BWWM Interracial Romance 6: Her Protector

Her

Protector

Elena Brown

Copyright © 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Copyright © 2015

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Adriana was already tired by the time she drove into the employee parking area behind Ellis American Cuisine. As she pulled into her accustomed space and put her beat-up old car into park, she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. It had been a several months now since her father—owner and manager of Ellis American Cuisine—had passed away, but between that upheaval in her life and her divorce from her husband before it, Adriana felt as if she never quite seemed to get a full night’s sleep. She took another deep breath and began to compose herself, to try and get her spirits up.

When her father died, the restaurant passed to Adriana and her mother. Adriana had never really been that interested in her father’s restaurant, opting to go away for college and start her career in business. She had hoped that when the time came, Ellis American Cuisine would go to one of the employees—a manager or someone who shared her father’s passion, but in spite of her reluctance to take on the responsibility, she found that the idea of the restaurant no longer being a part of her family was much more terrifying than she would have thought.

She had taken on the responsibility of the restaurant because of a combination of factors. Her divorce had left her with little to her name; after the signing of the papers, she had been adrift. Her career was foundering—Adriana found that her umber skin and femininity limited her prospects, and the stress of the divorce hadn’t exactly improved her job performance enough to compensate for the preconceived notions of her superiors. She hadn’t been fired, but it became clear in the months after the divorce that she wouldn’t be promoted anytime soon. Frustration built up inside of her as she did little more than report to work every day and do the minimum to keep her reputation intact; by the time her mother had called her to say that her father’s health was failing and they needed her help to keep the restaurant afloat, Adriana almost considered it a refuge.

She moved in with her mother during the last months of her father’s life, packing up the paltry possessions she had kept in the divorce and settling back into her childhood room. It was strange—her mother had gone to the trouble of updating it for her, moving out the slightly childish furnishings and slapping on a fresh coat of paint. It was just big enough to comfortably contain her queen sized bed, the dresser, and a desk that had come with her, (the rest of Adriana’s furnishings she had sold, given away to charity, or put into storage.) The room was different—but it was oddly the same, carrying echoes of her childhood, hidden away in corners.

Adriana opened her eyes and looked around. She had been sitting in the shut-off car long enough for the heat to set in, staling the air inside. She ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it down and pushing it back from her face. She opened the car door and stepped out, checking her purse for her keys before she pushed the door shut behind her. It was a habit she had taken on after a string of occasions when she had ended up locking her keys in her car and having to call a locksmith.

She took another deep breath as she made her way from the employee parking lot to the back door of the restaurant, preparing herself mentally for the inevitable stresses of the evening shift. Ellis American Cuisine opened at 11:30 in the morning for lunch, and the evening shift started—for Adriana at least—during the afternoon lull. She had about two hours before the dinner rush; enough time to get some work done at the back of the house—schedules, payroll, accounting work—before she would need to check on things at the front and make sure that the chefs were ready for the night.

Adriana jiggled her key in the stubborn lock on the back door, turning the lever and twisting it up to try and get the knob to cooperate. Part of her wanted to replace the door, lock and all; but it was the door that her father had installed himself, a physical remnant of the man who had owned the restaurant first—something that Adriana couldn’t quite give up, in spite of the continual frustration. As she finally stepped into the hallway leading to the office at the end and branching off into the kitchens at the opposite side, Adriana marveled at the fact that her father had somehow managed to make the operation run so smoothly, so effortlessly. He had had stressful times, but he never seemed to lose the smile on his face, and never entertained the notion of giving up on his business. “If you work hard, keep your head up, and keep your attitude right, you can get through the hardest of times just fine,” he had told her, more than once. They were words that Adriana had tried—though she didn’t always succeed—to live by.

She walked back to the office and saw that the door was half-open; her mother was there, seated at the desk, going over the expenses. “Mama,” Adriana said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You should be headed home to rest, not hanging here doing more than your share.” Technically the lunch shift started at 9:30 in the morning and extended to 3:30 in the afternoon—but Adriana’s mother, Esther, somehow always managed to be at the restaurant an hour early, and stay an hour late.

“Oh hush,” Esther said, looking up from the reports. “I wasn’t ready to go home yet, so I thought I’d get you ahead a bit.” Nominally, her father’s will had bequeathed the restaurant to Adriana; in the probate, ownership of the business had passed to her, with her mother kept on as a consultant. In fact, she and her mother had split the responsibilities, though Adriana—in spite of her lack of pleasure in the restaurant business—struggled constantly to take on more. 

Adriana shook her head, sitting down on the other side of the desk and dropping her purse onto the far end of the desk. “Mom, you should be resting.”

Esther shrugged, and Adriana saw her mother suppress a cough, turning it to a throat-clearing instead. Esther had had a “niggling little cold” for weeks now—little more than a sniffle and a cough, but enough to worry Adriana about her mother’s long-term health. Her mother had insisted on continuing on in the running of the restaurant, taking on the stresses. Adriana could understand; it was one of the few things they both still had of her father. When Richard Ellis had been well, Esther had been his backup, his behind-the-scenes manager. She’d taken on more and more of the responsibilities after Richard started to get sick, and had grown so accustomed to keeping up the restaurant for her husband that it was difficult for her to let go.

“It’s boring for me at home, and I’m a grown woman. I know when it’s time to go to bed.”

Adriana fought down a smile at the sight of her mother’s stern expression, knowing that her own echoed it almost flawlessly. She had inherited her father’s deep skin tone, but her mother’s eyes and lips, and the subtle bump at the bridge of her nose that spoke of latent Native American ancestry.

“Your cough is getting worse,” Adriana told her mother firmly. “You need to go home and make yourself a toddy and sit in the bathtub for a while.” Esther continued to hold her gaze, looking for a moment as if she wouldn’t give in—as if she would insist on staying behind to get the books up to date. The silence stretched out between them and Adriana marshalled another argument in her mind.

“I suppose I could go and visit Lucille,” Esther said finally, glancing away. “She’s been a mess ever since her daughter came out, you know—that old biddy can’t stand the idea that she might not get grandkids if Jessica doesn’t settle with a man.” Esther shook her head in exasperation.

“Go and comfort your friend. Get out of here, Mom.” Esther stood slowly, and Adriana knew her mother was trying to cover the stiffness in her back from sitting for a long period; she also knew that if she offered to help she would be rebuffed. Esther Ellis had always been tough and independent—she had kept her eyes dry throughout her husband’s stay in the hospital and had presented a stoic face during his funeral, shedding tears only at the graveside service when she said her final goodbyes, and then in private, when no one would feel the need to comfort her.

Adriana smiled to herself as her mother collected her purse, looking around the old office with a satisfied sigh.

“Don’t stay too late,” Esther said, reaching up and giving her a kiss on the cheek before she turned to leave.

“I’ll stay as long as I have to, just like Dad.”

Esther nodded and left, shaking her head.

Adriana sat down at the desk, pulling the paperwork up on the beat up old computer and bringing the hard copy next to the keyboard where she could glance at it. Her father had computerized the labor and supply shortly before Adriana went to college and made sure that she knew the system almost as well as he did; even though at that time she insisted that she would never take it over, he had told her it was in case he needed her to fill in on occasion, when she was home on break.

The numbers were not good. Adriana sighed as she ran them once more, trying to figure out how to make metaphorical soup from stones. The cost of running the restaurant had slowly but steadily gone up, and her father had still been able to manage everything; somehow been able to keep it going—even stay ahead. But since he got sick, it had been in a gradual—but noticeable—decline. The restaurant had barely kept afloat for the past few months, and Adriana knew that her mother was just as worried about it as she was, and maybe even more worried. She couldn’t afford to lose the family business; even if it weren’t for the fact that it was her only employment at the moment, it would be yet another tie to her father’s life broken.

Adriana spent the first hour and a half after she arrived at the restaurant working over the numbers, trying to find ways to cut costs. She couldn’t bring herself to lay anyone off; everyone from the head chef to the bus boys and dishwashers worked hard. She knew that if she told them that it was simply a matter of not enough money, they would understand—but she didn’t want to have to do it. In food costs she couldn’t think of a single way to save; the restaurant’s menu wasn’t ambitious and didn’t use expensive ingredients; everything that they kept in the kitchen and all of the front-of-house supplies were absolutely necessary—but they added up. She groaned, bringing her head down onto the desk and closing her eyes. The only solution would be more traffic in the restaurant; if they could get more people in the door, they would be okay. In the meantime, she would have to just cut back on quantities. If they weren’t getting the traffic, there was going to be obvious waste—and until the foot traffic improved, there was no need for waste.

Adriana revised orders, thanking her lucky stars that there were some savings held back from before the restaurant began its decline. Every month ate into the backing that Richard Ellis had put away; in a matter of a year or less, there would be nothing left. She had to get the restaurant to at least break even before the last of the savings was exhausted. At least, Adriana thought, her mother had the insurance money to live on. Richard Ellis had been an optimist, but he had also believed in being prepared; there was enough money for his widow and a little “nest egg for his daughter. Adriana wanted to put that towards her own place to live one day—and she wouldn’t be able to do that if she couldn’t keep the restaurant running.

She finished up all of the paperwork she could force herself to do and stood up from the desk, gathering up what she could of her sense of pride. She knew that the employees all suspected that things were not very good at the restaurant—but as long as she could keep the business afloat, she wasn’t going to say anything. Before she left the office to check on the kitchen and look over the front of house before the dinner hours started, Adriana took out her phone. She flipped through her contact book and called her best friend, Desiree. “Hey girl,” Adriana said when the call rolled over into voicemail. “We should hook up some time soon; it’s been a week or two since we’ve seen each other. Hit me up, okay?” Desiree was busy running her own business, a few blocks away; unlike the restaurant, Desiree’s business was booming, doing better every month, so that she was even starting to consider opening a second location on the other side of town.

Adriana put her phone away—she preferred to set a good example to her employees, even if she knew that they wouldn’t care if she occasionally took a phone call—and made sure her clothes were straight and neat, that her hair looked good enough. She walked through the hallway and into the kitchen, smiling as brightly and as broadly as she could. Delicious smells greeted her from the moment she opened the office door, intensifying as she came to the hot, steaming confines of the kitchen itself. The fragrances were almost more comforting to Adriana than home; her father had owned the restaurant before she was born and as soon as she was old enough to stay out of the way, she had been allowed to roam around at whim.

She made sure everything was ready for the evening—even though, Adriana thought pessimistically, she didn’t think very many people would show. She went through her routine, tasting one or two items from the menu to check for quality, just as her father always had, and taking the chefs’ “temperatures” to make sure everything was the way it should be. Adriana made her way to the front of house and met with the servers, the bartender, and the bussers who were on duty that night. When she was satisfied that everyone knew their sections, knew the specials thrown together by the chefs, and that everything was as prepared as it could possibly be, she headed back to the office and freshened up her makeup.

For the first hour of the dinner shift, Adriana thought that the situation was hopeless; two tables came in, somehow managing to make the dining room look even more desolate than it did when it was empty. Adriana dropped by and checked on the diners nonetheless, greeting them and making sure that everything was to their satisfaction. By the second hour, a handful of additional diners finally started to arrive, ready to start out their Thursday night. Adriana’s sense of panic began to go away as people came in; at no point in the evening were they in any danger of having a long wait for a table, but it was something.