Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
G emma bit down on her tongue so hard she almost drew blood. Oscar was an old man, and she genuinely liked him, but he was also her employer. The person who had ensured she had a job she adored only to stitch her up without so much as a warning.
“You’ve employed somebody else to be a manager over the top of me.” She didn’t bother with niceties; she didn’t have enough energy for that. “Your nephew, of all people.”
“No, no, not on top of you,” Oscar replied. “Alongside you. You carry on with the day-to-day running, and Kent will oversee?—”
“The bigger picture?” Gemma cut in. “Yes, I heard that’s what he said. I don’t need a bigger picture. The big picture is that we’re doing just fine. We are full of customers each day. Regular customers who love us. I’ve been doing this job for eight years, Oscar. If you had a problem with the way I was running the cafe, the least you could’ve done was talk to me about it.”
“No, no, no, Gemma, please don’t think that. That’s not what I think at all. You know I think you’ve done a fabulous job with the place. Fabulous.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like that right now,” Gemma replied.
She heard a slight clucking noise down the line, as if Oscar was trying to clear his throat or smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“I understand why you’re upset. I do, but Kent is a remarkable young man—remarkable, the things he’s done at these other restaurants.”
Gemma bit down on the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to hear about Kent’s list of accolades and accomplishments and how many fancy places he had trained or worked in.
“This isn’t even about Kent,” Gemma said. “This is about me, us, the fact that I thought you trusted me to run the place. You didn’t even send me his CV or details.”
“Now that’s not true,” Oscar said. “I’m sure I did. I printed it all off to give you when I came down at Easter.”
Gemma shook her head. “You didn’t come down then, Oscar,” she said. “The last time you were in Maldon was before Christmas.”
“No, are you sure? That can’t be right.”
For the first time, Gemma’s fury flickered. Of course, she knew he was getting old. He’d been old when she had taken over running the place, but she had seen so little of him in the last few years that she clearly hadn’t realised how much he’d aged. Somehow, despite not liking the way Kent had gone about practically anything so far, she suspected he was telling the truth about thinking Oscar had contacted her.
Resting her forehead on her hands, she let out a sigh that turned into a groan.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Gemma said. “You understand my problem, don’t you? You get why I’m mad?”
“I can see your point of view, Gemma. I can, but I do believe Kent is best for this business. Do you know he rang me as soon as he’d spoken to you, very concerned about how the working relationship is going to be? He does want this to go well, you know.”
Gemma didn’t reply.
“What about a trial? Eight weeks,” Oscar suggested. “You and Kent can try to work things out together for the next eight weeks, and then at the end of that, we’ll know better if it’s going to work.”
It wasn’t exactly what Gemma wanted. What she wanted was for Oscar to say he’d made a terrible mistake, Kent would be gone, and she could find somebody else of her choosing to employ, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. So, instead, she drew in a long breath and said, with more than a hint of resentment in her tone,
“I guess that’s what it will have to be, then.”