“Thereisno one else,” Traci told her, desperation creeping into her voice. “I can’t just hire someone off the street to run guest relations. We’ve got to have someone who knows the property, knows the guests, knows how we do things at the Saint. The person running that desk is the image of our family business.”
Parrish found herself shredding the paper napkin in her lap, her face arranging itself into what everyone in the family called her “cement face.” Her eyes were dead, staring straight ahead, jaw stubbornly set, arms folded across her chest.
“You think I’m exaggerating?” Traci asked. “We’re in the same boat as every other business on the coast. So I’m going to have to offer something those other businesses can’t. On-site housing. More money. Recruiting bonuses. Hopefully, that’ll bring in some bodies, but the one body I absolutely have to have this summer is Parrish Eddings.”
Parrish was unmoved. She leaned into the table, her resolve steely. “I have worked at the Saint every year since you started me scooping ice cream in the Parlour at fourteen. You promised that after I graduated, I’d be liberated. I did everything y’all asked. Majored in hospitality management, got good grades, didn’t get arrested. And now it’smytime.”
She slapped her hands together as though wiping them clean of an invisible noxious substance. “I am done with working in the family business.” Shewould notcry. “And I can’t believe you, of all people, would try to guilt-trip me into coming back. Do you know what it’s like? Living in my house? Dad’s sneaking around seeing someone again. Madelyn knows, I know, and he knows we know. It’s gross. And the idea of working at the hotel with her? Bad enough I have to live under the same roof. I just want to start living my own life.”
“Oh, Parrish,” Traci said, her voice low and soft. She really knew how to work the sympathy angle. “I hate dumping this on you. But I’m out of options. I can’t open the Saint without enough staff. But I can’tnotopen, because, just between the two of us, we’ve been bleeding red ink. Hoke committed us to spending millions on the renovations, borrowing heavily. And you know what the past few summers were like, coming out of the pandemic. It’s been brutal. We’ve got to start recouping some of our losses—or there won’t be a Saint.”
Parrish didn’t allow the cement face to crack. Not even a little. “Not my problem.” She picked the bacon from her sandwich and nibbled on a corner of it.
“Except it is your problem. Like it or not, Parrish, you’re an Eddings. The Saint is your legacy. Those areyourlittle-bitty handprints on the patio outside the dining room. Your grandmother pressed them into the concrete the day you started walking. Do you want to see this place, that’s been around for over a hundred years, taken over and run by bankers and venture capitalist vultures from New York?”
“You’re exaggerating,” Parrish said, but dammit, she could already feel the tiniest fissure working away at her façade.
“Am I? Come into the office. You’re a smart girl. Take a look at the books. Talk to Charlie. You know he won’t sugarcoat it. Look, what about this? We postpone your summer program. I’ll pay the cancellation fees or whatever. You come to work at the Saint. Did I tell you we’re turning the old cart barn into a dorm for summer staff? You wouldn’t have to live at home, and I’ll make sure Madelynkeeps her distance. She’s never around that much, anyway. Who knows what she’s actually up to? You’ll get your own room at the dorm. You’ll be well paid. And you’ll have fun. And after this summer, I swear, Parrish, you can go do your Europe program. I’ll pay for it. All of it.”
“A dorm?” Parrish’s upper lip curled delicately. “I haven’t lived in a dorm since I was a college freshman.”
“Or you could stay with me,” Traci said. “And Lola,” she added.
Lola was her aunt’s gassy, wire-haired dachshund. “Oh God, no,” Parrish said quickly. “I’d rather live in a dorm.”
She could already feel her summer in Europe slipping away. Coming out of the pandemic, the past few summers, even she could tell that business was way off. If she didn’t do what her aunt wanted, maybe the Saint actuallywouldclose. And then what?
Time to cut a deal. She couldn’t let Traci totally off the hook. Especially if it meant living in a freakin’ dorm for the summer.
“I want to be paid what you paid Sam,” Parrish said firmly. “And you’re gonna have to explain this whole deal to Dad.”
She grinned, just thinking aboutthatawkward conversation. Her father was civil to Traci, but just barely. He’d be absolutely livid about the nonrefundable fees he’d already paid for her trip. But mostly he’d be majorly pissed that Traci had outmaneuvered him.
“Then you’ll do it?” Traci let out a long sigh of relief. “Okay. I’ll talk to your dad. He won’t like it, but at least I’ll be able to breathe again.” She looked around the dining room, catching the server’s attention, motioning for her to bring the check.
“All set?” the girl asked, handing her a leather folder with the bill inside. She looked down at the mostly uneaten food on the table and lowered her voice. “I’m so sorry about your sandwich. I did put the no-mayo on your order, but we’ve got a new guy on the grill, and I think he gets off on screwing over the servers.”
Parrish rolled her eyes in sympathy. “Ugh. The worst.”
Traci reached for her billfold. “Parrish, why don’t you go ahead out to the car. I’ll just be another minute here.”
“Uh, okay.”
CHAPTER 3
OLIVIA
Olivia noticed the woman at table six looking at her oddly. Early forties, probably. On the skinny side, kinda pale, with dark blond shoulder-length hair with those cool balayage streaks Livvy couldn’t afford. She was definitely rich, judging from the size of the big honking diamond on her left hand, and also that Fendi purse.
The woman kept glancing at her. But there was no time to obsess over it, because the two other girls who were supposed to work lunch had both called in sick, and her manager was being a total dick about it. So she basically ran her legs off, and somehow got food to her tables and managed not to spill anything or get the orders wrong.
It wasn’t until she dropped the check at the woman’s table that she realized the problem. The younger woman had only eaten the bacon off her club sandwich, but the other woman had lifted the top slice of bread off her sandwich and set it aside, which is when Livvy saw that it was slathered with mayonnaise.
Eddie. He was screwing with her again, just because she’d threatened to rat on him for texting her dick pics. She was pretty sure it wasn’t evenhisdick, not that she ever intended to find out.
“I’m so sorry about the sandwich,” Livvy told the woman, after her daughter had left. “I can take it off your bill if you want.”
“It’s fine,” the woman said, tilting her head and giving her a full-on stare. Livvy was getting more than a little freaked out now.
