Then she walked behind the counter and placed it in front of him.
“I’m not quitting.”
She picked up the ownership document.
“I’m taking you off my schedule.”
Stan stared at her.
Adrian said nothing.
Neither did Cole.
Harper turned to the attorney.
“Can I do that?”
The woman checked the operating agreement.
“As majority owner, subject to the employment provisions here, yes.”
Harper nodded.
“Then Stan is suspended pending a full accounting.”
Stan laughed, but nobody joined him.
“You think one piece of paper makes you a businesswoman?”
“No.” Harper looked around the Midnight Owl.
“Four years of running half this place while you took credit might help.”
Stan’s jaw tightened.
He reached for the document.
Cole moved once.
Just one step.
Stan withdrew his hand.
Harper noticed the cab drivers watching.
The woman near the jukebox.
The cook standing silently in the kitchen doorway.
People who had seen Stan lecture her, dismiss her, cut her shifts, and take bows for ideas Harper had suggested months earlier.
The humiliation Stan had expected for Harper had reversed itself without anyone raising a fist.
He grabbed his coat.
“You’ll destroy this place.”
Harper opened the door for him.
Rain blew inside.
“Then I’ll destroy my own place.”
Stan stepped into the storm.
Cole locked the door behind him.
For several seconds Harper said nothing.
Then the adrenaline drained out of her so fast she had to sit.
Adrian poured coffee from the pot she had made before the phone rang.
He tasted it.
His expression tightened.
Harper looked at him.
“What?”
“It’s terrible.”
“It’s two-thirty in the morning.”
“That explains it.
It does not improve it.”
She stared at him.
Then she laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because if she didn’t laugh, she might finally cry.
Adrian sat across from her.
“I owe you an apology.”
“For the coffee insult?”
“For assuming I could order twelve people into your diner without explaining why.”
“Good start.”
“And for waiting three years.”
That silenced her.
