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my tendency to lose patience with difficult customers,” Emily reminded her. “I believe you were forced to pay several cleaning bills my last summer here after I accidentally dropped a few things into people’s laps.”
Cora Jane chuckled. “A few of them would have tested my patience, too,” she admitted.
“And I came close to dousing a few drunks with ice water after I heard about the unwanted passes they were making at you girls,” Jerry chimed in. “Only thing that stopped me was that you took care of them yourselves.”
“Actually Gabi and I didn’t,” Samantha said, grinning. “We turned ’em over to Emily. She really enjoyed retaliating.”
“I did take a certain amount of pleasure in it,” she agreed. When she noticed B.J. listening, wide-eyed, she leaned close. “What I did was not appropriate, though. Do not follow my example.”
“Thank you for that,” Boone said wryly. “After listening to you all, I’m probably going to have to completely deprogram him before I ever let him near a customer in any of my restaurants. We pride ourselves on impeccable, friendly service.”
“Well, fortunately, the lunch crowd rarely gets that rowdy,” Cora Jane said. “It’s one of the reasons I’m happy we close by midafternoon and that beer’s the strongest thing we have on the menu. Let the other places deal with the out-of-control drinking, loud music and such. This place is meant for families. It’s rare that the real party folks wander over from the beach in the middle of the day.”
“You’ve definitely made Castle’s into something unique,” Boone said. “It’s a real institution in town. I hope my restaurants last even half as long.”
“You run a good kitchen and have great service,” Jerry told him. “Last time Cora Jane and I came by, we were both impressed. I had a conversation with your chef, and he clearly knows his stuff. He’s got the whole Cajun influence going on, and you know I can appreciate that.”
Emily listened to the praise with growing surprise. Coming from Jerry, those were high marks, indeed. He might be working for a seaside diner, but his own credentials in the kitchen were pretty impeccable, and his standards were high. She recalled when her grandfather had recruited him from a restaurant in Louisiana.
“Thanks,” Boone said. “I paid close attention to everything you and Cora Jane taught me. If I’m succeeding, it’s because I had the best possible teachers.”
He stood up. “Now, let me bus these tables, help with cleanup and get B.J. home. You ladies should probably take off now. It’ll be dark soon, and you still need to be cautious on the road. Most of the debris has been cleared from the highway, but there’s bound to be some piled up on the side roads.”
“Boone, you went by the house,” Cora Jane said. “Anything we need to watch out for there?”
“There are a lot of branches in the yard, but the driveway’s clear. Just watch your step going inside. I flipped on the outside light, just in case the power came back on. I called your neighbors earlier and they say the power did come on over there. You should be okay. I didn’t spot any leaks in the house, but you might want to take a closer look.”
Cora Jane gave him a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem. Are you still planning to open here tomorrow?”
“Just with deck seating,” Emily told him. She gave a pointed look at Cora Jane. “We compromised.”
“Then I’ll be back here early in case you need help,” he promised. “What time?”
“Grandmother scheduled the bakery delivery for five-thirty,” Emily said dryly.
Boone laughed. “Of course she did. And that is why I run a restaurant that serves only dinner. I also postponed our reopening till the weekend. I wanted my employees to have time to get their own situations under control, deal with insurance issues or whatever they needed to do.”
“Can we come help you out, instead?” Samantha pleaded.
“Traitors,” Cora Jane said. “Family comes first, and don’t you forget it. We’ll all be here at five-fifteen with smiles on our faces.”
Jerry chuckled at their groans. “Well, at least you and I will be, Cora Jane.”
“Oh, we’ll be here,” Emily said. “But the smiles might be expecting too much.”
Fully clothed might be the best they could promise.
5
“Bad news, boss,” Pete Sanchez announced when Boone called him to check in after finally getting home from Castle’s and getting an exhausted B.J. into a bath and then to bed.
Pete was Boone’s manager of restaurant operations. Though Pete was a year younger than Boone, he’d come to him with ten years of solid experience. Single and eager to be on the go, he spent most of his time overseeing the restaurants in Norfolk and Charlotte, taking the burden of travel off of Boone. Even so, he’d come straight back to North Carolina the minute residents and business owners had been allowed back on the barrier islands.
“Tell me,” Boone said. If the usually low-key Pete thought the news was bad, it probably rose to the level of disaster.
“Looks like the restaurant’s been flooded one too many times, and the last repairs must have been made with poor quality materials. When we pulled up the carpets, we found sections of rotting floorboards all over the place.”
“Blast it!” Boone muttered.
“It gets worse,” Pete disclosed direly. “We discovered mold behind some of the drywall on the side closest to the bay, where the water stayed high the longest. A lot of mold. It’s pretty pervasive.”
“You have to be kidding me,” Boone said, thoroughly frustrated. If there was extensive mold now, even as quickly as it could appear after a flooding incident, this definitely hadn’t happened overnight. Nor had those sections of floor rotted since this last hurricane blew through. These were most likely things his inspectors should have caught before he bought the property.
Exhaling a sigh, he concluded he’d just have to consider this a lesson well-learned. Next time, he’d hire an actual contractor to go over any potential real estate purchase to assure that the inspection wasn’t superficial or in the seller’s favor.
“Why didn’t you call me on my cell?” he asked Pete when he had his temper under control. “I could have gotten Tommy over there today to take a look.”
“I tried, but I guess the service is still spotty,” Pete responded. “One of the cell towers blew down or something. I did get through once and tried to leave a message, but it cut me off before I could explain what was going on.”
Boone pulled his cell phone from his pocket and noted the call logged in early in the afternoon. It must have come in while he’d had the noisy chain saw going. “Sorry. I was tied up over at Castle’s.”
“I knew that, so I didn’t want to make a big deal out of something that could just as easily be handled tomorrow. I thought about calling Tommy myself, but I figured he was there with you. You’d told me you wanted him to get Cora Jane’s roof fixed. I know how you feel about making that a priority.”
“It’s okay, Pete. None of this is your fault. I’ll call Tommy now. We’ll both come by first thing in the morning so he can assess the damage and give me a timetable for the repairs.”
“You talking daylight?”
“Or thereabouts,” Boone confirmed.
“You want me there?”
“No, give yourself a break,” he told the night owl. “I’ll handle this one. How about meeting me there around nine and we’ll come up with an action plan. Looks like I’ll need you to stick around here longer than