Page 14 of A Place for Daydreams

“I think she wants to play with those toddlers,” Cooper said, nodding toward a group of little kids who were sitting down in a section of the splash pad that had squirts of water fountaining up from the ground.

He led Macey over to where the other kids were, and then he took Julia’s hand.

“Let’s sit on this bench right here,” he suggested. “I don’t feel the need to be so close to her now that she’s sitting down. She isn’t going to slip and fall.”

Julia smiled, glad for a chance to talk with her boyfriend for a while. They settled down comfortably on the bench, watching the way Macey was splashing happily with the other children.

“Oh, she’s a sweetheart.” Julia gazed at the toddler, feeling her heart ache with love.

“She’s a scamp.” Cooper laughed. “I’m completely soaked.”

“Mmm, I’m pretty sure you did most of that to yourself. Like when you were holding me underneath the stream of water.”

Cooper grinned and leaned back against the bench. “Oh, that was well worth it.”

She laughed and wrapped her arms around him, and he kissed her affectionately.

“So tell me how you’ve been,” he said. “How have things been going at the pub?”

“Oh, it’s a whirlwind as always. Not a day does by when we don’t have some kind of bizarre problem.” She laughed. “But it’s always fun. We’ve got a great team—we’re so great at putting out fires, I think I’m going to buy everyone little medals that say, ‘Champion Firefighter.’”

He laughed at her joke. “What kind of fires? Do you run low on supplies?”

“Oh, nothing like that. Mom’s so good at making sure we have everything we need in stock, and the cooks are great at communicating when we’re unusually low on something.”

“So what kind of things go wrong?” His brows furrowed curiously.

“Oh, where to begin?” She laughed. “Sometimes things go wrong with the building itself, like the day that we found out we had a wasp nest in the corner of the patio. Thankfully no one got stung, but there were some close calls and some unhappy customers.”

“I remember hearing about that,” he said, shaking his head sympathetically.

“From whom? Us or one of the unhappy customers?”

He laughed. “I believe it was my beautiful girlfriend who told me about it.”

“You have a beautiful girlfriend? Wow. What are you doing hanging out with me?”

“Yup, the prettiest girlfriend in the world.” He gave her a kiss, and her heart swelled with affection for him. “So anyway, tell me more about these fires.”

“Hmm. Well, one day one of the teenage waiters knocked over a bag of flour in storage. The whole room was covered in a film of white dust, and it took us hours to clean it up that night after the pub closed.”

“Couldn’t you just leave things a little dusty?”

She shook her head. “We offer gluten-free options at the pub, which means we need to ensure that some things the guests are eating don’t have gluten in them. We can’t cook with things that are covered in a film of flour without a little flour getting into all of the food.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. Wow. I bet that kid felt bad.”

“Oh, he did.” She chuckled. “But we were nice about it. And he stayed to help us clean it all up. That’s the last time he wasn’t careful in the storage room, let me tell you. Oh, and then…” She put a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh as another incident rose up in her mind. “Mrs. Billings was in one afternoon, and Alexis saw her putting salt into her coffee. You know, like a salt packet instead of a sugar packet. Alexis didn’t have time to stop her and then she felt like she should just keep her mouth shut so Mrs. Billings didn’t get embarrassed. But then when Mrs. Billings tasted her coffee, she said it was the worst coffee she’d ever had and made a whole scene. Alexis had to point out that she’d used the salt packet, which was still lying on the table, and everyone was staring.” Julia wiped a tear away. “Mrs. Billings left her a twenty-dollar tip that day.”

Cooper chuckled. “Well, at least she was nice about it in the end.”

She nodded. “But I think customers bring the most chaos to the pub. Which is probably to be expected. George Melder keeps trying to bring his dog into the pub. We have to keep explaining to him that because his chihuahua isn’t registered as a service animal, she isn’t allowed inside because of people’s allergies and because some kids are scared of dogs. Well, anyway, it’s gotten to the point where he’s been sneaking her inside in his jacket. She sits in the corner of the booth next to him and he sneaks her bites of his food. It’s so cute that usually we just turn a blind eye to it and take care to wipe the booth out when they’ve left.”

“Oh, I’d love to see that.” He grinned. “Next time it happens, tell me and I’ll run over there so I can witness it.”

She grinned back at him. “It’s every Thursday afternoon for lunch, at noon exactly. You could set your clock by George.”

They both chuckled, and then they fell quiet for a few moments. Julia turned to watch Macey, feeling delighted by how happy the little girl was.

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