Page 14 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)
“Can I take your order?” he asked, his voice quavering slightly, as if the effort to speak cost too much of his current oxygen supply. But his crisply pressed, shin-length white apron was immaculate, and his gaze was piercing as Alice looked over the menu.
“Still no order pad, Henry?” Collin asked.
Henry tapped his temple, near a fall of snow-white hair. “Still sharp as a tack, Mr. Bancroft. Haven’t forgotten an order since you were running around the hallways blindfolded.”
When Alice’s brows rose, he told her, “I was trying to memorize them.”
He looked at Henry. “I thought I asked you to call me Collin,” he noted. “You’ve known me for too long for formality.”
“And I thought I told you that I wouldn’t be doing that,” Henry shot back, a wry grin on his face.
“Fair enough. I’ll have the Michigan salad and a mineral water, please,” Collin replied.
“I’ll have the Collin sandwich,” she told Henry, whose eyes went wide.
Collin’s full lips twitched. “Really?”
“What if you change the menu?” she said, pressing her mouth into a thin line to keep her smile at bay. “I might miss my chance.”
“Would you like strawberry or grape jelly?” Henry asked without missing a beat.
Suddenly, Alice wondered if she was putting Henry in an awkward position with his boss—ordering the sandwich “to Collin’s face.
” But Collin didn’t seem offended. If anything, he was amused, and Alice appreciated that.
For someone who clearly had so much, to be able to laugh at himself—it was refreshing.
She could do with a little more of that kind of humor in her life.
“Can I get strawberry jelly on the side?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Henry said. “Would you like the sliced banana on the side too?”
Alice sent an astonished look across the table.
“I was a real pain in the chef’s ass,” Collin admitted. “I made a nuisance of myself.”
“On the side, please,” Alice said, laughing.
Henry promised speedy delivery of their lunches and disappeared.
“I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” she told him.
“I would rather you poke at me a little bit than fawning all over me.” He squinted one eye shut as he absorbed the full weight of his own words. “That sounded incredibly arrogant, didn’t it?”
“Well, it didn’t sound humble,” she conceded. “But I suppose you weren’t raised to be humble, were you?”
“There’s no good way for me to answer that,” he told her.
“And I’m not going to make that many changes to the menu, by the way…
OK, I’m going to make changes to the menu, but I wouldn’t take the sandwich off.
It’s the first mark I ever made on the hotel, even if I did it by being an annoying kid who had absolutely no business here—at the time. ”
“OK.” She nodded. “On that note, you cannot get rid of Henry.”
His brow furrowed. “Why would I fire Henry?”
“He’s a seventy-seven-year-old waiter?” Alice guessed. “Some business types might not consider that the height of efficiency.”
“He’s an institution around here,” Collin insisted. “There are customers who show up just to see him.”
“Oh,” Alice said, sitting back in her chair. “That is exactly the point I was going to make to you.”
“There’s no reason to sound so surprised,” Collin told her.
She turned her hands up in a sort of shrug. “From what Caroline tells me, the only thing that kept your predecessors from firing Henry was the potential age-discrimination lawsuit. I thought maybe you would find some way around it.”
Collin snorted. “Henry’s great-nieces have been trying to get him to retire for years. I’ve offered him increasingly attractive retirement packages. But if he doesn’t want to leave, and he’s doing his job, who am I to tell him he has to go?”
She beamed at him. “Exactly.”
He smiled back and it was like sliding into that honeyed sunbeam again, all radiant warmth and sweetness. She gripped the (orange) napkin in her lap, willing herself to keep a neutral, non-starstruck expression. It would not do to scare a new business acquaintance with her face.
Collin cleared his throat. “I have a proposition…proposal. It’s a proposal.
I’m not propositioning you. I clearly don’t know how to identify appropriate sentences to say aloud or antiques.
I don’t know what I’m looking at and whether it’s worth the price asked.
And that’s a problem because I’m planning a major makeover of the suites on the top floor, including some era-appropriate antiques to make it feel authentic, sumptuous. ”
“I’m not a decorator,” Alice told him.
“I don’t expect you to be,” he assured her.
“I don’t need you to decorate. I’ve hired interior designers who have come up with a lovely non-orange, neutral scheme for the other, more reasonably priced rooms in the hotel.
But they’re not antiques experts. And I want to make the suites something special.
That’s what the hotel used to be known for: luxury, comfort, something more than the ordinary.
I want all our guests to have a taste of that, but I want the suites to be an experience beyond, a conversation piece. ”
“I don’t know if the shops on the island have the kind of things you’re looking for—at least, not the quality you’re talking about,” she said.
Collin was undeterred. “So, source them from reputable shops off-island. Have them shipped here. I’ll make arrangements with one of the ferry lines.”
“I couldn’t let it interfere with my duties at the shop,” Alice told him.
Collin shrugged. “Roll it into your duties at the shop. As far as I’m concerned, working in your shop is scouting for the hotel. I’ll work up a contract for you as a private consultant, pay you a retainer.”
Alice blinked at him. She was so used to fighting her grandparents at every step, for every scrap of cooperation, she wasn’t sure how to handle someone assuring her that problems weren’t really problems. Or, at least, they were problems that could be solved with money, which was also a nice, novel response.
“Why me?” she asked.
“Because you obviously have a good eye and a passion for antiques, and you’re honest,” he said. “I like that in people.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I have a passion for antiques,” she demurred. “I know a lot about them because I’ve worked with them for so long, but I don’t know if they’re my passion .”
He leaned closer. “What is your passion?”
The very question sent a pleasant little shiver down her spine. She thought about the potential answers: spending time with her friends in a haunted house, talking to ghosts, psychically inspecting haunted bric-a-brac. Instead of telling him any of that, she frowned and said, “I’m not sure.”
“OK, fine, not your passion, then,” he conceded. “I just have a good feeling about you. I don’t get that feeling very often, so I think I should pay attention to it.”
She blushed then and looked down at the linen napkin in her lap. Despite herself, she liked Collin Bancroft. She knew it couldn’t—and shouldn’t—go anywhere, but she was enjoying her time with him. And lately, it was more difficult to find bright spots like this in her life.
“Are the suites also very orange?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding. “It’s a shade of orange that, under previous management, would cost you about two hundred dollars more a night.”
They shared a laugh and she thought she saw something in his eyes that she was probably going to write off as professional respect. She doubted very much it could be anything else.
“All right,” she told him. “I’d like to work for you.”
Just then, Henry arrived with not only their drinks but also their meals, which she supposed was the benefit of lunch with the owner.
Her sandwich was an enormous three-stack of Texas toast griddled to a golden brown, with melty Swiss cheese and peanut butter oozing over thick-sliced bacon at the corners.
As promised, jelly and banana slices were served in little silver cups on her plate.
The crusts were dipped in a rainbow of tiny nonpareil sprinkles more suited to topping a cupcake, yet here they were… on her sandwich.
She hummed, wondering how to best attack this plate.
“I can order you something else,” he said quickly.
“Are you doubting my resolve?” She arched her brows, using the provided steak knife to slice the bread into a manageable bite. Liquid peanut butter oozed into a puddle over the plate.
He shook his head as she forked a bite into her mouth. “Never.”
It was a strange combination of tastes and textures, salty-sweet peanut coating salty-savory bacon and perfectly buttered bread—then the dry tang of cheese. And while she wasn’t exactly enjoying the experience, she wasn’t about to let that show on her face.
“So… You went with round sprinkles and not oblong?” she asked Collin.
Collin sighed. “I was seven. ”