Page 21 of Burn for You (Slow Burn 1)
Then—just to make me mad enough to cuss out the pope—he ordered all my employees out of my kitchen.
“Everybody out!” he commanded without looking away from me, that deep voice rolling like thunder through the room.
When those turncoats had the audacity to start hustling their butts out, I almost lost my mind.
“Everybody stay put!” I said. “The next person who moves is fired!”
Cue the sound of screeching brakes. Then I had twelve employees looking back and forth between Jackson and me, waiting breathlessly to see what would happen next.
Standing by Hoyt, Eeny was busily fondling one of her trinket necklaces, muttering something under her breath. I hoped it was a voodoo curse that would make all Jackson’s hair fall out and shrink his balls to the size of peanuts.
“Miss Hardwick,” Jackson began, snarly as a grizzly bear, but I cut him off.
“Where’s your attorney? Or are you serving me the papers yourself?”
He blinked, his thick brows drawing together. “Attorney?” Then his look cleared. “Oh. No, I’m not suing you.”
Not trusting myself to speak, I spread my hands wide and stood there, like What then?
He said, “I have a job for you.”
Mother Mary, the man was offering me a job? Like this restaurant thing I’d been planning and saving toward for years was just a little side hobby, something I did in my spare time to make a few extra dollars toward my rent? And judging by his smug, aren’t-you-lucky delivery, he had every assumption that I’d be champing at the bit to come work for him. Because what a dream that would be.
I had to bite my tongue and count to ten before I was calm enough to string a coherent sentence together. Well, it wasn’t actually an entire sentence. It was just a word.
“No.”
I had to give it to him, he had extremely expressive eyebrows. Those thick black caterpillars perched over his steely-blue peepers had an entire language of their own. Right now they were drawn together in a glower that told me I was a rebellious little nitwit that he was fully prepared to have drawn and quartered and fed to his dogs.
My staff looked on in fascinated silence.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “This is an incredible opportunity for you—”
My sharp laugh made two of the line cooks jump. “How thoughtful of you to think of little ol’ me for your precious opportunity! I’ve been waiting so long for such a tantalizing offer! Whatever would I do without you?”
That growl of his came on, low and dangerous. Even Eeny started to look nervous.
Deadly quiet, he said, “Everyone. Out. Now. If she fires you, I’ll pay you each a year’s salary and find you other jobs.”
That offer proved to be too much for my employees to resist. I watched in red-faced f
ury as one by one they silently filed out in a single line, avoiding my gaze. At the end of the line, Eeny shrugged and mouthed, Sorry, boo. Hoyt sent me a wink.
I’d just gotten a painful lesson in the power of men with money, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Swallowing back the string of vile curses boiling on my tongue, I folded my arms over my chest and stared at him.
He stared right back at me. Boy, did he ever. The Beast had a Look of his own. Truth be told, it would give mine a run for its money.
I said, “We open in ten minutes. I have two hundred reservations tonight.”
He said, “You look tired.”
I had to close my eyes and count to ten again. When I opened them, I hoped death rays were shooting out of my head. If I’d had a machete handy, I couldn’t say for sure that I wouldn’t lunge at him with it.
“And you look like you were raised in the woods by a tribe of cannibals. All you’re missing is a bone in your beard.”
That smirk appeared briefly again, there then gone. He ran a hand over his face, staring at me with such sudden strange intensity I thought I might spontaneously combust.
