The Wedding Gift (10 page)

Julie hadn’t realized her change in attitude was that obvious. Though to be fair, who wouldn’t feel as great as she currently did after dinner–and breakfast–with Andrew Kyle?

“I know that look,” Phoebe said, with a mischievous note in her voice. She gave Julie a long look. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Phoebe!” Julie squirmed with embarrassment, but she was dying to tell someone about how good she was feeling and who else was she going to talk it over with? Aunt Evie? Even if the older woman weren’t planning to go out with her friends tonight, there were some things you just didn’t discuss with your aunt.

“How did you guess?” Julie asked.

“You’re practically glowing, and you obviously haven’t been home to change, because that dress is far too formal for work.”

That was from a woman who was currently wearing a floral number that fell down past her knees and looked like it had come out of the nineteen-fifties. Julie raised an eyebrow, but Phoebe shrugged the unspoken point off.

“This is retro-chic.
That
,” she said as she gestured to Julie’s outfit, “is an impromptu sleepover. I know the difference. Now, are you going to tell me who it was, or am I going to have to guess?”

When Julie didn’t answer immediately, Phoebe turned thoughtful, leaning her head on one hand while she ran through the possibilities and dismissed them.

“Let’s see, it has to be someone you’ve been spending a lot of time with. Good looking, obviously. Someone who—” Her eyes grew big. “Oh my God, you didn’t! Andrew Kyle?”

Not knowing what else to do, and frankly quite grateful to finally be able to tell someone, Julie nodded, a smile she couldn’t contain curving up her lips.

“Lucky you! He’s gorgeous. How did it happen? Details, I demand details.”

For a second or so, Julie blushed hot enough that she could probably have used her own face to cook with in place of a stove top. Still, she had to talk this over with somebody, or she would probably explode.

After a quick look around to ensure that they were all alone, she gave a quick explanation of the highlights of her relationship with Andrew. Still, regardless of how encouraging Phoebe was about it, Julie knew not everyone would feel the same way.

“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to Rose. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be very happy if she heard that I was involved with a client. Especially one I have a history with.”

It wasn’t that the Rose Chalet’s owner was some fun-hating boss from hell, but Rose
was
running a business, and had to hope for the least amount of interpersonal complications between employees and clients.

“Don’t worry, I won’t say a word,” Phoebe said, but before Julie could get back to the kitchen, her friend put a hand on her arm. “I’m really happy for you, but with a guy like Andrew Kyle—”

“I know, be careful,” Julie said. “Thanks, Phoebe.”

Phoebe headed back out into the garden and Julie was just reaching for a baking pan when she turned and ran straight into Rose.

The owner of the Rose Chalet did not look happy. Actually, Julie quickly realized, it was more like her face had shut down so that she didn’t have to show what she really felt. It was, strangely, worse than as if she had been shouting.

“Julie, I’d like to see you in my office, please.” Rose walked off, not waiting for Julie.

Oh God, she’d
obviously
heard.

If talking to Phoebe had been like being back in high school, then this was like being summoned to the principal’s office. It wasn’t a question of whether Julie was in trouble.

It was simply a question of how much trouble?

Rose was sitting behind her desk by the time Julie caught up with her. It wasn’t a neat desk. There were far too many pieces of paper scattered over it for that, arranged in an order that presumably made sense to her boss, but wouldn’t to anyone else.

Rose gestured to one of the chairs for clients in front of the desk. Julie hadn’t sat there even when she’d been interviewing for the temporary job, because they’d done that in the kitchen. Things suddenly felt horribly formal.

“Please sit down, Julie.”

Julie sat. “Rose, I can explain this.”

“I heard most of what you said to Phoebe,” Rose said. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t even sound angry. If anything, she sounded disappointed. “You’re dating Andrew Kyle?”

Julie hesitated, but then nodded. There wasn’t much point in trying to deny it. “Yes.”

“Do you know how complicated that makes things?”

“I’m sorry,” Julie said, but a small spark of defiance leapt up in her. “To be fair, things were already pretty complicated between him and me.”

“You mean because he gave you a bad review for your restaurant?” Rose looked at Julie pointedly. “One that you didn’t mention to me after you learned he was the client’s brother?”

Julie hung her head. She’d messed up. She knew she had. “I thought that if I told you about Andrew’s review of my restaurant, then you wouldn’t have let me work on this wedding.”

“So, instead, you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie, exactly. I just didn’t tell you.” Julie winced as she heard what she’d just said. “Not that it makes a difference, I know.”

“It sounds like there were quite a few things you didn’t tell me,” Rose continued. “First there was the role Andrew played in the collapse of your restaurant, there’s you somehow ending up on screen with him during the filming of his new show—”

“That was an accident,” Julie protested, although she suspected it probably didn’t help.

“—then there’s you kissing him a few days ago, you going to his house for dinner with his family, you spending the night with him…I don’t know what to say to all this, Julie.”

“I didn’t plan any of this. I thought I could ignore Andrew’s review.” Julie squirmed in her seat. “I thought he and I could both be professional about it.”

Rose pressed her lips together, obviously not saying the first thing that came into her head. “Yes, professional would have been good,” she said after a second or two, “but that’s clearly not how things have worked out.”

Julie nodded. “I’m sorry about this. Really.” She briefly wondered exactly how many times one person could say sorry in a day. Although, the truth was she would apologize as many times as she needed to, just so long as she got to keep her—

“Julie, I’m going to have to let you go.”

—job.

“Let me go?” For a second or two, she could barely take the words in. “You’re firing me?”

Rose nodded. “I don’t have a choice.”

“But the Kyles’ wedding…”

“I’ll have to find someone else to do it. I would have needed to find someone else afterwards, anyway. This just brings things forward a little. Look, I’ll be happy to offer you a reference. The food I tasted was good. It’s just all the rest of it that’s a problem.”

Julie brought her hands up to her face. She could feel the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but she was determined not to cry. Not here, not like this.

“But I—”

To Julie’s surprise, Rose got up and moved around the desk. Briefly, Julie wondered if the other woman was going to throw her out physically. That would be the perfect ending to her day.

Instead, Rose did something even more surprising. She put a comforting hand on Julie’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but I think this is the best thing. When you have time to think about it, you might even agree. I need someone here who can commit to doing this job long term, and I think you’ve never really been that interested in it, Julie.”

“That’s not true,” Julie tried to argue, but Rose stopped her.

“You had your own restaurant. Working here, putting on food for weddings, was always going to be second best. Even Andrew said that your heart didn’t seem to be in it back at the tasting.”

How, Julie wondered, had things fallen apart so quickly, from a perfect morning to a miserable afternoon? What would Evie say when Julie told her that she’d managed to lose the job her aunt had more or less handed to her?

“I’m not going to make you work out the rest of the day,” Rose said, “and I want you to know that this isn’t anything personal. I just don’t think that you’re a good fit for the Rose Chalet. I’m sorry. Obviously, you’ll be paid for the work you’ve done so far.”

Julie nodded and stood. She had to get out of Rose’s office before she broke down and cried. She mumbled something about being grateful for the opportunity and made it as far as the parking lot before she stopped, the reality of it finally sinking in.

She’d been fired.

The only job she’d been able to get after the demise of her restaurant was gone, just like that…all because she’d been stupid enough to let her life get tangled up with Andrew Kyle’s again.

Chapter Thirteen

Julie walked back to her aunt’s house with her breath coming short and her gut clenching. She didn’t even try to catch the bus home, passing it in a daze as she tried to make some sense of everything that had just happened.

Her phone rang as the first drops of rain started to fall. The thought of actually having to talk to someone was too much to bear. But she couldn’t resist checking the message. What if it was Rose calling to say she’d reconsidered?

Phoebe’s voice rang out on voice mail: “I just heard what happened and that you won’t be working here anymore.” Her new friend paused as if she only just realized that had come out wrong. “I hope you’re okay. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have started asking about Andrew. I shouldn’t have even gone near that whole conversation. I feel so bad about everything. Please let me know you’re all right when you get the chance.”

Julie hesitated, finger poised over the call button. She didn’t blame Phoebe for anything. She even thought it was sweet of her to check in. But she still couldn’t face the thought of talking. Especially not to tell someone she was all right.

She wasn’t all right. She was a long,
long
way from that.

Tucking the phone back into her pocket, Julie made her way back to her aunt’s house, not bothering to dodge the puddles that had started to form on the sidewalk. All she wanted was to curl up on the sofa and pretend for a little while that none of it mattered. Even though it mattered so very much.

Julie walked past a food truck at the end of her block, keeping going without even pausing to wonder what it served. Just the thought of food made her stomach knot.

By the time Julie got back to Aunt Evie’s place, the rain had worked its way through her clothes. Oh, how Julie wished her aunt were home, rather than out with her friends for the evening, to hug her and tell her that everything would be all right, even if it was a lie.

Then again, all the work Evie had put into cooking for the wedding venue, and Julie had lost it, just like that. Would her aunt be angry? Disappointed? The stress of trying to keep up with multiple weddings had been bad for the older woman’s health. What would the news of just how badly her niece had messed up this time do to her?

Julie went to her room, picking up the small notebook she had originally intended to write recipes in, but which sat largely blank in one of her drawers. She pulled out a piece of paper tucked in between the cover and the first page and unfolded it, re-reading the familiar words of Andrew’s review:
Delgado’s: 2 out of 5 stars

Why had she printed out the review and put it there? She could hardly remember now. Maybe she’d thought to use it as a spur to action, a source of inspiration. Maybe she’d wanted it as a reminder of how easily things could go wrong. All Julie had known at the time was that she needed to keep a copy, that she wasn’t going to let the couple of brief paragraphs that had ruined her life simply float off into the electronic ether.

Restaurants should offer more than bland food....

That passion for food didn’t come across at Delgado’s.

She’d had visions of one day being able to force Andrew Kyle to eat his words. Julie smiled grimly at that as she read the piece over again, her eyes skimming the words that she could have recited from memory.

Judging by the many empty seats all around me, the other customers felt the same way.

Such simple phrases, but they had done so much damage. When she got to the end of the review, she went back to the beginning to read it again.

Perhaps in future, the owner will couple her obvious skills with a more imaginative menu.

Strangely, two things jumped out at her from the sentence for the very first time.
Obvious skills
was an actual compliment. And
future...
well, it seemed to imply that Andrew thought she had one.

She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, with the world closed in around her and Andrew’s old words in front of her. It would be easier to tell herself that, once again, her life had gone from almost being okay to falling apart the moment he had come into it.

But she couldn’t lie to herself about his motives. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her, hadn’t been deliberately trying to rip her life to shreds.

It was simply that he couldn’t understand that the way he threw himself at the world simply didn’t work for everyone else. He acted and never thought about the consequences, because there never
were
any consequences for him.

Yet for Julie, life seemed to be nothing but consequences. Rotten ones.

She knew she was wallowing and forced herself to put the review back in the notebook, though by then, it didn’t make much difference. The words were still playing on repeat in her head.

A minute later, Julie stood under the jets of the shower, turning the water as hot as she could bear and squeezing her eyes shut. It didn’t make any difference. She could still the see Andrew’s final pronouncement on her restaurant–
unmemorable–
in her mind’s eye, as if it had been typed into her brain in indelible ink.

She opened her eyes again to find that she was on the floor of the shower, her arms wrapped around her knees, hugging them close. As much as she wanted to deny it,
Delgado’s
had been heading downhill for months before it closed. The two star review was just the last nail in the coffin. And last night with Andrew, this morning’s breakfast and sweet kisses…it had been her choice to stay. Her choice to take that risk.