Page 116 of No Holds Barred

Angelica pursed her lips and turned on her iPad, opening up a spreadsheet. “You’re understaffed.”

“We can’t afford any more staff,” Alexis responded, folding her hands together and shaking her head. “It’d put us further into debt.”

“How many hours are you two putting in?” Angelica again asking the pointed questions that no one else wanted to. She was so damn good at that.

“We basically live here. In fact, we’ve considered that to cut costs elsewhere, but the thought of living together again is… nauseating.” Alexis chuckled a little, but the tension that Hope had been missing before popped right up and reared its ugly head. That was a sensitive point, and Mark hadn’t seemed to appreciate that comment.

“What have you tried in order to bridge the gap of finances?” Angelica took the electronic pen and poised it to write.

“Everything,” Mark answered, his voice a lot gruffer than before. “Discounts, sales, advertising, promotions, specials… nothing seems to work.”

Angelica did note all of that down, though it couldn’t have been a surprise. Those are the obvious things to try out when it comes to a floundering business. Hope would probably start there too if she needed to increase income on short notice. But it was also minimizing profit and spending money that they might not have.

“We’re going to be interviewing you on and off to make sure we’re on track, but we’re also going to be interviewing other employees so we can get the full story of what’s going on and potentially work through the problems.” Angelica scrawled something on the iPad and then shifted in the chair.

“I’ll do some inspections of your restaurant and work with you to hire a new chef.” Hope pressed her palm to the top of the table, getting both Mark and Alexis’s attention. “Because without a chef, the restaurant is probably going to flounder.”

Alexis nodded. “You’re right.”

Of course she was right, but that didn’t necessarily make the conversation any easier. It’d certainly be interesting to see the two of them in the interview process. It’d give her a really good insight into what some of the problems at Claridges was.

“Great. So we’ll get an early start tomorrow.” Angelica flicked to her schedule. “We’re starting at seven.”

“Seven?” Mark’s eyes nearly bugged out. Hope almost had the same response. Starting that early was going to be tough after the day she’d had, but she’d be up and ready to go in time for Ansel to make her up again.

“Yes.” Angelica closed her iPad with a snap, which shook through Hope, startling her.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Hope added, along with a small smile to soften Angelica’s sharp answer. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rex called cut and ended the scene. He came around and pointed at Hope and Angelica. “Stay for a minute,” he said. Then he turned to Mark and Alexis. “Like Ange said, we’ll start at seven tomorrow morning, and we’ll start with opening statements and interviews. Alexis, you’ll work with Cadence, our AD.”

He answered a few of their questions before letting them go, and then he sat down across from Hope and Angelica. He sighed heavily.

“I already know these are going to be long days.” He eyed Hope. “You might want to prepare Eva for them. The problems here are mostly interpersonal conflicts.”

“I suspected,” Angelica said, clicking her pen onto the side of the iPad.

“Interpersonal?” Hope asked.

“They’re divorced, Hope. They don’t exactly get along.” Rex stared at her directly.

“They didn’t seem to be bickering or anything.” Hope pointed to the door that they’d walked out of.

Rex grunted. “They’re divorced.”

Apparently repeating that was going to make a difference in what Hope heard or saw in the relationship. “There’s no way that they’re not having conflicts between themselves and that it’s not affecting the hotel as a whole.”

“It could be. We get along well enough.”

The air in the room was sucked out in an instant. They did get along, didn’t they? She wasn’t just making that up. They’d worked hard to get to this point. And while it wasn’t perfect, they weren’t struggling every day like they’d done at the beginning of the season.

“It’s going to be a problem,” Rex reiterated.

“Fine.” Hope crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair, pushing it up onto the back two legs by digging her toe into the ground. “So interviews tomorrow?”

“Bright and early,” Rex responded.

“Then I need to go check on Eva.” Hope eyed him for a solid three seconds before she stood up and left. If he’d wanted to make her feel like shit, he’d succeeded.