There is a long silence around the table. Tira finally breaks it by introducing herself and the others, following it up with the declaration that she can’t believe she actually got me out here for a day off.
“Yes,” Stone says icily. “I would think you’d be tired. You had quite the busy day yesterday.”
The silence spins out again. Everyone is looking at me. This is my cue to say something witty to defuse the tense situation.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I announce, rising from my seat.
“I’ll join you,” Tira says, taking my arm as I stumble away from the table.
“Is he—” I say to her in a low voice as we go.
“Staring daggers at you?” she finishes, also in a prison-yard whisper. “Girl, if looks could kill.”
I close my eyes briefly against this communication, then force them open again. Crashing into another patron’s table would only make me even more conspicuous.
This is ridiculous, I tell myself. You’re a grown woman and a professional! You have nothing to be ashamed about. It was an accident, for god’s sake! Are you going to let him intimidate you in front of a whole roomful of people? No way! You’re going to go back there and show him what you’re made of!
“You can’t hide in there forever,” Tira calls to me through the closed toilet stall door.
“I don’t have to hide forever,” I tell her. “Only for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Time enough for the two of them to get bored and go away.”
“I hate to break this to you, but Jeff isn’t going to get bored, and Trent Stone will probably stick around, too.”
“Only to heap more scorn on me,” I moan.
“Want me to kick his ass?” Tira asks kindly. She’s been taking kickboxing classes and has been dying to try out her roundhouse kick on something other than the gym’s sparring dummy.
“No.”
“Probably a good idea,” she says. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who gets his ass kicked around much. That, and he could probably pay to have me killed several times over.”
“I don’t know…I think my name would come up on his hit list a lot sooner than yours.”
“Come on,” Tira cajoles, tapping on the stall door with her nails. “He’ll have a new solid-gold kitchen before the end of the week, I guarantee. The only question is, are you going to stick your head in the sand or are you going to show him that while you may be sorry, you’re not going to grovel?”
“If I stay in here,” I say, “I won’t have to be sorry or worry about groveling. Eventually, the problem will go away.”
“The problem,” she says, “is going to think that you’re constipated or something.”
“Who says I care what he thinks?” I protest.
“The same person who’s talking to you through a bathroom stall door. Put on your big girl panties and let’s get back out there. What’s the worst thing he can do?”
“I think you may have been onto something with your talk of him hiring assassins.”
I can almost hear Tira rolling her eyes. “I don’t think he’s going to have you set upon by thugs at the country club.”
She’s right, of course. What’s Stone going to do? Stare me to death? And no matter what he might think, I had never said anything less than the truth—it had all been an accident. Everyone makes mistakes, and while mine had been more than a little costly, it had been a mistake all the same. I’m not going to be tortured over it, either by myself or by anyone else.
I open the door, noting with a small smile that I had locked it after myself upon entering. Had I really thought that little thumb bolt would keep out my own sense of mortification?
“Okay,” I tell Tira. “Back out into the lion’s den we go, then.”
“It’ll be all right,” she says. “And hey, I’ll go first. If they want to get to you, they’ve got to shoot through me.”
“I think,” I reply, “Stone would feel that’s letting me off too quickly. More likely, he’d be happier if I were set on fire.”
I’m not going to get a definitive answer to this bit of morbid supposing, though. Jeff and Stone are both gone as Tira and I approach the table.
“The tall one got a call,” reports Jordan. “He left. The other one went with him—” She smiles at Tira and sips her drink. “—when it looked like Steph wasn’t coming back.”
“You see?” Tira says, slipping an arm around my shoulders. “All’s well that ends well.”
“I don’t know,” I say gloomily. “I have a feeling that this is a long way from over.”
With Stone and Jeff’s exit, the rest of the afternoon passes pleasantly. The girls and I don’t play any more golf, but that’s not what today is about, anyway. Instead, it was all about loosening up the bands of tension in my neck and shoulders, as well as banishing the lead ball that was sitting in the pit of my stomach. By the time Tira drops me off back at my apartment, I’m actually feeling pretty good.
I briefly contemplate going into one of the restaurants to work, but then reconsider. I have a good staff at all three places, more than competent. They can handle things while I’m away for a day. It wouldn’t say much for my confidence in them if I just show up and take over the show.
That doesn’t mean I can’t plan from home, though. I work on the week’s specials menus for a while, making lists and getting organized.
I like being involved in every aspect of the restaurant business, from working over the stove to making the crack-of-dawn journey
