BWWM Interracial Romance 6: Her Protector (3 page)

“That’s got to be a misery for him,” Adriana said quietly. It certainly explained the tension she had felt between the two men when the partner had walked over to grab some of the cookies she had brought with her. “I visited Sawyer earlier, brought him some of Mom’s cookies.”

“You should come by my place,” Desiree said. “Your mom mentioned earlier that you were on an enforced day off. Come on by and we’ll grab dinner together.”

Adriana accepted and hung up, agreeing to drop by in an hour or so.

She thought about what Desiree had told her; she hadn’t known that Sawyer was divorced—Desiree had confirmed that the divorce was finalized—and she hadn’t had any clue about the situation with Sawyer’s partner. It made her think about her own divorce. It had left her nearly destitute, but the actual cause of the divorce wasn’t nearly as scandalous as what Sawyer had gone through. It just hadn’t worked out with her and Paul—they’d grown apart and they’d started arguing over everything. Finally, Adriana had just told Paul that she’d had enough and she couldn’t live with him anymore.

It was the first time she had really thought about the end of her marriage since she’d gotten the call from her mom to inform her that her father was sick. Adriana picked at imaginary lint on the kitchen tablecloth, chewing her bottom lip. Could she and Paul have made it work? It didn’t matter, Adriana told herself. She couldn’t afford to care about anything other than the restaurant, the staff, her mother, and Desiree. But at least, she thought, she hadn’t been betrayed by anyone. It just hadn’t worked out, and it was as simple as that.

Adriana gathered up her dishes and washed them; though Esther had a dishwasher, it was only ever put to use for large loads. She would meet up with Desiree, get some advice from the successful businesswoman about increasing her profits, and she’d take her mind off of her money woes for the night. It would be a good break—her mother was right. She’d been working too hard. Why had it taken Sawyer’s appearance in her life for her to realize it? Adriana shook her head. For a moment she remembered what Sawyer had been like in high school and decided that in spite of his more recent woes, he hadn’t changed at all. It was refreshing and disappointing at the same time.

Adriana was back at the grind, today she had taken the lunch shift, switching with her mother even though she had her doubts about Esther staying up late. It was slow; but of course, she had known it would be. Two of the bussers had called out, stricken down with the flu that was going around. It meant that she had to stay at the front of house, that was fine because she didn’t especially want to go over the accounts again—there was nothing she could do about any of the expenses at the moment, and it would just drive her crazy. It also meant that at least for the lunch shift, the labor costs would be down. Even as slow as the shift was, Adriana was able to keep herself occupied doing side work, clearing a few of the tables, taking up the slack wherever she could.

When Sawyer came in, Adriana wasn’t entirely surprised; but his figure at the door still gave her a moment’s pause. He wasn’t in uniform—instead a pair of jeans and a well-worn tee shirt. “Hey, Adri,” he said with a smile when she walked up quickly. For the lunch shift, they didn’t have a hostess; the servers took the responsibility of seating people in their sections as needed.

“Good to see you,” Adriana said with a smile. “I take it you’re off duty today.”

Sawyer laughed and gestured to his casual clothes. “Can’t you tell? I’m undercover as the least cool high school student ever.”

Adriana rolled her eyes and grabbed one of the menus from the hostess stand and led Sawyer to a table. She decided abruptly that she would take care of him herself, and split the tip amongst the workers on-shift. “Come on; let’s get some food in you.” Adriana gestured for him to sit down and handed him the menu. “When was the last time you were in here?”

Sawyer smiled slightly.

“I used come in sometimes for lunch on my days off,” he admitted. “I liked to check on your mom and the food was always good…though lately I’ve been….occupied”

For a moment, the charming, friendly and easy-going demeanor dropped, and Adriana was able to see the stress and fatigue around Sawyer’s eyes. It was still hitting him hard, she thought—his wife’s betrayal, his partner’s treachery. She couldn’t imagine how she would have handled it if Paul had cheated on her—much less with someone she was so close with.

“Well, I’ll see if I can live up to Mom’s standards.” Adriana grabbed one of the pads and leaned against the bench of the booth. “What’ll you have?”

Sawyer looked over the menu with the air of someone perusing in detail, stealing a quick glance at Adriana’s face and flashing her a grin. “Well I think I’ll grab a beer to drink—it’s my day off after all.”

Adriana noted it down.

“What are the specials for today?”

Adriana smiled. “For lunch we’ve got the lobster salad on special; and I can give you a good deal on the pan-roasted trout. If you’re not feeling up to seafood, we have roast chicken with potatoes and green beans, sandwiches of course, and the soup of the day is corn and clam chowder.”

Sawyer considered for a moment and Adriana took the opportunity of looking at him; it had been a handful of years since she had seen him—and in his uniform didn’t seem to count as much. Off-duty, he looked more like the boy she had known in high school, with messy hair and stubble on his face, his bright eyes flicking back and forth the same way they had in study hall. His cheeks and nose were a little reddened from the sun, but he was slim as ever; he’d only muscled up slightly in the police, and Adriana wondered if he was as quick as he’d been when she’d known him so well.

“I’ll have the lobster salad and the chowder, I think,” he said, putting the menu down and looking up at her. “You any better at waiting tables than you were as a teenager?”

Adriana laughed, a smile tugging at her lips nonetheless. “Much better at it. I’ll bring your beer in a second and get your food order in right now.” Adriana gave Sawyer a haughty glance and turned away. She smiled to herself as she took the sheet off of the top of the pad and ran it to the kitchen hatch. “Got an order!” she called out, sticking the sheet where it could be easily grabbed. She came back out and detoured at the bar to grab Sawyer’s beer. She knew his preferred brand; the restaurant had always carried Bud, so it was no trouble to get it for him.

When she approached the table again, Sawyer was playing with his phone, some game she couldn’t really distinguish. The section she had seated him in was near-empty, with only a few patrons sitting at the tables scattered around.

“Hey,” Sawyer said as Adriana set down his beer. He looked up from his game. “Why don’t you chat with me for a while? The rest of your staff seem to have everything under control.”

Adriana glanced around and saw that it was true; everything was going well. Some of the servers were, in fact, watching her with the obvious intent of encouraging her—and she wondered what was going through their minds. She shrugged and sat down.

“I can take a little time I guess,” she said. “I was… I was sorry to hear about your wife.”

Sawyer’s bright eyes darkened and Adriana regretted her comment. “It’s just one of those things,” Sawyer said, shrugging it off as carelessly as he could. But Adriana could see the tension in him. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?” she asked, glancing around.

“I was just remembering what it was like when you used to be a server here, working for your dad.”

Adriana laughed, shaking her head. “I was fighting his plan that I’d take the place over one day,” she said. She could remember it easily; she had worked at the restaurant as her first job, she had been paid the same as any other server—after working her way up from bus-girl, the same as any other employee. Unless someone came in with serving experience, they always started out as bussers; if they started in the kitchen, it was as a dishwasher unless they had kitchen experience.

“That explains why you were so terrible.”

Adriana hung her head, still laughing. She had not been a terrible server, but she—like any teenager—was easily distracted by her friends, who always came in on Friday nights with their parents. Her father had never threatened to fire her—but he’d had stern words for her on those evenings when she had let herself get distracted. Any of the other servers who took up her slack would also get her share of tips from whichever table they had helped with—which had been enough punishment for Adriana to get serious about doing her job properly when she worked during the summer and winter breaks from college.

“Hey—at least I kept the specials straight, unlike certain other people I know,” Adriana countered. Sawyer had dated a girl in high school—Kelsey Spellman, Adriana thought her name was—who had worked at Ellis American Cuisine. Kelsey had been friendly and sweet, but she couldn’t keep the menu straight in her mind to save her life. The kitchen staff had to routinely correct her orders, and if she hadn’t been a good-hearted girl at the bottom of it, the staff would have all hated her.

“What ever happened to that guy you dated in junior year?” Sawyer sipped his beer, raising an eyebrow. “Seems like that just fizzled with nothing at all.”

Adriana shrugged. “He wasn’t the one. I met a guy in college I thought was the one… but that didn’t work out either. So here I am: living with mom, working the job I swore I’d never take.”

Sawyer grinned. “I remember you were determined to make a big splash in business, become the CEO of some great big company and buy up your dad’s restaurant, hire someone to run it for you and just stay a silent partner.”

Adriana couldn’t help smiling at the thought—it hadn’t worked out for a number of reasons, but she had been so determined never to have to actually run the restaurant herself that it had been her fondest dream to be so wealthy she wouldn’t have to. “Yeah, well, I seem to recall that you were only going to be a cop temporarily, until you achieved stardom in—what was it? BMX? Skating?”

Sawyer shook his head, laughing and bringing his hand down onto the tabletop. “Either or. I was reasonably sure it’d only be a matter of time.” He grinned. “Shows how much either of us knew about the real world.”

Adriana realized that his food was probably up and stood. She told him she would be right back; she could feel his gaze on her as she walked back to the kitchen, and wondered at how in spite of her life falling to pieces all around her, Sawyer had been able to completely put her mind at ease in a matter of minutes. She grabbed his food and put it on a tray, balancing it carefully the way she had learned to do years before. Maybe, she thought, she’d grab a drink for herself and sit with him while he ate; he looked sort of lonely sitting by himself.

Sawyer was clearly happy with her plan, and Adriana even let herself be talked into grabbing herself a bowl of the chowder to “keep him company” while he ate. They talked about high school, comparing notes on those of their classmates they had managed to keep up with.

“The reunion’s coming up in a year or two, isn’t it?” Sawyer asked her. “We’ll get to catch up with everyone then.”

Adriana learned that one of the members of the debate team had gone on to make a minor splash in politics, moving south and becoming a county commissioner and then a mayor. She was able to tell Sawyer about another of their mutual friends who had ended up going to law school; she was a corporate attorney now, making a killing—living in Connecticut.

The conversation started to wind down, and Adriana realized that the lunch rush was dying. It was about time for her to head to the office in the back and get to work on the books, no matter how little she wanted confirmation that they hadn’t made enough during the shift to cover costs.

“You know, it’s been really good chatting with you,” Sawyer said, his gaze level on her face. “I forgot how much I liked talking to you.”

“Me too,” Adriana admitted. She hadn’t really and truly thought about Sawyer in years; even when she had come back to help her parents out, Desiree had been more on her mind than Sawyer had—which she found strange now, remembering that she and Sawyer had almost ended up dating when they were in high school together. It had been during their senior year, and they had hedged around the question their entire high school career—and at the last moment, they had somehow managed to both chicken out yet again. Adriana was never entirely sure why it had happened that way; maybe they were both worried that it wouldn’t work out and that was what held them back.

“I was wondering—have been wondering, actually—would you like to see a movie, maybe grab a drink together sometime?”

Adriana felt her cheeks heating up. “Well,” she said, swallowing against the tightness she felt in her throat. “We were always on the edge of going out in high school, right?”

Sawyer grinned. “You’re right about that. I never could quite get up the nerve to really ask you. You were always too gorgeous, too good for me.”

Adriana rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Please. You just wanted the easy girls. I was too difficult to get in bed—that’s why you didn’t ask me.”

Sawyer shook his head. “I was willing to wait then and I’m willing to wait now. What do you say?”

Adriana considered it for a moment. “I really shouldn’t,” she said, hesitating as she looked around the restaurant. She saw Sawyer’s hopeful, pleased expression fall. “No—not because of you. I just don’t know when I’ll be able to get away from here.”

“You can find someone to manage for a night, can’t you? Or for the day and then Esther can take the night?”

Adriana smiled. “Let me call you when I figure it out. I do want to go out with you—I really do. But it gets complicated around here. Give me your number and let me know when you’re off next.”

Sawyer took the pen that went with the check and scrawled his number on a cocktail napkin, handing it to her. He stood up and Adriana stood with him, hesitating again for a moment—she didn’t know how to tell him goodbye. Before she could make a decision, Sawyer had wrapped his arms around her loosely and kissed her on the cheek.

“Make sure you actually call me,” he said. “After all, I know where you live—I can get a warrant.” He grinned to emphasize the joke.

Adriana laughed. “Corruption in the ranks of law enforcement!” she called after him as he made his way out of the restaurant. She looked at the credit card receipt; he had left a generous 25% tip on his meal, after insisting that she add her own soup to his tab. She was glad that she had tentatively agreed to his offer of a date—even if she wasn’t sure how she would manage scheduling it. She’d discuss it with her mom later.

Adriana went back to her office after cashing out the tip on the check and dividing it among the servers and bussers on the floor.

Becky, her wrist nearly back to normal, flashed a grin at Adriana, taking the couple of dollars. “He can come back anytime he wants,” she said. “And if I’m not getting to above myself, I think you agree.”

Adriana had smacked her arm playfully and danced away from any further questions, retreating to the office.

She sat down at the desk and found herself smiling still, thinking ahead to the date with Sawyer. She still wasn’t entirely sure how they had managed to avoid dating each other throughout high school—it was obvious to everyone in their circle of friends that they were both attracted to each other. Adriana had been one of only a few dozen students of color in the school; she had always, in the back of her mind, thought that that limited her prospects. Most of the guys who had wanted to date her in high school had simply been motivated by the “exotic” factor—her dark umber skin, her curling hair, sometimes kept in braids when she would have to work, and the lush curves that had started to form on her body, with full, heavy breasts and a high, tight, round butt, along with thick, muscled thighs, had been the attraction rather than her personality. She’d known instinctively that the guys who had asked her out were at least partially, if not entirely, motivated by the idea of having sex with a black girl. Sawyer had been different, and that might have been what kept Adriana from asking him herself; she didn’t want to think that underneath his interest in her as a human being, Sawyer was just like the rest of the boys in school.