“That’s sweet and all, but he’s not becoming my problem because he wanted to stretch his giant legs and get some mountain air. I’m trying to run a business. Offer people somewhere nice to enjoy something tasty, keep it affordable, and also pay the bills. I can’t have some drama king blowing that all up for me.”
“Lex, I love you, but I am telling you, if you don’t bring him on while you have the chance, youaregoing to have problems in the restaurant. You don’t have enough help in the kitchen. We’ve talked about this ad nauseam.”
Who speaks in Latin?
“You’re ad nauseam,” I mutter under my breath, but she ignores me.
“That’s why I went to see him when I was in New York, Lex. For you. I still can’t believe it worked, but we need to not look a gift horse in the mouth right now.”
“I wasn’t gifted a horse, I was gifted an ass and it’s going to bite me in mine, I can feel it.”
She gives me a look that says I’m the one being the ass here, and I’m out of energy to fight her on this. She’s shot down every objection I’ve had, and I probably have a better chance of running him out of town than I do convincing Rory to let me pass on hiring him.
I let out a sigh so loud it flutters my lips. “I will try it. Butonlybecause for some stupid reason, I’ve been trusting you as my mentor on this project from the start.”
Rory beams, still a rare sight when it comes to her, and she stands, holding out her arms for a hug. I bat them away.
“No. We aren’t celebrating this. This is a day of mourning.”
She laughs again, and for the briefest second I reflect on how much I missed that sound for so many years.
Rory moves closer, pulling me in for a hug against my will, and I struggle in her arms, trying to break free of her embrace. For someone who’s so much thinner than me, she sure is strong.
“On a trial basis,” I clarify. “Through the summer. And I’m scheduling us on separate shifts as much as possible.”
My sister pulls back from me, tucking some hair behind her ear as she watches me fondly. And to think, she used to negotiate nine-figure deals on behalf of her mega clients. Now she has to mediate spats between the local business owners, and I know I’m not the worst of them.
The phone in my back pocket vibrates. Not just once, like a text, but it keeps going, like someone iscallingme.
Ew. Who calls people anymore? Boomers and scammers, and that’s it.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and see the contact name flashing across the screen. Hitting the side button, I pray that Rory didn’t see the caller and doesn’t smell the unease in me as I slide my phone back in my overalls. I’m doing my best to keep collected, not show that anything is unusual here, and I vow to change the name in my phone immediately.
Lucky for me, she’s still blabbering about Wilder. “You’d better not schedule you two so far off that you can’t coordinate on all the items you’ll need to do together. Menu, food quality, ordering, health inspections, there’s a whole host of tasks your jobs will require you to work together on both before and after the opening.”
The reminder wasn’t needed. My eye twitches, and I slap a hand to it to stop it.
“As little time together as possible,” I say again, through clenched teeth. “And one other thing.”
“Yeah?” she asks.
“He doesn’t find out I’m the owner.”
My sister is too graceful to roll her eyes, but she does something close to it.
“No,” I jump back in. “He’s not exempt from our little secret. We are telling everyone—including him—I’m the manager.”
“I know,” she says, voice soft, like she’s talking to a wild animal.
She’s kept my secret this long, so I’m not sure what possesses me to lay that point out there, but I know that I feel strongly about it. This whole owning a business thing is scary enough without everyone in town watching me to see if I fail. Let them all think I’m just the manager brought in to run the daily operations.
Especially Wilder.
He waltzes up to my business, looking for a job, making fun of the name, the whole existence of downtown, and then he calls me the gardener.
Listen, if I could make a living at gardening, I’d be doing it. My love for plants of all types stems back as far as I can recall. Probably back to camping trips with my dad when Rory and I were little girls, and he’d explain the various trees, bushes, and flowering buds to us whenever I asked about them.
Shit, my small bungalow is full of greenery that are practically my children. Being a gardener is far from an insult.
