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Clearly, Grady had chosen the menu; those were some of his favorite foods.
“Let’s have a shot!” he cried, raising the bottle of whiskey in his free hand.
It was the first of many shots. I ended the night stumbling to my bed, knowing I would have preferred it if Shea had come with me, but too drunk to think about it for long before I passed out asleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Shea
Reality packed a massive punch when I returned to work Monday morning after a carefree weekend at the bachelor/bachelorette party. Eight youth baseball teams and their parents had stayed at The Moose for a tournament, and Nina had done her best to handle it, not texting me until very early this morning.
I wasn’t surprised to see Caden in the kitchen when I walked in at five thirty a.m., but I was aggravated. I knew him well enough to know he was waiting to unleash a full weekend’s worth of stored-up complaints.
“How was your weekend?” he asked, an edge in his tone.
“Fine. Nina told me she hit some speed bumps over the weekend.”
I was trying to tell him to leave me alone so I could work on breakfast prep. I’d given Nina today and tomorrow off to make up for her long weekend covering for me, so I had extra work to do.
“‘Speed bumps’ is putting it generously,” Caden said. “We ran out of bacon on the breakfast buffet Saturday morning for more than thirty minutes. And people told me the scones were inedible on Sunday morning. Cold potatoes and gravy at dinner Saturday. Someone put the whipped butter out on the buffet Saturday morning. That’s only for dinner rolls! Little boys were slathering it on their pancakes and we had to serve regular butter with dinner because, surprise, we ran out of whipped butter.”
I sighed heavily, hanging up my bag and walking over to the sink to wash my hands.
“Baseball tournaments are a nightmare. I’m not sure I would have done any better than Nina. And Caden, she’s my number one. I need Nina. If you drive her out of here”
My boss’s chin nearly hit the floor. I used the few moments of sudden silence to grab an apron from a hook and tie it behind my back.
“This isn’t about who anyone likes or dislikes, Shea,” he said. “Last weekend, the kitchen had so many unforced errors that the level of service was far below our standards. I had to comp so many meals that it affected our bottom line.”
I shook my head, irritated. “Over what? Running out of bacon? Regular butter instead of whipped? Caden, we always struggle to keep up with the breakfast buffet when we have eight baseball teams here. I hate that buffet. And you don’t have to comp an entire family’s meals just because we couldn’t keep up with a hundred boys’ appetites at once.” I went over to the walk-in cooler to get ingredients, stacking them in my arms and continuing what I was saying as soon as I came back out. “Anytime someone complains, you start falling all over yourself comping things. That’s on you, not Nina. She did a damn good job on a weekend with a baseball tournament while we’re understaffed.”
I set out my ingredients. One of my morning cooks, Ray, nodded at us as he walked in to start baking biscuits.
Caden lowered his voice but didn’t let up. “You deserve the occasional weekend off, Shea, but you have to leave someone competent in your place if you choose to be gone.”
“Nina is more than competent,” I fired back. “And I could tell from the text she sent me this morning that you stressed her out even worse than any of the issues she was having. We are understaffed, and this job isn’t easy even when we’re fully staffed.”
Caden put his arms out in a gesture of frustration. “So hire people, Shea. I’ve given you the green light.”
“I can’t find anyone I want to hire! Last time I advertised, the only applicant was Jan Forbes, but with her criminal record, I’m not comfortable hiring her.”
“You wanted to be a department head,” Caden said, crossing his arms and ignoring my very real staffing issue. “You get paid more than anyone else in this kitchen because the buck stops with you.”
“I shouldn’t have to be here seven days a week. And if things were so awful, why didn’t you call me? You call me when the slightest thing goes wrong.”
I hadn’t thought about work once the entire weekend, thanks to alcohol and being with Holt. But now that I was thinking about it, Saturday had been my first day off work without a single call, and Sunday had been my second.
“Oh, I called. I was about to call the police because I was so worried when you weren’t picking up or calling back, and Nina told me that your brother blocked incoming calls to your phone for the weekend.”
“What?” Now, it was my jaw on the floor.
Priscilla walked in and gave me a little wave. Caden sighed dramatically and shook his head.
“We need to finish this conversation after breakfast.”
“I go straight from breakfast into lunch prep,” I said. “I’ll have time around two this afternoon.”
“Fine,” he said. “Find me whenever you can fit me in.”
