“Good, because Robert is out there in the restaurant. He’s already ordered, but you can serve it. I’ll finish cleaning this up.”
Felicity felt her heart pound in her throat as she rose to wash her hands. Robert would leave the day after tomorrow. That was the way things went at a resort, with no one staying very long. It was ridiculous of her to fixate on him when she knew all along that he would come into her life and then leave. He was just so sad and kind and tragic, and Felicity wished there was something she could do to make him smile. This might be her last chance to try!
She made herself look logically at the man as she paused in the door of the kitchen with his plate. He was handsome, and she was lonely, and that was all this was. A silly, inconvenient crush. Probably, her foolish heart had picked him solely for his unobtainableness. Was unobtainableness a word? It should be. He would have been out of her league even if he wasn’t a guest at a fancy luxury resort and she was just a server. He had a fancy degree in architecture, and she knew how to set a table and fold a napkin into a swan. They wereworldsandlivesapart.
Felicity steeled herself. She would flirt lightly with him, just like Breck did with all the guests, and never let him see how much she truly yearned for him.
She took his omelet and strode out into the early sun.
“Happy Christmas Eve!” she said cheerfully, starting to put the plate down.
That was when she realized that in the steps across the deck, the unthinkable had happened. The omelet had shriveled around the edges, dry and unappetizing, and the bacon had clouded with congealed fat. The garnish had gone limp and dark with rot at the edges, and the orange slice had faded to nearly white. The strawberries were dark, sunk into themselves, and fringed in lacy mold.
It was appalling, something straight out of a horror movie. Felicity gave an involuntary little shriek and startled, the motion flipping the entire contents of the plate into the air...and straight at Robert’s lap.
CHAPTER14
Robert scraped his chair along the floor as he jolted back in surprise, the horrifying contents of the plate flying at him. It looked like his omelet had been sitting out in hot sun for hours—days, maybe! It was a spoiled, decomposing mess.
Was it a practical joke? Robert didn’t get the punchline, if there was one, in the brief moment before the unappetizing mass hit him in the chest and spilled down into his lap with an unappetizingglop.
He looked into Felicity’s face.
It was the first time he’d seen her without a smile, her eyes huge with mortification, her mouth slightly parted in dismay.
Don’t get angry,he warned himself, but to his surprise, it wasn’t anger that hit him like a load of landscape rocks. The sheer absurdity of the moment broke over him with all the irony and unexpectedness that was possible to pack in one single second.
His maybe-mate had just dumped the worst meal of his life on him, he was going to leave her forever in only a day, and if he didn’t do something soon, he’d have even more to never forgive himself for.
“Felicity…”
“I am so sorry!” she said, putting the empty plate on the table before him. “Your shirt! Your pants! Your breakfast! I ruinedeverything!”
“Felicity…”
She snatched up a napkin and knelt to clean up what had fallen from his lap. “I’ve made a mess of everything! I’m a walking disaster! This is my second destroyed omelet today! Oh, don’t let me touch your juice! It will spoil, everything I touch goes bad, and with my luck, it will turn to vinegar, not to wine!”
Something rushed up from Robert’s chest and he opened his mouth to discover that it was a laugh. Not a company chuckle, practiced for an audience, but a helpless belly laugh. He spasmed in amusement and nearly fell from his chair.
And exactly as he had feared, everything followed it,everything, in a wild hurricane of feelings.
He was angry. He was full of grief and regret and guilt and rage...but behind those were all the other things he’d completely forgotten about. Hope and faith and contentment and humor. It was the last of these that seized him now, and he was still laughing hysterically as Felicity continued to explain, “It’s my fault! I’m cursed, it’s a family thing! I’m so sorry, let me clean this up! Oh, your clothes! The strawberries just exploded, didn’t they! Why are youlaughing?Aren’t you mad?”
“I’m not angry,” Robert said, and relief was another feeling he had missed. “Not at you, anyway. I’m glad.”
Felicity was kneeling, and she looked up at him with confusion in her leaf-green eyes. “You’regladI dropped a moldy omelet in your lap?”
“Yes, if that’s what it took to shake me loose from my self-pity,” Robert said, reaching at last to touch her cheek, since it was so close and so tempting. She shivered, but didn’t pull back. “Felicity...it means happiness.”
She was smiling again, slow and warm, and Robert wondered if his hand on her cheek felt as good to her as it did to him. It was like a phrase of jazz that had just wandered back from cacophony to harmony. “It’s a good thing I didn’t turn out to be a pessimist,” she chuckled.
“It is,” Robert said solemnly. “Because I already am a cloud of doom, and this relationship couldn’t survive two of me.”
“Relationship?” Felicity said in astonishment. “What relationship?”
Robert didn’t answer the question, but asked one of his own instead. “You aren’t a shifter, are you?”
Felicity shot a terrified look towards the rest of the waitstaff that had gathered at the commotion and got to her feet. They were the center of all the restaurant’s attention. Every conversation had died, and only the wind and the distant surf made sounds.
