Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
He didn’t have to say much more. If conveying information to customers relied on my sisters telling them, then we would just have to accept that no one would ever know. They got tips because they were pretty, not because they were particularly good at their jobs.
“Well, one day when I take over the kitchen, I’m going to replace the whole menu with spicy stuff,” I joked.
“Have fun with that at sixty-six years old,” he quipped.
“Sixty-six? You plan on working in the kitchen until you’re over a hundred?”
“Nonna lived until a hundred and ten,” he said, smiling wide. “She cooked dinner every night until the night before she died. For the first time I can ever remember, we brought her food. For the longest time, I thought I killed her with my pesto.”
I laughed, kissing my father on the cheek.
“I promise I won’t kill you with pesto, Papa,” I said.
“You might. Especially if you use so much heat.”
I laughed again and grabbed the now finished plate of shrimp carbonara to run out to a table.
“Promise me, before you put me in the grave with a spicy pesto, I will have grandbabies to hold?” he asked as I reached the door. I turned to back out of it and smiled.
“No promises. But I am positive between the other girls, you will have plenty of grandbabies.”
“They won’t be yours, Sofia,” he called as I went through the door and out onto the floor.
Papa wanted me to run the kitchen. He had said as much before, but he also was more interested in me getting married and popping out babies while I could. I didn’t have anything against babies, per se; they just weren’t in the picture with the ex. Which I was glad for, because when he cheated on me and I found out, I just went back home to Ashford, went back to work with Papa and resumed life as I wanted it to be without him.
By the end of the day, I was starving but had something specific in mind to eat. Something Papa couldn’t, or at least wouldn’t, make. I walked home, pulled my work clothes off, put on a T-shirt and shorts, and went into the kitchen. Tying my hair up in a bun, I started making my homemade buffalo sauce and preparing a plate of drumsticks. Maybe I might not ever be tiny like my sisters, I thought to myself, but at least I didn’t have to subsist on kale.
2
KIERAN
“Well,” I said to myself, “welcome home.”
My truck, and the trailer behind it, was now parked in front of the house I had just rented at the foot of Alphabet Mountain in Ashford, Tennessee. I sat in the driver’s seat, stared up at my new residence, and shut off the engine. It was, by far, the nicest place I had ever lived.
It was a far cry from my tiny apartment in Nashville, that was for sure. Yet, somehow, the rent was almost the same. I was paying an extra five bucks to live in Ashford. In Nashville, I had a one-bedroom, one-bathroom, eight-hundred-square-foot hole where I could brush my teeth from my couch by leaning over a bit to reach the kitchen sink. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but the point was it was small as hell.
Five minutes after being offered the promotion to assistant fire chief in Ashford, I was already looking online for rental properties. There were only two. A trailer, way up in the mountain and about twenty-five minutes from the station, or this house, at the foot of the mountain and ten minutes away. The trailer came with a ton of land. The house came with… well, the house. And the view.
Being surrounded by the mountains had a feeling of safety that I greatly enjoyed, even if seeing the tons of trees kind of set my teeth on edge as a fire specialist. As with any heavily wooded area, the potential for disaster was high, but that was what I was being brought in for. I had experience with big-city fire departments, and Ashford’s was in serious need of revamping after some dicey calls with lightning strikes in recent years.
At first, it felt like the promotion was just the next logical step in my career, and I was barely surprised by it. However, when I got to thinking about it, a small town like Ashford seeking outside help was a big deal. One that could lead to some awkward moments while they got used to an outsider coming in and shaking things up. I might even have to make a few enemies to get things done.
That was part of the job, though. I had no family to speak of, just a father I didn’t have a relationship with and a mother who’d passed away when I was young. I had a few cousins, but that didn’t count when factoring in who would be willing to move across the state and take over a job that no one wanted for a chief who had a reputation for being a curmudgeon. I was thirty-one, single, professional, and most of all, available.