Sooner or Later by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online

muscular.
    She shrugged regretfully. She didn’t have time for men anyway. A career girl was what she was now, and forever would be. She was determined to make her way in the world. Ellie’s Place was only her first venture into the restaurant trade; she already had steps two and three planned.
    Dan finished his eggs in record time. He glanced at his watch, then went to pay his check. “Thanks,” he said with a smile, “I enjoyed it.”
    “Enjoy your vacation,” she called as he strode to the door.
    He stood on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, taking in the street scene before getting into the white Explorer. Ellie thought he surely had a great walk, confident, sexy.
    Putting the thought of sex determinedly from her mind, she concentrated on the problem of the coffee machine. She had already been on the phone twice yesterday, this would make the third call. Maybe today they would send someone out to fix it.
    When Jake arrived, she had to dash to Kinko’s with the menu. Then she had to go over the week’s orders, find out why there was so much waste in the fresh produce. Then there would be the busy lunch trade. After that she would set up the tables for dinner and check with Chan to make sure he was coming in. She would help with the preparations, take a half-hour break for coffee and a muffin, go home, shower, change, and be back at five for the evening stint as waitress, wine steward,dish stacker, and any other job that nobody else wanted.
    Sometimes she wondered if she was in the right business. Then when she’d had a good week, or even a good day, she knew she was. And every night when she fell into bed, exhausted—and alone—she told herself it would all be worth it and that, one day, she would be the owner and proprietor of a Michelin-starred restaurant.
    So there was absolutely no time, or room, in her life for a cute, blue-eyed rugged guy just passing through on vacation. Or anyone else for that matter. She had her grandmother to take care of and she definitely didn’t need a man to complicate her life.

         8
    D AN DROVE UP THE COAST, ENJOYING THE WAY THE NEW car handled, slowing here and there to admire the scenery. The road curved alongside the ocean and he stopped to watch the surfers, remembering when he was sixteen and had spent as much of the year as he could in the water. His mother told him she wondered why his brain wasn’t waterlogged, and then, when he’d married his high school sweetheart at the age of nineteen, his father told him he was sure it was. Dan guessed he’d been right.
    Running Horse Ranch lay just to the north of Santa Barbara in an area of gently rolling green hills that in summer would be scorched to the color of crusty French bread by the hot California sun. He drove past other wineries, admiring their orderly rows of vines, already bursting into leaf, and the attractive wine-tasting facilities set in manicured gardens, luring travelers to pause and picnic beneath shady oaks while sipping a glass of the house product.
    Running Horse Ranch was not quite like that. He gotout of the car, and stared at the slopes of shriveled vines, then picked up a handful of earth, let it trickle through his fingers. It was dustbowl-dry and looked as though it would blow away in the breeze. The tangle of rose bushes at the edge of the rows of vines were an old-fashioned warning signal; aphids attacked the roses first, then the vines. These were covered in bugs of every color, black, green, red, white.
    He groaned out loud. It seemed the only thing he’d got right was when he’d calculated Running Horse would take all his money, plus whatever the banks would lend him, plus all his time and a lot of hard work.
    Squaring his shoulders, he climbed back into the car and bounced over the potholes to the top of the hill to inspect his new home.
    He’d thought he’d bought a neat little New England-style farmhouse, but this was more Addams Family than Norman Rockwell. The square