The Gamma's Reluctant Mate -The Wolves Of Winter Valley Bk 3

Chapter 7 - Battle Of Wills

Megan POV

“Oh, my God! You got a new one!” Carla’s high pitch squeal was loud enough to shake the entire restaurant when she arrived to find the new dishwasher being installed. She ran over and hugged me, then rushed over to inspect it. Like a kid on Christmas morning, she ripped the owners’ paperwork packet from the front of it and waved it around. “A brand-new dishwasher!” The installer and I laughed as she danced around. The other servers were going to have similar reactions. They were all tired of fighting with the ancient behemoth my father had purchased second-hand nearly thirty years before. When she was finished, Carla handed me the paperwork, looped an arm around my waist, and laid her head against my shoulder with a sigh. “I haven’t been this excited over a new appliance since Jake bought me my Keurig. How did you pull it off?”

“That is an excellent question, Carla.” Bonnie’s usually sickeningly sweet voice had a hard edge coated in ice. “I did not authorize this purchase.” She shifted her gaze to the installer. “Young man, you can take that right back where you brought it from. I am the only one authorized to make purchases for this restaurant.”

The installer looked at me. I shook my head. “Keep going.”

“I said get it out of here!” Bonnie yelled.

Carla straightened and stormed from the kitchen. No doubt to prevent herself from saying something that would get her fired.

I turned to face my mother. “You are only required to authorize purchases made with the restaurants’ accounts. This was purchased by me, and last time I checked, I didn’t need your authorization to access my own money.”

“Anything purchased for the restaurant must be cleared by me.”

“Really? Please show me in the trust paperwork where it delineates that?” I challenged, knowing perfectly well that there was nothing. After Adam dropped me off at my apartment door, I scoured the documents to ensure that there wasn’t some clause or rule that stated that restaurant purchases had to be made by Bonnie and with restaurant funds.

Bonnie rushed toward me, then stopped when she remembered that we were not alone. “Need I remind you that you are the owner in name only. I call the shots here. What I say goes!” She whirled on the installer again. “Get that f*****g thing out of my kitchen.”

This time the installer gained his feet and stared her down. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I answer only to my customer and my supervisor. My customer says to install it. I’m installing it.”

“I will have your job!” she shouted. I sent him a look of apology from behind her back, but he just smiled as if he dealt with her level of crazy every day and pulled a business card from his shirt pocket.

He held it out to her. “The name’s Joe Dall. Supervisor is Milt Stephens,” he told her.

Bonnie snatched the card and stomped out of the kitchen. With a wink, he returned to what he was doing, and I stepped outside the back door, pulling my cell phone from my back pocket.

Keeping an eye out for Bonnie, I punched out a quick text to Adam.

Bonnie flipped as expected. She’s calling the dealer to demand they order him to return it.

My phone rang, and I heaved out an exasperated sigh.

“You would make a lousy secret agent,” I said when I answered, scanning the kitchen for signs of Bonnie returning.

He laughed. “Well, good morning to you, too. I actually have my hands full at the moment and couldn’t type out a response.”

I heard something thump against his phone, then I heard a baby’s shrill squeal followed by him shushing someone.

“Um… Adam? Why do I hear a baby?” I asked with a brow raised.

“Thanks a lot, kid,” he muttered to the baby, then explained, “I’m kind of babysitting.”

“Kind of?”

“Yeah, it’s just for an hour. The… ouch… The nanny had a doctor’s appointment this morning, his parents had an early meeting, and there was no one else to fill in,” he said while I grinned like a fool.

The mental image of big Adam Keller holding an infant was enough to make even my hardened heart turn to mush.

“…so anyway,” Adam’s voice pierced the haze. “I told the manager that when it comes to this particular purchase that he is to only speak with you or me. All you have to do to prove it’s you is mention my name.”

“Oh, okay, that’s great. Wow, how did you know that Bonnie might be a problem?” I was amazed that he’d anticipated what was happening.

I heard him coo something to the baby and my uterus clenched, then he said, “From what I’ve heard about Bonnie, she lives to make you miserable. Fixing the dishwasher every time it broke down was a guarantee that two to three times a week, you would be. We’re taking that away from her. It makes sense that she would fight us on it.”

Again, I poked my head in the back door and peered around the kitchen. “Thank you. I feel better knowing that she can’t return it when I’m not around. I better go before she comes roaring back in here.”

“Okay. Oh, hey…want to hang out tonight? I’ll bring pizza.”

My body tensed, and I opened my mouth to tell him ‘no’ but stopped myself. The man deserved some consideration. He’d tended my cut the night before, then purchased a dishwasher for my restaurant, so I wouldn’t have to fix the old one anymore. Every time I saw him, he did something else to prove that he was different than other men I’d known, without knowing about them. He’d gone well above and beyond to earn my trust. It couldn’t hurt to try to give him the benefit of the doubt, and there was no harm in spending an evening in his company over pizza. It’s not like it was a date.

“Sure, okay,” I answered and laughed when he choked.

“Really?”

“Really…” I smiled at how excited he seemed. “I like my pizza loaded. No anchovies and no pineapple.”

“I can do that,” he said, then added, “I’ll see you tonight,” before disconnecting the call.

Tucking my phone away, I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed my apron from the hook by the door. Tommy came in as I was tying it and grinned when he saw the dishwasher.

“That explains the shouting I heard coming from the office,” he said, walking over to inspect the new machine. “Nice one. How did you get around her?”

“Easy, I didn’t use restaurant money.”

Tommy winked and tapped the tip of his nose, then plucked his own apron off its hook. We were both looking forward to enjoying the smoothest day Nebula had seen in years.

Bonnie POV

After repeating myself for the one-hundredth time to a man I would swear had left his brain in his other pants, I slammed my phone down on the desk and screamed. He wasn’t going to order his man to remove the dishwasher and couldn’t talk to anyone about it but Megan. Sucking in a few deep breaths, I picked up the phone and tapped Bernie’s name in my contacts. Bernie would help me. He would find some way to get that dishwasher sent back to where it came from. Myrtle answered—annoying little woman—and snorted when I demanded to speak with Bernie immediately.

“Good morning, my lovely Bonnie. To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice this fine day?” he asked, making my stomach churn.

Bernard Casperson was a 67-year-old local attorney with a shoebox-sized office in a rundown building on the south side of town. He had a ring of white hair around his shiny white head, mud brown eyes hidden under thick white brows, and a spare tire that made Megan look supermodel thin. He’d been infatuated with me since the reading of Leighton’s will, and because I needed the man’s cooperation, I didn’t discourage him. I’d even gone out with him a few times to keep him happy, but the closer Megan’s birthday came, the more he talked about taking our relationship to the next level—like that would ever happen. Despite being an attorney, Bernard was not rich, successful, or even remotely good-looking. He literally ticked none of my boxes, so my interest in him was based solely on his usefulness. Once the terms of the will were satisfied one way or the other, he would no longer be useful to me.

Because I knew he couldn’t resist them, I turned on the waterworks. “Oh, Bernie! How did I end up with such a vicious daughter?” I wailed into the phone.

“What happened, darling?” he asked, his voice overflowing with concern while I grinned at my reflection in the mirror on the back of the office door.

“She keeps humiliating me in front of the employees. They all hate me because of her! She’s been sabotaging the dishwasher, spending hours ‘fixing’ it and telling the staff that I refuse to let her replace it. This morning I came in, and she had bought one with her own money! If you could have seen the look on Carla’s face when she announced that she had to use her own savings… Please can you make her stop?” I sucked in a deep breath and let out a loud screeching wail for emphasis.

Bernie clucked his tongue. “I’m so sorry, my love, but there is nothing I can do to help you. There is nothing in the will that prevents her from buying things for the restaurant with her own money. Nor is there anything that requires she treat you with the respect you deserve. The terms are very clear. She just has to keep working there and stay out of trouble with the law.”

My fury returned in the form of another scream before slamming my phone down a second time.

“Useless fool!” I snapped at the empty office.

There had to be something I could do to get things back on track. I’d given up too much and worked too hard to walk away with nothing. Leighton had promised me a life of luxury as the owners of a successful restaurant chain. We would travel the world, sail on yachts, and live in a huge mansion. He promised me all the best clothes and shoes, and all that glittered. Then she came along, and Leighton forgot all about his promises to me. I never should have told him about the stupid pregnancy. I should have just gone and had the abortion and never mentioned it. If I had, I’d be living the life he promised. Instead, I was stuck in this stupid, nowhere town, working in this hell hole of a restaurant, forced to put up with the biggest disappointment for a daughter I could have ever imagined.

As if a host of broken promises wasn’t enough, the asshole died and left the restaurant to Megan. The only thing that he owned that held any real value, and he’d left it to the disgusting lump of fat and skin that he’d pushed me into carrying to term. This restaurant was mine. I’d earned it, not that fat-assed, smart-mouthed little b***h, me. It was my body that was stretched out and marked up carrying the child Leighton wanted. Those were my dreams he’d tossed aside to raise her. He ruined my life, he destroyed my body, he stole my youth, then he couldn’t even make up for it by leaving me the restaurant to sell and start over somewhere else. Well, I would have it by fair means or foul. I would get what I deserved, and I would have the life I was promised one way or another.

My efforts to get Megan to voluntarily walk away had been failures. She clung to this place like it was the reason for her existence. I’d done everything I could think of to make her miserable enough to leave. I gave her the worst and the longest shifts. I forced her to learn how to fix the appliances herself instead of replacing them or hiring a professional. I cut our staff down to the bare minimum and refused to order specific supplies, citing cutbacks as the reason. I slapped her, trying to provoke her into hitting me back, so I could have her arrested. That hadn’t worked either. She took the slap and every one that followed, then those slaps became punches, and the punches became full-fledged beatings. That stubborn little witch weathered every last one without lifting a single finger in her own defense.

The only thing left for me to do to wrest this prison from her grasp, so I could sell it and start my life over was to sink it. I couldn’t do that if she was going behind my back and using her own money to correct the problems I deliberately refused to address. I needed the appliances to break down and make the employees’ jobs nearly impossible, so they would become frustrated enough to quit. To make this hell hole fail, I needed them to quit. I needed the service to slow and the food quality to suffer. I needed the flow of customers to stop.