Synopsis

Twenty-nine-year-old Nina Abrahams is not in a good place. She’s been fired from her restaurant manager job after she stands up to her bully of a boss, her motivational speaker mother is helping other people get their lives on track and ignoring the derailing of her daughter’s, and her best friend, Lucas Wilson, the guy she’s loved since she was eighteen, can’t seem to look beyond the girl in braces to the woman she is now.

When a new opportunity comes up, Nina decides it’s the perfect time to start over. The restaurant needs a reinvention and so does she. Unfortunately for Nina, the restaurant comes with hostile servers, a belligerent chef, and an owner averse to change.

But if Nina’s brave enough to take on the restaurant and tackle the people out to sabotage her, perhaps she can find the courage to tell Lucas how she really feels, even if it means risking the most important relationship in her life.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

If Nina Abrahams hadn’t been fired this morning, she never would have said yes. At least, that’s what she told herself. Her face flushed with the humiliating memory: standing alone in front of Pablo’s massive I’m-obviously-compensating-for-something desk and realizing no one had backed her, Pablo’s smug face as he uttered the words his Napoleonic ego had been squirming to say for weeks, the sympathetic stares of her staff as she packed up her stuff, and the guilty absence of those who’d sworn to stand by her, but who’d evidently caved somewhere between vigorous nods in her attorney-general moment—Pablo is stealing money from you, he’s exploiting you, enough’s enough, we shouldn’t let him get away with it—and the sobering reality of monthly bills that needed to be paid.

As if Mondays weren’t bad enough.

As the credits for another Grey’s Anatomy episode rolled onto the screen, Nina blew her nose, dug out the remote from under a throw pillow, and hit the Mute button. She checked the time: 5:00 p.m. After being thrown out of the restaurant, she’d spent the day stretched out on her couch, working her way through copious amounts of Coke and corn chips while she watched impossibly attractive doctors tear into each other and their patients.

Her phone rang, and she glanced at the screen: Lucas. Not Pablo, the Uruguayan chef turned restaurateur, admitting to a colossal mistake in firing her, begging her forgiveness and offering her and the rest of the staff at Mateo’s Grill a threefold pay increase. That was Fantasy Number Two. Lucas had taken the number one spot years ago, and it had never changed.

Sitting upright, Nina cleared her throat of the residues of a crying jag. “Lucas,” she answered lightly.

“So there’s a charity fundraiser this Saturday,” he said by way of greeting.

“No, no, and no,” Nina said. And then, as though Lucas was hard of hearing, which she knew he was not, just hard on resolve, she said again, “Definitely, no.”

“It’s for charity.”

“Still no.”

“The tickets cost me five hundred dollars. Each.”

She rolled her eyes, which only magnified her headache. That was a bodyguard for you. Trained to think of all the angles. “You can afford seven hundred.”

“Think of the kids in Zambia,” Lucas said. “They walk two hours every day to get fresh water. This will give them a tap right in their village.”

She frowned at her phone. And at the man who called himself her friend on the other end of the line. “Low blow, Lucas.”

“Did it work?” he asked hopefully. “Can you get someone to cover for you Saturday night?”

She’d been fired, so that wasn’t an issue, but she wasn’t ready to tell him. Not yet. She couldn’t cope with the resulting lecture—and there most certainly would be a lecture filled with uninteresting words like “prudence” and “responsibility” and “discretion.” Unlike the satisfying words she’d tossed at her ex-boss this morning: cretin, thief, bully.

“Saturday night?” she asked, considering. “You must be desperate.”

“Desperate enough to continue begging, if that would help.”

She laughed. And that was when she found herself saying yes.

Lucas gave a satisfied whoop. “Thank you. I owe you one.”

Add it to the tally, she thought, suppressing a sigh.

Wedging the phone between her shoulder and ear, Nina stood and stretched out too many hours of lying curled around comfort food. Finding a Doritos snagged on her pajama top, she absently pulled it free and bit into it.

There was a charged silence. “What was that noise?” Lucas asked suspiciously.

She swallowed. Quickly. “Noise? What noise?”

“Are you eating chips?”

“What?”

“You are,” Lucas accused. “You’re eating chips! Doritos, I bet.” She heard him give a loud sniff. “I can smell them.”

“As if,” Nina scoffed, and then groaned as she realized how neatly she’d fallen into his trap.

“What happened?” Lucas demanded.

“What makes you think something happened?”

“The last time you binged on junk food, that lowlife of the unmentionable name had just dumped you and you single-handedly upped Doritos’s profit margin.”

A half chuckle, half sob escaped her. “Objection to the word dumped,” she said, and burst into tears.

“Nina Sarah Abrahams,” Lucas said, drawing out her name in warning. “You better not be watching something sad and romantic.”

She hiccupped out a “Talking to you…so not watching…at this very moment.”

“Why do you do it?” he asked in exasperation. “Why do you torture yourself like this?”

“Meredith and Derek are never going to get it right!” she wailed.

“Grey’s Anatomy? Seriously?” Lucas’s sigh was heavy. “I’m coming over. You better not drink all the Coke.”

About the Author

Lara Martin writes books about imperfect people living messy lives, falling in love and getting their perfect happily-ever-after. She’s lived in South Africa and Australia and now calls a cozy village in England her home. She’s tried a variety of amazing and awful jobs: video game reviewer, graphic designer, insurance claims agent (she has no idea how she landed this one), proof reader, feature writer, and magazine editor. She lives with her husband (always the first reader of her novels), two slightly terrifying teenagers, and the requisite psychotic cat. When she’s not writing, she can be found haunting local coffee shops.

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