Page 1 of Daddy Frost

Chapter One

Delta knew how to work the crowd at Deep Dish as he moved flawlessly through the throngs of people coming and going, both to sit in the restaurant and pick up orders, quickly clearing away vacated tables.

What he couldn’t seem to work was the dang handheld POS machine Roman had given him to use. The last place Delta had worked as a server still used notepads and pencils. To make matters hilariously worse—and not in a belly-laugh kind of hilarious, more like a laugh-or-I’ll-cry way—the device kept glitching.

He banged it on the side with the heel of his hand, shook it up and down, then slammed it repeatedly onto the table. Now he knew what the POS stood for.

It wasn’t Point of Sale.

It was Piece of Shit.

“Problem?” the woman sitting with her husband and three children asked with a smile.

“I’m tapping out a tune to a song stuck in my head. Dance along if you know it.” Finally, he gave up. “Go ahead and give me your orders.”

“And you’ll remember them?” The husband seemed skeptical. The handsome bastard didn’t have to sound so cynical.

With a wink at the kids, Delta replied, “Your orders will beam from my head straight to the kitchen.”

The gorgeous devil gave Delta a disapproving look. Someone needed to get laid, but since they already had three kids and wifey was pregnant, maybe that wasn’t his problem.

They rattled off their orders, the kids adding and replacing multiple items, like they were purposely trying to trip him up.

With a smile, Delta went straight to the pass. “I need a pen and paper, Roman Empire. My phaser just glitched out again.”

“You’re mashing references,” Roman said from the kitchen, his knife skills still impressive. He was chopping onions, moving so fast Delta feared parts of his fingers would end up in the omelet. “Sloppy, newbie. Very sloppy. Besides, I’m a cook, not a technician.”

Delta grinned at Roman’s sense of humor. His boss had not only gotten the Star Trek reference but tossed one back at him. Nice. “My bad. I will try harder, sensei.”

“That’s now three different references.” Roman poured the egg mixture into a hot pan, flipped pancakes, stirred a pot of grits, and plated food. How did he multitask with so many orders? It was like watching Quicksilver in the kitchen.

The guy seriously needed to get some help back there. Delta was getting motion sickness watching him and praying the guy didn’t slip and fall while juggling fifty different tasks.

Grabbing some napkins off the stack on the counter, Delta set the device aside, snagged the pen hiding halfway under the rack of silverware, then jotted down the family’s order. When he tried to lift the napkin, it was stuck to the counter.

From what he could see, someone had spilled some syrup and hadn’t wiped it up.

He wouldn’t let this frustrate him on his first morning at his new job. This wasn’t a place to break down with his personal issues. For now, he would suck it up, paste on a smile until his cheeks hurt, and pretend life wasn’t gut-punching him.

All he could do was rewrite the order on a different napkin—careful of any suspicious-looking spots on the counter—and hand it to Roman. “You have to pretend I beamed this order through my thought waves. I got a table of kids I need to impress.”

“Just be yourself and the cool kids will like you.” Roman swiped the napkin off the pass. “Peer pressure can be brutal. Grab another device.”

“They’re not my peers,” Delta argued. “They’re little kids.”

Roman winked at him. “Don’t let them get under your skin, slugger.”

The guy was so not funny.

“From what I heard, Roman was a scrooge and purchased the cheapest model.” Julian joined them and grabbed the plates Roman had just whipped onto the ledge of the pass. “You get what you pay for.”

“I paid for working employees, but they seem to glitch just as much as the devices when it comes to doing their jobs.” Roman went back to playing superhero in the kitchen.

One thing Delta could say—it was very entertaining working here. He grabbed the carafe of decaffeinated coffee for the gorgeous devil, only to notice a dribble remained. It was the same for the other two carafes.

Grumbling, he rinsed them out and made three fresh pots. While they brewed, he took the kids’ and wife’s drinks to them. “Your coffee is percolating even as we speak. A fresh-brewed cup is coming right up.”

When the jerk grunted and turned away from him, Delta squinted at him, wondering who had taught him such spectacular manners. The guy started talking to his kids, like his server hadn’t spoken a single word to him.

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