CHAPTER FOUR
Later that night, when the bride and groom were off on their honeymoon and only the stragglers remained at the reception, he proved his point. He found her, or, as he liked to think of it, cornered her, in the kitchen. She was standing there, listening to an older man in a chef’s get-up as he went on and on about the complaints he received about the food. Charles perched himself beside the exit, folded his arms, and listened.
“But only a handful complained,” Jenay was saying. “Out of hundreds of guests, only a handful. You can’t please everybody.”
“But I worked my butt off, Jenay!” He was much older than Jenay, by ten or more years, and seemed awfully sensitive for a chef. Charles wondered if he was an intern at that school too. All of these old-ass interns!
“We all worked our butts off, Norm,” Jenay reminded him. And rightly so, Charles thought.
“We all work hard, yes, we do,” Norm responded. “I know that. But I don’t have great grades like you. I have to pass this internship or I won’t graduate!”
“You’re going to pass,” Jenay assured him, squeezing the man’s arm. “You passed this mid-term with flying colors today. Dr. Lander can’t fault you because every single person wasn’t pleased.”
Norm looked at her, his blue eyes blazing with concern. “You really think I passed? You really think so?” Although he was miles older than Jenay, Charles thought he acted more like an intern than she did. Jenay looked like a seasoned, experienced hand compared to him.
Jenay smiled. “You passed, Norman. You received rave reviews from most of the guests. I heard them singing your praises myself.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Will you tell Dr. Lander then? About them singing my praises, I mean?”
Jenay found his insecurity off-putting, Charles could tell, as any strong person would, but she managed to smile. “Of course I will,” she said, and then began to move away. “Stop worrying, Norm. You’re going to be fine.”
But when she started walking toward the exit, and saw Charles standing there, it was her face that suddenly looked worried.
“Charlie,” she said, surprised to see him in the kitchen area.
He smiled. No-one had ever called him Charlie before. No-one had ever dared. But he liked the name on her lips. It sounded like a far more affectionate name than Charles. “Thought you had a clean getaway, didn’t you?”
She smiled, and then glanced at Norm, who was staring at them. She began walking out of the kitchen, and out of the earshot of her colleague. “I thought you left with the other guests,” she said, as she began walking out.
“That would have been nice,” he said as he followed her, “but I’m spending the night at this hotel. I have some business in town tomorrow before I head back home. What about you? You have a room here?”
“I live in Boston,” she said. They were in the nearly empty ballroom, near the back bar. “I attend school here. BHI, remember?”
“Boston Hospitality Institute. How can I forget? You’re interning now, and then you graduate.”
“In two months, you are correct.”
“That soon? Is everything contingent upon you passing this internship?”
“Well, you certainly can’t graduate if you fail your internship.”
He smiled. “But knowing you,” he said, even though he didn’t know her really at all, “you’re pretty confident you passed.”
“I had zero complaints filed, zero problems or incidences in all of my time at this hotel. My grades are otherwise good. Why wouldn’t I pass? Why wouldn’t I be confident?”
“But I have it on good authority there was one complaint. Today as a matter of fact.”
Jenay’s heart pounded. “A complaint?”
“Yup. And it wasn’t a minor one, either.”
Jenay looked at him with eyes so worried he almost wanted to take it back. “What was the complaint?” she asked him.
“You were ignoring a particular guest all evening. Going out of your way, in fact, to ignore that particular guest. Some would call that rude and insulting. But who am I to judge?”
Jenay realized what he was talking about immediately. And she smiled. And relaxed. “I wasn’t ignoring you. I wouldn’t call it ignoring you.”
“Oh yeah? What would you call it then? Avoiding me?”
“Avoiding distractions,” she said instead.
“Oh, so I’m a distraction now?”
“You know what I mean.”
He looked down the length of her, and then into her eyes. When she looked into his eyes too, he held her gaze. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “Why don’t we go upstairs, to my room, and further discuss the meaning?”