AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even if they did see it, his servers here didn’t know Hadley. They might think he was just doing it for a friend or a woman he was interested in.
And he had to tell himself to not even care. Or why did he care, because the truth was he didn’t really.
Another thirty minutes went by and he was watching the computer to see if a dessert order came up. He could see things even though he wouldn’t be preparing them. But he did want to bring them out.
He’d told that to the server. He’d been out in the dining area a few times tonight just checking to see how people’s meals were. He tried to go out every night, even if it was for five minutes.
He liked to be seen by his customers. That little extra touch.
“Duke,” Mike said to him. “You wanted to bring the desserts to table twenty-nine.”
“Coming,” he said.
He finished the steak he was cooking and plated it and put it up on the run for the line cooks to finish with the rest of the dishes. There were only two more orders to go out that he could see and they’d stop taking them at this point. He could start cleaning his station and then get out of here early.
Once the desserts were plated, he grabbed the three of them and walked out into the dining area and toward Hadley's table.
“Duke,” she said, smiling. “Wow, you are sweaty.”
It wasn’t that hot in the back. At least he didn’t think so. He was used to it. But he supposed she wasn’t used to him working as hard, as Southside wasn’t nearly the flow and craziness as Duke’s was at more than three times the size.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“It’s an honest day’s work,” Stan said. “The food was fabulous as always.”
“Yum,” Hadley said. “The famous chocolate cake. I never tried it the day it was at Southside.”
“It’s been there a few times,” he said.
“But never when I’m there or it’s gone by the end of the shift.”
“You get it tonight,” he said, placing it down. “Who had what?”
He placed down the other two desserts in front of her parents. “Glad you guys could come tonight. It’s on me.”
“No, no,” Stan said. “I appreciate it, but you’re doing us a favor.”
“Nonsense,” he said.
“Really,” Louisa said. “We wanted to see Southside shine and it is. It’s everything we thought it could be and never knew how to get it there. Even Hadley has found a new purpose.”
He smiled at his girlfriend. She’d been getting a lot of orders for children’s cakes. She had something going on most weekends and was able to make the cakes at night, then decorate in the morning and deliver them no problem.
She seemed so happy to keep getting those orders.
And though she didn’t cook in the back or run the kitchen or anything like that when the pub was open, she was someone others were going to with questions when they had them.
He had her training a new server last week too.
She was organized and efficient and she knew her marketing well.
Her ideas were wonderful too, from the brunch special to having a Fourth of July picnic option too.
It was not something he could have done at Duke’s, but Southside made it easier to have things like sandwiches or fried chicken baskets.
It made him wonder why he never thought of those things before. Or why Stan and Louisa didn’t either.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” she said.
