from her book, he’d have moved past Gillian after two dates and saved himself a helluva lot of chaos.
He finished off the contents of Tabby’s plastic cup, then pushed off the stage and stood. “What kind of food did I miss out on?”
“The usual. Fried chicken. Three-bean casseroles. Seven-layer salad with peas and cheese. About twenty boxes of pepperoni pizza and more store-bought pies than Shop-World carries. Bubba’s barbecue.”
His ears perked. “Bubba’s barbecue? Any left?” His stomach growled again, right on cue.
And loud enough for her to hear, because she made a face and rolled her eyes before standing also.
“It’s only because you own the place that I’ll open up Ruby’s in order to raid Bubba’s leftovers.”
He grinned and dropped his arm over her shoulder, ignoring her quick little flinch. “Bubba will never know,” he promised.
Chapter Seven
B ubba knew.
And he complained about it through the entire morning rush the next day.
Tabby didn’t usually work on Saturdays. But she’d gone to the diner to take care of the books, which she did in one of the corner booths, because Ruby’s diner had never possessed something as fancy as an actual office space.
She had a filing cabinet shoved into one corner of the kitchen, along with several narrow lockers that the crew could use to store their personal belongings. But an office? A space to house a computer, a desk or even the phone?
That hadn’t been necessary in Ruby Leoni’s day, and Tabby—who’d been managing the place longer than anyone else besides Ruby—hadn’t found it necessary, either.
Even if it did take a table out of the rotation on a particularly busy Saturday morning.
“You leave setting the special to me,” Bubba said, dropping a hand-scrawled sheet of paper on her table as he passed by with a loaded tray to deliver to a six top. “Can’t do that when you’re comin’ in all hours of the night, eatin’ it up.”
“I think the customers will survive, Bubba.” Her voice was mild. She was used to Bubba’s occasional dramatic flare-ups. They’d been coming a little more frequently since he’d started cooking privately for Vivian Templeton, but Tabby blamed that on Vivian’s regular chef, Montrose. According to Hayley, Montrose was pretty much a monstrosity in the personality department. The chef had been with Hayley’s grandmother back in Pennsylvania, and to say he had a highfalutin attitude was putting it mildly. “Instead of the special, they’ll order off the menu. No harm in that.”
“Harm in not having any pulled pork when folks come wanting it,” he muttered after he’d delivered his tray and was heading back to the kitchen.
“Then put it on the menu.”
If the temperature hadn’t taken a nosedive overnight, she’d have just worked out back, where they had a grassy, treed area with a picnic table to use during breaks. But the weather was hovering below freezing, and she wasn’t a glutton for punishment. She also could have worked at home, but the sight of Justin’s truck parked outside had made her too antsy to stay there.
She wrote out the last of the paychecks for the month as well as the handful of bills and logged everything into the laptop computer sitting open on the table in front of her. She’d take the checks out to the Rocking C for Erik to sign sometime that weekend if he didn’t come into town before then. She looked over Bubba’s scrawled list of supplies and ingredients and put together an order for the coming week. Some things—like the strawberry jam, the dairy and the eggs—she sourced locally. Other staples—flour, sugar and the like—she got from distributors out of Casper or Cheyenne, occasionally even Denver, depending on where she could get the best deals.
For a small-town diner, the quantity of food they went through was almost shocking. But she’d long ago realized that—whatever else might be going on in the world—people still found their way to
He finished off the contents of Tabby’s plastic cup, then pushed off the stage and stood. “What kind of food did I miss out on?”
“The usual. Fried chicken. Three-bean casseroles. Seven-layer salad with peas and cheese. About twenty boxes of pepperoni pizza and more store-bought pies than Shop-World carries. Bubba’s barbecue.”
His ears perked. “Bubba’s barbecue? Any left?” His stomach growled again, right on cue.
And loud enough for her to hear, because she made a face and rolled her eyes before standing also.
“It’s only because you own the place that I’ll open up Ruby’s in order to raid Bubba’s leftovers.”
He grinned and dropped his arm over her shoulder, ignoring her quick little flinch. “Bubba will never know,” he promised.
Chapter Seven
B ubba knew.
And he complained about it through the entire morning rush the next day.
Tabby didn’t usually work on Saturdays. But she’d gone to the diner to take care of the books, which she did in one of the corner booths, because Ruby’s diner had never possessed something as fancy as an actual office space.
She had a filing cabinet shoved into one corner of the kitchen, along with several narrow lockers that the crew could use to store their personal belongings. But an office? A space to house a computer, a desk or even the phone?
That hadn’t been necessary in Ruby Leoni’s day, and Tabby—who’d been managing the place longer than anyone else besides Ruby—hadn’t found it necessary, either.
Even if it did take a table out of the rotation on a particularly busy Saturday morning.
“You leave setting the special to me,” Bubba said, dropping a hand-scrawled sheet of paper on her table as he passed by with a loaded tray to deliver to a six top. “Can’t do that when you’re comin’ in all hours of the night, eatin’ it up.”
“I think the customers will survive, Bubba.” Her voice was mild. She was used to Bubba’s occasional dramatic flare-ups. They’d been coming a little more frequently since he’d started cooking privately for Vivian Templeton, but Tabby blamed that on Vivian’s regular chef, Montrose. According to Hayley, Montrose was pretty much a monstrosity in the personality department. The chef had been with Hayley’s grandmother back in Pennsylvania, and to say he had a highfalutin attitude was putting it mildly. “Instead of the special, they’ll order off the menu. No harm in that.”
“Harm in not having any pulled pork when folks come wanting it,” he muttered after he’d delivered his tray and was heading back to the kitchen.
“Then put it on the menu.”
If the temperature hadn’t taken a nosedive overnight, she’d have just worked out back, where they had a grassy, treed area with a picnic table to use during breaks. But the weather was hovering below freezing, and she wasn’t a glutton for punishment. She also could have worked at home, but the sight of Justin’s truck parked outside had made her too antsy to stay there.
She wrote out the last of the paychecks for the month as well as the handful of bills and logged everything into the laptop computer sitting open on the table in front of her. She’d take the checks out to the Rocking C for Erik to sign sometime that weekend if he didn’t come into town before then. She looked over Bubba’s scrawled list of supplies and ingredients and put together an order for the coming week. Some things—like the strawberry jam, the dairy and the eggs—she sourced locally. Other staples—flour, sugar and the like—she got from distributors out of Casper or Cheyenne, occasionally even Denver, depending on where she could get the best deals.
For a small-town diner, the quantity of food they went through was almost shocking. But she’d long ago realized that—whatever else might be going on in the world—people still found their way to
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