The menu had been pared down, refined, and would change seasonally to keep things fresh and interesting for their local patrons.

And so here they were, relaunch night. Hours away from opening time, and Tina couldn’t quell the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. Seriously, she didn’t know why people called them butterflies. Butterflies were pleasant things—these were horrid, disgusting creatures. With talons. Vultures? Maybe she had vultures in the pit of her stomach. Frantically trying to claw their way out and leave her a bloodied mess in the middle of the floor.

She wrinkled her nose. Sometimes her imagination was a bit much.

She pressed the palm of her hand to her stomach and swallowed back a surge of nausea. She wouldn’t fail at this. It would be a success. Riversend needed a decent restaurant; the locals deserved this. The tourists demanded it. It made sense.

And even though she had been much too busy to meet people, she was happy here, and she knew that once the dust settled, she would feel at home.

Libby had bought a decrepit house close to the beach. Tina hadn’t gotten around to finding anything permanent yet. She was renting a place farther up the hill. While it could do with a paint job, it had a killer view from the front porch, and she was happy enough there for now. And it was in much better condition than Libby’s house.

Tina had been trying to get Libby to move in with her until the renovations on her ramshackle beach house were complete, but Libby was stubborn and determined to assert her independence after being reliant on her friends for so many months. Tina couldn’t really blame her. Libby had always been fiercely independent. Everybody had been shocked when the other woman had put her career on hold to marry Greyson—it had been so uncharacteristic. Libby had continued to work locally immediately after the small wedding but had taken a break from her demanding career after learning of her pregnancy.

Tina sighed and shook herself mentally: she should be preparing for the daunting evening ahead, not speculating over things that were not her immediate concern.

And, anyway, thoughts of Greyson inevitably led to thoughts of Harris, and that would really send her down a nasty rabbit hole.

Focus, Tina. You have work to do!

“You okay?” Libby asked on her way to the kitchen from the small office she shared with Tina, where Clara was currently cozily ensconced with her young babysitter, Charlie.

“So nervous. What if nobody comes?” She couldn’t help verbalizing the fears that she had been determined to keep to herself. Libby laughed and veered away from the kitchen to give Tina a huge hug.

“People will come. The place looks gorgeous, the food will be awesome, everything is half-price, the first glass of wine is free. Why wouldn’t they come?”

Well, there was the debacle surrounding the banner, for one thing. The huge, gorgeous relaunch banner—along with a few hundred flyers advertising their opening specials—that Tina and Libby had sweated over designing should have arrived yesterday. But somehow Tina had given the distributor the wrong dates. The banner wouldn’t be ready for another week. It had been a stupid mistake, and Tina didn’t know how she could possibly have gotten something as basic as the date wrong. And the flyers—Tina regretted their loss much more than the banner’s. They had been meant for small businesses and windshield wipers and would have been handed out at the community and youth-outreach centers.

It had been a stupid, careless mistake, and Tina felt totally incompetent because of it. She had done this too often in the past. Like the time she had absolutely believed that being a travel agent was the job for her. She had invested a great deal of money in the training course without really considering what it actually involved. But when fantasy had finally met reality and Tina had found herself having to interact with real live, demanding clients on a daily basis, she had discovered an innate lack of anything remotely resembling sales ability in herself. She had started making mistakes: booking the wrong flights or hotels. Not arranging airport transfers. And once—horribly—forgetting to organize airport assistance for a lovely, undemanding elderly lady. The woman had been one of the few nice people Tina had dealt with on the job. The entire venture had been a complete disaster, and her mistake with the old lady had been the last straw. Tina had lasted less than two months before bowing to the inevitable and calling it quits. Yet another “career opportunity” dying a swift and painful death.

That was how it had gone with pretty much every other venture she had attempted. Leaping before looking was her standard operating procedure.

But this was the first time Tina had people depending on her for their actual livelihoods. That was a huge responsibility.

Tags: Natasha Anders Broken Pieces Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net