Worth the Waitstaff

A Contemporary Workplace Romance

by Rowan Black

She’s here to optimize his bar.
He’s about to complicate her spreadsheets.

Elena Vance doesn’t believe in passion. As Sterling-Cross’s top efficiency analyst, she believes in data, deliverables, and never letting emotions cloud her judgment. When she’s assigned to audit the legendary Obsidian Bar at Vintner’s Cliff Resort, she expects resistance. What she doesn’t expect is Declan Mercer—the infuriatingly talented mixologist who treats her clipboard like a personal insult and her presence like an invasion.

Declan Mercer has seen what happens when suits optimize the soul out of a bar. He watched it destroy everything he built in New York. He’ll be damned if he lets some corporate number-cruncher—no matter how beautiful, how brilliant, how utterly maddening—do the same thing here. The Centennial Gala is his chance to prove that craft matters. That some things can’t be measured.

But when the resort’s owner forces them to collaborate, their clash of philosophies ignites into something neither can control. Stolen moments in wine cellars. Arguments that end in kisses. A connection that defies every metric Elena knows how to calculate.

Then a rival consultant uncovers Elena’s secret—and the price of protecting Declan might be destroying everything they’ve built together.

Worth the Waitstaff is a steamy contemporary romance featuring enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, workplace tension, and a hero who falls first and falls hard. This standalone novel contains explicit content and a guaranteed happily ever after.

🔥 Tropes You’ll Love

📖 Read Chapter One

Chapter One: The Incognito Test

The Obsidian Bar didn’t know it was being audited.

That was the point, of course. Elena Vance had learned early in her career that the most accurate data came from observation, not interrogation. People performed when they knew they were being watched. They optimized their behavior, streamlined their processes, became temporary versions of their best selves.

Elena wasn’t interested in best selves. She was interested in baseline reality.

So she’d checked into Vintner’s Cliff Resort three days before her official start date, registered under her mother’s maiden name, and spent seventy-two hours mapping every inefficiency, every redundancy, every hemorrhage of resources that the resort’s ownership was too close to see.

Tonight, she was testing the bar.

She’d chosen a seat at the far end of the granite counter—close enough to observe the workflow, far enough to avoid direct engagement. The Obsidian Bar was everything the preliminary reports had promised: moody lighting, exposed brick, a wall of bottles that glowed amber and gold behind the counter like stained glass in a cathedral of vice.

It was also, according to her calculations, operating at roughly sixty-three percent efficiency.

[Continue reading in the full book…]

🎁 Exclusive Bonus Content

Finished the book? Get an exclusive bonus scene that’s too hot for Kindle!

“The Reunion” — What happened after the gala…
Declan POV • Extra explicit • 4,000+ words of pure heat 🔥

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the heat level?

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 — Explicit. This book contains multiple explicit scenes including wine cellar encounters, walk-in cooler hookups, and emotionally charged intimacy. Reader discretion advised.

Is this a standalone?

Yes! Worth the Waitstaff has a complete HEA (happily ever after) and can be read as a standalone.

Who are the main characters?

Elena Vance — Efficiency analyst. Control freak. Haunted by her father’s failed restaurant. Falls harder.
Declan Mercer — Master mixologist. Passionate defender of craft. Escaped corporate destruction once. Falls first.

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