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Resumes from culinary schools, resumes in response to help wanted ads, resumes from students who’d seen the postings at local bartending academies. Every inch of space on Tia’s desk was covered with stacks of resumes.
She pulled off her suit jacket and sat down in the brown tweed armchair, sipping the iced tea she’d grabbed from the kitchen on her way upstairs. The bankrupt restaurant in Gaithersburg had been a quaint-looking place filled with chunky, antiquated furniture that wasn’t even close to what she had in mind for Tia’s Place. And she didn’t have much hope for the auction on Thursday morning either. It was for a restaurant located on Martin Luther King Avenue in southeast, DC—right in the heart of Anacostia, one of the poorest areas in the city.
Resigned to the likelihood that she would wind up spending her weekend in North Carolina, she took a large gulp of iced tea and began prioritizing the piles of resumes. Chefs first, waiters next, and bartenders last, if at all. According to Steven, there was no chance in hell that she’d have a liquor license by the time she opened for business and she would be lucky to have even completed the application process by then.
She pushed everything else to the back of her mind and started reviewing the chef resumes. The process was very cumbersome at first, but she soon got the hang of it. By the time she stopped for lunch, she could glance at a resume for a few seconds and decide whether to toss it in her “not interested” stack. If the resume survived that stage, it took her only another minute or two to either add it to her “second choices” pile or set it aside for a possible phone call and interview.
She headed downstairs to the kitchen and prepared a quick lunch of turkey burgers and homemade potato chips. She set a table for her father and Morrison and got them settled before fixing a plate for herself and returning with it to her office.
Several hours later, she had culled a select group of twenty chef applicants from the hundreds who’d sent in resumes. Now, came the hard part. She had to screen these applicants over the telephone and set up interviews for the following week. And tomorrow, she’d have to repeat the entire procedure with the stacks of resumes submitted by hopeful waiters and waitresses.
She would set up as many first interviews as possible for the coming week so that she could invite the promising candidates back for second interviews the very next week. That way, she could make her final hiring decisions the weekend following second interviews and each of her new employees would receive at least two weeks notice that he or she had gotten the job.
Damn, but time was flying by quickly! What on earth had made her think she could whip a restaurant into shape in two months or less? And how would she manage to pull everything together in time?
She forced back the lump of fear she felt gathering in her throat. It was much too late to start second-guessing herself now. Shit, her first lease payment—a whopping two thousand and five hundred dollars—was due in exactly seven days. She had to launch this restaurant on time, no matter what it took. She simply didn’t have any other choice.
She took a deep breath and picked up the telephone to call the first chef applicant. More than an hour ticked by as she spoke to one answering machine after another. Her second line rang as she was dialing the twelfth candidate and she promptly switched over to answer the call.
“Tia’s Place.”
“Good afternoon, Tia,” came the sexy, unmistakable voice across the line.
She sat straight up in her chair and her heart began to pound. It was Sam! He’d finally called her! “Well, hello there,” she said in what she hoped was an equally sexy voice.
“How’s my favorite restaurant owner?” he asked.
Her mouth curved into a smile. “I’m fine, Sam. How are you?”
“I’d like to see you again, Tia,” he said. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since our lunch date. Will you go out with me this weekend?”
“This weekend?” She was going to North Carolina on Friday and she couldn’t afford to put it off.
“Yes, this weekend,” he said in a deep voice that made her shiver. “There’s a Van Der Zee exhibit at the National Museum of American Art and I’d like to see it with you. Will you go, Tia? On Saturday afternoon?”
Damn, damn, damn! There was no way she could turn this man down. She couldn’t even form her mouth to say the words.
“Yes, I will, Sam,” she said. “I’d love to go to the museum with you.” She’d just have to move her trip up to Thursday night and come back on Saturday morning. She was her own boss now. She could do that.
She gave him her address and he agreed to pick her up at two o’clock on Saturday. They had just ended the call when her telephone rang again.
“Tia’s Place.”
“Hey, you,” Steven said. “Long time no hear from. What’s going on over there?”
“Only because you haven’t returned my calls,” she said.
“What calls?”
“Didn’t your new assistant give you my messages?”
“No, she didn’t. I’ll have to ask her about that.”
“Well, anyway. I’m glad you called. Guess who I just spoke to.”
“Who?”
“None other than Sam Hairston, himself! He asked me out on another date! Can you believe it?”
Steven chuckled and said, “Congratulations. At least one of us is having success in the romance department.”
“What do you mean by that? Are you and Denise having problems?”
“I wouldn’t know, given that I haven’t seen her in the last two weeks.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because she’s preparing for a trial. And to tell you the truth, Tia, I don’t think I can deal with this much longer. I need a woman who can spend time with me.”
“Have you talked to her about it?”
“And just when would I do that? When she calls me at midnight to say she just got home and is so tired she can’t wait to go to sleep?”
Tia sighed. She had been in Denise’s situation for five years and had lost more than one man because of it, so she felt sorry for Denise. “Well, don’t give up on her yet, Steven. Let her get through this trial, and then let her know where you stand.”
“I don’t know, Tia,” said Steven. “We’ll see.”