Slightly pampered rich girl Jane Barrett is excited about helping her good friend Andrea pitch in with the waitressing at her family's restaurant over the Christmas holidays, but she has no idea of how hard the work will be or how confused she will be by the gorgeous but opinionated Zach.
"Emily Chase" was the pen-name used by a number of authors who contributed to Scholastic's Girls of Canby Hall series, about a group of girls living at a New England boarding school. Amongst these contributors was romance novelist Julie Garwood.
t's Christmas vacation. Andy, whose parents own a restaurant, has a problem. It's going to be terribly busy at the restaurant but they don't have enough servers. Jane and Toby volunteer to help. Andy, of course, knows what to do and Toby catches on really quick. Jane, on the other hand, has a lot of problems and she gets really depressed.
The other theme is that, while in Chicago, Jane meets a guy she likes, but it turns out he's really down on rich people and makes a lot of negative comments about them. So, Jane has to decide whether or not to drop him and whether or not to stay in Chicago and try to help in the restaurant no matter how useless she feels.