be glad,” Janice said in a very nearly nasty tone of voice. “You’re always complaining that you don’t have any free time or personal time to do things for yourself. This way you should have plenty.”

“But I…” Melody snapped her mouth shut and stopped talking. There was absolutely no point in continuing to argue on her own behalf. She was going to have to approach this from another angle. “So, you’re hiring someone else. Or you already have?”

“Actually, I’ve hired two people,” Janice admitted. “When and if Allie ever shows up again, it will be to find out that she’s been fired for not showing up. This is the last time I’m going to deal with this crap from her. And let me be clear, I’m not dealing with it from you anymore either.”

“You are such a bitch,” Melody muttered. She should have been shocked by what slipped out, but she wasn’t.

Janice was however. She leaped to her feet and put her hands on her hips in her signature indignant pose. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re going to say that to me when I did you a favor and didn’t fire you yesterday?”

“Are you kidding me?” Melody shot back. She felt weirdly brazen. Why was she taking such chances? It was foolish in the extreme! Yet she was so sick and tired of Janice acting like she was so much better than Melody. It was so irritating! “I work a million hours for you. I pick up shifts for everyone. You used to call me almost every single day to come in because someone else hadn’t shown up. I was practically on a twenty-four-hour call for you! You used to call me at three thirty in the morning because someone was sick, Janice. And now you’re telling me that I’m the problem? No. That isn’t fair.”

Janice drew back as though Melody had slapped her. Apparently, she hadn’t expected any kind of response from Melody. And the more Melody thought about that, the more it pissed her off. When had she stopped standing up for herself? Why did it feel so scary to say that she was being mistreated? It wasn’t like she didn’t deserve equal treatment. People like Janice had convinced Melody that she was on shaky ground. Her financial situation had trapped her into that mode of operation. It was time for that to stop. Not because she was desperately hoping that the financial situation would change, but because she really wanted to feel human and in control of her own destiny again.

“You can hire someone else if you want,” Melody told Janice quietly. “I can’t stop you from managing this place the way you see fit. But you can just forget calling me every five seconds to have me cover an extra shift. I’m not going to do that. I’m not coming in extra. I’m not staying late.” Melody pointed her index finger at Janice. “I’ve looked. That is not in the employee handbook. We have a choice. It’s the manager’s responsibility when someone doesn’t show up. If you made me a shift manager or something, then yes. That would be my problem. But you haven’t. This store doesn’t have a single shift manager. There’s just us, and then you. And I think you did that on purpose. Whatever. Now you get to pay the price for that choice you made. It’s that simple.”

With those final words to her boss, Melody turned on her heel and walked out of the office and back out to the front of the shop. Chris gave her a sidelong look, but Melody ignored him. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened.

Chris had moved to the cash register while Melody was in the back having her little “meeting” with Janice. The result was a backup in the drinks waiting to be made at the bar. Melody picked up where Chris had left off and started furiously mixing coffees and smoothies and pretty much every other mainstay on the coffee shop menu.

Melody and Chris worked that way for quite a while. It was comfortable. In fact, it was so comfortable that Melody did not notice when one of the customers came to stand in front of the bar and seemed to be intent on hanging out there. The rush lasted almost fifteen minutes. For the early afternoon, that was a pretty decent little burst of business. It was good. It helped the time fly by. And when Melody could finally stop mixing and sag against the counter, she looked over at Chris to share the satisfaction of a job well done and another rush accomplished.

Of course, that’s when Chris motioned to the woman who had apparently been standing right in front of Melody for several minutes now. “Ma’am?” Chris said with an almost hesitant politeness. “Can we help you with something?”

“Yes.”

It was the slightly accented voice that tipped Melody off and jogged her memory. The woman appeared to be in her late twenties or perhaps her early thirties. Her hair was dark. Her skin was a beautiful shade of caramel. And there was almost no doubt in Melody’s mind that she was used to getting what she wanted. Her dark hair was swept up into an elegant chignon, and there were huge diamond studs in her ears.

“The blue dress,” Melody whispered suddenly. “I saw you at the gala on Friday night.”

“Yes.” The woman put her hands on her hips and looked down at Melody. “You were the one drooling all over my date.”

“Excuse me?” Melody drew back in surprise. “Are you talking about Cisco Hernandez?”

“Francisco,” the woman haughtily corrected. “And yes. You were so very obvious with your bad hair and your bad clothes.” The woman was gesturing arrogantly to Melody’s work uniform. “You looked disgusting, and yet you thought to flirt with my boyfriend!”

From the corner of her eye, Melody could see Chris gaping in shock. And why wouldn’t he be? This was ridiculous! Melody cleared her throat and tried to say something in return. Of course, she could not help but think about the kiss that Cisco had given her just the evening before. Of course, that was also before the whole world had gone nuts and there was a gun involved, but still. It had been a really wonderful kiss.

“You will stay away from him!” the woman told Melody. “You will never call him again. He is not going to help you with your little case. And if he does, you will ruin him! Is that what you want, you selfish little bitch?”

Melody was so tired of people acting like they were better than her! She felt everything she needed to say ready to roll off her tongue—ready to burst off her tongue. And yet she managed to say nothing at all.

Then the woman—formerly of the blue dress—put up her hand. “You say nothing. You just stand there and remember what I told you.”

The woman left Melody and Chris in a waft of perfume so strong it made Melody’s eyes water. Then the front door slammed and everything returned to quiet.

Chris turned to Melody. “Wow. I don’t know what it is, but you have an absolute knack with making people hate you. Do you usually get yelled at twice in one day?”

“Nope,” Melody said irritably. “Today is just my day, I guess.”

Of course, what that really meant was that Melody was having a seriously crappy day that just did not want to end.