Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1)(13)

Stage three. It sounded more like a movie set than a diagnosis.

“You all right, boo?” asked Eeny with concern when she caught me staring into space over a big pot bubbling with jambalaya at the stove. It was my mother’s recipe, the comfort food I always turned to in times of stress. The waitstaff had just eaten, as usual before the restaurant opened for dinner, and first service would soon begin, but I had no idea how I was going to make it through tonight.

“I’m . . .”

What? What was I? There wasn’t a word. Finally I settled on, “Fine. Just tired is all. Couldn’t sleep last night.”

Chuckling, Eeny patted me on the shoulder. “That explains those bags under your eyes.”

From across the kitchen, Hoyt called, “Looks like you been et by a wolf and shit over a cliff, dawlin’.”

When I turned to glare at him, Eeny said, “Somebody had to say it!”

I threw my hands in the air. “Really? Somebody had to say I look like I was eaten by a wolf and shit over a cliff? That’s something someone really needed to tell me?”

My aggravated tone made Hoyt whistle. “Aw, now c’mon, Miss Bianca, I’m only teasin’.” He paused, squinting in my direction. “Y’all actually look like somebody died.”

My throat closed. I turned back to the pot and stared down into it, stirring furiously with the wooden spoon while blinking back tears.

“I’m just tired,” I repeated forcefully, feeling Eeny’s gaze on my face. “Now could everyone please get to work?”

For a moment her colorful bulk didn’t move from my peripheral vision. Then she walked off, the skirts of her yellow-and-orange-striped caftan swinging. “Make you a gris-gris,” she said as she went, “for protection against whatever’s ailin’ you.”

Eeny was always making someone one of her good luck voodoo amulets for whatever was ailing them. She had at least ten of her own hidden in small burlap bags in her pockets or strung around her neck at any time. You always knew when she was approaching by the tinkling.

But it wasn’t me who needed protection. It was Mama. Mama who had stage three lung cancer, no health insurance, and no savings, because like me she’d plowed all her money into the restaurant. We were both so broke we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Though the restaurant was busy, we’d only been open six months, and I was up to my neck in debt and operating expenses. She wouldn’t qualify for Medicare until she turned sixty-five next year, and by then she might be—

No, I thought, inhaling sharply. Not going there.

“You mad at that jambalaya, Bianca?”

I glanced up from the pot. Pepper stood beside me, watching me with arched brows and a worried look, like I might start throwing things.

I sighed. “No, and please don’t say anything about how bad I look, I already—”

I stopped short, dumbfounded by Pepper’s outfit.

Her neon pink blouse was cut so low her hoo-has were on display like buns at a bake sale. Her zebra-print leather skirt was so short it was almost a belt. Under the skirt she wore fishnet stockings and a pair of sky-high, red-and-black heels that screamed Fuck me! at the top of their cheap snakeskin lungs.

She asked brightly, “Hey, what do you think of these earrings?” and lifted her hair away from her face to display an enormous pair of gold hoops with little gold hearts dangling from the bottoms.

Hoyt called out, “Ain’t nobody lookin’ at ya earrings, couillon. And pull down that skirt, I kin see clear to the promised land!”

“They’re lovely, Pepper,” I said, to distract her from whatever insult she was about to toss back Hoyt’s way. You had to have tough skin to work in a kitchen, but all the hazing was done with a generous dose of love.

Pepper smiled. “I bought them with the tip I got last night from Mr. Boudreaux. The heels, too.”

And the rest of the outfit, most likely. Judging by the looks of things, she probably had enough left over from that hundred bucks to buy another ensemble of the same quality, with money to spare.

“How nice for you,” I said. “Now tell me why you’re in the kitchen and not up front at the desk.”

“Oh yeah! That’s what I came to tell you. It’s about Mr. Boudreaux.”

I stared at her with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What about him?”

Pepper beamed. “He’s here. And he wants to talk to you.”

I groaned. Dear Lord, not today. Not him, today. “Tell him I’m busy. I can’t get away now.” Besides, I hate his stuck-up guts.

Pepper blinked. Her brows pulled together. “Um. He sort of . . . you know. Demanded to see you. Like he does.”