Page 4 of Lavender and Lust

“Oh, it gets better,” she adds, the tone of her voice indicating that it’s anything butbetter, and I wait with bated breath for her to finish, “Asha and Rachel called in sick too.”

I inhale sharply through my nose. Asha and Rachel work the evening shift, and if they’re not coming in today, it means only one thing.

My dad is going to hit me up to work a double. And with my desire to do nothing more than crawl into bed and die today, the thought of having to work a double shift makes my blood pressure spike to dangerous levels.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” I shriek, the piercing shrill of my voice slicing through my throbbing brain like a hot blade and making me wince.

“No, she’s not,” my father’s gruff voice barks as he storms out the double doors leading from the kitchen with a container of clean cutlery in his arms, pinning me with a scowl. “And you’re late.”

“Huh?” I frown, twisting my wrist to double-check the time on my watch. “No, I’m not. It’s eight o’clock.”

“You were supposed to start at six.”

“Since when?”

“Since I sent you one of those text thingamajigs this morning,” he responds, then dumps the cutlery down on the counter.

Pulling out my phone, I swipe the screen and search through my messages, seeing nothing but a few drunk texts from Lexi last night before she passed out.

“No, you didn’t. Here, see for yourself.” I hold my phone up for him to see, and his eyes squint before remembering he’s blind as a bat, then shifts the glasses from the top of his head down to his nose. “No text thingamajigs.”

“Goddammit,” he growls, pulling his phone out and stabbing a finger at the screen with enough force to punch a hole through it. “I thought this stupid contraption was supposed to send messages to people?”

“It does if you do it correctly.”

“I did do it correctly,” he argues, then holds up his phone to show me the message, and I instantly spotsaidmessage sitting in his drafts.

“It’s in your drafts.”

He pulls the phone back and studies the screen, confusion marring his features. “What’s drafts?” He glances back up at me with a blank look before turning his attention back to his phone and looking at it like he’s trying to read Chinese. “Christ, this is ridiculous. I’m taking this damn thing back to the shop. I didn’t pay four hundred bucks for a phone to send my messages to something called drafts.”

“It didn’t send it there. It saved it, and besides, all phones have drafts, Dad.”

“What the hell for?”

“In case you want to send the message later.”

“Why would I do that? What’s the point of typing a message only to send it later?”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I inhale a deep breath and attempt to curb my patience. When it comes to technology, my father is about as clued in as a squirrel trying to navigate a spaceship to Mars.

“Order for table five,” Wyatt, our kitchen hand, calls out and places two plates of biscuits and gravy on the serving window.

Charlotte appears, lifting a plate with each hand and casting me a beseeching look. “I hate to break up the father-daughter bonding time, but can you take the order at booth twelve, Kenzie?”

I glance back at her apologetically. “Of course. Sorry, Char.”

My father, suddenly remembering we have a business to run, snaps his eyes up from his phone and skewers me with a disgruntled glare. “Why are you still standing there? Get to work.”

Rolling my eyes, I huff out a breath, then make my way through the double swinging doors that lead into the kitchen and make a beeline straight for the aprons hanging on the far wall.

Awareness prickles along the back of my neck, the feeling of being watched making my skin crawl. I know exactly whose eyes are burning holes through my back right now. But choosing to ignore it, I make quick work of removing my jacket and swapping it with the black apron on the hook, all the while hoping that if I continue to ignore him, he will go back to doing what he’s supposed to do—which is cook for our customers—rather than antagonize me.

But he never was going to make employee of the month.

“You’re late, Mac,” his deep husky voice drawls, and my back stiffens at the blatant mockery in his tone.

Closing my eyes, I tilt my head back and silently pray to the Lord above to grant me strength before turning to face the man who has been the bane of my existence ever since he pulled my pigtails on the jungle gym in the third grade.

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