Kitabı oku: «A Dash of Romance», sayfa 2
“Stop!” Marta barked. “You’re a liar and I wouldn’t blame Mr. Harker for calling the police right now.”
“I think you should,” Mrs. Winchester agreed, nodding quickly. “Send a message.”
Rose’s jaw dropped. “This is a mistake!”
“I think you’d better go,” Warren said quietly. He moved forward and, with a firm grip on her arm, led her to the front door.
She wrenched her arm free. “You don’t need to manhandle me. It’s not like I want to stay.”
He looked at her for a moment, then shook his head and opened the door. Behind him, she could see the condescending expressions on the faces of his guests. A bunch of wealthy people who were more comfortable believing the “help” would steal than in listening to the truth.
For just a moment when she’d met him, Rose thought maybe Warren was different.
What a foolish mistake that had turned out to be.
One thing was for sure: it was a mistake she would never make again.
Chapter Two
“He sounds like a jerk,” Lily pronounced.
“Big-time,” Rose agreed. “I don’t know if I should conclude never to trust rich guys, or good-looking guys, or both.”
Rose and her sister were sprawled on the floor of their Brooklyn apartment, the newspaper Help Wanted section spread around them on the floor.
“How about simply never trusting Warren Harker?” Lily suggested. “Rather than wiping out the entire male population with one fell swoop. Or at least, the entire desirable male population.”
Rose sighed. “We’ll see. Oh, and add Marta Serragno to the list, too. I’m an equal opportunity mistruster.”
Lily chuckled. “So she actually used the words, ‘You’ll never work in this town again’?”
“That’s exactly what she said.” Rose circled another ad in the Help Wanted section of the paper. “And she’s as good as her word. So far I’ve been turned down by every major catering company in the entire city and two of three that are so minor you’d think she wouldn’t have ferreted them out.”
“Well,” Lily said with a straight face, “when you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you’re going to have to expect repercussions, sis.”
“Very funny, Lil. Very, very funny.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Lily threw her arms around Rose and gave her a big squeeze. “I’m just trying to help you see the humor in this. Such as it is. I mean, it’s not like you’ll never work again.”
“It’s starting to look like it.” An ad for a gas station attendant caught Rose’s eye and, after a moment of self-pity, she circled it, too.
Lily looked over. “Oh, come on.”
“Come on what?”
“You can get a job in the food industry. Gerard said he’d hire you if Miguel didn’t already have the job.”
Rose mustered a smile. “That’s nice of him to say, but since Miguel already does have the job, he doesn’t really have to put his money where his mouth is.” Gerard owned one of the exclusive boutique hotels where Lily worked as a concierge. He’d always been so kind to both of them. “Unless…Maybe he’d hire me as a maid?”
“I’m sure he would, but you’d be miserable.”
“I’m miserable now.”
“No, I mean you’d be a miserable maid.” Lily smiled. “Look at your room. There’s hardly a place on the floor where you can see the carpet.”
“This is no time to joke, Lily,” Rose said, but she smiled.
“Okay, okay. Just trying to add a little levity. Now let’s think about this. What if you forget catering for the time being and try restaurants? Maybe even work as a waitress.”
“I’d do that gladly. Unfortunately, I’ve already tried. Same story. Marta Serragno is nothing if not determined. Horrid woman. Half the town seems to be sucking up to her and the other half seems terrified. I can’t win.”
“Wait a minute.” Lily tapped her finger against her chin. “I saw a sign up in one of these places…yes! It was the Cottage Diner. Over by Coney Island?”
“Cottage Diner? I’ve never heard of it.”
Lily shrugged. “It’s a greasy spoon, but a great location. Water view and all. The place itself looks like it’s been there since World War II. Maybe you could get in there as a waitress and then, you know, work your way up. Put the place on the map. Meantime, I bet the tourists and Coney Island visitors give good tips.”
Something in Rose tingled. “That’s not a bad idea. There’s no way that Marta would have gotten to a crummy little diner in Brooklyn. But if I could help them raise their profile…” She frowned. That was getting ahead of herself. She hadn’t even gotten the job—or seen the diner, for that matter—and she was already thinking about raising the place’s profile?
As if reading her mind, Lily said, “I’m sure it will work out that way. And I’m telling you, the location is great.”
“Hmm.” For reasons she couldn’t quite express—maybe just intuition—this was striking Rose as a good idea. A very good idea. Something told her this could work out in ways she hadn’t even thought of. “Where is this place exactly?”
Like the plucky heroine in an old movie, Rose took the Help Wanted sign out of the Cottage Diner window and carried it inside with her to ask for the manager.
She approached a busboy who was clearing dishes from a booth. “Excuse me,” she said.
He turned, startled, and dropped a mug onto the floor. It didn’t break, but bounced loudly under the booth. He looked at Rose and his face turned red. “Yyes?”
“I’m here about the job.” She indicated the sign she was holding.
If possible, his face turned even more crimson.
“You need to talk to Doc, the owner,” a voice barked behind her. “Tim’s just a busboy.”
She turned to see a craggy-faced customer sitting in another booth, holding a newspaper. There was a steaming cup of coffee in front of him and about ten empty sugar packets. “Doc’s in the back.” He looked her over skeptically. “But I’m not sure you’re exactly what he’s looking for. What do you think, Al?”
He looked across the room at the only other customer in the place. The pudgy gray-haired man sneezed, dabbed his nose with a napkin and said, “Give her a break, Dick.” He sneezed again and said to Rose, “They’ve had pretty waitresses here before, but they always leave.”
“I’m always willing to try another pretty waitress, though.” A bald man in a greasy white apron came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a bar towel. “Doc Sears.” He set the towel down on the counter and held his hand out.
Rose shook it. “Rose Tilden.”
“You’re looking for a waitress job?”
“If you’re looking for a waitress.”
He looked at her skeptically. “You don’t look like the kind of waitress we’d get here. Bet you could make a lot of money a few miles into the city.”
He was talking about Manhattan, of course. Where she couldn’t get so much as a job busing tables. “I live here.”
He looked at her as if he wondered what the truth was, but was too tactful to ask. “Can you work evenings?”
She splayed her arms. “Any time you want.”
“You gonna stay on longer than a week?”
“I guarantee it.”
“Good.” He took the sign from her and ripped it in half. “You’re hired, Rose Tilden. Can you start tonight?”
Lunchtime had been dead in the diner, and dinner wasn’t a whole lot better. Doc was working the grill alongside a short-order cook called Hap, short for Elwood Happersmith. Rose privately concluded that, under the circumstances, she would have preferred Hap, too.
Only about half the booths were full, and the only other waiter was a young man named Paul, who spent more time dozing in an unoccupied booth than waiting tables, leaving Rose to handle pretty much the entire crowd.
She didn’t mind, though. She was just glad to have the work.
She was on her feet from two in the afternoon until 10 p.m. With closing time just an hour away, and her feet eagerly awaiting the promise of an Epsom salt bath, her last customer came through the door.
Warren Harker.
She did a double take. If she’d made a list of the top fifteen people she least expected to see in a place like this, Warren Harker would have been close to the top, along with Gandhi and Fidel Castro.
For a moment, she froze, heart pounding. She didn’t know if it was the lighting or the fact that she’d spent the day looking at guys like Dick, Al and Doc, but Warren Harker was even more slick-looking than she’d recalled. His dark hair gleamed under the fluorescent lights, his crisp blue suit—with loosened tie and unbuttoned collar—fit like a charm across his wide shoulders.
The jerk.
And now he was her customer. This was spectacularly bad luck. A quick glance at the booth she had already come to think of as “Paul’s bed” revealed that the waiter was indeed snoring away, so she was stuck with Warren Harker.
Rose took a quick breath and straightened her back. She could do this. No problem. With a little bit of luck, maybe he wouldn’t even remember her.
She walked toward him, feeling a little like a prisoner being led on the final walk down the prison hall. Of all the greasy spoons in all of New York, why why why did he have to walk into this one?
“Can I take your order?” she asked, laying on the Brooklyn accent a little thick and keeping her eyes averted.
Her efforts were wasted. Apparently Dick was right in saying they didn’t normally have women waiting tables here, because Warren looked up from his paperwork with surprise.
“Hey, you’re new,” he said.
She barely glanced at him. “Just started today.”
He gave a laugh. “Wow, I don’t know when I last saw a women working here.”
Oh, no, he was a regular?
That was it; she was doomed. She was going to lose another job and, given the trouble she had had in finding this one, she didn’t know where she’d go next.
“So what can I get you?” she asked, keeping her tone short.
“Just a coffee, thanks. And real cream, not milk. Doc’s always cheap with the cream.”
So he was a regular. “Sure thing.” She turned to get the coffee, thanking her lucky stars he hadn’t realized who she was. Yet.
But she was stopped in her tracks not three feet away.
“Wait a minute.”
She closed her eyes, dreading what was coming next.
“I know you, don’t I?”
She could feel his eyes on her back, sending a tickle straight down her spine.
“Don’t think so,” she answered without turning around.
“Come here.” It was practically a command. Apparently he was so used to having people jump when he told them to that he felt perfectly comfortable bossing everyone around.
She took the coffee carafe from the counter and turned to go back to his table. She kept her eyes downcast, in the ridiculous hope that if she didn’t look at him, he wouldn’t see her. Ostrich logic. “What is it?”
“I know we’ve met.”
She shook her head. “Don’t think so.” Then she made the mistake of glancing at him.
His blue eyes looked her over for a moment before he snapped his fingers. “Serragno Catering.”
“I—”
“You’re Rose Tilden!”
Chapter Three
“What the hell are you doing here?” he went on, before she’d even had a moment to respond.
His tone was so sharp, so downright accusatory, that she was taken aback. “I’m working here.”
“What?” He looked around, as if trying to find confirmation that this was true.
“I’m working here.”
“That’s impossible.”
She tightened her grip on the coffee carafe, tempted to assure him that his wallet was safe from her. But she bit her tongue and instead tried to be mindful of her job. “Do you need more sugar?”
He looked at her for a long moment, before shaking his head. “I don’t do sugar.”
You don’t do sweet, either, she thought pouring coffee into his cup. “Well, is there anything else I can get you? We’re closing up soon.”
“Nothing,” he said, distracted. “How long have you been working here?”
“Are you investigating me, Mr. Harker?”
“Should I be?”
Good lord, he sounded serious! “Of course not!” she responded quickly. “I was joking.”
“That’s reassuring.” His tone remained even. Cool.
Accusatory.
“Mr. Harker, are you implying something? If so, I really wish you’d come right out and say it.”
“Hey, now, what’s going on here?” Doc came out of the kitchen and ambled over to the booth. “You two know each other?”
“We’ve met,” Warren said, keeping his eyes on Rose.
Her heart pounded as she wondered what else he would say to Doc and if she would lose her job because of it. For a moment, she stood there, suspended in time, filled with anxiety at the thought of what Warren might reveal.
Then she decided she would just tell Doc the truth herself. There was no point in standing around wondering if someone else was going to control her future; she had to do it herself.
“I worked for a caterer at one of Mr. Harker’s parties,” she said to Doc. “I was falsely accused of stealing and lost my job because of it, but I promise you I didn’t do it.”
Doc laughed and patted Rose’s arm. “You’re as wound up as an old alarm clock, aren’t you? I know you wouldn’t steal anything.”
Her shoulders slumped in relief. “Thank you.”
“What sort of idiot accused you of stealing?”
She glanced uneasily at Warren.
“No!” Doc exclaimed. “Not you!”
Warren gave a small shrug. “The evidence was, as they say, overwhelming.”
Doc looked at Warren incredulously. “What are you, crazy?”
“I’ve been called worse than that,” Warren said. Then he frowned and added, “I think I’ve even been called worse than that by you, Doc.”
Doc furrowed his brow. “Then you deserved it, I’m sure. Now it sounds like this little lady has been through enough. You ease up, Harker, or you’ll find yourself drinking some mighty cold coffee in here.”
Warren took his wallet out, opened it and left a twenty on the table for the dollar fifty check. “Your coffee isn’t that good to begin with, Doc.”
“Hmmph.” Doc crossed his arms in front of his barrel chest. “You drink too much of it anyway.”
Warren laughed, then headed for the door without looking back at Rose. “See you next time.”
“Be nice to my waitress,” Doc called after him, then turned back to Rose. “See? He’s not so bad.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully, watching the dashing figure of Warren Harker walk out the door and into the night. “Does he come in here very often?”
“Few times a week. He’s been in quite a lot lately.”
Her heart sank. This was going to be trouble for her. “Why? He doesn’t live near here.”
“Nah. Just likes to hang out here, I guess.” Doc gave her an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry about him. He may be a big shot up in the city, but around here he’s just another fella looking for a cup of coffee. Now let’s wake Paul up and get out of here. Got another day of work tomorrow, you know.”
Warren Harker leaned back against the leather seats of his Town Car and watched the drizzly gray city pass by. It had been unseasonably cold and rainy all day, and his mood had grown worse by the hour, along with the weather.
Now, on what promised to be a long wait in traffic on the drive to Brooklyn, he sat back and tried to figure out what was troubling him so much.
It came to him in two words: Rose Tilden.
For two days, he hadn’t been able to get her off his mind.
What was she up to? What was she doing at the Cottage, of all places? There was no way it was just a coincidence and although Warren didn’t like to draw the worst conclusion, it was inevitable. She had to be some sort of corporate spy. Some clever and strange variation on the theme—a cross between Mata Hari and Donald Trump. He had heard rumblings that something like that was going on, but at first he had dismissed it as rumors. Now he wasn’t so sure.
If her contact with him had just ended with the caterer, he never would have suspected a thing. Whoever had sent her, if indeed someone had, had been smart to take that route. If he were a less honest businessman, he’d be jotting it down in his notes for future reference.
But once she showed up at the Cottage…well, that was bad planning. It was just too specific to be chance, wasn’t it? Of all the tiny, obscure little places she might have gotten a job, why the Cottage? He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen a woman working there. Maybe never. It was in what was generally regarded as a slightly unsavory part of town. That was one of the reasons he was spending so much time there. In fact, the neighborhood was still a diamond in the rough. He could buy property for a song and turn it around in no time.
Which was exactly what he intended to do.
He could think of three adversaries right off the top of his head who would have paid big money to find out what and where he was planning to develop next.
Had Rose figured it out? The real reason he was spending so much time in that booth at the Cottage was that he was planning to buy the building opposite it just as soon as he could get the owner—a creaky old man who ran a dry cleaner on the ground floor that never seemed to have customers—to sell.
Warren couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t accept any of his offers, though there were rumors of money laundering and vague Mob ties, so he had to keep an eye on the place to watch for changes. As soon as the old guy relented, and surely he would eventually, Warren had to pounce.
Then he’d tear the building down and use the space to build one of his luxury apartment complexes. More and more people were moving out of the heart of the city, for more and more reasons. Now was the time to bring the Harker touch to the suburbs of Manhattan.
Unless, of course, Monroe Associates or Chuck Donohue or Apex got wind of his plans and sabotaged them somehow.
The question was, who among them would go so far as to hire a beautiful woman to spy on him?
And had she figured out anything about his plans yet?
Rose’s first two weeks of work flew by. She liked being busy. And the truth was, she was enjoying working in her old hometown, a stone’s throw from the nostalgic beauty of Coney Island. It was still hot for mid-October, and there were a lot of tourists who kept the place hopping.
Toward the end of her night shift one Thursday night, it occurred to her that Warren Harker hadn’t been in for days. That led to a long series of troubling thoughts about the man; mostly troubling because once she started thinking about him she couldn’t stop.
“What’s on your mind, Miss Rose?” the busboy, Stu, asked. “You look sad.”
She sat down at the counter, glad to take a load off her aching feet. “Stu, do you know Warren Harker?”
He pressed his lips together and looked up and to the left, as if trying to see something very far away. “Mmm…I don’t think so.”
“Yeah you do,” Paul said with a yawn as he passed by with some plates in his hand. “Mr. Harker.”
Realization lit Stu’s eyes. “Oh, yeah, Mr. Harker. Sure. He’s in here all the time.”
Rose tried to keep from smiling. Stu was just like a child. It was going to take a while to get used to it. “Has he been here a lot?”
“Sure,” Paul said, clattering the dishes into the sink and turning back to her. “Few times a week. Always sits in that same booth.” He pointed to where Warren had, indeed, been sitting the last time she saw him.
“Why does he come here do you think?”
“Best food in Brooklyn,” Stu said.
“Horse manure,” Dick called from his booth several yards away. “If this is the best food in Brooklyn, Brooklyn is in trouble.”
At this point the short-order cook, Hap, poked his head out of the window from the kitchen. “Then why are you in here all the time, you big lug?” he asked with a bright, red-faced smile.
Dick gave a grumpy shrug and turned his eyes back to the racing section of the newspaper. “Close to home.”
Hap chuckled. “Customer’s a customer, I guess. No matter why they come in.”
“So why do you think Warren Harker comes in here?” Rose asked him. “I mean, the guy’s as rich as Croesus. He could eat anywhere. He could hire an entire cooking staff to be on call twenty-four hours. Why come to a little place like this, no matter how good the food is?”
“You think he doesn’t like the food here?” Stu asked, frowning.
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m just wondering if there’s some other reason he comes here.” Not that she could think of one. If he hadn’t been coming all along, she’d have worried that he was so angry about what happened at his party that he came here to get her fired, but she knew no one was that petty. No one except Marta.
Still, it just didn’t make sense that he came here. It was just so far from his world. And now that he hadn’t been for a few days, she wondered if he’d stopped coming because of her, because he didn’t trust her.
“Who are you talking about?” someone asked behind her.
Thinking it was Al, she turned, saying, “Warren Ha—” She stopped mid-word, shocked to say the man himself standing in front of her. “Warren Harker, what a pleasant surprise,” she fudged.
He gave a nod. “Nice recovery. Now, you want to tell me why you’re asking about me, or should I tell you what I think?”
This time it was Doc who poked his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, now, Harker, I don’t want any trouble from you. I’ve already told you to leave the poor girl alone.”
“It’s okay,” Rose told him.
Warren raised his eyebrows. “Join me for a moment?”
She glanced back at the worried faces of her coworkers, and gave a reassuring smile that felt more as if she were gritting her teeth. “Sure,” she said to Warren, following him to the booth.
He sat down and indicated she should do the same, but she shook her head. “I’ll stand, thanks.” She realized, then, that she had the carafe of coffee in her hand. It made for an awkward prop, but it was too late for her to go back and put it away now, so she poured some into the cup on his table.
Warren leveled his cool blue eyes on her. “So you want to know why I come here to the Cottage.”
“I was curious about it, yes.”
“What I want to know is why you’re curious about it.” He narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice.
She didn’t have a quick answer to that. She was curious because she was curious. There wasn’t a lot more to it than that. But the way Warren was looking at her, one would have thought it was positively sinister of her.
“What are you really up to?” he asked her in a low tone.
“What am I up to? Nothing! What are you suggesting?”
“You tell me.”
“Is this about what happened at your party?” She did not like being accused of anything she hadn’t done, and she definitely didn’t like to have to keep on defending herself. “If so, you’ve got it all wrong. You did hire a dishonest caterer, but it wasn’t me. Marta Serragno had her eye on you before she even got to your suite, and when I made the foolish mistake of talking to you, she got jealous and set me up. It’s that simple.”
“Why would she do that?” he asked, nonplussed. “It doesn’t make her business look good if she hires thieves.”
Rose winced at the designation of thief. “I think it was a rather impromptu decision on her part. Maybe she figured it was the lesser of two evils. I don’t know.” She threw her hands in the air. “Actually, you know what? I don’t care. If you want to believe a black widow like Marta Serragno, more power to you. It’s not my problem.”
He leaned back and let out a long breath. “Okay, let’s be honest. I think you know I’m not concerned about what happened at my party.”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. “Not at the moment. At the moment, I’m more concerned with what you were doing there in the first place. And what you’re doing here now. Tell me the truth, Ms. Tilden, and I’ll go easy on you. Has someone hired you to watch me?”
Now that was definitely not expected. “Has someone hired me to watch you?” she repeated incredulously.
He gave a short nod. “I’ll double what they’re paying you if you tell me who it is.”
She didn’t know whether to be amused or insulted. Or just plain flummoxed. “Why on earth would someone want me—or anyone—to watch you? Are you doing something that needs to be watched?”
He gave a quick shake of his head. “Nothing at all. But I do a lot of business in this city. Not everyone wishes me well.”
“And you think they hire spies?” She gave a laugh. “To watch you eat? I don’t see how that helps anyone who has it in for you. Unless, of course, they hired me to lace your coffee with arsenic.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“No one did.” She shook her head. “But the way you treat people, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone wanted to do just that.”
He watched her through narrowed eyes. “I find it quite a coincidence that you worked for the caterer in my suite and now, suddenly, you’re working here.”
“It’s not a coincidence at all,” she said simply.
“No?”
“No. I’m working here because I was falsely accused of a crime by your caterer, and this was the only place that would hire me. Now I’d appreciate it if you could stop insinuating things about my character, lest I should lose another job because of you.”
“I’m not trying to get you fired.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Now, if you’re satisfied that I’m not spying on you or going to pick your pocket, how about we pretend we’ve never met?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Do you want anything else with your coffee?”
He shook his head. “But keep it coming. It could be a long night.”
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