In Over Her Head: An Anchor Island Novel by Terri Osburn (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

have a staff.” If he thought a challenging stance would intimidate her, he was mistaken. “Once I conduct interviews, I’ll build a competent crew. I need people who know their way around a kitchen. Not a fry cook and a grill runner.”

“The Marina staff know more about this kitchen and this island than you do,” he informed her. “Letting them go would be a mistake.”

“They don’t know my kitchen.”

“They can learn.”

“I’ll find that out in the interviews then, won’t I?”

With furrowed brows, he stared her down for several seconds. “This is a tight-knit community,” he finally said. “We take care of our own, and that means we hire our own. Don’t make assumptions about us, and if you want this place to succeed, don’t make enemies before you open the doors.”

Undaunted, Lauren raised a brow. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t hire locals, and I also didn’t ask for your advice.”

To her surprise, Nota laughed. “You two would make an excellent match. You’re exactly alike.”

Lauren doubted either statement was true. “I have more calls to make,” she said, nodding toward the older woman. “I hope to see you again once we’re open. I have a lamb chop recipe I think you’d enjoy.”

Long before culinary school, Lauren had possessed a talent for knowing the food a person would like just from meeting them. Her assumptions were rarely wrong.

“I’m looking forward to it, my dear.”

“All done,” Mia said, rejoining them. “Lauren, I left my supplies in the storage room like before in case Will wants any changes. Once she gives her final approval, I’ll take it all home.”

“Not a problem.”

Nick escorted Nota to the door while Mia lingered behind. “I want to apologize for my grandmother. She’s determined to see Nick and I married off, and unfortunately, that puts her in constant mate-recruitment mode. You know how grandmothers are.”

Lauren never met either of her grandmothers, so no, she didn’t know.

“She seems nice.” A glance toward the door revealed how tightly Nota clung to her grandson’s arm, and how carefully he ushered her along, as if she might break at the slightest misstep. “You’re lucky to have her.”

“We are,” Mia agreed. “Thanks for being so nice this week. That tour guide offer still stands. Maybe a little sightseeing will inspire items for your menu.”

Keeping her response noncommittal, she said, “Maybe. Have a nice evening.”

“You, too.”

Mia caught up with her family at the door and they disappeared together into the sunshine. A stab of jealousy sliced through Lauren, but she swept it away with a deep sigh and went back to her office.

“I told you we didn’t need to do this,” Nick said as Mia lowered a birthday cake onto Nota’s kitchen table. He made the same claim every year, but this time he meant it. This was the last birthday he felt like celebrating. An apropos thought considering this could also be his last birthday ever.

“And we ignored you,” Mia replied, “like we always do.”

His sister had an annoying habit of ignoring pretty much everything he said. From his birthday to her coming clean with their grandmother.

“Get the candles from the drawer,” Nota ordered. Though his grandmother had claimed she felt fine, her arthritis must have been acting up. She’d plopped into a chair the moment they’d entered the house when normally she’d shoo them out of her kitchen and insist on doing everything herself.

“I don’t need candles,” Nick said.

“Everyone needs candles,” Nota informed him. “When are you going to stop giving us a hard time about your birthday?”

When he stopped having them, Nick thought, but kept the morbid statement to himself.

Mia stuck pink, yellow, blue, and purple candles along the perimeter of the cake and then used a match to light them. “You’re going to have another fifty of these things,” she said.

He would be lucky to have another four. Nick turned thirty-six this year. His father died at thirty-seven. His grandfather at thirty-nine. His great-grandfather had been killed in World War II at the age of twenty-six, but probably wouldn’t have seen forty even if he’d survived. Stamatis men simply did not live to old age. Or middle age, for that matter.

“You two need to face reality,” he argued.

His sister blew out the match. “And you need to think positively.”

Right. Because that would help him cheat death.

“Start the song, Mia,” Nota said, and the pair sang the traditional tune in perfect harmony. When the song ended, they both said, “Make a wish!”

The only thing Nick wished was that the women in his life would stop pretending, but to make them happy, he closed his eyes and did the pretending for them. Seconds later, he opened his eyes and blew out the candles.

Mia passed him the knife and three paper plates. “Do you really like the mural, Grandma?”

Nick had stopped calling Nota grandma years ago, but Mia never lost the habit. He meant no disrespect. She was simply Nota to him. Other than Mia, his paternal grandmother was the most important woman in his life.

His mother had remarried right after Nick graduated high school, and he loved her as any son should, but she’d severed her connection with Dad’s side of the family after the second marriage, and then moved to Florida without even discussing the idea with her kids.

“I do,” Nota replied. “You brought our beloved island to life on that wall. Everyone is going to love it.”

“I hope so.”

Once the cake was cut and the pieces distributed, Mia added a scoop of ice cream to each, then they ate in silence until Mia exclaimed, “Your present!” Rising from the table, she rushed off toward the bedrooms down the hall.

“That new chef is beautiful, isn’t she?” Nota commented.

She was. She was also a hard-ass with a chip on her shoulder. Nick knew the type well. A chef with a superiority complex while also being scared shitless. He’d bet his best blades this was her first time running a kitchen. The inexperience was written all over her face. Being able to