“I think I’ve made it clear that I want to talk to you.”
“And I’ve made it more than clear that I don’t want that. So you need to leave.”
She makes an obnoxious tutting sound. “I’m a paying guest. And I’m not leaving until we talk.”
I heave a long sigh.Someone give me strength and patience and don’t let me kill her.“If you insist on doing this to me, we need to do it in private. Not in the middle of my workplace.”
“Then let’s go somewhere private,” she says.
“I’mworking,” I emphasize. “I’ll meet you when I’m done after lunch.”
“Sounds good to me.” The smile she gives me now is a bit twisted, almost like she’s gloating that she’s won. I want to rip that smile off her face and shove it up her ass, but I can’t make a scene. “I’ll be right here waiting for you,” she adds, which sounds an awful lot like a threat.
“Super,” I bite out. Then I turn around and hightail it back to the kitchen.
For the rest of the breakfast service and throughout lunch, I periodically ask the servers if Christy’s still out there, and every time, theyreport that she is. So it seems she hasn’t lost any of her stubbornness since we were together.
I rush through the clean up after lunch, because at this point, I just want to get this disaster over with. As soon as Sam arrives to take over for the dinner shift, I go out to face my past that I thought I’d buried under a mountain of divorce papers.
Christy is sitting at the same table, in the now otherwise empty dining room, scrolling on her phone. She looks up as I approach her. “I thought I’d have to track you down.”
“Let’s do this so we can be done with it,” I tell her.
“All right.” She stands and smooths out the imaginary wrinkles in her perfectly pressed black pants.
I follow her out of the dining room and toward the lobby, but when she turns to go up the staircase rather than out the front, I want to argue. I decide to keep my mouth shut, though. The quicker I can get this over with, the better. And at least this way I won’t be confined in the small space of a car with her to go somewhere else.
When she stops to unlock her guest room, I glance across the hall. Riley’s room is right there, only one door over. It weirds me out to think that when Riley was holding me together in her arms last night, Christy was this close by. Like my ex’s poison might have seeped right under the doors and infected us while we were sleeping.
Christy gestures me inside first. Then she shuts the door behind us in a perfectly normal fashion, but I jolt as if she’s slammed it. She laughs wryly. “Relax. I’m not going to bite you. Unless you want me to.”
“Enough,” I say. “I’m not joking around with you. You wanted to talk, I’m here. So go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say.”
She perches on the end of the bed and pats the space next to her. “Come sit.”
I give her a dirty look as I go over to the small table and sit down in one of the wooden chairs.
Sighing, she says, “Have it your way. But I promise, I didn’t come for anything bad.”
I can’t imagine any possible reason she could have for coming here that I’d consider good, but I don’t say that. Glancing around the room while I wait for her to get on with it, I feel a tiny sense of smug satisfaction in noting that Riley’s room is much larger.
After an uncomfortable stretch of silence, Christy says, “I’d like you to come back.”
A short laugh bursts out of me. “You must be joking.”
“No, I’m not.”
I shake my head. How this woman could ever believe that I’d go back to her after all the horrible things she did is astounding. “There’s not a chance in hell,” I tell her. “We are so beyond over. We signed the papers, I packed up my stuff, and I left the damn state to get away from you. And I haven’t felt any ounce of desire to look back.”
Her face scrunches up for a second, then she scoffs. “I’m not talking about us getting back together.”
Okay, now I’m confused. “Then what are you talking about?”
“The restaurant,” she says sharply, like a slap in the face. Like obviously I should have understood that. I gape at her, and she shifts her tone to something that almost resembles pleasant when she continues. “I’d like you to come back and take over as head chef.”
“As your partner?” I ask, still trying to process this.
“No, the restaurant is mine now. But you’d be in charge of the kitchen operations like before.”
