He squeezed my hands, giving me a half-cocked grin. “You’re not just every girl, are you?”
My heart beat wildly in my chest. “How… would you know that? You don’t know me.” I pulled my hands away from him.
He leaned forward and sized me up, looking me up and down. “I know you’re a hard worker, you’re humble, and it sounds like you’re trying to help your mom. I admire that.”
He knew all that? Just from one interaction with me?
“And you throw a mean spaghetti,” he added.
That made me laugh, but then I shook my head. “I don’t think I can accept this. It feels…wrong. Or too good to be true or something.”
“If you don’t want the restaurant, I’ll change the sign toJack’s Fine Italian Cuisineand hire a manager to run it, and you can keep your waitressing job.”
What? That was…too kind.
“Of course she wants it!” Sydney yelled from twenty feet away, where she’d clearly been eavesdropping. She waltzed over, wiping her hand on her apron before extending it to Jack. “I’m Sydney.”
He shook it and smiled at her. “Jack.”
Sydney then looked down at me with all the sternness of a mother hen. “Sign it, honey,” she coaxed.
Sydney was very much my work mother. She had two grown kids and always looked out for me. She took my shifts when I needed her to, and we were always watching each other’s backs.
“It’s up to you.” Jack held his hands up in surrender.
“Would you like something to drink?” Sydney asked him.
“Club soda with lime?” he asked. “Thanks.”
She left, and I looked at him again. He was so handsome. Was there some ulterior motive here? Hot guys didn’t just go around handing out restaurants to small-town girls like me.
I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I don’t, like,oweyou anything for this, right?”
His face scrunched up. “Ew. No. This is a gift,” he said, and I was mortified I’d asked.
Without reading too much into it, I signed my name at the bottom of the contract and initialed all the tabbed pages.
This was absolutely crazy, butsucha blessing. I wasn’t going to say no.
When Sydney brought us drinks and went back to her menu demolition, I peered over at Jack.
“What do you do for work?” I asked him. Cleary he had money to throw around.
He played with his straw, watching me as if trying to figure something out. “Every time I answer that question honestly, people freak out,” he said.
My mouth popped open. “You come from old family money. Oil industry?”
He laughed. “I grew up poor. I earned all the money I have.”
“Mobster?” I guessed again. “You bought Vinnie’s because he’s a rival mobster and you wanted him out of business.”
Now Jack was grinning. “You’re in the wrong occupation, Hannah. You should be a writer.”
I smiled at that. “What do you do, Jack?”
He watched me intently for a full thirty seconds, as if wondering if he could trust me. “I invented a pretty popular app.” He shrugged, and I dropped my straw into my drink.
“Ohmygosh. TikTok?” I gasped.
