Page 3 of One More Baby for the Boss

Stacy hurried out the door. Alex looked around at the restaurant. She was now responsible for Stacy’s two tables of customers in addition to her own two — well, that wasn’t so bad. She would go and check on Stacy’s tables, explain what had happened, get caught up on where they were in their meals—

The door swung open and nine more people walked into the diner.

Alex stopped cold. This was more than she had bargained for. The hostess began showing them to seats, and Alex knew she needed to go and check on them, bring them drinks… but now she had seven tables, and more people could come in at any time. She had just finished learning the menu. She might have been able to handle this at a familiar restaurant, but this place was so new to her. How could she keep up?

I just have to. That’s all.

Still, as she went to greet the new tables, she couldn’t help feeling as though her bad luck had caught up with her again. Some first day this was turning out to be!

Twenty minutes later, Alex felt as if she was in the middle of a marathon. Two more parties had arrived. Edgar had left, thankfully, but she was still in the weeds and she could feel the irritation of the customers as she struggled to make it to each table with their food.

“I’m so sorry about all this,” she said as she swung by Elijah’s table to refill his coffee. “Is there anything else I can get you right now?”

“You’re fine,” Elijah said. “We can see you’re busy.”

She wondered what he meant by that. Was there judgment in his tone? It was impossible to be sure. Maybe she should take his words at face value — but then, maybe he was subtly reprimanding her for being too busy to provide good service.

“We had someone call out sick,” she said, hoping that he would understand.

He nodded and said nothing.

Alex’s mood darkened. It seemed as though hewasupset with her — and that was completely unfair. She’d done nothing except try to make the best of a bad situation.

Rich men are so entitled, she thought as she walked away from his table. He probably wasn’t used to having to wait for anything. Maybe he and his kidshouldjust eat at home from now on. What were they doing in a diner anyway? This was no place for a rich guy. He should be eating brunch at a five-star restaurant or something. The service there would be great. He wouldn’t have to wait for anything. Then he would be happy.

Then maybe she’d be able to focus and get some work done, and stop looking over at those long, hard thighs, those broad shoulders, those blue eyes that threatened to make her forget about all her other tables and give all her attention to him.

She shook her head, trying to clear it, and hurried to the window to pick up more plates of food.

This shift couldn’t end soon enough.

CHAPTER 2

ALEX

The rest of Alex’s first week was just as bad as the first day had been.

On the second day, she came in to find that the menu was entirely different from what she had worked so hard to memorize. “What is this?” she asked, staring at it. “This is completely different from yesterday.”

Stacy wasn’t working today — it was an older woman named Veronica, and she clearly had an attitude about new hires. She looked down her nose at Alex. “This is the Tuesday menu,” she said. “I’m sure that you were told about this in your training. We offer a different menu every Tuesday.”

“I wasn’t told.”

“You probably just forgot,” Veronica sniffed.

Alex felt slapped. She hadn’t forgotten. She wouldn’t have forgotten something like that. And she had worked so hard on memorizing the standard menu. It seemed impossible to her that this detail had been overlooked — and yet, somehow, it had.

The upshot was that the entire day was a mess. She wasn’t able to answer any questions about the menu without consulting it herself, and the customers noticed. By the end of the day, she felt stupid and worn down, and she wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and hope that maybe tomorrow would treat her a little more kindly than today had.

But the third day — if it were possible — was even worse. The power went out overnight, thanks to a storm, and as a result Alex’s alarm didn’t go off. By the time she jolted awake and ran downstairs to the restaurant, she was an hour late — and to make matters worse, Marjorie was there.

“I’m so sorry,” Alex gasped as she scrambled to tie her apron.

Marjorie frowned. “You know, I like to rent the upstairs apartment to people working at the restaurant so they’ll be sure to show up on time. I never expected something like this.”

“I know. My alarm didn’t go off because of the storm.”

“You should set an alarm on your phone so that doesn’t happen. You’re a millennial; I shouldn’t have to tell you these things.”

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