He had something to prove.

She should say no, walk away and find a new job and hope that her past didn’t follow her, but Melanie had been right about one thing this morning. She did love the Fire & Brimstone. As much as she hated to admit it, he’d probably offered her the only thing in the world that would make her even consider going through with this hell again.

Knowing that he probably wouldn’t make this offer again, she nodded and graciously said, “Only if it comes with a raise.”

Chapter 9

Two soul-crushing weeks later…

“What if we put a couple of computers on the tables by the back corner?” his own personal version of hell asked distractedly as she continued to gaze around the large open dining area, looking for more changes to make.

“No,” he said evenly, taking a bite out of his cheeseburger as he looked over last night’s sales, hoping that she would take the hint and leave him alone.

“It might bring in a new customer base,” she said, using the three words that she seemed to have fallen in love with over the last two weeks.

“No, it wouldn’t,” he said, wondering why she couldn’t leave him alone for five minutes so that he could enjoy his after lunch snack in peace.

“But, it might if you gave away free internet and-” she started to explain in that excited tone of hers that she’d developed recently, the one that told him that she was about to try to explain her latest idea in under thirty seconds as though that would somehow make him say yes.

It wouldn’t.

What it did do was give him one hell of a headache.

“It’s not happening,” he said, hoping that she would let it go.

She really needed to stop before he lost his goddamn mind, he decided as he reached for his drink only to find it empty. Glaring at the bartender busy at the other end of the bar, he grabbed her Coke instead and finished it off. Not seeming bothered by the fact that he’d stolen her drink, she simply walked around the bar and refilled both their glasses while she continued to look for new ways to improve his restaurant.

Then again, over the past two weeks he’d been forced to steal her food since she was always bugging the shit out of him. At first she had simply stood there, shifting her gaze from him to the food he’d stolen and back again before she’d inform him that he’d stolen her food. When he pointedly kept his gaze locked with hers and helped himself to the rest of her food, she shrugged it off with a sigh and returned to her sale’s pitch.

“Have you given any more thought to the brunch buffet?” she asked as she placed his soda back in front of him.

Picking up his glass, he repressed a shiver of revulsion at the idea, and said, “No.”

“It’s a good idea,” she said as she returned to looking around the restaurant, once again determined to prove that he needed her.

He really didn’t and he would point that out, but that would probably only encourage her to try harder and he definitely didn’t want that. Today was the day that he was going to be proven right and she was trying to do everything in her power to show him that she was an essential part of the team so that he wouldn’t fire her ass.

The last part was a summarization of what she’d said when he’d asked her why she was driving him out of his fucking mind. She was worried that once they found out the test results that he would immediately fire her. Normally he would probably do that, because she did have a tendency to annoy the shit out of him, but he’d once again found himself in a moral dilemma.

Firing her after she’d agreed to do something that she hadn’t wanted to do felt…wrong. He couldn’t explain it and he didn’t like it, but there it was. He wasn’t going to fire her and he should have probably told her that so that she wouldn’t have to worry, but that would only create more problems. It was for the best that she didn’t know that her job was safe, otherwise he would probably have to deal with the devious woman pulling more shit behind his back and to be honest, he liked her better this way.

Even though she was still bugging the shit out of him, she was on her best behavior. So far, in the past two weeks she hadn’t gone behind his back and did anything major, tried managing him with that damn clipboard or that innocent little smile of hers.

It had been fucking perfect.

“New dessert menu?” she suggested, obviously getting desperate if she was starting to repeat herself.

“There’s nothing wrong with the dessert menu,” he said, shifting his attention back to the paperwork in front of him even though he was already thinking about changing the dessert menu. Not that he would tell her that since it would only encourage her.

“It needs pie,” she said matter-of-factly.

“It doesn’t need pie.”

But, it really did.

Damn it, now he wanted pie.

“Shouldn’t you be working?” he asked, wondering if he had time to go down the street and get a few pies before his brother showed up with the test results.

“Today’s my day off,” she said with a heavy sigh as she walked back around the bar and sat down on the barstool next to him.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Killing time and covering for Jane and Erin so they could take a break,” she said with another one of her shrugs as she stole a fry off his plate, making him wonder if she was suicidal.

Momentarily distracted by the fact that she’d had the audacity to come within twelve inches of his plate, he looked up from his paperwork and glanced around the dinning room. The dinning area was packed, but the customers were smiling, had their food, their drinks were filled and there wasn’t a waitress in sight.

“There should be four waitresses on right now,” he mumbled to himself, wondering where everyone was.

“Yes, yes there really should be,” Rebecca readily agreed. “But Tammy called in sick and Jenny quit last night so-”

“Jenny quit?” he asked, trying to picture her face, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember who she was.

“Ummm, you made her cry yesterday?”

No, that still didn’t help. “And she quit?” he asked, wondering how he kept ending up hiring waitresses that couldn’t handle a little criticism.

“Yeah, imagine that,” she said dryly as her attention shifted to the door where two of his waitresses were walking in, smiling and carrying a plastic takeout box.