Page 2 of The Billionaire's Special Relationship

But he didn’t see the smoke. Or the fire. What he saw was her smiling eyes become suddenly so sad that he found himself sitting back in his seat with a chunk of steak still on his fork. She had soft, brownish-gray eyes against smooth dark-brown skin, but her eyes held such a depth of emotion that just watching them bothered Stuart. It felt as if he was watching the inner soul of another person through those eyes, and he was completely in tune with it.

And the way she stood there staring at Jennifer as if she could not believe her cruelty shook him too. Was she that innocent to the ways of the world? Or was she just that vulnerable?

But Jennifer did not let up. “If we needed something from your poor, trashy, can’t-do-no-better-than-a-waitress ass, don’t you think we have enough sense to request your presence? Don’t you think we, the elite of America, have enough sense to know to ask for what we need? But no, you had to drag your sorry-ass all the way over here and disturb us!”

Many at their table thought this was hilarious. Stuart was still staring at the young lady.

But Jennifer kept going. “And you didn’t stop at our table because you care about our welfare. You don’t give a damn about us. You came over here because you know money when you see it and you believe you’ll get a bigger tip if you stay in our faces. The greed of you people never ceases to amaze me. It’s utterly ridiculous how manipulative you can be. So shoo fly,” she said with a backhand wave as if she was actually shooing a pest, “and stop bothering us!”

The group seemed to nod and agree with Jennifer’s harshness. But Stuart stared at the young lady as her beautiful, cheerful face turned into a look of shame and pain. Although he could tell she wanted to put that white woman in her place right then and there, she undoubtedly needed that job too badly to lash out. Because she didn’t say a work. She just stood there.

And when she refused to just shoo away, Jennifer kept pouncing. “I get it. I’m not blind to somebody’s misfortune. But I also know how misfortune happens. It happens because of you. Your bad decisions or your bad relationship choices or just your plain bad luck forced you to work whatever piece of job you can get while everybody else went to college and made something of themselves. I get it. You got left behind. But don’t blame us. Don’t look as if I’m the reason you’re a failure. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Now leave us alone!” And she said the last sentence empathically.

Stuart’s heart squeezed when the young lady’s big, unblinking eyes blinked and then she turned and walked away. But his friends were still enjoying the laugh at that young lady’s expense while Jennifer was flinging her long, blonde hair backwards once again and didn’t give that poor girl a second glance. The young woman had held her tongue, and her dignity, too, in Stuart’s view, as she walked away fromtheir table. But she was hurt. There was no doubt in his mind Jennifer had hit a nerve deep inside of that lady’s soul when she came for her so harshly.

“That’s what I love about Jennie,” one of the guys at the table said. “She tells it like it is!”

“And you’re right as rain, Jennie,” said Gheri, who was Jennifer’s best friend. “She just wants a big, fat tip. That’s the only reason she stopped by our table. She wants our money.”

“And that’s why I’m not giving her a damn dime,” said Jennifer. “Not one red cent.”

“Now now ladies,” said Gheri’s husband Logan. “Let’s not be so unforgiving. Those waitresses rely on our tips to be able to feed their families a simple slice of bread.”

“Bump bread,” Jennifer said. And then added in her best Marie Antoniette imitation: “Let them eat cake!”

“What’s wrong with cake? I love cake,” said Logan jokingly. “I’ll take cake over bread any day of the week.” And they all, except for Stuart, laughed at that too.

While they continued laughing and talking until they had moved on to another group to gossip about and laugh about, Stuart tossed the big, cloth napkin onto the table, got up, and madehis way toward the backside of the restaurant where his friends assumed he was going to the bathroom.

But while they had been laughing and drinking as if no crime had just been committed, he was observing that waitress. The victim of the crime. He saw her unshed tears. He saw the hurt and the pain all over her petite body. He saw her.

And that was why, after she was out of sight, he thought about it long and hard. It was nothing new. Jennifer had treated many waitresses similarly in the years he’d known her. But this one hit differently. And he knew, at the end of the day, he could not let this one stand. Right was still right and in his eyes she’d been wronged. He got up and headed in the same direction where he saw her make her escape.

CHAPTER TWO

In the ladies room at Argyles restaurant, Tabitha Morgan wiped the tears from her eyes that began to trickle down her face after that scathing rebuke by that older white woman, and after she delivered the drinks at her other table. She held her head high, determined to not let anybody see her cry, and made her way to the restroom.

It was only one stall, so it was private. It allowed her to stand at the sink and let the tears flow for a few seconds before she wiped them away. She hated to be so vulnerable! The least insult and she could hardly take it. But when that woman called her a failure and said how everybody else her age had graduated from college and made a name for themselves while she was still waiting tables, it hit her where it hurts. Because she knew she should have been doing better. Because she knew she was a failure too.

Her mother died when she was eleven years old, and her father, who was a jazz musician, was hardly ever around. So she pretty much raised herself and her two littlebrothers, and even her older sister who was as irresponsible as their father.

Years later, when their father left one night and never came back, she knew she had to do something. They would have starved to death had she not gotten a job. So she told the then-manager of Argyles that she was eighteen, which allowed her, at fifteen, to get the job as a waitress. Now, at twenty-five, she’d been waitressing for a decade. Even she never expected to be there that long.

She and her siblings all graduated high school, including her irresponsible older sister, and then every one of her siblings fled Ohio as if they couldn’t wait to go. They tried to stay in touch with Tabby, and she tried to stay in touch with them, but eventually they forgot about her and they all lost touch with each other.

By the time she was twenty, she finally passed the GED. It took her four tries. She knew she was smart, but she was a horrible test taker. But passing only encouraged her to keep moving forward. That was why she enrolled in Larkin Community College, while she was still waiting tables, to try to get ahead. She did well on all of her assignments, but she didn’t do nearly as well on the tests. And because she hadto retake classes, her GPA suffered and her grant money dried up. So she quit before they kicked her out. She had to find a different path.

But she had a job that allowed her to work long hours and make extra money, especially after her cousin became the assistant manager, and she had the personality to get great tips. She was able to keep a roof over her head and pay her car note. She was getting by.

And because she was always taught that a bird in the hand was always better than ten in the bush, she decided to stick with the job she had. And then she got stuck. And then that job became like running on a treadmill where it didn’t get her anywhere, but she stayed on it because she was afraid of losing the little she had. So she didn’t step off. Which she knew was her fault too.

She washed her face, refusing to even look at herself in the mirror, and then she dried her face with paper towels and tossed them in the waste basket. Then she grabbed another paper towel to blow her nose.

She was just wiping her nose when she walked out of the restroom and saw one of the men that had been at the table with that nasty woman. But instead of going into the men’s room, he bypassed it and began walking up the back hall towards her.

But when he had the nerve to smile at her as if he still thought that shit was funny, it angered her. She couldn’t lash out when she stood at that table because she knew the manager was nearby and he’d fire her on the spot, but nobody was in that hall. If he came at her sideways with more of that bullshit, she was going to let him have it.

Although her eyes weren’t red by the time Stuart made it up to her, he could tell she’d been crying. “May I speak with you for a moment?” he asked her.