Page 8 of Chosen By a Billionaire (Rags to Romance #24)

Jayda made it to work with three minutes to spare.

She hurried through the back entrance of the popular, albeit low-budget restaurant, and punched in.

Once she was on the clock, she exhaled. She was never late for work, but was always on the verge of being late.

Which was another part of her personality, that always on the verge stuff, that she knew she needed to straighten up too.

She went down the hall to the locker room, threw her big shoulder bag into her locker, locked it, and then headed up front to the welcome desk.

“We’re busy tonight,” said Raymond, the restaurant’s manager.

“I see that. We’re almost full already.”

“I just seated some fat cats. Which means fat tips. They’re in section E, table 12. I’m giving them to you.”

Jayda smiled. Her first smile of the day.

“Thanks, Raymond.” He was the only man she knew who saw her hustle and appreciated it.

He was also one of those beautiful, dark-skinned black men that many of the ladies on staff were so enamored with that they would do anything to get his attention.

But Jayda kept it professional. That was why, she felt, he still respected her.

“Don’t let me down girl,” he said to her. “Put on that charm you’re more than capable of putting on, although you rarely put it on, but I need you to do it tonight. I want those guys back. They smell of money, you hear me? Pulled up in a limousine no less.”

“For real?”

“For real though.”

“But why would they come to our humble abode?”

“They wanna be around the regular folks, who knows. Who cares? I’ll have customers that can elevate our restaurant, and you’ll take home some much needed extra cash.”

“Much, much needed,” said Jayda as Raymond wrote down her name and what section was her responsibility.

“Did you put in their drink orders already?” Jayda asked him.

“Yes I have. Go to the bar to pick them up.”

She was about to walk away, but he stopped her. “And Jayda?”

“Sir?”

“I heard you and Kenny broke up. Sorry about that.”

How could he have heard about that already? Did he know Kenny?

“You okay?” he asked her.

Jayda nodded her head. “I will be. It’s just the financial part I’m worried about. We split the rent and he already told me he wasn’t putting up his share next month. It’ll all be on me.”

“I hear you, sister.”

“I would ask for more hours, but I know I’m working until closing as it is. And I have my delivery job. Just not enough hours in the day, I guess,” she said, tried to smile again but failed, and then hurried to the bar.

But as she waited for all of table 12’s drinks to come up, Makela, who was also moonlighting by bartending at night to be able to pay her high rent too, gave a customer a drink and then walked over to Jayda. “Hey girl.”

Jayda wasn’t trying to hear her bull crap tonight, but she wasn’t going to waste any energy on it either. “I didn’t know you was bartending tonight.”

“Friday night? The way these fools tip on a Friday night? You better believe I’m gonna get them coins.” Then she hesitated, as if she was trying to decide the best way to bring it up. Then she decided to just bring it up. “Kenny said something about you two breaking up. That true?”

Jayda looked at her. “When did you see Kenny?”

“When? Oh. I don’t even remember. But I’m glad to hear it. Girl, you can do way better than him.”

“But when did he tell you we broke up?”

Makela tried desperately to come up with a response, but she couldn’t. She smiled instead. “What difference does it make? The point is you got rid of that zero. You can do better than him. For real.”

Jayda looked away from her. “He doesn’t think so.”

“But do you?”

Jayda didn’t answer that.

“I mean, if you think he’s the best you can do then shame on you. I don’t know why you keep shortchanging yourself with these no-good men anyway.”

Jayda looked at Makela. “You don’t?”

“No. Not at all. I mean if I had your body and that face? Girrl ! Kenny Jenkins wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“But he stands one now?” Jayda asked her: staring at her.

And Makela seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Is he staying with you now, ‘Kela?”

“Me? Of course not!” She began smiling again, but it made her look even more uncomfortable to Jayda. “Why on earth would you think something like that?”

But Jayda didn’t respond to her. She just continued to stare at her.

But Makela’s look wasn’t getting more relaxed, but even more uncomfortable. “Me with Kenny? Where you come up with this stuff? Girl bye,” she said, and then went over to the other end of the bar to wait on a customer.

Jayda leaned her head back as another bartender, the one making her table’s drink order, placed the tray of drinks on the counter. “Number 12 up,” he said. Jayda, relieved, grabbed the drinks and hurried to table 12.

Table 12 was occupied by Harrison, along with three of the highest-ranking men in his organization: his CFO Carter Davenshaw, his Chief Executive Officer Archie Endicott, and his Chief Operations Officer Dalton Spurington.

When Jayda walked up with their drinks in hand they were talking intensely about some business matter that she wasn’t trying to overhear.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said cheerfully as she began naming the drinks and putting them in front of the guy that claimed it.

Then she hung the tray by her side. “Are you ready to order, or do you need more time?”

“We’re ready,” Carter said.

Jayda pulled out her iPad Mini and began inputting orders.

Harrison recognized her immediately as she took the orders of his employees.

She was the one he had come to see. The that doesn’t mean I’m not here young lady.

And when he saw that it was her, he was inwardly pleased. He didn’t know why, but he was.

He found himself staring at her as if she was a puzzle he needed to solve.

Mainly because that same feeling that overtook him when he saw her complaining to him outside of his office building, came over him again.

At the time, he chalked it up to the words she had spoken.

Those words, where she made clear that just because he and his driver viewed her as invisible didn’t mean she was, had such a sadness and dejection to them, but a great sense of pridefulness too.

As if she knew she was poor and powerless, but she was not going to be disrespected.

That resonated with him. That was what made him pay attention to her when he heard those words.

But while he was looking at her, something else happened to him.

It was as if he wasn’t staring at a stranger, at a woman he’d only seen for a few seconds in his life, although he knew he was staring at a stranger.

She was definitely a stranger. But it didn’t feel as if she was.

And now, as he was able to watch her unabated while she was preoccupied with the others at his table, he still didn’t understand why he would be experiencing any feelings toward her whatsoever.

She was cute enough and had a nice enough body, but so did a hundred other women he could name off the top of his head.

But none of them fascinated him. None of them intrigued him the way she did.

Because he was undeniably intrigued. He felt something for that particular woman that he’d never felt for any woman before.Something very deep and penetrating, but also strangely soothing too. He thought it was all lust at first. But not now. And it was perplexing the hell out of him.

“And you sir?” she asked Harrison while she was writing Carter’s order in her iPad. Then she looked up at him. But he didn’t break his stare. Even when he realized she recognized him too, he didn’t break his stare.

Only Jayda’s recognition wasn’t born out of some inner sense of familiarity or perplexity.

She recognized him as the man she called a pervert in front of that office building just because he was staring at her during one of her lowest moments.

She never liked sympathy. She was never going to be a victim.

And his looked seemed to smack of both. That was why she lashed out at him.

That was why she let her anger get the best of her and she kicked his limo.

But that was also why she now regretted putting that dent in his expensive ride because she knew, based on how he was staring at her, that she could kiss that big fat tip goodbye.

He remembered her. She could feel it in her bones.

She tried her best to keep smiling and pretending that she didn’t know him from a hole in the wall. “Make I take your order, sir?”

“Just a truffle soup for me,” Harrison said as they all began handing back their menus.

“One truff coming up,” said Jayda as she finished inputting his order, accepted the menus, and left their table.

Her heart was hammering. Her only hope was that he couldn’t remember the circumstances surrounding their meeting, since she could tell in his eyes he knew he’d seen her before, and that her big fat tip wouldn’t become a big fat bust like everything else going on in her life.

She hurried to the kitchen.