Baby Makes Three

“Okay,” Max said, opening the swing door behind him. “Let’s go back to stacking that wood.”

“This is bullshit!” The kid hollered as Max led him into the dining room.

Gabe’s silence worried her, actually set small stones atwirl in her stomach. “What aren’t you telling me, Gabe?”

“There’s no money for staff unless you take a pay cut,” he said point-blank. “Not until the next check comes in from the Crimpsons.”

“When will that be?” She asked, disbelieving.

“Two weeks.”

“Even if that kid was Cordon Bleu trained, I couldn’t pull together the menu for this wedding with one staff member!”

“I know.” He rubbed his forehead. “We open in a month and I’ve already got some reservations and am running an Internet spring promotion, so I should get more. I can make this work. We can use the money—”

She laughed, listening to him rob from Peter to pay Paul.

“You think this is funny?” he asked, his blue eyes dangerously clouded over.

“A little, yeah.”

“Great. Wonderful attitude from my chef.”

“You hired a chef, Gabe. Not a cheerleader. If you’re screwing up—”

Her comment must have lit his dormant temper because he bristled. “I’m not screwing up. You’re the one doing two months’ work for the price of what I had earmarked for a yearly chef’s salary.”

She shrugged. “You should have gotten a beginner chef.”

“No, you should have been reasonable.”

“Ah, I thought I recognized that voice.”

Patrick Mitchell’s loud voice boomed through the kitchen, stalling their argument as he stepped in from the outside. His red flannel shirt matched his ruddy cheeks and it was as if the sun had come out from behind clouds. Indomitably cheerful, that was Patrick, and she was inordinately glad to see him.

“There’s only one person Gabe actually fights with,” Patrick said and held out his thick burly arms. Alice allowed herself to be hugged, the sensation odd but pleasant enough since it didn’t last too long.

When was the last time someone touched me? she wondered. Even casually. That awkward embarrassing kiss from Charlie months ago, when she’d been so lonely and sad and drunk that she’d let him touch her.

She didn’t know when she lost the capacity for casual touch, when any sort of physical affection, no matter how benign, made her ache.

“How is my favorite former daughter-in-law?” Patrick asked, his blue eyes twinkling.

Some of the tension from locking horns with Gabe fell away and she smiled, even patted Patrick’s grizzled cheek.

“Don’t tell me he’s got you working here, too?” she asked.

“Slave labor.” Patrick shook his head, always one for teasing. “At least now we’ll have decent chow.”

“Don’t be too sure, Dad,” Gabe said, leaning against the doorjamb of his office. “She may have decided she doesn’t like the terms.”

“Always trying to make it my fault, aren’t you, Gabe.”

“If the shoe—”

“Wonderful!” Patrick rubbed his hands together. “If you don’t mind, Max and I are just going to pull up some chairs and watch you two duke it out for the next few months. That way no work will get done.” His eyes flicked from her to Gabe, who, chagrined by his father’s reverse chastisement, looked down at his shoes.

“I told Max this was going to be trouble,” Patrick said and she could feel his direct gaze on her face.

She’d only been here minutes and already things were going wrong.

“I can make it work,” Gabe said, resolute. “It won’t be a problem.”

“For you,” she said.

“You, either,” Gabe insisted, his tone hard, his smile sharp. “I will make it work.”

She nodded, wondering why she felt so small. So dark and ill-tempered. He was the one who had lied, who had told her he had staff. She shouldn’t feel bad because she was making him hold up his end of the bargain.

“You always do,” she said. He did. He could make gold out of hay without making it look hard.

“Ah, that’s how children should play,” Patrick said. “Nice.”

“Don’t you have some work to do, Dad?” Gabe asked.

“I’m going to hook up your fancy dishwasher,” he said, pointing to the far corner of the room where a dishwasher sat, with its tube and wire guts spread out across the floor.

He winked at Alice and vanished behind the equipment.

“Let’s get to work,” she said and pushed past Gabe into his minuscule office. “I’ve got some ideas for menus.”

GABE HAD PREPARED himself for the worst. He was fortified by too much caffeine, and ready to do battle with Alice over kitchen operations. But, surprisingly, there was no battle. It didn’t take long for them to ease into their old routine. They were rusty at first, but the one thing they’d always shared—well, two things—was that they were both perfectionists. Fortunately they both had the same idea of what perfect was.

“All right—” Alice looked down at her notebook “—breakfast buffets at the beginning. You have some kind of waitstaff, or do you expect me to do that?” She glanced at him from beneath her lashes and her eyes, black as night, twinkled just a little more than they had before, and he sighed.

“I’ve got staff.”

“Juvenile delinquents?” She was having too much fun with this at his expense. “Cameron going to be your front-of-house staff? He’ll be a real hit with guests.”