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Her green eyes sparkled when she smiled—and hey, that was another thing we had in common.
7
CARLY
“Where are all the frickin’ busboys?” I exclaimed in the bustling Forge kitchen. “I need my tables cleared off pronto!”
Forge was in its busiest full-swing dinner rush, and it was like I was playing my usual role of Carly the Magnificent, spinning plates and jumping through hoops to entertain the masses, but with the added element of a tightrope and maybe the hoops were on fire to boot. One of our best servers had just quit—we all were taking bets about why, and my guess was that she couldn’t handle Logan being around so much more lately, being an overbearing dick and scaring the bejeezus out of all the nice people who made his business run day to day. Since the recently-quit Justine had been kind of snotty to me and clearly looked down on me for being a single mom, her departure was no great loss personality-wise, but I hated having to maintain stability for the rest of our staff. Everyone knew practical, dependable Carly could always pick up the slack.
Being short-staffed would have been bad enough, but said Overbearing Dick was here tonight, driving us all to drink with his snippy orders and brooding stares. His presence escalated the tensions to an all-time high. I’d been too busy with all the clusterfuckery to even talk to Nate, the guiding light of sanity who usually made all the chaos worth it with a well-timed joke, a flirty smile. Maybe my new older stepbrother from hell would be more tolerable if I could talk to the other stepbrother, but no, I never could have nice things.
I hadn’t really gotten to talk to either of two new stepbrothers since that dinner, and as a result, I was still mulling over what Nate had told me about Logan. In the immediate aftermath of that big reveal, I’d been much more amenable to the idea of Logan being a good guy, a wonderful older brother whom Nate looked up to so much. But now that he was on a rampage at work and I was forced to bus my tables my damn self, it felt much more fitting to grumble quiet curses on Logan and the whole McDonald line. Everything Nate said, backed up by Logan being on his best behavior during dinner at my mom’s house, or not was completely contradictory to the image he gave off to me and everyone else at Forge. I trusted Nate’s judgment, but it was hard to reconcile these two narratives of Logan McDonald in my head.
At least I could sort of see the reason for Logan’s extra dickishness today. Emphasis on the sort of. We were getting closer and closer every day to the grand re-opening of the restaurant, an event he’d been pouring his blood, sweat, and dollars into for weeks on end. For the past few months, Forge had been undergoing a complete rebranding that was finally almost complete. We’d stayed open the whole time as a team of Logan’s marketing cronies buzzed about talking about remodeling and menu changes and what made this place uniquely “Forge”, but they’d done a good job of marking the shift between old and new anyway. Now, in hopes of putting this place on the map and one day opening a second location, thus expanding his slow-growing empire, Logan had decided to host a huge party to generate more buzz. There would be entertainment, a special menu, and all manner of other nonsense that put a shit ton of more work on those of us plebeians who were below Logan and Nate, of course. But I guess if I were being generous, I could sympathize with the amount of pressure our fearless leader must be shouldering.
That still didn’t justify his yelling at and making one of our sweetest, most innocent dishwashers cry, though.
I could see it in the weary expressions of my coworkers as we gathered in the break room during a rare lull. We were all fed up with this night, this crushing weight of expectation. Maya and the others looked worn out, their shoulders slumped with fatigue, and I was sure I looked just as downtrodden. It didn't take long for the break room conversation to turn to our shared frustration with Logan's relentless pushing.
"He's been riding us like a pack of mules," Maya grumbled, her usually upbeat demeanor replaced with exhaustion.
One of our line cooks, Frederico, nodded in agreement, rubbing his tired eyes. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."
The others murmured their agreement.
“Imagine having to deal with him in your personal life, too,” I grumbled, and then all eyes turned to me. Oh, shit. That shouldn’t have slipped out, and now I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“That’s right,” Graham the bartender mused aloud. “You’re related now.”
My eyes widened as I realized what they were all suggesting.
"Maybe… you should talk to him," Maya said carefully. I could tell she felt bad for being the one to suggest it, but her wince was only partially an apology.
“What?” I blinked at them, seeing my coworkers’ faces all falling into expressions of agreement.
“Please, Carly,” Danielle, a college girl who was damn good at her job now that she’d learned the plate-balancing trick I taught her, pleaded. "You're the one who's been here the longest. And y’all are family now to boot, right? You have to talk to him for us."
“What am I supposed to say?” My tone was pleading.
“Just tell him he’s being a total douchebag,” one of the younger hostesses, Holly, grumbled. She looked at her usually-pristine nails, gesturing toward me with one that had broken off under the pressure. “We can’t keep living like this!”
I shook my head, already feeling the weight of the responsibility they were placing on my shoulders. "I don't know, guys. Logan's under a lot of pressure, and this whole family thing… it’s new. I'm not sure he'll listen to me."
That was an understatement. I was pretty fucking sure he wouldn’t listen to me, considering how little we seemed to like each other. He was a family oriented man, but I wasn’t part of his family in his mind yet, nor was he included in mine. I knew if I went to his office and tried to talk some sense into him, I’d just become the newest casualty in his warpath.
But my protests fell on deaf ears, and before I knew it, I found myself standing outside Logan's office, steeling myself for what was to come. Put on your big girl panties, Carly, I told myself, much like my mom would tell me when I was nervous for a big school project as a teen. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door, my heart pounding in my chest.
"Come in," Logan's voice called out from inside. It wasn’t a yell, so that was at least a positive sign.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the office, my stomach churning with nerves. Logan was seated behind his desk, his brow furrowed in concentration as he scanned over a stack of paperwork. And I understood immediately why he hadn’t yelled at me for interrupting him. Even as he looked at the work in front of him, I could tell he was barely reading it. His forward-tilted head cast a shadow over his face, emphasizing the deep, dark circles around his eyes. Those broad shoulders were slumped, too, though no less impressive for it. He looked completely exhausted. It was a sight I wasn't used to seeing from the normally unflappable owner of Forge.
"Sorry to bother you, Log—Mr. McDonald," I started, trying to keep my voice steady. "I just, uh, am here on behalf of the staff. Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Logan didn’t glance up from his work. "Go for it. Make it quick, please.”
I took a deep breath, summoning all of my courage. "Well, I was… sort of nominated by the staff to talk to you. We're all feeling really rundown, and we need to take a stand. The pressure you've been putting on us is starting to take its toll."
He slowly lifted his head to look at me. His jaw tightened, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of vulnerability in his eyes. But then his expression hardened, and he shook his head.
