Chapter 6
Chapter Six
SERENITY
“Hey, honey. You good?”
At Rory’s question, I looked up from my task of rolling silverware in napkins to find my boss had come out from behind the bar, leaving one of the other bartenders to handle restocking the fridges back there, and had taken a seat across from where I was working.
The Tap Room might have been a bar, but it also served lunch and dinner, so it was open most of the day and well into the night.
Tips on the day shift weren’t quite as good as when people were feeling boozy and loose with their purse strings, but since the cook rocked a pretty killer menu during daylight hours, there was a steady flow of patrons from the time the place opened at eleven in the morning until close.
I blinked “Huh?”
“You’ve been really quiet this morning. In fact, you’ve been quiet the past few days,” Rory pointed out. “I know you haven’t been here long, but that doesn’t seem like you. Everything good?”
I thought I’d done a decent job of covering the pouty mood I’d been in since Hunter shot me down three days earlier, but apparently, I thought wrong.
Since he took off on his motorcycle, I’d been in a funk that left me feeling uncomfortable and itchy, and no matter how hard I’d tried, I hadn’t been able to shake it.
I’d given myself countless pep talks over the past few days, determined to shake the melancholy off. He was just a man, after all. Nothing worth getting myself all tied up in knots over. Only, as much as I repeated that mantra, there was a voice in the back of my head calling me a liar.
It was that voice that reminded me of all the things that drew me to that man in the first place, the connection I felt to him, like we were kindred in some way.
I lowered my head back to the work I’d been doing. Mindless as it was, it kept my hands busy, never a bad thing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I offered her a smile to press the point home. “I’m great. Just a little tired, I guess. Still trying to get used to the late hours.”
“If you need more days and less nights, just let me know,” she offered without missing a beat. “I try to be as accommodating to my staff as possible.”
My smile grew more genuine as I reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. I couldn’t have asked for a better boss than Rory Paulson. She had a heart bigger than the entire state of Virginia and it showed daily, and not just with how she treated those of us who worked for her.
A few years back, a boy threw a rock through one of the bar’s windows.
When her man Cord caught up to the kid and brought him back, they discovered he’d been seriously abused while in the foster care system.
She’d walked through fire, doing everything that needed to be done so Zach could live with her where she could keep him safe.
Eventually, she and Cord adopted him, but knowing his wasn’t the only horror story when it came to the foster system, she started a charitable foundation.
That foundation was responsible for creation of a group home right here in Hope Valley call Hope House.
It provided kids in foster care a clean, safe, hell even fun place to live.
The goal of everyone who worked at Hope House wasn’t only to keep a roof over these kids’ heads then put them out the door the moment they aged out, but to help them thrive in every single way possible.
That took heart, guts, and conviction. In the short weeks I’d known her, I respected her in a way I didn’t many other people.
“No need,” I answered her earlier question. “I like the lively crowd, and the tips don’t hurt either,” I added with a wink.
She chuckled and reached over to the stack of silverware and began rolling. “If you say so. But if anything ever changes, you let me know.”
Like I said, best . . . boss . . . ever.
Just then, Fletcher shoved through the swinging door that led from the back, carrying a bin of clean glasses.
It was like it happened in slow motion. His long, lanky arms trembled under the weight of the heavy bin, his face was a strained shade of red, and his shoulders were hunched in an awkward position he couldn’t possibly hold for much longer.
He only made it two and a half steps from the kitchen when he finally lost his hold and sent the bin crashing to the floor.
I shot from my chair and started in his direction, Rory on my heels, just as the boy shouted, “Son of a bitch!” and dropped to his knees.
He was in the process of cleaning up the shattered glass with his hands when I rounded the counter and crouched down to his level.
“Here, let me help.”
“It’s fine. I’ve got it,” he grunted. In the short time he’d been working here, surly grunting and clipped, snide remarks had been his constant choice of communication.
Fletcher had been one of Hope House’s most recent charges, a seventeen-year-old boy who had a chip on his shoulder the size of Rhode Island.
He’d only been there for a few months, removed from his own home by the state when his eighteenth birthday came and went.
The director of Hope House, a woman by the name of Tessa, had insisted he stay, worried he wasn’t quite ready to be on his own just yet.
Rory agreed, fearing that if they put him out, he’d end up right back where he’d started. As a way to help him start building a life, she’d hired him on as a busboy at the Tap Room, hoping to teach him responsibility, as well as put some money in his pocket.
“You can’t clean this mess with your hands.” I circled one of his boney wrists with my fingers when he moved to grab a large, jagged piece of glass. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
He snatched his arm back like my touch had burned him, his forehead pinched in a severe frown. “I don’t need your help. I’m not a freaking baby.”
I braced my hands on my knees and shot him a warning look. “First of all, that’s not the tone you use with someone who’s trying to help you out.” I paused, giving him time to respond. When he said nothing, I cocked an eyebrow and rested back on my haunches so I could cross my arms. “Is it?”
He kept his eyes downcast and his voice in a low mumble, as he responded, “No.”
“No what,” I pressed, channeling my own mother. We might not have had the most conventional upbringing, but my mom never tolerated disrespect.
“No, ma’am,” he said on another grunt.
I nodded my head in approval, just like my mom would have. “All right. Now go grab a broom and dustpan from the back and I’ll help you get the rest of this picked up.”
Rory lowered herself down beside me once Fletcher disappeared through the door to the back, and together we pulled the glasses that were still salvageable from the bin and moved them to the side. “Sorry if I stepped on your toes there,” I said. “I probably should have let you handle that, huh?”
“No. You did great.”
My brows rose high on my forehead. “Really? I mean, I know he’s been through a lot, and I probably could have been a little nicer—”
She stopped me with a shake of her head.
“You’re right, he’s been through a lot and picked up some serious baggage along the way, but part of helping these kids is having a firm hand with them.
If we just gave them their way with anything or let them run rough shod over us, we’d be doing them a disservice.
One of the main things almost all of the kids who come to Hope House need to learn is that there is such a thing as discipline and authority without cruelty.
You were right in demanding he treat you how you deserved to be treated, and you did it without being cruel.
I have to say, that’s a gift. Not everyone has the patience or wherewithal to keep their cool. ”
My forehead pulled into a frown as I stared off at where I’d last seen Fletcher.
My heart gave a little tug as I thought about what a kid his age had to have suffered through to make him so unhappy.
It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. He deserved something good, even if he remained a grumpy grunter for the rest of his life.
I was about to ask Rory what exactly it was Fletcher had been through when the kid shoved through the door once again, broom and dustpan in hand.
I shoved up without another word and carried the glasses that were still intact to the guy manning the dishwasher just off the kitchen.
My face pulled into a wince as I sat the glasses he’d only just washed down in front of him. “Sorry, Frank. Hate to double your work, but we had a little accident out front.”
He waved me off with a jovial grin. “Stuff like that happens. I’ll have these out for you in a jiff.”
I skipped over to him and placed a loud, smacking kiss against his ruddy, weathered cheek. “You’re the best.”
“Don’t I know it, doll,” he said on a laugh as I headed back to the front of the bar and got back to work.
Without any more accidents, we quickly got into the flow of things.
I moved on autopilot as I finished prepping to open.
I was so focused on the task at hand that I hadn’t noticed all other work had stopped as I moved through the bar, lifting the chairs off the tables and tucking them into place.
The sensation of eyes on me, that prickling of the skin on the back of your neck, alerted me to the fact I had an audience and pulled me out of the zone I’d been in.
I stopped with one of the chairs hanging midair, self-consciousness swamping me as I looked around the bar and noticed that Rory, Fletcher, Dan, the bartender, and one of the waitresses, Tammy, were all staring at me.
“Uh . . . What? Am I in the middle of a wardrobe malfunction or something?” I looked down at myself, then spun in a circle in an attempt to check my ass.
“Damn, woman,” Dan said as he dried a glass with a hand towel. “Who knew you had a set of pipes like that.”
My brows dipped in confusion. “Huh?”
“You’ve been singing along with the juke box.” Rory’s smile was so big it looked almost painful.
“I was?” I tended to do that. If there was a song playing that I liked, I’d sing along mindlessly, not even realizing I was doing it.
“Uh, yeah, babe,” Tammy replied. “And your voice is amazing!”
Rory nodded enthusiastically. “It really is. You sounded incredible. Why didn’t I know you could sing?”
My cheeks heated at being the center of attention. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Why would you know something like that? I’m just a waitress.”
“Girl, that’s sacrilege,” Tammy insisted.
“Voice like yours, you should be front and center on a stage.” She stopped and sucked in a gasp so big you’d have thought an A-list celebrity had just walked in and asked her to carry his baby.
“Oh my God! I know what you should do. You should totally sing on Friday when the Makin Hardware Guys come in to play.”
A few times a month, the Tap Room hosted a live band.
A group of men who worked at Makin Hardware played together, and it just so happened that they were damn good musicians.
Much better than they were at naming themselves, that was for sure.
But there was no way in hell I’d get up on stage and sing.
“Yeah, that’s never going to happen,” I stated firmly as I lowered the chair the rest of the way to the ground and moved on to the next.
“Oh, come on,” Rory said, joining in with Tammy like this was the best idea they’d ever had. “But you’re so good! You should totally do it.”
“Not happening.” I stopped what I was doing and turned to face them, my hands planted firmly on my hips. “The only place I sing is alone in the shower, and that’s how I plan to leave it.”
Tammy, known as the fun, boisterous one around the Tap Room, poked her bottom lip out in a pout. “You’re no fun.”
“No, I’m not.” I shot her a wink as I moved past her. Taking the hand towel I had tucked into the ties of the apron wrapped around my waist, I spun it in the air before popping her in the backside with it as I passed her on my way to the back. “And don’t you ever forget it.”