BWWM Interracial Romance 6: Her Protector by Elena Brown

Author:Elena Brown [Brown, Elena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, African American, Romance, Women's Fiction, Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages)
Amazon: B00VF0S3DA
Published: 2015-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Adriana dropped her head onto the desk with a soft thump, lifting it and dropping it again, letting out a soft groan of frustration. Nothing was working. The restaurant was in worse straits than it had been since she took over. She sighed, and her eyes began to tingle and burn with tears. Adriana sniffed, feeling the frustrated sobs that threatened to work their way up from her chest to her throat, tightening around her neck. It wasn’t fair—it just wasn’t fair.

She had visited with Desiree a few months before, taking the opportunity of working the night shift to meet with her best friend during lunch. They had started out talking about the usual things—about Adriana’s relationship with Sawyer, which was established then in the town gossip, after they’d had a handful of successful dates, about their mutual friends’ dramas and comedies, about upcoming events in the town that they hoped to go to. But gradually, Adriana had come to admit that she was struggling—really struggling—with the restaurant. “We’re tapping into the savings every month,” she told Desiree. “Every month, nibbling away at it, never putting anything back in.”

“At least it’s summer soon—you should have an upswing just naturally then,” Desiree had suggested optimistically. Adriana had shrugged.

“I don’t even know if the usual upswing would do anything,” she had said resignedly. “I’ve been looking over the books for the years that Dad was still running everything, and we’re hopelessly behind for the year. Even with the usual boost from summer, I can’t see how we’ll even manage to break even, much less turn a profit and put anything back into savings.”

“Okay,” Desiree had said, setting aside her finished plate. “There are some things that you can do to try and increase business. I mean—it can’t be that different from any business, right?” Adriana had listened in closely; Desiree had made multiple suggestions, all of them at least a little bit feasible. The restaurant had never done any real advertising that Adriana could remember—and while she didn’t like the added expense, she knew enough about business to know that one sometimes had to spend money to make money. There were some free advertising avenues that she could explore; there was the chamber of commerce, there was participation in annual events taking place in the downtown area.

While she hadn’t liked it, Adriana had instituted a few half off nights and other promotions in the hopes of drawing more people in, and made sure that the younger members of her staff took home fliers to spread around school. It was getting to a point where the more established employees, who had worked at the restaurant for years, knew well the fact that the business was struggling. It was impossible for Adriana to hide the fact, and she was exhausted from pretending. The customers shouldn’t know that they were underwater, thoroughly in the red—but the oldest employees, who eventually would have to start looking for new jobs, deserved the notice, and to know the stakes.

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