The restaurant hadn’t opened for business yet, but prep was well underway, and Georgie had only a few more minutes to show before salads and soups would need dishing up, not to mention the bread ovens were already fired up and baking the first batch. He kept himself from going back to Reuben’s office and asking for her phone number. He somehow felt responsible for her job or her quitting, if she had. But how invisible would that be? He tapped the counter, staring at the stainless-steel containers, willing them to fill themselves. If she didn’t show, the job would be his again.
“Ah, forget it.” He reached for a tray and grabbed a few containers.
“Hey, Georgie.” He froze when he heard Caleb’s greeting, then shoved the containers back, left the tray, and thought invisible thoughts as he turned to the grills and twisted the knobs, adjusted the heat, and inspected the spatula. And yet relief washed through him.
She hadn’t quit. Or maybe she was coming to work to quit. His stomach tightened again, and as she approached her station, he held very still. She quietly collected her containers and took the tray back to the walk-in.
She wore a white blouse and the required black slacks. She’d tied her apron on. She was staying. He blew out a breath and checked his oil and seasonings and asked Haru to bring out more house fries.
Just cook, he told himself.
The evening progressed without too much difficulty. Jace found that if he imagined a bubble around Georgie and he stayed outside it, he was still able to attend to his duties and maneuver around the stoves and the pick-up counter. He avoided eye contact at all costs but couldn’t help the few times when he needed something quickly and the only thing to do was ask, quietly and without malice.
He had purposely removed her name from the closing crew for the next few days. Reuben hadn’t questioned it. Now all he could do was take his mom’s advice and judge how to act by how Georgie acted. And just maybe things might get back to normal in the kitchen.
* * *
As the week wore on, Reuben remained up front more frequently, providing Jace with the space he needed to give Georgie. And it seemed to be working. Instead of the anxious newbie she’d been, Georgie was steadily blending in with the staff, becoming part of the choreographed chaos of the restaurant kitchen. She even seemed to enjoy her role of keeping things organized between kitchen and dining room. He had to admit, she was good at it.
He still caught glimpses of her nerves around him and couldn’t help the way she flushed when he had to address her directly. A couple of times he had to stop himself from putting a hand on her arm just to reassure her. Definitely a wrong move. At times she seemed like a frightened little girl, and then there were other times . . . a look, something in her posture . . . and she wasn’t a little girl.
Jace had plenty of opportunity to ponder all this in the mornings as he cleared out the rain gutters on the duplex. It was a messy, tedious job, and he wondered more than a couple of times how much it would cost to replace the entire system. He’d had no idea dandelions could grow in rain gutters. Kit kept him company, loyally stretching out on the ground beneath wherever Jace worked, rain or shine, and Jace tried not to hit him with clumps of moss and molded leaves as he threw them down.
“Kit,” he said as he flung what looked like a mushroom down to the sidewalk leading to the front door and wiped his work gloves on his pants, “you’re lucky to be a dog.” Kit reached down and licked himself, then rolled over.
Jace brushed a mixture of sweat and mist off his brow and glanced down the hill at one house in particular. The movement of a wheelbarrow being pushed to the front flowerbeds of the house drew his eye, and before he looked away, Georgie came out to join one of her aunts. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, jeans, and gardening gloves, but he easily recognized the way she held herself. They were planting flowers. Georgie knelt down on the wet grass next to her aunt, the soles of her shoes slightly angled as she rested on them.
Kit barked. Jace scowled at him and turned back to the gutters. “Easy for you to say.” He scraped the putty knife along the insides of the now-clear section he’d been working on. “You wouldn’t know a nice-looking pair of jeans from a mailbox.”
* * *
“Georgie, can you answer that? I’ve got my hands all tied up in these biscuits.”
Georgie hurried to take off her gardening gloves, slip off her shoes, and pad across the front room to the landline phone near the bar. The house was filled with the aroma of Tru’s chicken soup. “Hello?”
“Hi, Georgie? It’s Tyler. Gordon.”
“Hi, Tyler.”
“Hi. I’m calling to see if Saturday is still okay for Deception Pass. The weather is supposed to be pretty good. Can we pick you up at eleven? I guess we’re bringing a picnic.”
A small knot tightened in her stomach. The date. “Sure. Can I bring something?”
“We’re just doing sandwiches and chips and stuff. Hang on.” He covered the phone and asked if she should bring something. “Megan suggested a dessert. Nothing fancy. Would that be all right?”
“Sure.” Dessert. Cookies were dessert, right? “How’s the job hunt?”
“I found one,” he replied enthusiastically.
“Great. Where?”
“At the restaurant.”
“What restaurant?”
“Peter & Andrew’s. Your restaurant.”
She heard the anticipation in his voice, but for some reason the news made her sit down on the barstool, and all she could do for a moment was twirl the spiral phone cord hard in her fingers. “Oh, that’s great. I didn’t know they had an opening.”
“Yeah, they needed a dishwasher.” His enthusiasm faded at the word dishwasher. “But it’ll be good because I need to find a second job, and the hours will help with that.”
Georgie wondered what had happened to Anders. Maybe Reuben just thought they needed a second dishwasher. “When do you start?”
“Next week.”
Confused by her relief that he wouldn’t start for several more days, she brightened her voice. “Well, congratulations. And I guess I’ll see you on Saturday.”
“You bet.”
When she hung up, she sat still for several minutes. She didn’t even really know Tyler. Why should his working at the restaurant make her feel so . . . She shook her head.
“You all right?”
She sat up and turned on the stool to face Tru. “Yeah, I guess. Tyler got a job at the restaurant.”
“That bothers you.”
“It shouldn’t.” She frowned.
“But it does.”
Georgie nodded. Tru gave a sympathetic cluck of her tongue and slid a tray of biscuits into the oven. “Tyler’s a good boy. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“I know. I know. I just . . .”
“Feeling a little like it’s your place?”
Georgie looked at her aunt. She nodded. “I think that’s it. And there’s absolutely no justification for feeling that way.”
“No.” Tru wasn’t looking at her, just steadily cutting out circles of rich dough and placing them on the tray. “But you’ve come here as a kind of safe place. Then you got a job at the restaurant. A little hard at first, but it’s working out, right?”
Georgie nodded, listening for the insight this puzzle of a woman had to offer.
“It’s become part of your safe place. The place you’ve let into your life after whatever trouble you’ve had. You know the people there, trust them enough to keep going there every day, right?”
An image of Jace flashed before her eyes, and Georgie could see where she was going. “And part of me feels Tyler’s going to endanger that.”
Tru nodded with feeling, still working with the dough, lips pressed in a firm line. She said nothing more, just finished the last of the biscuits and set the tray on the stove to wait for the others to be done. Looking fatigued, Tru washed her hands and dried them and, on her way out of the kitchen, said, “Tell Faye dinner will be ready in twenty minutes. I’m g
oing to lie down.”
Georgie said she would but sat looking after her aunt, realizing she understood the woman much more than she thought. And Tru probably understood Georgie as well.
And she couldn’t help wondering if her coming to stay here had ever felt like a threat to Tru’s safe place. And if it had, the woman had been very gracious.
* * *
Georgie looked down at the text on her phone.
Deacon: This will be good. Just breathe.
Georgie sat waiting in a small office that may have been larger except for the shelves lining two walls filled with books, binders, and framed photos. Crayon drawings and notes covered a bulletin board. A poster advertising a tulip festival hung above another kids’ table, which was stacked with Dr. Seuss books and a small bin of Lego toys.
Laurel Cruz entered with a smile. “I work with a lot of children,” she explained as she took the seat next to Georgie, ignoring the comfortable office chair behind the desk.
“Your therapist in Idaho Falls sent me your file, so thank you for signing the release for those. It was very helpful to see where you’ve come from. Trauma in any form can be difficult to overcome, but it can be overcome.” She pulled a notepad from the desk and clicked a pen. She crossed her legs and sat back with an encouraging smile. “What would you like to accomplish here, Georgie?” Laurel watched her with kind, steady eyes.
Georgie knew she had an answer to this question, but she struggled to find it. I want the old me back seemed trite. Maturity told her that wasn’t how things worked. I want to start over wasn’t right either. “I want to move forward,” she said. “I want to feel connected to myself.”
“Those are good answers. How are you feeling disconnected?”
She played at a loose thread in the seam of her pants. “I feel like there are new things I don’t know about myself, and they’re as strange as the hole in my memories, and instead of being inside my head looking out, I’m watching myself from the outside. I’m not sure where I’m going anymore. I’m not sure why . . .” She paused, willing herself to rein in her emotions. “Why things ended up the way they did.”
“Sounds like reconnection is a good goal. Did this disruption begin with your car accident?”
Slowly, Georgie shook her head. “It began when I met a boy.”
* * *
Friday came quickly and was as busy and frantic as usual.
Jace turned his head in Georgie’s direction. “That sirloin on eight was smothered, right?”
Georgie nodded.
He threw mushrooms and onions onto the grill next to the steak.
“Thirteen’s up. And seven’s about ready,” she announced to the waiters.
Jace glanced up, catching Rhea smiling at John as they approached the window to collect their orders. John whispered something quickly in her ear before they each picked up their trays, and she laughed, bumping him with her elbow. Rhea left first as Georgie finished with the cups of tartar sauce and butter, and John watched her walk away out of the corner of his eye. He turned and caught Jace watching. Jace raised his eyebrows, and John stood up straight, covering his smile.
“John, you’re set.”
“Thanks, Georgie.” John gave another nervous glance toward Jace.
Jace smiled and focused on the grill again, turning the pile of mushrooms with one flip. He shook his head, piled the steak and toppings onto a plate, and turned to find Georgie watching him. In one movement, she looked away, and he stepped around her to take another look at the next order up.
John and Rhea. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time staffers had paired up in the restaurant. He just hoped they could handle everything that went with it. There was enough tension in this kitchen already. The bread oven buzzed, and Georgie turned her attention to removing the loaves, her ponytail swaying and bouncing as she moved.
He blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. “Haru, is that lobster ready?”
He picked up the pan of cream sauce Caleb had started for him and whisked it with energy. He slowly poured a thin stream into a pot of the simmering lobster stock he made twice a week and moved his whisk to the pot, incorporating the cream to make the base for the bisque. Jace grabbed a tasting spoon, sampled the soup, and tossed the spoon into the dirty-spoon bucket under the counter. He threw in a fistful of salt and a pinch of white pepper. Haru came over with a bowl of freshly cracked lobster meat, and as Jace whisked the thickening bisque, Haru added the lobster, sprinkling in a handful at a time. Another taste and the pot was headed for the warming tray at Georgie’s station.
She turned and reached for a clean ladle with an empty bowl in her hand but paused, giving Jace space. He backed away, remembering the spilled bisque, and he couldn’t help but think he saw color creeping into her cheeks and a hint of a smile. He also wasn’t sure what to think of the small skip of his heartbeat as he set the bisque down. Frowning, he gave orders for the seared scallops and started two swordfish on the grill.
Behind him, Mai asked, “Are the crab cakes ready for table nineteen?”
He gasped and quickly jumped to the fryers, hoping they weren’t overdone. But Georgie was there first, tapping a cake gently against the basket, the last drips of oil falling back into the fryer. She’d turned at his hasty movement, and he forgot to keep his eyes down. There she was, her tongs gripping a crab cake, her ocean-blue eyes locked on his.
His mind cried out, Look away! Be invisible, remember? And the more he thought it, the more he couldn’t do it. As long as she held him with her unreadable expression, he had to let her look, let her search and find what he needed her to know.
That he was safe.
But her flush grew, and she blinked. The cake slipped from her tongs back into the oil as she gasped.
“It’s okay. Here.” Against everything he’d vowed before he stepped into the kitchen each day since that night behind the restaurant, he stepped forward and took the same handle she held and rested the basket on the hook above the oil. He felt her watching, his hand resting against hers, his heart about ready to pound out of his chest. “Did you get splashed?”
She shook her head.
He rescued the dropped crab cake. “Not even broken, see?” He felt her nod as she quickly pulled her hand away from his, and he caught a whiff of something fresh and sweet. Oranges? He turned, but she’d already gone after a plate. Her hair was a swirl of varying shades of soft pale gold, and he caught himself wondering what it would look like down.
He cleared his throat when she held the plate of the other cakes out to him. He placed the escaped cake with the others, and Georgie moved away to her station, but not before he heard her, though barely.
“Thank you.”
He finally breathed.
He turned, fighting the urge to smile, and went back to work. “Caleb, where’s that reduction?”
* * *
Georgie wiped down the counters with bleach water, trying not to look like she was listening in on the conversation taking place over at the grills. It was her first night to close since Tuesday, the night she’d made a complete fool of herself. It was down to her, Jace, and John, who was covering as dishwasher for closing. He was obviously done with the dishes.
Jace cleaned one of the grills. “Have you taken her out yet?”
Georgie peeked at John, who leaned against the protective bar in front of the grill’s surface, his arms crossed. “That’s just it, man. Every time I think I should ask, I clam up. Like an idiot.”
Rhea wasn’t assigned closing tonight, and Georgie had noticed the shy way she’d said good night to John, lingering long enough for him to say something more than “See ya tomorrow.” It hadn’t come, but she’d still left with her broad grin, her eyes bright against her cocoa skin, and a wave to everyone. Georgie had remembered that giddy feeling that had come with wondering when, not if, the guy would ask.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to man up and blurt it out. Rhea, you wanna go to a movie?”
“Yeah, I
know, but,” John’s leg bounced, “she’s so . . . so . . . I don’t know, smooth. And I’m a . . .”
“A clam.”
“No—”
“An idiot.”
“Dude.”
Georgie smiled and took the towel to the basket.
As she turned to get the broom, John stopped her. “Hey, Georgie, you’re a girl.”
She paused. “I am.”
“Yeah. So what do you think?”
She’d liked believing they didn’t know she was listening. “Um, about what?”
Jace turned away and continued cleaning the grill.
“How do you like to be asked out on a first date?”
“Oh.” Georgie dropped her eyes. “I don’t think I’m the best person to be answering that right now.”
“Why not? I’m dying here. It’s Rhea.”
Jace cleared his throat, looking sideways at John and, to Georgie’s surprise, shook his head.
John wasn’t going for subtleties. “What? Like you’re a lot of help?” He turned back to Georgie. “What do you think?”
But Georgie was still trying to read Jace’s attempt to keep John from questioning her.
“Is it that bad?” John asked.
Georgie blinked and focused on John. “No. No, I just . . . The timing isn’t great.” How could she give advice about something she’d lost faith in?
“You think I should wait?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant I’m just not—” Why was this so hard?
He looked ill. “I’m making a fool of myself, aren’t I?”
“No, not at all. I just don’t think . . . that I—”
“Maybe Georgie’s uncomfortable giving you an answer,” Jace broke in.
John and Georgie looked at Jace.
“Why? What is Rhea gonna say?” John turned to Georgie. “What do you know? Oh, man, she totally hates me, doesn’t she?” John pushed his hands through his red hair and began pacing. “I am an idiot.”
“What do you mean uncomfortable?” Georgie watched Jace, waiting for an answer that didn’t include the words insane or unbalanced.
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