Page 115 of The Promise Of You

He squints. “Not for you it’s not. Chris owes me big time for closing down when Alex left, and he knows it. Put all of us here in a bind. Now it’s payback time.” His laughing eyes drill into mine. “Don’t worry, he’s fine.”

“I barely know him, but Alex is great. She moved up from New York, right?”

“Yeah… You want a cremee?” he adds suddenly.

“A what?”

“A cremee.” He jumps to his feet. “Course you do. Be right back.” He jogs to the shack, Moose right after him. I lay on my back, watching the small cotton-like clouds slowly drift against the azure sky, Justin’s voice drifting to me in waves.

He settles back next to me, handing me an ice cream.

“Oh! What flavor is that? And thank you.”

“Babe. We’re in Vermont. There’s no question what the flavor of a cremee should be.”

Ohmygod. This is heaven. So soft and, well, creamy, and sweetened with pure maple syrup.

“Can’t believe you have never had one of these.”

“Me neither,” I say, licking the ice cream melting down the cone.

Justin’s gaze heats as it narrows on my tongue. He takes a deep breath and shifts on his towel. “How are things at the restaurant?”

Brought back to reality, I take a deep breath.

“I mean in general, Clover. This is not a loaded question. I’m not asking about the rent or anything. I don’t have an ulterior motive. This is me wanting to know everything about you. How your days are going. What you worry about. What keeps you up at night. Now that we’re… together, I want to be there for you. For everything.”

Warmth spreads through me. ‘Now that we’re together.’

I blink a few times at him. I need to pinch myself. So this is what’s it like to have a significant other? Someone who cares about what you do when you’re not with them.

“Well, let’s see. The restaurant needs a re-brand. A clear position in the market. A new menu. A redesigned visual identity, starting with décor. It also needs a new chef.” I take a big bite out of my ice cream, which is in danger of melting onto my thighs.

Justin takes clean, wide, effective licks. He’s almost half done with his ice cream—cremee. “Samuel being a dick?”

“Nope, no. Not in the way you may think.” I tell him about my issues getting a menu costing that holds water. Samuel’s refusal to discuss changes to the menu. And his refusal to put the recipes in writing. “I think he’s being dishonest about the quantities that actually go on the plates, versus what he claims we’re serving. But I can’t pinpoint why he would do that and how that affects our bottom line. Because at the end of the day, if we charge the same price but put less product on the plate, we should be making more money, right?”

“Do you guys do any catering?” Justin asks.

Where is he going with that? “No…?”

He clenches his jaw, like that makes him angry.

“Should we offer catering?” I don’t even know how we would manage that.

“You have a lot of waste?”

“What’s a lot? Plates usually come back fairly empty.” Unless the salmon is overdone, but that’s another story.

“Do you see your kitchen staff throwing away food gone bad from the fridges.”

“I haven’t noticed. We’re bleeding money, and I can’t put my finger on it. We spend more than we sell. Yet it seems we’re always out of some items. We can’t sell some dishes because there’s always something missing. Like, one week we can’t sell the tajine because we’re out of the lamb, and then the following week we can’t sell it because we’re out of cumin or saffron or more likely, both.”

“Why do they run out of stuff? Did you ask?”

“Did you see who I’m dealing with? I just need to do inventory myself, and I’ll take note of expiration dates.” Maybe that’s the issue. “We just need to run specials when the stuff gets close to expiring,” I mumble, “although that’s not—”

Justin cups my jaw. “I know you’re not going to believe me, because of how I fucking hate Samuel, but… he’s stealing from you. I’m convinced of it, and you need to believe me, so we can catch him.”

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