Not Going To Take It From You

The next morning, I woke with a start to find Cassie’s hands on my shoulders as she shook me. “Finally!” She snapped when I opened my eyes and stared up at her; my heart damn near beating out of my chest in fear. “We’ve been calling you for the last half hour, it’s 7:40 Aunt Anna, we have to be downstairs for 8!”

Groaning, I rolled over onto my stomach. “Take the girls for breakfast, sign it to our room,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Aunt Anna!” Cassie gave me a shove. “I’m not taking the girls down to breakfast without you! We are meeting Scott, remember? He doesn’t want to hang out with us; he wants to hang out with you!”

“Yeah, well,” I snapped as I flipped over. “I want the voices in my head to shut up with all their worrying too but that’s not going to happen!”

Cassie jumped back in shock, “What do you mean?”

Sighing, I told her to forget about it. “I just didn’t sleep much last night. I called Jordan and ended up upsetting him.”

“No,” she groaned as she sat next to me. “What happened?”

Closing my eyes, I sighed. “It doesn’t matter what happened Cass, just that he’s upset and feels he has every reason to be.”

“You don’t think he does?”

I shrugged, “I told him that I wanted time to get over Josh, I mean we just broke up for heaven sakes! What’s wrong with giving me a little time?”

“Surely he understands that Aunt Anna.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “He understands that but he pretty much told me that he wasn’t waiting around for me to get over Josh.” Cassie started to protest. “He’s going to California next month, to visit Olivia.”

“The bastard!” Cassie snapped. “How dare he be such a prick right now?” She shook her head in disbelief. “What the heck is his problem? You need a little time, what’s so wrong with that? Does he really need to -?”

“Cass,” I had to stop her. I didn’t want her to think of him as a bad guy when I wasn’t so sure that I was right. “It’s really not something that I should be sharing with you; I don’t want you to be upset with him.”

“But Aunt Anna, he said he loved you!” She seemed more upset than she should be. “At the party, he told me that he loved you and he couldn’t wait for you to give him a chance to show you how much. And now he’s threatening you with that California whore? Fuck that shit!”

“Cassandra -”

“No, I’m mad at him and you should be too!” Cass jumped off my bed and tugged the sheets off me. “Get up,” she demanded. “You are a hot guy waiting to have breakfast with you. Starting right now, we are forgetting that he exists!”

I was literally scared of her at that moment, she looked so much like Zack when he got mad, I didn’t hesitate in crawling out of bed. As I closed the door of the bathroom, I heard her tell the other two that under no circumstances were they to mention Jordan at all for the remainder of this trip. “Aunt Anna needs to forget about him and Josh, she needs to have some fun with a new guy and Scott fits the bill.”

Ten minutes after we were supposed to meet Scott in the restaurant downstairs, the girls and I walked up to the entrance. Standing just inside was the waitress from the other night and an older one. The older one glanced at us, “Tessa you have a table.”

Tessa turned, saw me and stalked off in the opposite direction telling the older lady, Donna, that she wasn’t serving the likes of me. My nieces looked up at me questioningly but I just smiled and shrugged as an embarrassed Donna came over to us with menus in hand, “Please follow me,” she asked as she started to walk away.

We were heading towards the window when I happened to spot Scott sitting in a booth in the back of the restaurant with his father and a woman and young girl I could only assume was his mother and sister. He looked up, saw me and smiled before turning back to his parents.

“Here we go,” Donna motioned to the table for four in front of us.

“But,” Natalie glanced up at me. “Wasn’t Scott joining us Aunt Anna?”

“Scott?” Donna threw a nervous look towards the back table, Scott wasn’t sitting there any longer, he was making his way towards us. “Oh I didn’t know,” she gave me an apologetic look.

“Hello ladies,” Scott said cheerfully as he came to stand beside me. “I’m so glad you could make it this morning, shall we sit?” He reached for a chair and motioned for me to sit down on it. “Could you give us a few minutes Donna?”

The older lady placed the menus on the table, “I’ll be back soon,” she told us as she slipped away.

It wasn’t until I was seated that I realized there were a few people watching us but it was the fact that neither of my nieces made a move to sit that puzzled me. “Girls?”

“I think I left my curling iron plugged in,” Cassie said quickly as she took a step back from us.

“Yeah,” Lindsay jumped in. “I forgot to put on socks,” she showed me her feet.

I raised a brow and started to tell them to sit when Natalie jumped in and said she stinks. “What?” I stared at her.

“I told you to wash up,” Cassie grabbed Nat’s hand and pulled her away. “Really, what are you going to do when mom and dad have the baby? You need to look after yourself.”

I watched in disbelief as my nieces all took off. “They aren’t coming back,” I glanced up at Scott, who was still standing behind me with his hand on the back of my chair. “They set me up, didn’t they?”

With a laugh, he told me it looked like it. “Is that a problem?” He asked as he rounded the table to sit across from me.

“No,” I admitted. “I figured they would end up doing something like this.”

“So it’s a good thing right? They don’t think that I’m a bad guy if they were so willing to leave you alone with me.”

I shrugged, “Maybe that’s what they think. Or maybe they would rather hang out upstairs and order room service.”

“Maybe,” he handed me a menu and began to tell me which dishes he would recommend when Tessa came over to our table.

“Hello, I’m your waitress today. Can I get you something to drink?” The whole time she spoke, she was smiling down at Scott who wasn’t even looking in her direction.

“Umm, no,” I chuckled as I stared right at her. “I believe you passed on serving my nieces and me when we came through the door.”

Scott frowned, “What?” He looked from me to Tessa and back again. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know Scott,” Tessa lied through her teeth.

I rolled my eyes, “I don’t have time for this.” Getting up, I told Scott it was nice to see him but I had plans with my nieces.

“Anna wait!” Scott called after me as I made my way through the busy restaurant. “Anna!” He caught up with me just outside in the lobby, his hand circled around my arm as he turned me around to face him. “What happened? Why are you leaving?”

“Look Scott I have enough problems, I don’t need to walk into a restaurant and have some waitress give me attitude because you talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on between Tessa and you and frankly, I don’t really care, just leave my nieces and me out of it.” I went to turn away but he grabbed hold of my other hand, stopping me.

“I’m sorry Tessa is rude to you but I swear there’s nothing going on between us, I don’t get involved with people who work for my father.”

“No,” I scoffed. “Just people who stay in his hotel.”

His jaw dropped the same time he let go of my hands, “No Anna, I don’t normally get involved with guests either.”

Sighing, I opened my mouth to apologize but he walked pass me and over to the house phone sitting on a small table in the lobby. Picking up the receiver, he dialled three digits and waited. “Hey Cassie,” he glanced at me when I gasped. “Would you and your sisters please come down to the lobby?” She must’ve said that they would because he said thanks and hung up.

“Scott what are you…”

He walked towards the restaurant without even giving me another look. I watched him walk behind the cash counter, grab some stuff and then disappear down the hallway to the right of the counter. Left alone in the lobby, there was nothing for me to do but wait for the girls to come down and then, well I figured we might as well head out and get breakfast some where else.

A couple minutes later the girls came over to where I was standing, they wanted to know why Scott called them down but I didn’t know. “We can grab breakfast on the way to the mall,” I told them when they asked about food.

“Or,” I jumped as Scott’s voice came from behind me. He waited until I turned around to face him before continuing. “You can follow me and have breakfast here like you planned.”

“I’m not going back -”

Scott smiled, “No one said anything about going back in there Anna.” He reached for my hand and tugged gently, “Come on, follow me and everything will be alright.”