“That won’t be necessary,” Mr. Larrabee said quickly, his face going suddenly pale, and the flurry of nerves replacing the glassy lust in his eyes. “On second thought, the pierogi and kielbasa should be more than sufficient to satisfy my appetite.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Jane snapped.
She skirted away from Larrabee’s table, then navigated the rest of the bustling restaurant on her way back to the kitchen. The cramped dining area was filled with workers, fresh from their shift. Their chatter vibrated through the walls—crude jokes, laughter, twangy accents.
Across the restaurant, Jane caught the eye of Emily Pritchett, her long-time friend and fellow waitress, and they exchanged a knowing look of disgust before Jane pushed her way through the swinging kitchen door and escaped the chaos of the dining room.
Like Jane, Emily was a young and attractive woman who, through a series of unfavorable circumstances, had wound up forced to fend for herself in Chicago. Unlike Jane, though, Emily wasn’t facing the dire realities of life entirely alone, she had the support of her grandmother. Though Emily’s grandmother was elderly, unemployed, and more often than not suffering through the late stages of her failing health, Jane was secretly envious that Emily had a warm home to go to at the end of every long and dreary day at the restaurant. Jane desperately longed for the comforts of companionship—any companionship, even that of an elderly relative.
Jane turned into the kitchen and nearly ran straight into Mr. Bosko, who stood over the stove stirring a bubbling pot of boiled cabbage.
“Oy! Careful!” Mr. Bosko grunted, then muttered something under his breath in his native Polish.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bosko,” Jane chirped, swinging around the cramped kitchen and fetching a clean plate, which she then carried to a steaming pot of pierogi that sat beside the stove. Using a long ladle, she quickly filled the plate with food as Mr. Bosko looked on.
“You’re distracted tonight,” he observed, stirring the pot on the stove as his eyes followed Jane through the kitchen. “What’s troubling you?”
“Nothing,” Jane said. She had no intention of burdening her boss with her own petty complaints of crude or difficult customers. Mr. Bosko had enough to worry about. Besides, unsavory steel workers were just part of the job… if it wasn’t for their loyal patronage, the restaurant would go out of business. Jane knew there was no point complaining about things that couldn’t be changed.
The kitchen door swung open again, and Emily nearly collided with Mr. Bosko as she stepped inside.
“Oy!” Mr. Bosko grunted for a second time.
“I see Mr. Larrabee is in rare form tonight,” Emily said to Jane, ignoring Mr. Bosko as she slipped through the kitchen and reached for a clean plate. She repeated Jane’s motions, filling the plate with a steaming heap of soft pierogi and kielbasa.
“Always,” Jane sighed heavily. “I wish he would just go away, or at the very least find the decency within himself to eat his meal in silence.”
“Decency? Mr. Larrabee?” Emily scoffed. “You’ve given the man far too much credit. He doesn’t have a decent bone in his body.”
Both women knew it was true. They had both taken turns serving Mr. Larrabee for months, and if it wasn’t Larrabee, it was another man just like him. The restaurant was full of inappropriate men.
“Is this someone I need to talk to?” Mr. Bosko offered, wielding a ladle menacingly over the stove.
“Of course not, Mr. Bosko,” Emily said diplomatically. While both women complained freely about the men who frequented the restaurant, neither of them wished to cause a scene or disrupt business. They were, however, grateful that their boss was willing to come to their defense, even if it meant losing a paying customer.
“So,” Emily whispered, this time keeping her voice down so that the conversation didn’t quite reach Mr. Bosko’s ears. “Has Mr. Larson written back yet?”
Jane’s cheeks turned red hot and she kept her eyes pointed down at the plate in her hands.
“Not now,” she hissed. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Oooh!” Emily crooned a bit too loudly, and Mr. Bosko glanced up from the pot on the stove.
Jane nudged Emily quickly in the side and sent her a fierce glare, but she couldn’t remain cross with her friend for long, not now that Wyatt Larson was on her mind.
As Jane trudged dutifully back toward Mr. Larrabee, his steaming hot plate of food balanced on her arm, her mind was no longer dwelling on the dreariness of her circumstances, nor on the unsettling grin that the crude customer wore stretched across his face.
Rather, her thoughts were focused entirely on Wyatt Larson.
They had become acquainted months earlier when, after a particularly harrowing few months, Jane found herself at an emotional low point: horribly lonely and hollow, and tired of her dismal circumstances and even more dismal future.
Facing such dreary prospects, it had been all too easy for Emily to get a foothold in her mind, to convince Jane to read the advertisements in the newspaper seeking mail-order brides. While Jane might once have scoffed at these advertisements—most dripping with the desperation and sadness of the lonely men who had penned them—Jane now looked at them with new hope, saw them as a means of escaping her seemingly hopeless existence in Chicago and carving out a promising new life out west.
Of course, her hopes had been all too quickly dashed when she started reading the advertisements. Jane quickly realized that most of the men seeking brides in the newspaper weren’t entirely unlike the patrons of Bosko’s: unrefined, unmannered, and utterly lacking class or decorum.
She had almost abandoned the venture entirely…
Then she found Wyatt Larson.
And, well… that had changed everything.
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MAIL ORDER BRIDE BEST VALUE
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The Outlaw’s Bride (Mail Order Bride Adventures) Page 6