Page 110 of Tumbleweed Temptation
She pressed her lips together and turned away. “You don’t have another appointment until two, so you can go to lunch, if you want.”
“I might go upstairs.” He knew she wanted him to invite her, because they hadn’t really talked since the weekend. But he knew the more time he spent with her, the harder it would be to keep what was on his mind to himself.
“Okay. I’m going to just eat here and get some work done. I’ve gotten a little behind on my personal deadline.”
He looked at the back of her head for a long moment. God, he missed talking to her, confiding in her, hearing her thoughts. He missed her.
But he headed upstairs anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The candle that Ginnyhad been burning at both ends was now sputtering in a puddle at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. She was so grateful to Sofia and Poppy for helping her set up the next contest at The Wheel House, because Austin had disappeared.
Okay, he hadn’t disappeared. He’d gone to San Angelo. She didn’t know why because he’d never told her, and she hadn’t pressed because he clearly wanted to keep it to himself. But she couldn’t help feeling hurt. Hurt that she’d opened herself to him more than she’d ever opened herself to any man, trusted him with a truth she’d never told anyone, and he’d ghosted her. Seriously, if she didn’t work with him, she would never see him, and even then they only talked about work related stuff. Really, if they hadn’t already done so much work on the contests she’d cancel this one. She might still cancel the next one.
The set-up at The Wheel House was problematic for a lot of reasons, the main one being that the kitchen was inside and the audience would be outside. So Poppy had borrowed the audiovisual equipment the elementary school used to do their morning announcements and set up a camera in the kitchen, and they would hook it up to the big screen on the stage.
The other problem was that The Wheel House didn’t have waitresses, so Sofia, Hailey and a few of Poppy’s friends from work would be acting as waitresses to serve samples of the dishes to the audience.
And a cold front had come through, so Patrick was helping Jonas the bartender put out gas heaters.
So Ginny had been stressed about this competitionbeforeshe learned she was also going to have to give the commentary. She wanted to blame Austin for bailing on her, but also knew that wasn’t fair. Well, she didn’t know. He’d seemed really sorry and she didn’t know his reason for going to San Angelo, for not being able to change the date. If he didn’t want to tell her, she wasn’t going to press.
She was going to do what she always did. Figure it out.
She stopped short when she saw Janine walk through the gate of The Wheel House about an hour before the event was going to start. As far as she knew, Janine had never been to The Wheel House, disdaining the restaurant because it was her competition. But here she was.
“Hey, Janine, how’ve you been?” They’d never really smoothed things over after Ginny left the diner.
Janine, true to form, didn’t mince words. “I heard you need some help tonight. I can wait some tables for you.”
“Did you—close up?”
“No, Darla is running the place. Not too busy since everyone’s coming over here for this thing, and Nancy said you were running it on your own. What can I do to help you get started?”
Ginny wasn’t an overly affectionate person, like Poppy, but she couldn’t resist giving Janine—also not affectionate—a side hug in gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, and guided Janine to the kitchen to show her the set-up.
