Chapter 2
Chapter Two
HANNAH
I barely slept.
The next morning, I got to Vinnie’s at ten fifty because I wanted Jack to know that tardiness was not something normal for me, especially if he was thinking of hiring me. I wore my black slacks and a blue silk top that made my blue eyes pop against my long, blonde hair, which I had down and curled.
I hadn’t bothered telling my mom I’d gotten fired last night. There was no need to worry her, especially if Jack was about to offer me a new job. I had a giddy moment where I wondered if it would come with a salary and health benefits package, and then I had to calm myself and lower expectations. I mean, the suit he had worn was really nice. Maybe he needed a personal assistant. Although, the brunette hanging out of the SUV and screaming about his meeting was probably already that. Maybe he needed two!
Oh, but I hoped he didn’t expect me to travel. I needed to be close to my mom. All things we could talk about at our interview.
I parked out front, between Vinnie’s and the Willow Harbor Saltwater Taffy factory, and then smoothed my hair and buttoned up my coat. I decided I’d wait outside the Taffy Factory because I wanted to avoid seeing Vinnie, since he usually came in around this time to set up for the lunch rush.
The first thing I noticed when I got out of my car was that Vinnie’s sign was blocked by a man on a ladder. At first, I thought it was another volunteer taking down a Christmas wreath, but the man on the ladder had a drill—and he was holding the letter S.
Then I saw it.
Hannah’ was written where Vinnie’s used to be. I stopped dead in my tracks, staring up at the sign with an open mouth, as the man began to drill the S to the end of my name.
My name instead of Vinnie’s.
What the heck was going on here?
The door to the restaurant opened, and Jack popped his head out, wearing a bright smile. “Oh, good. You’re here. Come on in. We were just finishing the paperwork.”
He held the door open, but I just stared at him openmouthed, blinking rapidly.
“Why is my name on the front sign, Jack?” I asked nervously.
“Come on in and I’ll show ya,” he said with that devastatingly handsome smile, and because I was curious by nature, I stepped inside behind him.
He walked in with a confidence I couldn’t match as I glanced around the restaurant I’d worked at for the last six years.
Sydney was pulling the paper menus out of the clear plastic and throwing them into the trash. I gave her a what’s going on look, but she just smiled at me.
At the back table were three men in suits ranging from gray to black, and the pretty brunette from before was with them. Maybe this was the job interview and the name out front was a coincidence.
When I reached the table, the brunette stood and shook my hand. “Congratulations, Hannah. I’m Chloe, Jack’s personal assistant.”
She looked like a Chloe. Pretty, perfect, happy. But why was she congratulating me?
“Thanks… Did I get the… job?”
The men at the table laughed, and that’s when Jack asked me to sit down at the booth.
I did, and the men in the suits stood to leave.
“Are we good?” Jack asked them.
They nodded.
“She just needs to sign,” one of them said.
Then they all left, leaving me sitting across from Jack and feeling very lost.
“What’s going on? Who are those men?” I asked. I eyed the back kitchen door, expecting Vinnie to come out at any moment and yell at me for being here.
Jack clasped his hands together. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep very much last night. I had to find someone to make that sign on rush order and then fly it in from Seattle.”
“Whoa!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, and those guys are my lawyers. This is your restaurant now, Hannah. Your name is on the front, so you call the shots.” He pushed the stack of papers over to me just as my eyebrows hit my hairline.
“I’m sorry. What did you just say?”
Jack smiled at me, and good heavens, that smile made butterflies take flight in my stomach. He was so handsome. He had a dimple in his right cheek, and even though he looked about four or five years older than me, that dimple gave him a baby face.
“After you left yesterday, I negotiated with Vinnie, your jerk of an ex-boss, and I bought the restaurant. Now, you can keep your job, and your name is on the front, so you can fire whoever you want.”
I burst into laughter, checking over my shoulder to see if I was being recorded for some social media stunt or something. “You can’t be serious.”
His face fell as if he were disappointed by my reaction. “I am.”
“You can’t buy me a restaurant!” I blurted out.
He tapped the papers in front of me. “I just did.”
I glanced at the stack of papers for the first time. It was a commercial real estate contract and my name, Hannah Phillips, was on it as the buyer.
“Why?” I breathed. “I mean…How? That’s…” I felt tears brimming in my eyes. “This is too expensive. You can’t do this.”
Was this really happening? Some guy watched my mortal public embarrassment and felt so bad for me that he bought me a restaurant. Was this real life? Was I still sleeping?
He shrugged. “I’m sure it seems expensive to you, but it was a bargain for me. And I come to Willow Harbor every Christmas, so I can’t in good conscience come and eat here knowing that jerk is making money off of me. But the food is really good, so I want to come back here. Big conundrum for me,” he said seriously.
I laughed. “You’re dead serious?” I asked.
He nodded. “I am. Sign here and the restaurant is yours. Land taxes and overhead will be covered by me for three years while you figure things out. But my CFO says Vinnie actually ran things well, and you should make a profit immediately if you keep the menu the same. You could even afford to give the staff a five percent raise.”
My gaze flicked to Sydney, who stopped pulling the menus out and put on a face as if begging me to do exactly that.
I shook my head. “This is all happening really fast. I don’t know the first thing about running a restaurant.”
Jack nodded. “I figured. That’s why I’m flying out my buddy Raj from Seattle. He runs the Mango Tree Indian restaurant out there. Really successful guy. He’s going to give you a two-week crash course on how to manage a restaurant.”
I burst into an unexpected sob and then started laughing to cover it. Great. Now I looked insane.
I grasped his hands. “Jack, this behavior is very sweet, but it’s not normal. You don’t just go around buying restaurants for every girl you see get fired.”
He squeezed my hands, giving me a half-cocked grin. “You’re not just every girl, are you?”
My heart beat wildly in my chest. “How… would you know that? You don’t know me.” I pulled my hands away from him.
He leaned forward and sized me up, looking me up and down. “I know you’re a hard worker, you’re humble, and it sounds like you’re trying to help your mom. I admire that.”
He knew all that? Just from one interaction with me?
“And you throw a mean spaghetti,” he added.
That made me laugh, but then I shook my head. “I don’t think I can accept this. It feels…wrong. Or too good to be true or something.”
“If you don’t want the restaurant, I’ll change the sign to Jack’s Fine Italian Cuisine and hire a manager to run it, and you can keep your waitressing job.”
What? That was…too kind.
“Of course she wants it!” Sydney yelled from twenty feet away, where she’d clearly been eavesdropping. She waltzed over, wiping her hand on her apron before extending it to Jack. “I’m Sydney.”
He shook it and smiled at her. “Jack.”
Sydney then looked down at me with all the sternness of a mother hen. “Sign it, honey,” she coaxed.
Sydney was very much my work mother. She had two grown kids and always looked out for me. She took my shifts when I needed her to, and we were always watching each other’s backs.
“It’s up to you.” Jack held his hands up in surrender.
“Would you like something to drink?” Sydney asked him.
“Club soda with lime?” he asked. “Thanks.”
She left, and I looked at him again. He was so handsome. Was there some ulterior motive here? Hot guys didn’t just go around handing out restaurants to small-town girls like me.
I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I don’t, like, owe you anything for this, right?”
His face scrunched up. “Ew. No. This is a gift,” he said, and I was mortified I’d asked.
Without reading too much into it, I signed my name at the bottom of the contract and initialed all the tabbed pages.
This was absolutely crazy, but such a blessing. I wasn’t going to say no.
When Sydney brought us drinks and went back to her menu demolition, I peered over at Jack.
“What do you do for work?” I asked him. Cleary he had money to throw around.
He played with his straw, watching me as if trying to figure something out. “Every time I answer that question honestly, people freak out,” he said.
My mouth popped open. “You come from old family money. Oil industry?”
He laughed. “I grew up poor. I earned all the money I have.”
“Mobster?” I guessed again. “You bought Vinnie’s because he’s a rival mobster and you wanted him out of business.”
Now Jack was grinning. “You’re in the wrong occupation, Hannah. You should be a writer.”
I smiled at that. “What do you do, Jack?”
He watched me intently for a full thirty seconds, as if wondering if he could trust me. “I invented a pretty popular app.” He shrugged, and I dropped my straw into my drink.
“Ohmygosh. TikTok?” I gasped.
He laughed again, and the sound made my belly flip over. It was so full of life and carefree. When was the last time I’d laughed like that? Maybe being rich made you laugh like that.
“Not that big,” he said. “It’s a little game app called Candy Smash.”
My hand fell to the table. “Shut up ! You invented Candy Smash?”
He nodded. “Heard of it?”
Had I heard of it!?
I yanked my phone out and pulled open the app. “I’m on level two hundred and fifty-three.”
More laughter. “I don’t advocate playing that much, Hannah. Your brain will rot.”
“Hey! My mom has five-hour chemo appointments. I play there,” I told him.
He nodded solemnly. “Is she going to be okay?”
The question of the year.
“Her numbers were bad this week, but she better be,” I croaked.
“I wish my money could cure cancer. I’d give it all away.” He looked wistfully at the wall, and I heard the truth in his voice.
“So, what’s it’s like being rich?” I changed the subject jokingly. “Do you just add extra guacamole without a second thought?”
He grinned. “You’re funny, Hannah Phillips.”
I smiled back at him because he was charming, and I couldn’t believe this was real life right now. But then his face fell slightly as he seemed to consider my question seriously.
“Being rich is…lonely,” he finished.
My heart sank a little. Lonely? He was lonely?
The bell over the door chimed, and Chloe walked in on the phone. She pulled it away from her mouth and looked at Jack. “Are we done here? We need to be back in Seattle for the fundraiser tonight.”
Jack slapped the table lightly. “Yep.” He stood and took the contract from in front of me. “I’ll have this recorded with the county and mail a copy to you.”
I stood as well, suddenly thrown that he was leaving so soon. “Will…I see you again?”
This man just bought me a restaurant, and now he was leaving?
He nodded. “Next Christmas. I never miss a Willow Harbor Christmas parade.”
That made me smile. We did have a good parade, but that was a year away since we’d just had ours. And how come I’d never seen him? Even though the parade did attract hundreds of out-of-towners, I didn’t think a man this handsome could easily be lost in a crowd.
“I…don’t know how to thank you,” I said sheepishly.
He grasped my shoulder. “Be happy,” he said as he squeezed, and then he left.
Be happy. That’s how I could repay him? My happiness was his payment for buying me an entire restaurant?
Sydney ran over then and held her phone up to my face.
Jack Marrow. Candy Smash founder net worth: 7 billion.
“Oh wow,” I breathed.
“He’s an angel,” she said.
I just nodded, at a loss for words. A billionaire had just strolled into Willow Harbor and bought me a restaurant.
“So, the staff wants to know. Are we getting a five percent raise?” she asked.
I peered at the back kitchen and saw Lupita’s and Carl’s heads pop out of the door.
I smiled. “No. You’re getting ten.”
Sydney whooped and then pulled me in for a hug. “Oh, honey, you deserve this.”
This had been the darkest three months of my life, and Jack Marrow had just filled it with light to the point I could no longer see the shadows.
Thank you, God.
It was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.
If only Jack hadn’t left so soon…