Every Breath You Take (Second Opportunities 4)

He was truly distressed. you would have to eat at the bar, unless you want to wait for a table to become available.”

Kate paused beneath a Moorish arch and looked inside. No one was sitting at the small bar, and the high stools looked comfortable with nice backs to lean against. Eating at the bar would suit her fine. She chose a stool facing the patio so she could look out at the water; then she pulled her book, her notepad, and a pen out of her tote bag. Satisfied that she had everything she needed, she looped the canvas straps of the green bag over the back of her stool and ordered a salad and a glass of tomato juice for lunch.

Towels had been delivered to her on the beach when she walked out of the water, and now a balmy breeze blew through the little restaurant’s open arches, softly drying her damp hair. It was nice to be away from the glaring sunlight, and the conversations at the tables inside were quiet enough not to intrude on her concentration. Kate gazed out at the water, thinking about what list to start on first, tapping the end of the pen on the tablet.

She decided to start with her relationship with Evan. The waiter brought her glass of tomato juice just as she drew a vertical line down the notebook page to make two columns. Above the left column she wrote, to Continue”; above the right column she wrote, to End.”

She’d been drifting in her relationship with Evan, letting it flounder, because she was unsure whether she truly wanted it to go forward. Holly blamed Evan for many things, especially the fact that he hadn’t put an engagement ring on Kate’s finger after almost four years, but that was mostly Kate’s doing. Whenever she sensed he was thinking about marriage, she did or said something guaranteed to make him hold off and rethink the issue. Her father had loved Evan, and he would have loved the idea of Kate marrying a Bartlett. He’d wanted Kate to have a beautiful life, with no worries about money, ever. . . .

’s that?” she asked the waiter when he put a second glass of tomato juice next to the one she’d barely touched.

of the young gentlemen on the patio,” he replied with a smile. asked that you be given a glass of whatever you’re drinking and that the charge for it be put on their parents’ bill.” Kate bit back a smile of her own and looked outside toward their table.

Three teenage faces grinned hopefully at her. The family at the table beside them obviously knew what the boys had done, because they were watching Kate—so was a couple seated near Kate who’d heard the waiter’s announcement when he gave her the glass of tomato juice.

The boys looked as if they ranged in ages from thirteen to sixteen, and Kate debated a moment about the best way to handle the situation without crushing their egos. them I said thank you. And—tell them I’m working,” she added. That was a little lame, Kate thought, but it would surely keep them from trying to join her at the bar.

By the time the waiter brought her salad, Kate had written several items on both sides of her list, but she realized she was too emotional right now to make objective judgments about Evan and their feelings for each other. She gave up on that list and turned the page to start a new one. At the top she wrote, to Do at the Restaurant.” She glanced up as her waiter put another glass of tomato juice in front of her.

of the young gentlemen.” This time he rolled his eyes and grinned.

When Kate looked around, several couples at tables inside were grinning and watching her, and when she glanced outside at the boys, everyone around them was watching her—except a man seated alone at the table she’d declined earlier. Embarrassed for the boys, not herself, Kate looked straight at them and shook her head slowly, but she smiled to take the sting of rejection out of her warning to stop.

She looked down at the title of her new list, and her hand trembled. Donovan’s Restaurant would be forever linked in her mind to her father. Located downtown, Donovan’s had begun as a little Irish pub founded by her father, and over the next thirty years it had repeatedly expanded and transformed until it was now one of Chicago’s most elegant, and most popular, restaurants. Daniel Patrick Donovan had always been a fixture there—a witty, charismatic man who mingled with his special customers while keeping an eye on every minute detail involving food and service. He had been the spirit and life force behind Donovan’s, and now it was up to Kate to try to carry on without him.

Struggling to keep her emotions under control, Kate went to work on her list. According to the ma d’, the restaurant was booked solid with reservations for the next eleven days, and the waiting list was longer than the usual number of cancellations. Kate needed to learn every detail about the restaurant’s operating budget, and she needed to set up safeguards to make sure she stayed within it. . . . She needed to have weekly meetings with the staff for a while, until they were confident she could actually take her father’s place—and until she was sure of it. She also needed to see if the new menus her father had chosen were on order. He’d liked those padded maroon leather menus with the wordDonovan’s deeply embossed in gold.

He liked maroon leather chairs with shiny brass nail heads, she remembered achingly. . . .

And waiters in freshly pressed dinner jackets . . .

And sparkling cut-crystal glassware . . .

And gleaming brass foot rails in the bar . . .

Kate stopped writing and pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose to hold back the tears stinging her eyes. A chorus of laughter rang out from the patio and rippled through the interior of the restaurant. Kate blinked and lifted her head.

of the young gentlemen,” the waiter announced.

it back to them and tell them I don’t want it,” Kate ordered, her voice ragged with emotion. She flicked an apologetic glance at her audience within the restaurant; then she bent her head and turned to a new page in her notebook. She began a list of things she had to do at her father’s house.

On the patio outside, the boys let out a groan of dismay when the waiter walked out of the restaurant carrying an untouched glass of tomato juice on a tray.

At the table beside them, Mitchell Wyatt turned his head to hide his amusement and encountered laughing looks from several people on his left. By now, everyone seated on the patio was privy to the boys’ repeated amorous attempts to make an impression on the woman inside.

Although Mitchell had a view of her sitting at the bar, she was in deep shadow, so he had no idea what she looked like. According to the boys, who’d repeatedly expressed their opinion to everyone within hearing, she was hot” and “Such a fox.”