Page 5 of Challenged by the Single Dad

If there hadn’t been, she would have slept in her car.

As she started at herself in the bathroom mirror of the hostel and brushed her teeth, a sharp pang of sadness filled her chest. She missed her van.

Up until two weeks ago, she’d been traveling across the country in her olive-green painted camper van. It had everything a nomad like her could possibly need. A comfy bed, a small television, a camp stove, a fridge, and a decal of a warrior princess over the two back tires.

ButOlive,as she’d named her van, came to an untimely end after some asshole forgot to put his parking brake on and his truck rolled down the hill and crashed into Chloe’s van. Olive was the smashed peanut butter between two Dodge loaves of bread. One on the back, and the idiot who caused the whole debacle on the front.

The poor thing didn’t stand a chance. She was a write-off. Too much damage was done to fix a beautiful old girl like her. So, Chloe took the settlement money and bought herself a Volvo. An indestructible tank. But a boring tank.

She took Olive’s passing as a sign that she needed to set down some roots. Get a job that lasted more than two weeks and think about getting on with her life.

It was time.

Which was why she had an interview today at Sound Bites. The place looked right up Chloe’s alley. On the ocean, for one. But also, a local watering hole and tourist hotspot. She could get to know the locals, while charming the money right out of the pockets of tourists. Wow them with her cocktails and chipper chatter until they tipped her like she was a stripper giving them a private lap dance, and not just a bartender slinging whiskey sours and Moscow mules.

In addition to the restaurant, the place also had a brewery. San Camanez Brewing was popular, though Chloe had never been much of a beer drinker. And it looked as though they had cabins that they rented out on the property as well.

She already knew that this was the place for her. She just needed to slap on her best sparkly smile and let her experience as a bartender, and winning personality, do the rest.

She spat and rinsed, then did a big cheesy grin into the mirror to double-check everything.

“It takes more muscles to frown than smile,” her mother used to say. “Just grin through the pain, and soon enough, your smiles will become real.”

Pulling in a deep sigh, Chloe let her smile drop. She glanced at the screen of her phone and the wallpaper, and her chest tightened a little. The clock said her interview was in twenty minutes. She needed to get a move on. She’d checked into her hostel room half an hour ago, because even if she didn’t get the job, she wanted to check out the island anyway. Her deep dive into San Camanez while in the ferry line earlier that day hit her on a visceral level. She was going to explore, relax, and hopefully, find a job.

Tying her dark-red hair in a professional, chic bun on the back of her head, she pulled a couple of whisps down around her face to frame it. Then she hit her cheeks with a little blush, her pale eyelashes with some mascara, and finally, her lips with a peachy-pink gloss. Then she was out the door.

Google Maps said her restaurant was ten minutes from her hostel by car.

The last thing she wanted was to be late for an interview.

Her outfit was professional, yet casual.

The restaurant wasn’t fine dining, so she wasn’t going to show up in a pantsuit—not that she owned one—but she also didn’t think rocking up in jeans and a Metallica T-shirt was going to win her any bonus points with the bosses.

She went with a pair of dark-green, figure-hugging pants that secretly had a lot of stretch to them—as well as pockets, because women needed pockets—and a long-sleeve, black sweater in an ultra-soft fabric. She wore her black combat boots that she basically lived in, and had her brown leather jacket if it got chilly. But the weather was beautiful for early October. A bit of a nip to the air, but the sun was out and the melange of colors in the trees was breathtaking.

Google Maps was right, and it took her exactly ten minutes to drive from the hostel to Sound Bites Pub. There weren’t too many cars in the big gravel parking lot. It was four o’clock, so things were probably slow until the dinner hour rush in an hour.

She double-checked her lip gloss and hair in the rearview mirror, took in a deep breath and exhaled, before reaching for her purse off the passenger seat and climbing out.

She could do this.

She was a great with people.

People usually loved her.

She’d never been fired from anywhere, and bosses had begged her not to quit more than once.

This was her job and all she needed to do was convince the people hiring her of that.

Easy peasy.

Wrapping her hand around the door handle to the restaurant, she gave it a hard tug, tossed on a big sparkly smile, and marched straight up to the very handsome man behind the bar with the man bun. “Hello.”

He tipped his gaze to her and smiled. Hot damn, he was handsome. “Hi. What can I getcha?”

“I’m Chloe Voss. I’m here for an interview for the bartending position.”

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