10. Holly
TEN
HOLLY
“You doin’ all right?”
Piles of paper and multiple spreadsheets in front of me almost hid the intruder from my view. I was working on Caroline’s taxes, both The Premier Grille’s and her personal ones.
Caroline was an incredible cook. Excellent at managing people and always had the front restaurant immaculate and was incredible with customers. Organization was her major fault, and I’d been staring at piles of receipts and unorganized spreadsheets. I’d been trying to reorganize her for so long that a dull throb had started behind my right eye.
She was leaning against the doorframe to her office, and I had no doubt she had one eye on me, one eye on everything else out front, even if she couldn’t see it.
“You’re a hot mess, Care. Have I ever told you that?”
“Just about every spring since you started doing this, so yeah.”
I was thirteen the first time she asked me to help her get organized for her accountant. Fifteen when she decided she didn’t need him for everything, and I started handling her personal taxes. Eighteen when I started figuring out the business end. There were plenty of accountants in town, but none she trusted for some reason only Caroline could understand.
“I swear I keep trying to do better. I start off the year well.”
I laughed and held up one neatly piled set of receipts and printed bank statements from January and February of last year. “Two months. You did great. Do you need me out there?”
“The rush is slowing down, but there’s a table that requested you.”
“Me?” That hadn’t happened since high school. “You sure?”
I was already pushing back from her desk and headed her way. “Who?”
“Some boys.” She leaned in and whispered, “Cute ones.”
Cute boys. That could only be one person…or, rather, three.
“Great,” I muttered, and my hands went to my hair, smoothing back flyaways so I didn’t look like I’d spent the last few hours wanting to tear my hair out by my roots.
“Is one of them the reason you’ve been different lately?”
“Different?” I glanced back at her over my shoulder.
“Yeah, your face has been different.”
“Wow, Care. That’s sweet of you. Thanks for the compliment.”
She kicked the back of my shoe with hers, making me stumble. “Shut up. You’ve been smiling. It’s weird.”
“You’re weird,” I muttered and pushed through the metal doors.
I didn’t have to look far to find them. Even among the skiers and tubers and mountain hikers, there was something special about Graham. Perhaps it was the easy smile he wore as well as he wore his clothes and backward hat, curly hair concealed beneath the brim.
Maybe it was just him and the reminders of those kisses last night. The kisses we kept giving each other, the kisses I fell asleep thinking about and dreamed of. I woke up with my fingers pressed to my bottom lip like I’d spent the entire night trying to seal the taste of him into the deepest recesses of my memories.
“Which one is yours?” Caroline whispered, and I swear she was giddier than a kindergartener on their first day of school.
Yesterday, I would have said none of them.
But that was before he told me about his friend. Before I opened up about my mom. Before those kisses…
“Graham,” I muttered, taking the minute while he talked with two guys opposite him and hadn’t yet noticed me. “The one sitting by himself.”
“Wowzers. He’s cute . Could do worse, but not sure you could do better.”
How odd. I was starting to think that too, but it had nothing to do with his looks. Well, not fully. He was gorgeous.
I nudged Caroline away with my shoulder. “Don’t you have work to do? Tables to clean? People to help?”
“A niece to take care of,” she added with her dry tone. “And that niece who I adore so much is finally smiling, and if it’s because of that boy, I’m thrilled, but you deserve to smile even without a boy around.”
“Thanks for the life lesson.” I turned to the water station, grabbed a tray, and set three glasses on it. “You can go now.”
“Get their drinks and their orders and then sit and enjoy yourself. I’ll bring the food out when it’s ready.”
It was almost eight, and she’d been on her feet since six in the morning. How Caroline and Paul could have a happy marriage when she was on her feet for up to sixteen hours a day was beyond me, but except for the occasional stress that came with running a restaurant in a small town that relied heavily on tourism, I never heard Caroline complain.
And life hadn’t been that much better to her than it had been to me, although she had someone to share it with.
I thought of this while I grabbed the water pitcher and headed toward Graham and his friends. Eli and Tanner sat across from him. I hadn’t seen Tanner since the last time they were in Deer Creek, and Eli shot me a chagrined smile as I reached them.
“Hey,” I said, glancing at all three of them. “Nothing going on in Boone that you had to head out this way?”
“Someone.” Eli coughed as he said it. “Begged us.”
“I didn’t beg ,” Graham corrected. “I simply kept asking someone to come with me until I convinced them. I can be very convincing.”
“Vomit,” Tanner grumbled. “Seriously, it’s right here in my throat.” He pointed to the divot at the base of his throat and cleared it. “Please don’t do that while I’m trying to think of food.”
Graham rolled his eyes. “How’s work going? Looks like you were plenty busy tonight.”
I scanned the side of the restaurant they were in. Years ago, before smoking sections were outlawed, this had been that area, so it was tucked away and separated with a glass partition and two open walkways. Most of the tables were dirty. Some still had plates on them that hadn’t been cleaned.
I cringed as I glanced around at the old restaurant. Back in the fifties, it’d been a diner, complete with poodle skirts and all. My grandparents had bought it after, taken out the jukebox and soda fountains, and remodeled it to have a rustic charm. I couldn’t quite see the charm anymore. It’d faded after years of use, declining profits, and while Caroline was awesome and I loved Paul, neither were nearly as handy as my grandfather, or my dad had been when he’d helped out.
Caroline shouldn’t have had me doing her taxes. I should have been out with customers and cleaning tables, but I couldn’t fault her for tucking me away on a Saturday night. She needed as much business as she could get, and my presence tended to turn them away. We were at the end of ski season. It was probably one of the last few weekends that tourists would flock to our mountains and our town. Soon, we’d be spending our hours keeping the restaurant immaculately clean all for something to do with our time. The Grille needed every penny they could find to get them through the summer.
Right now, there was nothing special about the restaurant, and seeing it through the eyes of college students who had credit cards to pay for hundreds of dollars of flowers and dinners, I wasn’t embarrassed necessarily…but it was humbling.
“Yeah.” I poured their waters, set down the pitcher, and grabbed our old-school order pad. “It was pretty busy. You guys need something to drink?” I rattled off the beers on tap, but they all shook their heads.
“Hockey playoffs are soon,” Eli said. “Need to watch that. I’m good with water.”
“Same,” Tanner and Graham said.
“Any chance you can take a break while we’re here? Come and chill for a minute?”
“I’ll try. I’ll be back with your drinks in a minute. Take your time looking over the menu.”
Not like it would take long to find something to order. The menu was only one page. Sandwiches, burgers, a couple of salads, and a half dozen actual entrées, Caroline always kept the menu simple. She switched things out every few months, though, to keep things new and interesting, keeping the best sellers always available.
I dropped my tray on the stand before pushing through the metal doors and found Caroline leaning up against the metal counter, arms crossed over her chest, like she’d been waiting for me.
“So…? Who’s the guy? And why haven’t I heard about him before?”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about him.” It wasn’t like gossip didn’t travel. I’d been kicked out of Golden Eye on New Year’s Eve. She had to have heard about that night.
“Chanelle didn’t kick you out, she kept Mick from being a bigger asshole. You know that.”
“Yeah, well, that was the night I met Graham and his friend Tanner, who’s one of the guys with him, so it wasn’t my finest moment.”
“Doesn’t seem to bother him.” She shrugged. “He go to school?”
“Plays hockey at NCWU, majoring in chemistry, wants to be a science teacher and hockey coach. Any more questions, Your Honor?”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Don’t get mad because I look after you, sweetheart. Life’s handed you enough to deal with. You like him, though. I can see it.”
I gave her the driest expression I could muster. “He’s all right.”
His kisses were far better than all right. His sense of humor was superior, and he never seemed bothered by the fact I didn’t seem impressed with him. Which meant I was becoming a better liar, frankly, because so far I hadn’t seen or learned anything about him that wasn’t impressive.
She rolled her eyes and closed them. I was pretty sure she was praying for my soul, or for hers, so she didn’t respond to my sass. “I’m forty-two, not ninety, and even then I’m pretty sure I’d still have eyes to see how good-looking he is. It’s okay to live a little and have some fun. You know that, right?”
As she asked, she tucked wisps of my hair behind my ear.
In theory, I knew what she was saying. In reality, well, life hadn’t given me a whole lot of chances to do whatever I wanted.
“I hear you, Caroline.”
“Good. Get their orders and then get yourself a break. You’re off the clock for an hour.”
I gave her a look I’d learned from her. Probably why she didn’t seem fazed by it. “When am I ever actually on the clock?”
“Perks from being part-owner. Now git.”
“I’m gittin’, I’m gittin’,” I teased her, accentuating our southern mountain drawl, but that was only to avoid the whole part-owner comment.
It was in my mom’s will that I took her half of the restaurant. Considering we had no idea if Mom was dead or alive, it wasn’t exactly mine, but Caroline considered the fact that Mom had abandoned all of us as worthy enough for me to have it.
The problem was I didn’t want it. I didn’t want Caroline’s life, and there was no way I could stay in Deer Creek. If the locals knew Caroline wanted to give me ownership, we’d go out of business faster than a summer flood could take out a bridge. The only bonus it offered was a safety net if I couldn’t find a job right away. Or if something horrific happened. There was always The Grille to fall back on, even if relying on it would destroy me.
I headed toward Graham and his friends, took notice of a new table that’d been seated near them, and inwardly sighed.
Great. I had no doubt the girls at the new table had seen Graham and his friends and requested to be sitting within viewing distance. Hannah, Mia, and Kacey didn’t hate me because my dad killed someone. They hated me because they were the quintessential small-town mean girls…
I ignored them as much as I possibly could while their snickers grew louder, no doubt directed at me in some way and smiled at the guys. Tanner glanced at the girls, then back to me. He was most likely replaying the last time he’d seen me in Deer Creek, being humiliated and then kicked out, because his brows tugged downward.
“Are you guys ready to order?”
“Yeah.” Tanner looked to the table again and then back to me. “You good?”
“Always.” I plastered on a fake smile that Graham read like a book.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. You guys need food, or did you come for the water?”
I went for sass. My backup.
Graham gritted his teeth together.
“Double cheeseburger, extra cheese and bacon,” Eli ordered, “with fries.”
“Okay.” I reached for his menu, but he held it away from me.
“And I’d like to know why those girls are glaring at you and have been since you stepped foot out here.”
“Because they’re bored,” I told him, “and I’d prefer it if you drop it.”
That earned me scowls from all three guys, Graham mostly, but they at least complied quickly enough.
By the time their order was done, Caroline had come out and helped the girls, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief as I headed to the back. Order entered, I took off my apron and went back to Caroline’s office.
There, I rested against the wall, eyes closed, apron balled into a fist.
If I went back out there now, there’d be a scene. Caroline would be embarrassed. I’d end up in tears or a fight.
Graham was about to see the worst of me, all because I opened my mouth and told him where I worked and when. It wasn’t like I expected him to show up or bring friends. It was just my luck those girls would be there tonight of all nights.
A knock hit the door, and before I could open it, the decision was taken from me. Graham stepped in, leaving me wide-eyed and slack-jawed as he closed it behind him.
“What are you doing here? You can’t be here.”
“Caroline said I could. Nice aunt, by the way. Seems feisty. That where you get it from?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, firmly fixing that smug grin of his into place. One simple smile from him and I was already wondering what I was so afraid of.
Against my better judgment and totally out of my control, a smile broke out on my face. How was it possible he could disarm me with a grin and sarcasm?
“Why are you here?” I asked, but this time without panic lacing my words.
“Wanted to see if you’re okay and wondering if you’d tell me why you knew what was going to happen as soon as you saw those girls?”
“You didn’t hear them say anything about me before I came out?”
With the way Tanner had glared at them, I already knew the answer.
A muscle on the side of his nose jumped. “They did.”
He wasn’t going to tell me. Cool, cool. Back to secret keeping we went.
“Why’d you come here tonight?”
“Because I missed you and wanted to see you.” He stepped toward me. “I don’t care what those girls said, Holly. And I don’t care about Piper’s opinion either, although we already went over that last night. The only person I care about right now is you and making sure you’re okay.”
“I’m never okay,” I admitted, and my stupid chin wobbled. I breathed in sharply and fought the surge of emotions. I’d been looked down on and pitied for years, and it’d been a full year since I became a pariah. None of it was any fault of my own.
I should have thicker armor by now, but whenever it happened around Graham, the walls I built crumbled and failed when I needed it the most.
He reached out and cupped my cheek. Thumb brushing along my cheekbone, he tipped his head until I met his eyes. So dark, they swirled with tiny flecks of yellow at the irises. “How can I help?”
The urge to suggest he get his food to go and leave came first but stalled before I could give voice to it. Instead, I suggested, “I know it’s not really the ambiance you guys were going for, but what if you and the guys came back and ate in here?”
There was a round table with chairs in the corner. It’d work in a pinch, if he gave me a few minutes to clean off the stacks of boxes of extra napkins.
“We didn’t come for ambiance or the food, Spitfire. We came for you, so where you want to be is where we’ll be. Where I’ll be.”
Darn him. He was so sure. So confident. So caring . It was the last that shook me most. Outside of Caroline and Tracey, I couldn’t remember the last time someone so easily cared about me. Certainly not a man.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“No thanks required. Being back here with you means I get to do this.” He kissed me, brought my lips to his, and at the first heady inhale of his cologne and the taste of him, I lost track of where I was, what had bothered me only moments before, and a whole new fear raced across my mind.
If he truly cared about me…what would happen when he found out the truth?
And why in the world did I keep forgetting that this thing with him wasn’t a good idea?