His to Protect: A Fireside Novel Read Online Free PDF

bag, would tame it.
    This was certainly not how I wanted to look when I took Declan up on his offer.
    But I had to.
    I had no other choice.
    No other options.
    Perhaps if he could give me a place to crash for a night or two, I’d be able to think clearly and figure out what I needed to do next.

Chapter 4
Declan
    Friday mornings were my busiest mornings at the restaurant. That morning, I was more tired than usual as I sifted through my accounting program, doing payroll.
    I fully understood how to cook a burger and take care of a kitchen and keep a restaurant stocked with alcohol and food, but payroll was a bitch. All of this office shit I had to take care of myself until I could hire someone to do it for me made my head pound like I’d spent all night with a bottle of tequila in one hand.
    The headache was worse today, though, and it wasn’t just from payroll problems and a printer that was currently refusing to print the checks correctly. I needed to upgrade to direct deposit, but again…expenses.
    “Fuck it,” I muttered and dropped my head into my hands, elbows propped on my desk. Rubbing my head, I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to erase the memory of Trina—and the way she looked so vulnerable as she pulled away from me last night—from my mind.
    It’d been a fruitless endeavor ever since I climbed into the cab of my pickup and made the short drive home.
    I pressed my fingertips against my closed eyes, trying to push her out of my memory, but when I opened them, I saw the stool she’d sat on and the menu she’d perused and tapped with her finger.
    Pushing back from my desk with more force than necessary, I snagged the inventory clipboard hanging from a nail on the wall, and decided payroll could wait.
    I needed to be focused and I was anything but.
    “Hey, Declan,” one of my prep cooks, Matthew, called out as I walked by him.
    “Yeah?”
    He tilted a green basket in my direction and frowned. “Almost out of tomatoes.”
    I made a grunting noise and scribbled a note on the spreadsheet in front of me. We didn’t have enough to last us the day if I was judging correctly. “I’ll get you cash and you can head to the store to pick some up.”
    Matthew’s eyes widened briefly with concern before he set the basket back down. “Sounds good.”
    Normally, I had the art of inventory and ordering down to a science, but there were always weeks where something randomly came up short.
    If only I were psychic and knew what customers would order. I never would have guessed we’d have a surge in lasagna orders this week. I chalked it up to fall setting in, and the cooler days and chilly nights making more customers want comfort food.
    Then I made a note on the inventory sheet and I wished I could hide in the dry-foods closet until the Friday afternoon lunch rush, when I could lose myself in cooking instead of planning and worrying.
    —
    “Come in,” I called out when I heard a knock on my office door while I sealed the last payroll envelope. After finally fixing the printer jam, I was now officially caught up on paperwork.
    “Declan?”
    I looked at Emily in the doorway as she stuck her head in.
    “Yes?”
    “There’s someone here to see you.”
    Her blonde brows knit together and she opened the door further. Stepping in, she looked back toward the kitchen doors before lowering her voice. “She, um…well. I don’t know who she is. She won’t tell me.”
    Trina.
    I pushed back from my desk and got up, then led Emily out of my office with my hand on her lower back as she turned. “Thank you, Emily. I’ve got this.”
    “Um, she looks not okay.”
    My gaze cut to hers and I stopped walking. “What do you mean?”
    Emily had been at Fireside from the beginning. She was much younger than me at only twenty-two, and worked as a hostess and waitress to help pay for college. She was always on time and responsible, and was the kind of woman who would stop on the side of the road to pick up stray animals.
    Or