“Where’s Elsie?” Hope shouted.
“Outside!” Rex responded.
Cadence already had a fire extinguisher in her hand and was aiming it at the stove. Hope moved quickly to a second one and pulled it off the wall and started to join in the fight.
“Fire’s on the way!” Rex yelled through the smoke.
Hope had to squint her eyes to see anything, but she hadn’t seen any flames yet, so maybe they managed to get it out. Her heart raced as she reached Cadence’s side. “Do you see anything?”
“I think we got it.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Hope took Cadence by the arm and pulled her toward the outside door. They were going to need fresh air, not the smokey air that had been captured inside the dining room. She coughed a little as she reached outside and sucked in her first breath. “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. I went in to get some soup, and everything was on fire.” Cadence leaned down, hands on her knees as she bent over to catch her breath. “Holy fuck.”
Others from the crew piled outside. They brought Elsie with them just as the fire truck arrived. Hope straightened her back and rolled her neck. She glanced at Rex and then straight to Angelica, who was already pointing at different people and giving orders.
“Rex! Make them sit down!” Angelica tossed that one his direction before focusing back on Florence who joined them. “We need an ambulance to check them out.”
Hope leaned against the wall of the restaurant, knowing that she was in good hands. Angelica would take care of everything.
This was the last thing they needed, though.
Chapter
Sixteen
“Thankyou for sitting down with us,” Angelica said.
Angelica slid into the small four-person table in the dining room that was now, thankfully, smoke free. Mitigation teams were still working in the kitchen, but they’d have that resolved easily enough in the next day. The fire wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
“We wanted to talk to you about some of the conversations we’ve been having and maybe set some plans in motion that might help you. But we do need to know a bit more detail about what happened after… the scandal.” Angelica hated calling it that. But in a small town like this, naming it for what it was wouldn’t do anyone any favors. In fact, it might harm Ronan and Elsie more than it already had.
Ronan paled visibly, and he stared down at his hands on the table. Elsie seemed dissatisfied with the fact that they were even talking about this. Angelica was going to have to tread very carefully. Luckily, Hope was there to help her out a bit.
“After the scandal, how did you start to rebuild?” Angelica asked, using a softer tone in hopes that it’d help ease them into some kind of conversation.
Ronan pressed his lips together hard, his jaw clenching. Elsie crossed her arms tightly over her chest and refused to look in Angelica’s direction for an answer. Well, Angelica was patient, and she could wait them out. She continued to stare at them in silence, letting the awkwardness pull them toward actually speaking. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Hope’s mouth opening. Angelica reached out and pressed a hand to her forearm and shook her head slightly. Hope immediately stilled.
“We didn’t,” Ronan finally said.
Elsie snorted. “There’s no coming back from what you did.”
And there was the tension that they’d all been feeling but they hadn’t been able to put their fingers on. Angelica tightened her grasp on Hope’s forearm before she let go and straightened her shoulders. “You two bought this hotel.”
“Mom bought it.” Ronan looked up, directly meeting Angelica’s gaze. “I didn’t have the money to after my divorce.”
Angelica nodded slowly. “And she bought it to give you something to do? A job?”
Ronan nodded again.
Elsie snorted in anger.
Angelica ignored her and focused on Ronan since he was the one who was actually giving her answers. “Ronan?”
“She bought it so that I could have an income. Which hasn’t…” He sighed heavily, that sound echoing the massive weight of the world on his shoulders. “Which hasn’t exactly happened.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Elsie chimed in, that angry tone back. “No matter what we do, this town can’t accept that my boy made a mistake, and move on from it.”
