She looked like a Chloe. Pretty, perfect, happy. But why was she congratulating me?
“Thanks… Did I get the… job?”
The men at the table laughed, and that’s when Jack asked me to sit down at the booth.
I did, and the men in the suits stood to leave.
“Are we good?” Jack asked them.
They nodded.
“She just needs to sign,” one of them said.
Then they all left, leaving me sitting across from Jack and feeling very lost.
“What’s going on? Who are those men?” I asked. I eyed the back kitchen door, expecting Vinnie to come out at any moment and yell at me for being here.
Jack clasped his hands together. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep very much last night. I had to find someone to make that sign on rush order and then fly it in from Seattle.”
“Whoa!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, and those guys are my lawyers. This is your restaurant now, Hannah. Your name is on the front, so you call the shots.” He pushed the stack of papers over to me just as my eyebrows hit my hairline.
“I’m sorry.Whatdid you just say?”
Jack smiled at me, and good heavens, that smile made butterflies take flight in my stomach. He was so handsome. He had a dimple in his right cheek, and even though he looked about four or five years older than me, that dimple gave him a baby face.
“After you left yesterday, I negotiated with Vinnie, your jerk of an ex-boss, and I bought the restaurant. Now, you can keepyour job, and your name is on the front, so you can fire whoeveryouwant.”
I burst into laughter, checking over my shoulder to see if I was being recorded for some social media stunt or something. “You can’t be serious.”
His face fell as if he were disappointed by my reaction. “I am.”
“You can’t buy me a restaurant!” I blurted out.
He tapped the papers in front of me. “I just did.”
I glanced at the stack of papers for the first time. It was a commercial real estate contract and my name, Hannah Phillips, was on it as the buyer.
“Why?” I breathed. “I mean…How? That’s…” I felt tears brimming in my eyes. “This is too expensive. You can’t do this.”
Was this really happening? Some guy watched my mortal public embarrassment and felt so bad for me that he bought me a restaurant. Was this real life? Was I still sleeping?
He shrugged. “I’m sure it seems expensive to you, but it was a bargain for me. And I come to Willow Harbor every Christmas, so I can’t in good conscience come and eat here knowing that jerk is making money off of me. But the food is really good, so I want to come back here.Bigconundrum for me,” he said seriously.
I laughed. “You’re dead serious?” I asked.
He nodded. “I am. Sign here and the restaurant is yours. Land taxes and overhead will be covered by me for three years while you figure things out. But my CFO says Vinnie actually ran things well, and you should make a profit immediately if you keep the menu the same. You could even afford to give the staff a five percent raise.”
My gaze flicked to Sydney, who stopped pulling the menus out and put on a face as if begging me to do exactly that.
I shook my head. “This is all happening really fast. I don’t know the first thing about running a restaurant.”
Jack nodded. “I figured. That’s why I’m flying out my buddy Raj from Seattle. He runs the Mango Tree Indian restaurant out there. Really successful guy. He’s going to give you a two-week crash course on how to manage a restaurant.”
I burst into an unexpected sob and then started laughing to cover it. Great. Now I looked insane.
I grasped his hands. “Jack, this behavior is very sweet, but it’s not normal. You don’t just go around buying restaurants for every girl you see get fired.”
