The Book Club Hotel(69)

She stopped to talk to them. No matter what revelations were popping in her head, her guests always came first. “You seem to have had success with your Christmas shopping.”

“It was fabulous. I bought gifts for everyone, including Ray’s mother, and believe me, that’s the biggest challenge of all because she is not an easy woman to please.” The woman gestured to one of the bags, which obviously contained the precious item. “Thank you for the suggestion.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We have a table booked for seven fifteen,” the woman said, “but we wondered if we could push it back to eight? We wanted to wrap the gifts and make some calls and just enjoy being in the room. It’s hard to force ourselves outdoors, to be honest, because we love it here so much. It’s not often you book a festive break and don’t want to leave the room, but that’s how we feel. Would that annoy Chef? He seemed very put out last night when we were five minutes late.”

Hattie wondered at what point the emotional state of her chef had started to take precedence over the wishes of her guests.

The man gave a nervous smile. “We wouldn’t want him to have a tantrum and walk out.”

A bit late for that, Hattie thought.

“That will be no problem at all,” she said. “I’ll let the kitchen know.”

Providing there was anyone left in the kitchen. It was entirely possible that in the past hour they’d all followed Chef Tucker and left Hattie to stew in her own misery—or boil, or flambé, depending on whether you preferred your crisis to be well-done or medium rare—although hopefully Claudia would have persuaded them against that course of action.

She wished Claudia was staying.

“If there is anything I, or my team—” what’s left of it “—can do to make your stay more comfortable, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”

The couple headed toward the stairs, and Hattie watched them for a moment and then walked to her office.

Erica was pulling some pages from the printer and looked up as Hattie walked into the room.

“I’ve retyped the menu—changed the layout as Claudia requested. Take a look and let me know what you think.” She handed them over and Hattie took the menu, trying not to be distracted by the fact that this was Erica and the whole situation was beyond weird. She had no idea how she was supposed to react, but that was true of so much of life, or so she was discovering.

She scanned it. “You’ve called it the Winter Warmer menu?”

“It’s no longer a taster menu, so I thought we should present it as something different. Confidently. Not as something we’ve thrown together in last-minute desperation. It’s snowing outside. People enjoy comfort food when it’s cold, and also at Christmas. I thought tomorrow’s menu could be Festive Feast. And maybe later in the week we could have Santa’s Supper.”

Hattie was so focused on simply surviving the evening, she hadn’t given a thought to the rest of the week. But Erica had thought about it. Winter Warmer. Festive Feast.

“I wanted to do something similar in the beginning—fun themed evenings. I thought we could do a Swiss night, with fondue and other traditional Swiss dishes. I even thought about offering posh afternoon tea, the way they do in the big hotels in London. Finger sandwiches and amazing cakes, maybe a glass of champagne—” She stopped and shook her head. “Sorry. Getting carried away and I need to stay focused. Thanks for the menu.”

“Wait—” Erica tapped her finger against her lips. “So what happened to your idea for Swiss night and afternoon tea? It wasn’t a success?”

“We didn’t try it. Brent didn’t think it would work. He wanted to offer a gourmet tasting menu with wine pairings. And that was popular. His idea was a good one.”

“But that doesn’t mean your idea was bad,” Erica murmured. “There is more than one good idea in the world. I’ve heard a lot about what Brent thought, but what about you? What does Hattie think?”

No one ever asked her what she thought. Everyone had just assumed she’d keep things going the way Brent had. Except Noah, of course. He’d always shown confidence in her and encouraged her to forge her own path.

Noah.

She wasn’t sure what she would have done without his support earlier. Just having him there had made things easier.

And she badly wanted to show the courage he seemed to think she possessed.

“I think I like what you’ve done with this menu. I think that once things have settled down, I’d like to explore being more creative with our dining options.”

“Good. If you want to toss around a few ideas, I’m a good listener.”

Hattie felt a flicker of excitement. It was slowly dawning on her that she could do whatever she liked. Make whatever decision she wanted to make. No one was going to stop her or tell her they had a better idea. It was both freeing and scary. The responsibility for success or failure was all hers.

She looked from the menu to Erica. “You were on your way out the door. Why are you helping me?”

“You look like someone who could use some help, so let’s start with that as a reason and tackle the rest later.” Erica tidied up the paper stacked by the printer. “We need to get this menu to Claudia for approval and then print them. After that, you can tell me what else needs to be done and we can throw around some ideas if that’s helpful. Do you want me to take her the menu?”