Free BWWM Interracial Romance 6: Her Protector by Elena Brown Page A

later. She didn’t want to put any more strain on her mother than she could help doing.
    “Go on and head home, just have a couple of things left to do here,” she said, summoning a smile for the server from somewhere in her worried, occupied mind. If she could get the paperwork together for either a grant from the chamber of commerce or a loan from the bank to cover the next several months, Adriana thought that she might be able to potentially satisfy everyone; at least, she could until a loan came due, if she wasn’t able to make the restaurant turn a profit. At first, Esther had been adamantly against taking on any debt; Richard had worked hard through high school and college to be able to afford to open the restaurant, and he’d taken the money that his father had set aside for him to buy a house to finish off the expenses that opening the restaurant had incurred. Never had he taken a loan from a bank, never had he run the risk inherent in debt.
    But Adriana pointed out to her mother that it was one of a scanty list of things that they could do to save the business. Eventually, Esther had given in, with misgivings. “Make sure that you’re only taking out the minimum you need to keep afloat for six months,” she had said over and over again. Adriana had started—in the late hours, after everything was shut down, and early in the mornings when nobody had come in yet—to compile the documentation she would need to demonstrate that, while Ellis American Cuisine wasn’t turning a profit currently, it could, and had. At that, the only collateral they had on the loan was the property and building itself, along with the contents. It took a lot of money to keep a restaurant running, and Adriana, even after paring her estimate of what they needed down to the bare minimum—enough to keep everyone employed, and to cover the overages in supply and maintenance—was daunted by the total that would be hanging over the restaurant.
    As her vision started to blur with fatigue, Adriana’s mind drifted. It had been weeks since she had seen Sawyer. He had tried to set another date, and she had put him off, saying that things were still uncertain at the restaurant, that she needed to be there as much as possible to keep labor down and still maintain standards. “You’re going to work yourself to death at this rate, Adri,” he had told her, his voice full of worry.
    “I’m getting six hours of sleep a night,” she had countered, feeling irritable in spite of his offer to come in with several of his friends on the force and have a big meal. She had been relieved at the offer, and had seen him—for a few minutes—when he came, but knowing that she had to put their relationship on hold, even for a little while, made her fatigue and edginess seem even more useless. Sawyer didn’t have to worry about losing everything; if he lost his job, he was qualified to work security, to do something else. Technically, so was Adriana—she had education and experience in business—but the blow of losing the last link to her father was something she wasn’t sure she could stand. She had managed to keep in touch with Sawyer, but she was feeling something like physical withdrawals, compounded by fatigue and stress. She had even cut back on the time she spent with Desiree, only seeing her best friend when the petite blonde came in for lunch or dinner.
    Adriana reeled slightly as she stood up from the desk. She was more than capable of realizing that much though she would like to continue working—and she felt the pressure to do just that—if she kept up when she was so tired, she was going to make mistakes, miss pieces of information, and otherwise create more work for herself later. She would go home, get some sleep, get a good breakfast and a cup of coffee, and tackle the paperwork again while Esther ran the restaurant for the lunch shift. Satisfied with her resolution, Adriana gathered up her purse and keys, looked around the office to