A Plain & Fancy Christmas Read online

  Still, she was completely unprepared when he caught up with her in the back one evening around ten o’clock and asked if she’d like to go somewhere to get a cup of coffee after the restaurant closed.

  “Let’s have something cooked by someone else,” he added. “No business. Just personal.”

  She stared at him, shocked and angry.

  “Are you joking?” she demanded. “You think I’d go for that?”

  He looked confused. “Go for what? A cup of coffee? Well, yes, actually, I believe you like coffee. I mean, I’ve seen you drink it …”

  “Very funny,” she snapped. “This is how you’re wooing me to be your girlfriend on the side? Forget it.”

  “Whoa, hold on now. Who said anything about girlfriend, much less ‘on the side’? It’s not a lifelong commitment, just coffee.”

  “You’ll probably fire me for saying this, but you’ve got a lot of nerve. I’m not interested in having my married boss hit on me.”

  “Married?” He was clearly bewildered. “Excuse me, but the last time I looked I was not married.”

  “Don’t lie, please—just don’t insult me like that.”

  He put a hand on her arm, and she glared down at it. “What are we talking about?” he asked. “If you don’t want to go out with me, that’s fine, I understand. But please don’t accuse me of lying about being married. That’s pretty ridiculous.”

  “I heard you. I heard you talking about your wife and children.”

  “Now I have children, too. I’ve been awfully busy.”

  “Stop acting like I’m crazy. I heard you talking to Anita a couple of weeks ago. You told her you were going home to your wife. You said you had to get home to the little woman and the kiddies. I was right out there and I heard it.”

  He shook his head in confusion. “No way. When did you say this happened?”

  “I told you, about two weeks ago.”

  A realization came to him, and an enormous smile spread across his face.

  It infuriated her. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, Ellie.” He began to laugh. “I said the little woman and the kittens. My cat had kittens two weeks ago. She’s the little woman, you know, new mother and all.”

  She stared at him, speechless. Uncharacteristically, a bright red blush spread up from her neck. She could feel her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment.

  “Oh,” was all she could whisper.

  He threw back his head for a good, loud laugh.

  “No wife? Not even a girlfriend?”

  “Nope. I don’t do stuff like that, cheat on people I supposedly love.”

  “Okay, okay, so I’m a fool and a lunatic both.”

  “No, you’re not.” He smiled at her. “We’ll just put it in the category of great stories to tell our kids. More importantly, does this mean you’ll have coffee with me? Or perhaps you’d rather meet the kittens. I’m still in the process of locating homes for them.”

  As her humiliation began to recede, she realized that this was what she had been hoping for. He was, in fact, single. Even better, he was interested in spending time with her. “Coffee will be just fine. See you at closing.”

  He was still smiling as he left. For her part, Ellie smiled for the rest of her shift.

  Carson was delayed by a problem at the other restaurant that night, so they changed their coffee appointment to a dinner date the following night, when Ellie wasn’t scheduled to work. He picked her up at home. As they got into his car, he paused before turning on the ignition to pull out his cell phone and show her a picture of himself surrounded by kittens.

  “Took it this morning, just for you.”

  “You’ll never let me live that down,” she said as he drove away from the house.

  “Probably not,” he grinned. “Do you like Italian food? I have this place in mind. Rarely get a chance to go there, but it’s great.”

  Over salad and pasta, they quickly dispensed with talking about work and moved on to their personal stories. Ellie wasn’t sure how much she could confide in him, so she started with the facts of her life up until the time she learned about the existence of the Kings.

  “I’m confused. It seems to me you said you worked on your family farm.”

  She was surprised he remembered that comment. “I’ll explain later. First, we trade. You tell me something about yourself.”

  “I was born in Virginia, but my parents died in a car accident when I was eight. I got shipped off to my only relatives, my dad’s parents in Boston. Very rich, very cold people. They never approved of my dad marrying some poor girl from Fairfax, and they certainly weren’t pleased to be saddled with his noisy little boy. Who might bring over other noisy little boys to ruin their rugs and antiques. I didn’t see them much. Guess I grew up as kind of a loner.”

  “That’s your idea of ‘not much to tell’?” Ellie asked. “That’s quite a story.”

  He shrugged. “I went to college on the West Coast, which was fine by my grandparents. They paid my tuition, but made it clear they expected me to pay it back. After I graduated, my only contact with them was those checks I sent the first of every month. The problem was, paying back that debt meant I got stuck in a bunch of jobs I hated because I needed the money.”

  “Where are your grandparents today? Still alive?”

  “No, they died within a year of each other, about ten years ago. We hadn’t spoken in a long time. They left pretty much everything to their charities, but for some strange reason, they left me fifty thousand dollars. It couldn’t have been more unexpected, I can tell you that.”

  Ellie nodded, reaching for a piece of bread. “I’ll bet.”

  “The thing was, I always had this idea in the back of my mind that I wanted to open a restaurant. But I didn’t have the capital. Now, suddenly here it was. I was living in Philadelphia at the time, making a good living, so it was a tough decision to take the leap. I mean, did the world need another failed restaurant? But I had really come to hate what I was doing.

  “Anyway, jumping into this business was a now or never kind of thing. I found a good spot out here, and rented a place right next to it. That first year nearly killed me, and I almost went under a couple of times. But the second year was better, and by the third, I had enough to think about another place.”

  “You’re good at what you do, anyone can see that.”

  He twirled spaghetti onto his fork as he considered his reply. “I loved the business even more than I expected to. So that makes it worth the ridiculous amount of work it is. I guess I’ll keep opening places as long as they keep succeeding, and I can manage to keep my life from being swallowed up altogether. This new place may be the tipping point, though.”

  Ellie considered this. He had discussed a lot with her about the fourth restaurant he was planning to open just after Thanksgiving. It would be larger than Carson’s, but more informal. “You’re a workhorse.”

  He smiled. “Exactly.”

  “You still live near your first restaurant?”

  “I finally got around to buying my own place. Although it’s kind of a waste of space for just me and the cat. Plus my dog, Marcus. He’s my buddy. A brown Lab.”

  “It’s interesting that a self-described loner would love the restaurant business, which is all about dealing with people.”

  “I guess.” He picked up his wineglass.

  “If you’ll allow me to indulge, I’m wondering if it lets you create the home you never had. You give people a warm welcome, instead of all that cold, proper silence.”

  “Wow, that’s some heavy psychoanalyzing.” He laughed, but she noticed he didn’t contradict her.

  From that point, she had no doubt she could confide the rest of her situation to him. Little by little, she laid it out. He was intrigued by the situation, but it was his immediate understanding of her confused emotions that made an impression on her. Maybe it was feeling so alienated from his only living relatives that allowed him to understand. Plus, having lived a
mong the Amish people for so long, the idea of making jokes, as Jason had, would never have occurred to him. Even if he hadn’t been so familiar with them, Ellie could see he wouldn’t think that way, and that made her admire him all the more.

  “How have these people taken to you?” he asked.

  As she started going over her relationships with the various members of the family, Ellie was astonished to realize how much affection she felt for each one of them. So slowly it had been almost imperceptible, they had taken her into their circle, without fanfare but also without reservation. She could appear unexpectedly in any of their homes and find a warm welcome. They asked for her help in the same casual way they asked each other, which told her she was no longer considered a guest or outsider.

  “They’re amazing people. It’s as if they’ve allowed me to join them in a different world. And I love it there.”

  Carson took her hand across the table, and Ellie curved her fingers around his in response. “Such a strange tale, your coming here. I’m so happy you did.”

  She looked into his eyes. Not as happy as I am, she thought.

  Chapter 29

  The evenings that Ellie worked were becoming progressively more hectic as Carson started spending the bulk of his time at the location for his new restaurant. The cashier, cooks, and other waitresses seemed to gravitate toward Ellie when they had questions or problems. Somehow, they trusted her advice and treated her as the de facto manager, although she hadn’t tried to assume such a position. She was glad to help, anyway; compared to what she had done in the past, this was pretty straightforward problem solving, and it gave her satisfaction to see a problem solved or averted. Carson told her word had gotten back to him that she was performing duties above and beyond her waitress duties, and he added a generous bonus to her paycheck. She stared at the check, recalling the large numbers on her former bonus checks, and had to laugh when she realized how much more she appreciated the genuine gratitude behind this far smaller amount than the indifference behind those far larger ones.

  Ellie was also enjoying the camaraderie of the staff at the restaurant. Aside from Anita, she had also become fond of Lisa, the twenty-year-old waitress who had waited on her the first time she’d come into the restaurant, and whom she had shadowed on her first day working there. Lisa could be moody, but her cheerful nature more than made up for the times she preferred to retreat into herself. Ellie noticed that she missed a few days of work here and there without much explanation, and wondered if it had to do with the girl’s mood swings, or possibly some more serious form of depression. Otherwise, though, she was always ready to joke and have some fun.

  She was surprised to leave after a shift one night and find Lisa leaning against Ellie’s car in the parking lot. When the girl turned her face to Ellie, she saw by the glow of the streetlights that Lisa was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Ellie immediately put a comforting hand on Lisa’s arm.

  Lisa rubbed her wet eyes, further smearing her dark eye makeup. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you with this.”

  “With what? Are you okay?”

  Lisa let out a small sob. Ellie rummaged around in her purse until she came up with a small package of tissues.

  “Here.” She extended the tissues and Lisa took one. “Now please tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s my mom. She’s been really sick, and I’ve been using the money from this job to pay for her medicine. We don’t have insurance. The medicine is for her kidneys, and it’s really expensive.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” Ellie felt terrible, hearing that she had been keeping such a burden to herself all these weeks.

  “But now … I don’t know what we’ll do.” Lisa looked away.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Carson fired me. He said I’d missed three days of work in the past month, and that was three days too many. He pointed a finger at the door and said, ‘Out.’ ”

  “Carson actually said that?”

  Lisa nodded, miserable.

  Ellie couldn’t imagine him being so brusque with an employee, much less Lisa, who had worked for him for a couple of years, and with whom he typically joked around. Then she recalled the first time she had met him, when she had applied for the waitress job, and he so rudely kept his head buried in his notes; he hadn’t bothered to look up at her until she mentioned that she was an executive. Maybe there was a much harder side to him than she knew. She certainly wouldn’t have seen it lately, though, even if it did exist; things had been going so well between them since their dinner date.

  “Anyway,” Lisa said, wiping her eyes one last time, “I don’t have my car anymore. Couldn’t make the payments. Would you mind terribly giving me a ride home? It’s just a couple of miles that way.”

  She pointed down the road, in the opposite direction from where Ellie was headed to get home.

  “Of course.”

  They got into her car and drove what turned out to be some ten miles. Lisa confided in Ellie along the way about how long her mother had been sick, and how difficult it had been to care for her without assistance or any money other than what she made as a waitress.

  “This new batch of medicine costs three hundred dollars, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She sighed.

  “Can I help you out?” Ellie asked.

  “Oh, no,” Lisa said at once. “I wouldn’t take money from you. I couldn’t. You’ve been so great to me, and who knows when I could pay you back.”

  “It’s okay, really,” Ellie said.

  “Absolutely not,” Lisa said in a firm tone. “But thank you anyway.” She pointed. “Make a left here, and then a right. I’m the last place on the left.”

  The street where Lisa lived was crowded with run-down houses. As soon as Ellie pulled up to the curb, Lisa jumped out and turned back to speak to her through the window.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  She was gone into the darkness. As Ellie turned her car around, the headlights revealed a car parked on the tiny front lawn, and what seemed to be some cinderblocks and tires, but not much else. Grim, Ellie thought. As she drove, she felt progressively worse about Lisa and her situation. The family obviously had very little, and this young girl was burdened with supporting a sick parent all by herself. No wonder she had dark days.

  As she approached Carson’s again, she saw a light on inside, and decided to stop at the restaurant instead of bypassing it to continue home. She knew Carson had been planning to come by at the very end of the night to collect the receipts, and he was obviously there right now.

  Sure enough, when she knocked loudly on the door, he emerged from the back to let her in.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked, obviously pleased to see her.

  “I was on my way home, but I took a little detour to drop Lisa off at her house.”

  “Lisa?” He frowned. “Was she still here? She should have been gone hours ago.”

  “I don’t know about that, but she said you fired her.”

  His smile faded. “Yes. Yes, I did fire her.”

  “Wow, Carson, I was surprised. The kid told me she’s the one supporting her mother, who’s sick.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, did you really tell her ‘three days of not showing up is three days too many, so out’ or something like that? Why would you be so harsh with a nice kid like her?”

  His eyes turned cold. “I don’t believe what I do with my other employees is your business, frankly.”

  Ellie bristled. “Wait a minute. We’re all kind of close. They talk to me, and I care about them. It’s one of the benefits of working here. And you’ve seemed to not mind my getting a little more involved in how things are done here. So why are you suddenly the big, bad boss?”

  His words were angry. “You’re a smart woman and you know a lot of things, Ellie. But you don’t know everything, and that includes when to stay out of things that aren’t you
r concern.”

  “Whoa.” She took a step back. “I don’t know where that came from.”

  “It’s pretty obvious. If I want to fire someone, I will do it without asking your permission. And I don’t expect to have to justify my decisions to you. Are we clear?”

  She spoke in a clipped tone. “Crystal clear, I assure you.”

  “Good.” He suddenly seemed impatient to get back to whatever he had been doing. “Was there anything else you wanted?”

  “No, not a thing.” She turned to go. “Thank you for your time.”

  “You’re welcome.” He was already walking down the row of tables toward the back.

  Ellie yanked open the restaurant door and returned to her car. She was furious at Carson, and she wondered if she could have a relationship with somebody who was so cold when push came to shove. She remembered how Robert Clark had spoken to her when she quit her job in New York. It hadn’t felt good, having to take that verbal lashing from someone she liked and respected. She could imagine how Lisa must have felt, not to mention her financial problems on top of it.

  So Carson Holt wasn’t any different from all the other selfish businessmen she encountered: interested and appreciative when it served his needs, indifferent to everyone else when the situation was no longer beneficial to him. She was so disappointed in having misjudged him, she wanted to cry.

  It was a long, unhappy night for Ellie. In the morning, she left the farm after breakfast, and drove straight to the bank, where she withdrew three hundred dollars. Regardless of what Lisa had said, she was going to help, at least to get the girl over the hump of buying this one batch of medicine. It didn’t take her long to return to Lisa’s house, which looked even sadder in the daylight, in dire need of a paint job, with a dirty, plaid sofa on the sagging porch.