Love Blooms on Main Street by Olivia Miles Read Free Book Online

officially ended. She didn’t mind staying a few minutes late, and she didn’t bother drawing attention to it or marking it on her time sheet either, but what she did mind was being stuck out at that hostess stand day after day, nearly a year after Rosemary and Thyme had opened.
    She’d assumed at first that it was a temporary position. She’d just been happy to be a part of the team, one of the original three, from the ground up, standing front and center on opening day when a crowd had gathered down Main Street, eager to see the new establishment. Her skin still prickled at the memory, that feeling of expectation as she opened the door and welcomed everyone inside. Anna and Mark had looked so proud, so joyful, and why shouldn’t they? This restaurant was their dream, something they’d finally created and were eager to share. Imagine being able to say the same?
    Kara did imagine. She imagined that a lot. The only problem was… how did you break that kind of news to two of the closest people in your life? They assumed she was happy here. That nothing was amiss. She did her job with a smile on her face, but there was increasing heaviness in her heart. One that was filled with dissatisfaction and… guilt.
    Back when she was still working just for Anna at the café that was once housed in this very space, Kara had felt excited about the prospect of her future for the first time in, well… forever. Anna was a friend, but beyond that, she was a mentor, and Kara looked forward every day to learning a few baking tips from someone she admired, being Anna’s right-hand woman when business was busy—and it was always busy.
    She’d thought when Anna and Mark joined forces and opened the full-service restaurant that her own responsibilities would increase, too, that maybe she’d be asked to handle the desserts even. Instead, they’d brought on a team of talented people—people with culinary backgrounds, sous chefs—and Kara was left standing on her aching feet for hours at a time, plastering a smile on her face, showing people to their tables, and sometimes, only sometimes, being asked to help in the kitchen when someone was thoughtful enough to take a sick day and give her a reason to step in.
    It was soulless. Oh, she liked chatting with the locals who stopped in, and she was good at her job, always sure to note a repeat customer’s favorite table and ensuring it was available for their reservation, but it was hardly what she’d set out to do, and honestly, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could do it without feeling like her spirit had been completely crushed.
    She was going to quit. Today. It was as good a day as any. She’d give two weeks’ notice. Maybe even a month, considering Mark was her cousin and Anna, one of her best friends, would be a Hastings herself by the end of the summer. She’d just march over to them, ask if they had a moment, and say the words she rehearsed every morning in the shower:
It’s not that I don’t love working here; it’s just that it’s time I pursue my own passion.
Surely they’d understand that much!
    The thought of letting them down had kept her quiet for too long. They loved her. Wanted the best for her. And the best thing for her was to leave.
    She rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin, her stride purposeful as she aimed her body directly at the longest workstation near the back of the brightly lit kitchen, where Anna was standing over a stainless steel range, her back to Kara. The energy of the kitchen was overwhelming at times and, really, downright intimidating at others. Whereas at Fireside Café, she’d loved nothing more than slipping into the cozy kitchen and mastering a perfect piecrust, she had come to have an almost physiological response to stepping into the hot, steaming, and clanking kitchen of Rosemary and Thyme, and it had nothing to do with the fact that