Be Mine(47)

“Yeah. It’s making Jake twitchy because the sledders will be out in hordes this weekend and every engine he hears is lost dollar signs.”

“Plenty of riding time left after the Valentine’s Day thing. What is the thing, anyway?”

“He says he has a plan. He’s yet to tell me the plan, but he says he has one.”

“How are you two getting along?”

Now, that was a loaded question. On the surface they got along fine and worked together well. Under the surface? They were both a little ticked off they’d talked themselves out of having sex. But she couldn’t say that. She and Paulie were friends, but Paulie and Kevin were best friends.

“We work together well” was what she settled for. “We were supposed to start interviewing wait staff today, but I think we’re having a snow day instead.”

“Oh, I should tell you Kevin wore his T-shirt to dinner at his parents’ and now all the kids want one, too.”

Darcy groaned. “I can’t believe Jake had those made.”

He’d special-ordered three T-shirts, one for each of them. Emblazoned on the front were the words Jasper’s Big-Ass Steak House. She had to admit, she’d laughed pretty hard when he gave her hers.

They talked a few more minutes, mostly about what Darcy should be looking for in wait staff, but then Paulie had to go mediate a situation and promised to call later, when she had more time.

Sick of the beige walls, Darcy pulled on her parka, boots, hat and gloves, then wrapped a scarf around her face for the trek down the flight of stairs to the back door. It was that cold. Once she was in the kitchen, she reversed the process and piled it all up for the one-minute walk home later.

She heard Jake’s laugh before she went through the swinging doors and she stopped, peering through the small window. She could only see him over the pile of stuff sitting on the coffee counter, waiting to be put away, but everything about his demeanor said he was talking to a woman. Whoever she was, she either had a sled dog team or drove the plow truck.

Darcy pushed through the doors and went around the counter to the table Jake was sitting at with a fortyish-looking woman with very short blond hair and a bright smile.

“Oh, here she is. Karen, this is Darcy Vaughn. She’s more or less in charge of everything on this side of the swinging doors. Darcy, this is Karen Sikes. She’s here to interview.”

“Wow. I didn’t think anybody would make it in.”

Karen actually scoffed. “Let a little snow keep you from doing your business up here and it won’t be long before you don’t have any business to keep.”

“Good advice,” Jake said. “I know my four-wheel-drive’s been getting a workout.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. She didn’t even want to think about how long it was going to take to shovel her car out. Not that she was going anywhere. After pulling out a chair, she took Karen’s application from Jake to refresh her memory.

“Waited tables until I had my kids,” Karen said. “Waited on them until they went to school, then went back to waiting tables until the restaurant closed down. You can’t compensate for slow business by charging nine dollars for a cheeseburger. You have a menu yet?”

“It’s still tentative.” Jake pulled his copy out of one of the folders in front of him and handed it to her.

Karen’s laugh echoed through the dining room, and she tapped a finger on the page. “Not a man I know who’ll pass up a big-ass steak.”

Darcy had done everything but beg Jake not to put that on the menu. The cut and the ounces were enough. But he was determined to prove her wrong, and so far, everybody seemed to love it. “I’m a little concerned customers won’t want to say it out loud, which makes it hard to order.”

“Honey,” Karen said, “if you can’t say big-ass steak, order the grilled chicken and some cottage cheese, because it’s too much beef for you, anyway.”

Jake tried to cover his amusement with a fake cough, but failed miserably and she kicked his ankle under the table.

“Little high on the children’s menu.” Karen marked the spot with her finger. “You want a couple of two-ninety-nine things, like a hot dog or PBJ with fries, and a couple of four-ninety-nine things, like chicken tenders or fish, but you want most to be about three ninety-nine. Grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, cheeseburgers. Basically you need to cut everything by at least a buck.”

She must have caught the look that passed between Darcy and Jake, because she shrugged. “I was born and raised in this area and I’ve been taking food orders around here since I was fifteen. You can do what you want, of course.”

They talked about almost every item on the menu. Then she gave them a list of names to beware of in the stack of applications. So-and-so had a drug problem and would steal from them. Another so-and-so was a sweetheart, but clumsy as an ox with a special knack for spilling coffee. They couldn’t tell her if those people had applied or not, but Jake took careful note of them on his legal pad.

It was almost an hour before Karen left, and Darcy’s head was spinning from the conversation. She not only knew everybody, but knew what they did and didn’t want to eat.

“She’s definitely got the knowledge,” Jake said after Darcy grabbed them each a bottle of water from the kitchen. “Competent and definitely comfortable with the job.”

She wasn’t so sure. “Sometimes people like her don’t take managing well. And when somebody’s that firmly entrenched in the community, being too friendly can be a problem, to say nothing of the backlash if there was a problem.”

“She’s at the top of my short list.”

“Mine, too. I just think we need to give her a lot of thought before we jump at making her an offer. But at least we know weather won’t keep her from coming in.”

He looked at his watch and winced. “We have to finalize that menu tonight, so you hold on to the copy with her comments on it and we can talk about it over dinner. I have to go call Kevin before his head explodes. I blew him off yesterday, so next time my phone picks up reception, I’ll probably have a dozen messages from him.”

“When’s he coming up? Next Tuesday, right?”

“Yeah. He’s going to come up Tuesday and look around. Have an on-site meeting. Then Wednesday we’re going to hit the trails and he’ll drive home Wednesday night. You want to go out with us?”

“Snowmobiling?” She laughed. “Absolutely not.”

Shaking his head, he gathered his files and papers. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I’ll live.” She watched him walk away, loving the way his legs looked in worn denim, and he caught her looking when he spun around.

He winked. “By the way, your turn to make dinner.”

* * *

JAKE WASN’T SURE HOW he managed to get through every day with Darcy. She would talk and he would try to listen. And on some level he retained the information because he always remembered the conversations later, but every time he was near her, all he could think about was sex.

If they were in the apartment, he’d imagine taking her on the kitchen table. Or bending her over the arm of the couch. The shower. The colorful braid rug she’d bought to cheer the place up. Sometimes he even imagined taking her to bed.

Downstairs, the possibilities were endless, though at least some of them were probably code violations.

“Hey, it’s your turn. Unless you’re ready to forfeit.”

“Never.” He took his iPad from her and looked it over. They were playing Trivial Pursuit and she’d just blown an Arts & Literature question. Which was good because she had one more piece of the pie than he did and he didn’t intend to lose.

When he landed on the correct space to get the orange Sports & Leisure wedge he needed and knew the answer right away, Darcy made an annoyed sound and leaned back against the couch.

“I think you’re cheating.”

He laughed. “How would I be cheating?”

“I bet you hide under your covers and play this all night so you can memorize all the answers.”

That’s not at all what he played with under the covers, but he’d be keeping his nocturnal activities to himself. “You know, you’re not a very good sport.”

A few minutes later, when she’d added a pink wedge to her collection, he rolled his eyes. “It’s the Entertainment category. You’re just getting the easy ones first so your pie looks better than mine.”

“Now who’s a poor sport?”

Inevitably, it became a race for the last wedge each needed, and the game got really intense. And when he blew his Geography question, the words he muttered were pretty intense, too.

Darcy grabbed for the iPad. “My turn.”

He held it out of her reach. “Don’t be grabby.”