Owned by My Sinful Guardian novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Order Up

I stepped back into the walk-in and let the door ease shut until it was open a crack.

I heard Joanne start to cry.

I heard her say, "Oh, Mr. Thorley. I've kept it in my jewelry box for thirteen years. He never once knew it was there."

Then the compressor kicked on, and I couldn't hear anything else.

I stood in the cold with a cherry pie in my hands.

I'd made him promise in the room upstairs. No more secrets.

I had a guess what this one was.

I let him keep it.

It was June before he used it.

The Kid had been open six weeks by then.

Twelve seats, dinner only, booked a month out.

He still came over every Saturday morning to eat my hash at the counter before his own prep started.

He'd sit on the cracked fourth stool.

His knees still didn't fit.

That Saturday the rush was the biggest we'd had since the review.

Every stool. Every booth. A line out the door past the laundromat.

Gretchen was on the flat-top, and I was working the pass, calling tickets and hanging plates.

Joanne was at the register, ringing up a whole softball team.

"Order up," I called. "Two short stacks, stool two."

The old man in the Steelers cap raised his fork.

Magnus was on his stool with a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.

That should have told me.

He asked the server for her ticket pad.

She gave it to him.

He wrote something, slow and careful, in his square capitals.

Then he leaned across the counter and pushed the ticket onto the order spike himself, right in front of me, on top of the stack.

"That's not how it works," I said, without looking. "You give it to her, she gives it to me."

"I'm in a hurry."

"Everybody's in a hurry."

I pulled the ticket off the spike to read it.

Something slid down the spike and clinked against the steel.

It was a ring.

A thin gold band, worn soft, with a small round stone.

I knew it.

I'd seen it on my mother's hand every morning of my life until I was eight.

Wrapped around a coffee pot, pinching a pencil, holding up the keys with the blue bird tag.

My hands stopped working.

I looked at the ticket.

It said, in his square capitals:

TABLE: ALL OF THEM.

ORDER: MARRY ME.

FOR HERE.

The pass went quiet.

Gretchen had turned around with the spatula up.

The old man in the Steelers cap put his fork down.

Joanne was standing at the register with both hands over her mouth, and the softball team had no idea what was happening.

Magnus stood up.

He came around the end of the counter, where nobody but staff was supposed to go.

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