Holidays In The Hamptons [COMPLETE]

Chapter One

"Marley, you've got another."

Marley Harkin stopped trying to wipe the dripping coffee from her front and looked over her shoulder. Mark was right, she did have another one.

Resisting the urge to glare at the new busboy, responsible for the current state of her black work button-up, aware that her manager was standing right behind her, Marley threw away the paper towel holding only a fraction of the spilled coffee and headed back to work. Her only fifteen-minute break of the day was cut short thirteen minutes.

"Hi! How many?"

The young man standing in front of her hostess stand turned from surveying the intimate French bistro at her question. Marley didn't have to catch a full glance of his neatly trimmed haircut to know this kid was from money.

He was wearing a wool coat in thirty-degree weather, which made it obvious. And he wore leather shoes, only wet from whatever short walk he had made to enter the restaurant. Marley guessed the trek had been at most from a town car to the entrance. She kept her regulation black sneakers tucked behind the hostess stand.

"Eight, please. We have a reservation, I believe. If-"

"Eight. For Reigns. My assistant called this morning."

An older version of the young man (more gray in the dark brown hair, fewer smiles around the bright gray eyes, although by the looks of him, the kid hadn't smiled in a while), barged into the restaurant, barely pausing from yelling into his cell phone to yell at Marley.

Marley flipped a stray hair that had fallen from her ponytail to look through the reservations book. She wasn't looking fast enough, apparently, as the older gentleman forgot all about his business call to focus his energy on Marley and her failure as a hostess.

"Reigns. R-E-I-G-N-S. It's in there. My assistant called-"

"I'm looking, sir. If you could just give me a minute."

"What's the problem here?"

Mark arrived just in the nick of time and motioned for Marley to go help set up the table for eight. Marley breathed a sigh of relief as she had a feeling the man wasn't going to take the news well that there would be a ten to fifteen-minute wait as they rearranged the tables.

Her guess was right as the older man's voice raised above acceptable levels and Marley could hear his son try and reason with his father.

"Good luck," Marley muttered under her breath.

She looked up at the clock for the fiftieth time that afternoon. An hour to go. Well, fifty-six minutes, to be exact.

Marley had spent the day either dreading the minute her shift ended or impatiently begging for the time to speed up. It didn't. In fact, it staunchly refused to. It ticked on, as usual, just to annoy her.

Luckily, Marley had enough to keep her busy. She was working at not only the nicest French restaurant within a five-block radius of Times Square but also on Christmas Eve, their second busiest day of the year. New Year's Eve held the record for the busiest day of the year but Marley smiled at the thought that at least her holiday plans were keeping her away from that round of chaos.

The rest of the family of eight appeared by the time the tables were ready and Marley grabbed eight menus as she led the family to their table. Two of them were children under the age of four so two of the menus weren't necessary but it was restaurant policy. Marley planned on adding those two to the stack of sticky-fingered menus she was already planning on cleaning.

The rest of the family were dressed just as nicely as the patriarch had been, minus the obnoxious indoor voice and expensive watch that cost Marley didn't want to know how much.

She smiled, nodded, gave out specials, and mentally cursed the theater down the street that had hosted the high-end charity event that afternoon and only bothered to alert the restaurant of that fact this morning. Their normal lunch-time rush had simply morphed into a post-show rush. The family of eight was hopefully the last.

"Is there anything else I can get for you?"

Her question and gracious manner ignored by nearly all, Marley slipped her pad back into her apron and headed for the hostess station, a faint and sickly scent of coffee following.

"Excuse me..."

The guy from before half-stood from his chair, his napkin barely hanging onto his lap.
He leaned forward to reach out and stop Marley but dropped his hand when she turned at the sound of his voice.

"My apologies. About earlier. My father-"

"I understand, sir. Enjoy your meal."

'Sir?'

It had popped out before she could have stopped it. This guy was barely older than she was, if even. But he did the energy of a forty-year-old executive with a wife and three kids at home and smiled just as often from what Marley had witnessed. Was that why the sir had slipped out?

He nodded and sat back down. Marley turned away before he nodded to make sure he knew he didn't need to give her permission to get back to work.

"At least he apologized,' Marley thought.

She glanced at the clock. Forty-two minutes.

Those forty-two minutes were spent rolling silverware, wiping down menus, erasing the fingerprints of grubby mid-western tourist children the pages, and helping clear and reset tables when needed.

It was her third holiday season at Marguerite's and every season she considered quitting. She didn't care that she had worked the past two and a half years to become shift manager and lead hostess. The crazy holidays didn't feel worth the experience.

Marley was racing to meet her hostess replacement the minute Jocelyn walked through the swinging metal doors that led to the kitchen, her black apron barely tied around her string.

The family of eight were standing from their chairs as she cried out 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy New Year' to the kitchen staff and waiters as she clocked out.

"You're one lucky son of a gun, Marley," Mark grumbled.

"What was the last time I called in sick?" Marley asked, wrapping her scarf around her neck and slipping on her down jacket. "Or took a vacation? I think I deserve this!"

"We're already understaffed! You can't leave me stranded during Christmas!"

"Take it up with Marguerite. She was the one who gave me the week off. Bye, everyone! Merry Christmas!"

With a smile on her face, turning her back on Mark's scowl, Marley raced out the back of the restaurant and rounded the building.

She was racing towards the subway stop just as the family of eight were piling into two town cars waiting for them. Marley didn't notice. Her mind was whirling, double-checking her packing list, making sure she didn't forget anything, trying to ignore the clench of nerves and nostalgia as the fact of the matter finally hit her, just as the scent of the subway did.

For the first time in her twenty years of life, Marley and her family were leaving the city behind for the holidays. And they were headed somewhere Marley never thought she would ever end up.

The Hamptons.