"I've been looking around online," he started.
"Of course you have," Malcolm grumbled.
"What did you find?"
"Well, I thought you'd never ask. Hold on, I got you something."
"He got himself something," Malcolm said, shaking his head.
"Be nice. I am kind of in the mood to bake, actually." It was the first day in a long time that I had a day off, and nothing I needed to handle.
"Alright," he agreed.
"Besides, you have to go and be a spy," I reminded him, nestling my head into his neck for a moment.
"You gonna save me some of whatever he's making you bake?" he asked.
"I might be persuaded. For the right price," I added, pressing a kiss to his neck.
"I think I can give you something you'd like," he said, voice low and sexy just as Dezi came back out of the hallway holding up a baking pan with rectangular dividers.
"Mini cheesecake assortments," Dezi declared, practically bouncing with excitement.
"Oh, fun. What did you have in mind? Peanut butter? Nutella? Chocolate? Caramel? Classic cherry, blueberry, raspberry, or peach?"
"Yes," Dezi said, nodding.
A smile tugged at my lips. "Well, I need a lot of ingredients for that," I told him.
"Well, then, I better get them," he said. "Cary! Holly needs you to go to the store!" he called, moving off toward the kitchen to find his fellow prospect.
"He's hopeless," Malcolm said with a sort of older brother frustration.
"So, Holly," Fallon said, dropping down in the seat Dezi had vacated.
"Yeah?"
"The diner," he started. "That would be a pretty big cash business, wouldn't it?" he asked.
"I, ah, yeah, I guess," I agreed, confused.
"Hm. On a typical shift, how many people pay with cash?"
Fallon had been nice enough, but mostly in passing. He never went out of his way to talk to me before. The fact that he was doing so to discuss the diner seemed super strange.
"Um. Maybe half? Definitely more so if the crowd is younger or there is a group of friends sort of thing."
"Hm. Okay. Interesting to know," he said, giving Malcolm a look, then jumping up. "Good talk, Holls," he said before rushing off.
"I can't get a read on him," I admitted, sinking back into Malcolm's hold.
Malcolm said nothing to that, making some noncommittal noise instead.
I had no idea at the time what they had up their sleeves.
But it wouldn't be too long until I found out.
Holly - 5 months
"Excuse me," I said, stomach tensing as I approached the men who'd just burst into the diner and started measuring things. "What are you doing?" I asked as they jotted down notes.
"Taking notes for the renovation," one of the guys told me, shrugging.
I hadn't heard anything about a renovation. I mean it went against everything I knew about Luis and his cheapness. Unless something was an actual safety hazard, he didn't fix it. Why would he decide to change the diner out of the blue? Without mentioning it to anyone?
"Ah, I think I should call the owner," I said, backing behind the counter.
"You rang?" Fallon asked, appearing out of nowhere. "Well, to be fair, you'd have to call both me and Malc," he said.
"Wait... what?" I asked, looking from Fallon to the giant figure of Malcolm moving in behind him.
"We bought the diner," Malcolm declared.
"What? Why?" My brain was struggling to catch up as Fallon moved to take a seat at the counter, grabbing a discarded menu, looking it over.
"Well, you did say that the cash is king around here. Turns out that is important to us," Fallon said. "Ugh. First things first, we are taking sushi off the fucking menu."
"First thing is getting coffee that doesn't taste like mud mixed with battery acid," Malcolm said, moving behind the counter with me to make his own cup of coffee.
"This can't be happening," I mumbled, head spinning.
"It can. It is," Fallon said. "How's the cook? Should we keep him on or fire him?" he asked, shooting Don a smirk that said Malcolm might have told him that Don had given me a hard time in the past.
"I, ah, I can't make decisions like that."
"Sure you can," Fallon said. "You're the manager or whatever now."
"But I... but, what if I don't want to be the manager?" I asked, feeling a little light-headed. I mean, it was an honor if they were offering me the position. But it was also not what I wanted to do with my life. Being a waitress could be as long or as short a career as you want. Being a manager of any sort was more of a serious endeavor. And it just wasn't what I wanted.
"That's not what we said," Malcolm reminded Fallon. "We don't want to make you the manager, honey," Malcolm said, giving me a soft smile like he was softening a blow. "We just want you to guide us. We don't know shit about owning a restaurant."