An Endless Summer(34)

Sean tore his eyes briefly from the road to look at me. “Anyone would think you were happy to be home.”

“I am!”

“I bet you’re tired.”

“You would think so, but I actually feel … I don’t know. Strangely upbeat.”

“Give it time, you’ll hit a wall mid-afternoon.”

“Great! Just what I need for Saturday night.”

Sean frowned. “So you’re actually going to open tonight?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I just thought after everything you might want to take it easy.”

I couldn’t afford to lounge around, now more than ever. If the Onslow ran at a loss and turned into the burden Mum believed it was, then there would be no negotiation. Even though I was pretty certain there wouldn’t be much room for negotiation anyway, I had to try.

We pulled into the Onslow in a long semi-circle up the drive. Matt’s car was parked out the front and it looked like the note had been removed from the front door.

“Bloody hell, don’t tell me he’s used some initiative and opened up …” I shook my head.

Sean clenched the steering wheel. “What are you going to do about him?”

I banged my head against the car seat. “He’s gotta go.”

“Do you want me to come in?”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

“What are you going to do tonight? You can’t run the bar on your own.”

I shrugged. “What choice do I have?”

Sean broke into a slow smile.

“What?”

“To think you were perched on that picnic table last night ready to chuck in the towel, and look at you now. Your dad must have said something to you; something’s lit a fire inside you.”

Sean was impressed about my turnaround, as if I had been on some kind of journey of self-discovery and now I was going to take on the world. I had to face reality, and if that meant telling Sean the truth then I knew I could trust him.

I gazed out over the freshly mown, sloping grass embankment that led up to the beautiful, big Onslow Hotel. It was the place of my childhood and my heart ached with the possibility of not wandering through its rooms, perching myself on a stool, or looking out over the lake from the best view in all of Onslow ever again. I smiled sadly at Sean.

“They’re going to sell the Onslow.”

Sean stilled, looking at me with a grave uncertainty as he waited for me to continue.

“Mum thinks it’s a burden, that this place is to blame for Dad’s health. She says they’ve talked it over and reckon it’s for the best to sell.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

I thought about the question. “It makes me want to prove them wrong, show them that it may not have been in the past, but this place could be the best thing that ever happened to us.”

Sean looked past me, his eyes sweeping over the Onslow with the same familiarity mine did. It was then that I noticed that same spark lit his eyes as he looked at me.

“Then let’s see you do it.”

A mutual understanding formed silently between us.

I shifted my focus to Matt’s beat-up Mazda.

“First things first.”





Chapter Seventeen



“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Matt sneered at me, his arms crossed in a defensive challenge.

“It’s quite simple: you can either give back the money you stole and then I fire you, or you can just go and I keep what is owed to you. Either way, you’re fired.”

I heard the distant crack of billiards. I had tried to convince Sean that I didn’t need him on standby but he had negotiated himself as merely an early paying customer, playing pool … by himself.

Nothing strange about that …

Matt was not taking my ultimatum well, so the fact that Sean was close by gave me a boost of courage to play hardball. From the moment I walked through the door, Matt had been all sickeningly concerned and fraught with worry over Dad, asking if there was anything he could do. As soon as I mentioned we needed to have a ‘chat’ he snapped into the sneering, glaring douche I had always pegged him for.

“You can’t fire me. You’ve got no proof, sweetheart. Just because you’re the publican’s daughter doesn’t make you Mother-fucking-Superior.”

Okay, that didn’t even make any sense.

I sighed, bored more than threatened.

“This is useless. I’ll just cut my losses and opt for the latter. Forgive me if I don’t offer you a reference.” I hopped down from my stool and made my way around behind the bar.

I could see he was stunned that I had meant what I said. A blackness swept over him and even though Sean was just in the next room, I still felt uneasy.