BWWM Interracial Romance 6: Her Protector by Elena Brown Page B

throwing his car into park.
    “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” he said, switching over to the phone itself. “What happened?”
    “We couldn’t make the loan work,” she said, her breath hitching as she sobbed. “After everything I did. All the work. All the hours cut.” She let out a wail and Sawyer hoped that at least she was in the office at the restaurant, or in her car, or at home—somewhere she wouldn’t have to deal with the well-intentioned pity of her own employees, now soon to be turned out onto the street to find new jobs. “S-s-Sawyer, I tried so hard to make it work,” she began to sob in earnest, her words garbled. “I’m letting him down. I’ve failed him.” Sawyer wished with every inch of his being that he could be wherever Adriana was right then, to fold her into his arms and hold her tightly while she shook with sobs.
    “Listen, baby,” he said softly but firmly, knowing exactly the emotional state she was in. “Where are you at?”
    “I’m at the restaurant,” she said faintly, continuing to gulp and sniff. “In the office. Mom’s—mom already went home.”
    “I’m going to go over there and pick you up, and we’re going to buy you a big bottle of wine and you’re going to take a nice long bath and have a good meal, and we’re going to make love until tomorrow morning.”
     
    A few days later, Sawyer parked in the surprisingly busy lot outside of Ellis American Cuisine. It was the last night that the restaurant would be open, and it seemed as though everyone who had ever known the Ellis family in any respect had managed to turn out for the last night. It was heartwarming to Sawyer, and he knew it would be for Adriana too; she had come to accept the fact that she simply couldn’t hold onto the restaurant any longer, that it wasn’t in her blood the way it had been in her father’s, and she was halfway to accepting that it wasn’t her fault that it had failed—that she had done everything she could to make it a success, but that luck had simply been against her.
    As he worked his way to the front of the line, several people giving way to him not just as a police officer but also as Adriana’s acknowledged boyfriend, he caught sight of the woman he loved moving around the dining room, dry-eyed and smiling. If the smile was a little sad, it suited the occasion, and Sawyer thought that she was very brave to go out the way she was.
    Banners on the wall proclaimed that everything in the restaurant was for sale, that all of the food had to be eaten that night—they were turning over the keys and the deed to the property to the banks the next day, along with the loan money. Scattered around the tables, pieces of memorabilia from the walls had already been claimed; Sawyer saw the servers laughing, a few of them shedding nostalgic tears, but no one lost to sadness in the oddly festive occasion of the restaurant’s last day of business. Adriana spotted him and came over, giving him a quick kiss. “We’re a bit packed at the moment,” she said loudly enough for the people waiting their turn at a table to hear. Everyone laughed. “But I think I can seat you at the bar, Officer, if that’s okay?”
    “More than okay,” he said. He spotted some of his friends from the department in line and at tables, and waved all around. Adriana led him to the last open seat at the bar and put a menu—hastily assembled, comprised of everything that the chefs could possibly make that night from the supplies at hand—in his hands. On the bar itself there was another menu, exhorting the patrons to drink responsibly but thoroughly—the alcohol needed to be sold out too.
    Sawyer planned on driving Adriana home at the end of the night, so he kept himself to two drinks—a top-shelf bloody Mary and a rumrunner, sipping through his enormous dinner of steak and lobster with all of the traditional trimmings. People came and went, buying enormous meals at a deal, tipping as generously as their wallets