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“Sure, I’ll take care of it,” Greyson said, and Harris nodded before striding to his tiny room. He genuinely needed to send emails and get some work done, but it was also a convenient excuse to avoid Greyson’s company.
He sank down onto his lumpy bed and sighed dismally. Seeing Libby happy and settled and also finally getting to spend time with his adorable niece had made his decision to come here worth it. But he didn’t know what to do about Tina, and he definitely wasn’t sure that being here would in any way improve his relationship with Greyson.
He shoved both hands through his hair and swore shakily. Like Greyson, he usually knew what to do in most situations, but this entire fucked-up mess was confusing and had him doubting his every decision.
It was dark.
Tina blinked, disoriented and terrified by the absolute blackness of her surroundings. She was curled up in bed.
Naked. Freezing.
She sat up and wrapped her arms around her body in an attempt to both self-soothe and warm up. The gesture did neither.
She felt around for her phone, finding the device under her pillow. The screen lit up, flooding her immediate surroundings with light, and she sucked in a relieved breath, only then realizing that she had been breathing in shallow, panicked pants.
She swore when she saw the time. After seven—dinner service would have started already. There were dozens of missed calls and messages on her phone. Most of them from Libby; some from Ricardo, the restaurant’s service manager; and one missed call from her mother.
“Crap!” she swore, frantically punching the call button on Libby’s number. Her friend replied almost immediately.
“Tina? What the hell? Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Hey, Libby. I’m so sorry. I came home to do some work and I fell asleep. My phone died, so I got none of your messages until now.”
“Charlie told me you left when Clara wouldn’t stop crying.”
Tina winced, remembering her complete meltdown earlier. Triggered by the fraught encounter with Harris in the ladies’ room and culminating with the baby’s crying.
“I needed to . . . I’m sorry. I needed to concentrate.”
There was an extended moment of silence from Libby, during which Tina could hear pots and pans clamoring in the background and raised voices as the kitchen staff communicated back and forth.
“I’m sorry I left,” she said, once it became clear that Libby wasn’t going to say anything. “I’ll be right over. God, this is so . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to utter the word unprofessional and instead let the sentence die.
“I’ll see you soon.” Libby’s voice sounded distant. Cold. And Tina bit back a sob. She knew she must have offended Libby by implying that she couldn’t concentrate with Clara in the office, but it had been the most convenient excuse for her appalling lack of professionalism today.
“Fifteen minutes,” she promised, leaping out of bed. She wasn’t sure her friend had heard her words, though, because the call had been dropped. Or Libby had hung up on her.
She entered the restaurant exactly fifteen minutes later and stopped for a moment as she blinked at the scene that met her eyes. It was a good crowd. Their best yet. Still not at capacity, but nearly three-quarters of the tables were filled.
Ricardo looked relieved to see her and came bustling over to her.
“Miss Jenson, hey, I’ve been trying to reach you. We don’t have enough napkins. We ran out halfway through our lunch service, and I had to send one of the busboys out for paper serviettes. With the other napkins in the laundry, I—”
“Ricardo.” She halted the nervous torrent of words with a raised hand, and the man stuttered to a halt. “I’ll call the company on Monday to find out what went wrong with our order. We should have had more than enough to last the week. In the meantime, keep using the paper, and well done on finding a solution so quickly.”
He looked relieved and nodded, offering her a small smile.
“Did everything else go smoothly?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “Our lunchtime crowd grew a bit after you left.”
“Fantastic. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. My phone died.” He looked surprised by that but nodded, accepting her explanation. “I’ll just check in on the kitchen, and then I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
She headed straight to the kitchen and found Libby bent over a countertop, putting the finishing touches on a dark-chocolate mousse. She watched as her friend dotted some raspberry coulis around the mousse and garnished the dessert with a sprig of mint and more raspberries before calling for service.
“Libby,” she said quietly before the woman could move on to another task, and Libby’s head snapped up. Her expression cooled when she saw who had called her, and Tina tried not to let that look hurt her. She couldn’t blame Libby. She had abandoned everybody in the middle of a service and then tried to blame it on her best friend’s crying, innocent baby.
