“With so many guests here, we need someone full-time until they leave.”
He was firing her to hire someone full-time.
Rapidly, she thought over for her options. She could go back to the diner. She might be able to talk to the manager of the theater to take her back. She had given notice—
“I talked to Willa. She’s willing to give you leave until you can go back to your normal work schedule.”
“You’re not firing me?” Relieved, she breathed again.
“Fire you? No, I’m giving you a raise for the hours you’ll have to put in here. You can take the bedroom in the basement—it has its own bathroom. We want you to be comfortable during your stay.”
“I don’t need to stay here. I can work whatever hours you want and go home to sleep.”
“We need someone on call.”
“I just got a kitten. I can’t leave her alone at night.”
“You can bring her with you.”
Viper was shutting her down, countering her each time she made an excuse not to move in. Deciding to be blunt, she made her point clear. “I don’t want to move in here. I have my own house.”
“It’s only for a couple of weeks.”
Train’s reassurance didn’t change her mind.
“No.”
Viper wasn’t willing to accept no for an answer. “I wasn’t giving you a choice. I’ll pay you for the inconvenience,” he reminded her.
Ginny stiffened, shaking her head. “It’s not about the money. If you need me to work longer hours, I’m okay with that, but I want to go home at night.”
She really didn’t want to lose her job with The Last Riders, and she really didn’t want to make Willa upset enough to fire her—but she didn’t want to give in to Viper’s demands. Willa was her friend, but Ginny never let herself forget that she was ultimately her boss and kept a respectful distance between them as employee and employer.
“Ginny, let’s go talk in the front room.”
Ginny turned around to find Pastor Dean behind her. Seeing his understanding expression, she calmed down and went to the front of the club. Grateful that the room was empty, she shoved her hands into her jean pockets.
“I’m not going to leave my house. I can work whatever hours Viper wants me to.”
“Ginny, when Willa and I discussed you taking the job here, we warned you that there would occasionally be things we couldn’t discuss with you. This is one of those times.”
Ginny swallowed hard. She wasn’t blind. She noticed the extra men at the doors when she’d come and gone from the club. She hadn’t missed the additional men wearing the Predators jackets and all the changes that had come about since Penni and her friends’ arrival. The fact Hennessey had been hurt so badly, being bedridden for a couple of weeks, didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there were problems happening for the club and they thought she could be in danger.
She trusted Pastor Dean and could sympathize with him having to walk a fine line between being her pastor and the other side of him—the one who belonged to the club. More than anyone knew, she understood the dilemma he was in, since she walked a similar a fine line, which was why she told Trudy to stop calling her Evangeline. She and her sister had given up too much for their past to leak out now.
“I’m staying at my house. If Viper wants to fire me, I’ll understand.” She resolutely ended the conversation, going back into the kitchen to load the dishwasher.
Whatever trouble the club was in, she wasn’t involved and she refused to get dragged into it. If Hammer thought she was in a dangerous situation with The Last Riders, he would never let Trudy have the overnight visits they had promised each other, and she didn’t want Trudy in danger. She was just a housekeeper; if she started staying full-time, their enemies might assume she was closer to them than just a worker. Viper wasn’t asking the factory workers to move in, so he shouldn’t expect her to leave her home either.
Ginny continued to worry as she shoved a baking sheet into the dishwasher.
When Penni stormed into the kitchen to get a beer and a pitcher of tea to take outside, Ginny slowed down abusing the bakeware. After seeing Penni stomp back out again, she looked out the window and saw Fat Louise, Killyama, and Sex Piston having a picnic with Lily and their children. Had she been deluding herself? Did Trudy just not have the heart to tell her the truth, that they’d never be safe enough to even be roommates? What would it be like to be out there, laughing and having a good time with them? Just once she wished she knew.
Her mouth dropped open when Penni dumped the pitcher of tea over Killyama’s head. A fight erupted between the two women, sending the backyard into a turmoil that had the men running outside to break them apart.