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CHAPTER TEN
DOMINIC
The dining room configuration wasn’t right. I had three long eight-seat tables, twelve square four-tops, and six small two-tops. Plus there were nine four-person booths bolted into the walls. Seating capacity at Espo 2 was twice what it was at Espo 1. Yet the main room didn’t have the right kind of flow. When I stood on a round stool beside the counter and surveyed the scene, it looked like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle.
I hopped down and started rearranging everything again, whistling as I worked. The fact that we were getting closer to opening day and no terrible obstacles had arisen yet made me hopeful that it would all go off without a hitch.
When Melanie walked in at ten minutes to nine, I was still whistling.
Instead of just saying a polite good-morning and proceeding to the office, Melanie stopped and stared at me.
“You’re happy,” she said, but something funny lurked behind her words. She sounded almost suspicious. When I glanced her way, I tried to avoid sweeping my eyes over her figure. I failed. Her black, fitted skirt was gloriously short today.
“I do that sometimes,” I said mildly. “I get happy.”
Melanie set her purse and laptop bag down and started straightening out a square four-seat table that didn’t really need to be straightened. She was still giving me kind of a sour look. “And when you’re happy, you just start spontaneously whistling “Strangers in the Night”?”
“Big Sinatra fan,” I explained. “My grandmother instilled a love of his music in us from the time Gio and I were little.”
Melanie finished straightening the table and gazed at it with a critical eye. I watched her as she played with a lock of loose hair. It must be a nervous habit. I’d seen her do it before, wind a piece of hair loosely around an index finger and twirl. But then she stopped and secured the escaped hair back into the clip that held a loose bun atop her head.
Soon it would be easier to avoid Melanie-related temptations. A cast of servers and kitchen help would be bustling around, and before we knew it, we’d be open for business. All that constant activity meant I wouldn’t have time to appreciate the way Melanie’s legs looked in high heels. Or so I told myself.
Melanie was still brooding beside the table. Maybe she didn’t like the dining room configuration either. Or maybe I’d managed to do something to piss her off without even realizing it.
“So,” I said, pushing some dining chairs into place. “How’s all the interviewing going?”
She stopped fussing over the table. “Fine. I’ve hired two hostesses, six servers, and five kitchen staff. They start training next week.”
During the course of that little speech, Melanie had set her hands on her hips and tilted her chin up. It was a defiant pose, almost like she expected an argument from me.
“Sounds good.” I shrugged. “I’m glad you’ve got everything covered.”
“You want me to forward their resumes to you?”
“What for?”
Melanie inhaled and exhaled. “So you know who’s going to be working for you, Dominic.”
“I’ll know that soon enough.”
She looked annoyed. I didn’t know why. But she was definitely irked about something, and I didn’t believe it had anything to do with the staff.
“Is there something you want to say to me, Mel?”
She frowned. “You don’t usually call me that.”
“What?”
“Mel.”
“But isn’t that your nickname?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “Okay, Melanie. Let’s get back to our first topic of debate. Is there something you want to say to me?”
She opened her mouth to fire back, but then she closed it. “For someone who obsesses over every detail of your restaurant, it seems like you might be more interested in who’s going to be working here.”
