I can melt down on my own, cry it out, and then get on with it like the big girl I am. It’s what I always do.
“Tell me,” he pleads. “What’s fucked?”
Nostrils flaring, chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, I make the mistake of looking up into his eyes. So far up, he towers above me. The onyx should be forbidding, but somehow it calls to me, the mystery in it tugging on something in me to explore deeper.
Those dark depths search mine, bouncing from eye to eye, looking for a reason for my freakout.
That’s new.
I’m used to a “call me when you’re over it,” or even just tire tracks without a word.
Someone caring? This is something I’m not sure how to navigate. So I let my self-protection mechanism lower the defenses, flip the safety off, and spill exactly what’s on my mind.
“The forecasts. We’re busy, yeah, but lunch service is taking longer than we predicted. Without being able to turn over the tables at lunch, we might be fucked.” I take a deep breath, and the words tumble out over one another as fast as my lips can move, while my hands gesture to illustrate the problems. “We thought forty-five minutes per service at best, but people are lingering for closer to an hour, and there’s no way we can flip all the tables during lunch service like this. Which means we need at least twenty more covers over the dinner service, and we need daily specials to pull that kind of crowd away from their own kitchen tables, which we’ve never even talked about.”
Wilder doesn’t move, arms crossed in front of his chest, listening as I spill, and spill, his eyes on mine unwaveringly.
“I still haven’t got the water report back from the inspector, and it can’t be taking this long because everything isfine. Watch it come back and say we’ve given half the town E. coli or something even worse they haven’t even discovered yet. They’ll probably name it after us. The Heights Bites Virus that causes instant death.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, but not even his necklace shifts otherwise. “What else?” he asks.
“The POS system keeps glitching on me and I can only reach them during business hours, which happen to be the hours I need to use the system. Not the ten minutes I get to work on other shit a week.” I fling my arms around, hoping their customer service hears my frustration from here.
“That it?” he asks, and for some reason I focus on the scar in his eyebrow when I keep my rant going strong.
“No. That’s not it,” I huff. “I got a quote on fryer repair, and we might as well just buy a new one. But with what money? We didn’t budget for capital expenditures this early in. Not for at least six months. Everything is going toward staying operational right now.”
“Sure,” he says, amused.
“And, and—” I start pacing the office, my fluster at hislackof fluster coming through. “I’m also worried we’re going to get too many covers. What if we run out of inventory, everything gets eighty-sixed and then people stop coming here because we fucked it up when they came, and then we have to close down.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding slowly. “That’d suck.”
“And I haven’t seen my best friend in weeks, I’m spending every spare minute here, and I knew this would be hard, but fuck, it’s become the only thing in my life and we’re only a month in.”
“Anything else?” he asks, shifting his large body so he’s taking up even more of the space between us.
My air smells like him. Strongly masculine, spiced, intoxicating. It clogs my brain instead of clearing it.
“Probably,” I whisper. “But I can’t keep everything straight in my head, and I can’t carry around forty Post-it notes either.”
Wilder reaches out, swiping one massive palm across my cheek until he’s gripping the side of my head in his hand.
“You don’t need to bottle this up, Lexi. I’ll help you with every one of these things. Even the ones you haven’t remembered yet.”
My stomach bottoms out, butterflies erupting upward into my chest.
“The forecast. We can flip a few tables to make up for the covers. Or upsell a handful of diners to raise the average cover. Start pushing desserts. But I’ve also got plenty of ideas on specials if we want to draw a bigger crowd at dinner.”
I’m so mesmerized by how seriously he’s taking this—caring enough to get me to spill and not running for the hills after I do—I skip the opportunity to shut down his new dishes.
The tips of his fingers slide through my curls, scraping along the delicate skin there, causing chills to break out along my upper back. I gulp at the intensity in his gaze as he speaks again.
“If there was somethin’ wrong with our water,believe me, we would’ve heard about it by now. The well water is perfectly safe. Zero contamination. And on the POS system, let’s get Wanda to cover you for twenty minutes after the lunch rush ends tomorrow so you can come up here and reach customer service. Maybe it’s time to hire another server so you don’t have to be on the floor as much.”
The pressure on my chest eases to the point I can suck in a breath that doesn’t feel like icy daggers.
“The fryer isn’t dead yet,” he continues. “Let Samuel and I drain it and take a look at it when we’re closed next Monday. It’s probably something we’ve seen before. Got a feeling Dr. Google can help us fix it, even if not.”
