Love in the Morning by Meg Benjamin Read Free Book Online

she?” he snapped.
    â€œNo idea.” She hoisted the tray onto her shoulder and started toward the door to the dining room.
    Denham stepped beside her, swinging the door open so that she could pass through. “Did you call her?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t have her number.”
    â€œI do,” Denham said grimly. He strode out of the dining room as she turned back to the kitchen again.
    Lizzy half-expected Clarice to show up after that, but she still didn’t appear.
    Desi seemed oddly elated by the morning, despite the fact that he’d been doing double-duty as a kitchen assistant and a dishwasher. When the last diners had left the room, he dropped into a chair at the side of the dining room. “Man, that was really cool. What a rush.”
    Rush was accurate, given the state of breakfast. At least they’d gotten through it without any major screwups. Lizzy slumped into one of the chairs, letting her head fall back. “Thanks for stepping up. I couldn’t have handled all of that on my own.”
    He shrugged. “No problem. I asked Clarice to let me start cooking after the last kitchen assistant quit. She kept saying she’d consider it, but she never did.”
    She turned to look at him. “You want to be a cook?”
    He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. That’s why I took this job in the first place. I thought I could get my foot in the door. I guess once Clarice has you doing something she doesn’t want you to do anything else, though.”
    Lizzy considered just how far she could go in subverting Clarice’s orders. Screw it. If Clarice wanted to run her kitchen, Clarice needed to be around. “You could help me out with breakfast prep if you want. Lord knows there’s lots to do.” Maybe she could even put him to work making sandwiches since all that currently involved was weighing meat portions and assembling the pieces.
    Desi nodded again, more enthusiastically this time. “That’d be great. I mean, you’ve got a lot of experience, right? You really look like you know what you’re doing around here.”
    Danger, danger, danger. “I’ve done some kitchen work before,” she said carefully. “I could show you how to prep the stuff for breakfast.”
    Desi’s grin was the brightest spot in the dining room. “Super!”
    The dining room door swung open and Lizzy steeled herself to tell some hungry hiker he was just too late until she saw it was Denham. He gave her one of those laser looks she was getting used to. “I need to talk to you.”
    She nodded. “Right. Go ahead.”
    He glanced at Desi. “Let’s do it in the office.”
    Desi’s grin faded a bit.
    Lizzy gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Why don’t you get started on cleanup? I should be back soon.” She glanced at Denham’s thunderous expression. Or not.
    She followed him down the hall to his office, her pulse thudding like a battle drum, her stomach somewhere around her toes. It doesn’t mean he’s found out anything about your past. He could want to talk to you about something else. It doesn’t mean he’s going to fire you. Would the fates actually be this cruel—letting her work in a kitchen again for a few weeks and then kicking her in the rear? Well, they’d done it before.
    Denham dropped into the leather chair behind his desk, motioning for her to take the chair across from him, then pushed a piece of paper in her direction. “Look at this.”
    Lizzy picked it up with trembling fingers, staring at the handwritten note. Don’t be anything bad. Please don’t be anything bad. She focused on the words.
    And blinked.
    â€œClarice is quitting?”
    â€œApparently, she’s already quit,” Denham said. He sounded like he was gritting his teeth.
    She looked at the note again. Short and not sweet at all. Clarice had a new job in