Page 86 of Smitten with the Single Dad

Gripping Cash by the shoulder, Wyatt gave the kid a little warning squeeze. Nothing too hard, but enough to send a message. “If I find out you’ve done this to anybody else, I will go to your dad. If you’re telling the truth and I’m the first place you tried to pull this on, then I’ll keep it between us.”

Cash exhaled in relief. “You are. I promise.”

Wyatt nodded and let go of the kid. “We’re going to pay thefairmarket value.”

Cash nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Go back to your truck and write me up a new invoice.” He jerked his chinat the big, gray, plastic bin on the floor. “Crabs in here?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna pick the biggest and the best.”

“Of course. Of course.” Then Cash disappeared out the back door as if being chased by his own guilty conscience.

Crouching down carefully, he opened up the bin and started checking out the crabs. They were all still alive and male. It was illegal to keep the females. He didn’t even have to get out his measuring tape to make sure they were all above the legal size. Willy followed the letter of the law and wouldn’t allow his sons to compromise his business by keeping anything undersized.

The swinging door from the front of house pulled his attention. Nadine hung her brunette head into the kitchen. “Hey, Vica?”

“Si, bella?” Vica said.

“There’s a customer that’s asking if the homemade fettuccini Alfredo can have meatballs added to it?” Her face said it all. She thought the customer was nuts. But it was her responsibility to ask.

Vica’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“Yeah … I … he said he prefers spaghetti, but we don’t have that on the menu. I told him the homemade fettuccini was a special, just offered today, and he asked if he could add the meatballs from the meatball sub into the fettuccini to create his own spaghetti.”

“If I put wheels on my grandmother, she becomes a bicycle.” Vica shook her head stiffly. “Absolutely not. No. Adding meatballs to fettuccini does not make it spaghetti. Tell him to buy both the sandwich and the fettuccini, and do it himself. But I will not be party to such …” Then she went off in Italian, shaking her head and throwing her hands in the air.

“Got it,” Nadine said with a laugh. She met Dom’s gaze. “She’s awesome.” Then she headed back to the front of house.

Burke came up beside Wyatt. “I like her. Can we keep her?”

Wyatt stood up to his full height, wincing just a little. “What is going on inhere?”

Burke shrugged. “We’ve made some changes. Vica made a bunch of fettuccini so we added it to the Daily Special menu. It’s selling incredibly well. And I was on the phone with a supplier when Cash came in—which she handled beautifully as well. Woman’s got a set of brass ovaries on her, that’s for sure.”

“Behind,” Vica said, making her way behind Wyatt and Burke, a big bowl of diced cucumbers in her arms.

Wyatt spun around to watch her maneuver her way through the kitchen like she’d worked there for years.

Cash returned, still pink in the cheeks, with a new invoice in his hands. “Here,” he said, handing it to Wyatt.

Wyatt thanked the kid, then handed the invoice to Burke, who nodded and said he’d take care of it. Burke and Cash made their way to the small, kitchen office while Wyatt sidled up next to Vica. She was in the middle of mixing the cucumber she’d just diced with diced watermelon, mint, and feta for their Summertime Watermelon Salad. It was a customer favorite.

“You okay?” he asked.

The noise in her throat was nothing short of feral, then started wildly gesturing again. “You can’t justchangea recipe. You can have meatballs. You can have spaghetti. You can have fettuccini. But you can not add meatballs to fettuccini and call it spaghetti. It is …” she growled again and didn’t finish her sentence.

“You know, you don’thaveto work here if it’s frustrating you.”

She set down the big spoon she was using with a loudclunkonto the stainless-steel counter, and turned to face him. “Frustrating me? I love it here.”

“It doesn’t seem that way.”

Waving her hand dismissively, she shook her head. “Wyatt, I told you, I am finally feeling useful. I am contributing. I am making friends. I am not just sitting around waiting for someone to kill me, arrest me, or deport me. Do you know how depressing that is?”

Probably a lot more depressing and stressful than him sitting at home with asore neck and back. Now he felt like a tool for wallowing in self-pity when her entire life was in literal limbo, and she was trying to make the very best of it while in survival-mode.

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