“Oh, I assure you, that can be fixed quite easily, especially if you’d like to not take public transportation to and from your nextsession, Mr. Rawlings.”
I can tell the man wants to sigh, but he represses it.
“I’m sure once Summer here fills out an application, I can make sure it’s sitting at the top and that she’s the one we call with the job offer.”
“You can’t be serious,” I interject, annoyed they’re talking about me like I’m not even here.
My father looks at me with amused eyes. “Oh, honey, I amveryserious.”
“You can’t call mehoneyand be serious in the same sentence. That’s not how it works,Sheriff.”
He glares at me from the other side of the table, and I try my best not to smirk at his reaction. He hates it when I call himSheriff.
Then suddenly he doesn’t look so entertained after all. He looks furious as he leans over the table, and I have to tip my head back to look up at him. “Listen to me, Summer Anne, if you think you’re going to run away from your problems and live in my house while terrorizing my town without any consequences for your actions, you’re dead wrong. You’re twenty-six years old. It’s time to grow up.”
His words are low, but not so quiet that I don’t hear them loudly.
He’s glad I’m here. I know he is. But he also knows I’m not just here for him. I’m here because I’m hiding from everything that happened in Chicago.
So I swallow down that rebelliousness that lives inside me, the part of me who wants to argue just because I can, and I nod. “Where exactly is it that I’m working now?”
Dad grins, leaning away from me as he motions toward Mr. Rawlings to let him explain.
“Stick Taps,” the guy with the gruff voice says, running his hand over the stubble on his chin.
“What’s that?”
I know what it is. I just like the wayMr. Rawlingsnarrows his eyes at me.
“The cidery-slash-farm on the outskirts of town.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Summer . . .” my father warns.
He knows I’m fully aware of what Stick Taps is. Even though I haven’t come home often since the cidery opened, it’s kind of hard to avoid with how much the people in this town won’t shut up about it, since one of the owners is none other than the town’s star, Noah Stevens. He played in the NHL for a long, long time, and the town rallied behind him all those years. Whenever he was in the playoffs, there wasn’t a place you could go that wasn’t blasting the game on the TV, including the library.
Now everyone can’t stop talking about how he’s engaged and has turned his cidery into a wedding venue on the side. It was supposed to be a onetime thing for his younger sister, Izzy, but even though her marriage never happened, it still became a sought-after location for other nuptials.
I’m happy for Noah and all his success. He was always a nice guy, and I ran in the same circles as his sister and fiancée, even though they were a grade older than me. But it doesn’t mean I want to work for him.
I want to ... well, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do anymore. I thought I knew. I spent years in culinary school and training in kitchens around Chicago before landing my role as executive chef. I made a name for myself. I had a good reputation, and I ruined it all with one bad day.
Lore was supposed to be the city’s hottest new restaurant, and it was for a time. Then things got messy with their first chef, and they quit. I thought I could come in and rescue it, but all it did was break me.
What I believed would be my dream job turned out to be my worst nightmare. It made me question everything, including the passion that had driven me to cook or want my own restaurant in the first place.
Even still, working at a cidery in a small Washington State town feels like a step down after running a kitchen of that magnitude. My father must be serious about this punishment.
“What exactly will I be doing at thiscidery?” I say the word with enough disdain that Mr. Rawlings’s nostrils flare.
I’m being petulant. I know that, but I can’t stop myself.
My father sends me another warning look before he announces he’s going to grab the paperwork to release me, leaving me alone with the stranger.
The door closes behind him with such finality that it startles me.
The chair across from me scrapes against the floor as my new employer sits. He winces as he settles onto the metal seat.