Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1) (7 page)

He held my gaze for a long moment before abruptly standing. “Fine. Follow me.”

“Oh, it would be my pleasure,” I muttered, half under my breath. A quick look over his shoulder told me that he probably heard me; I merely gave him my sickly-sweet smile as I followed him from the office.

“Stock room is back here,” he said, gesturing down the hall to an open door. The lights were off, and I could just make out stacks of boxes in the darkened room. “I try to keep it organized when I’m here but…” He shrugged a little. “It’s tough to keep up with it, working part-time.”

“You only work here part-time?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me despite my desire to speak to him as little as possible. “How’d you get to be a manager then?”

“I guess your grandmother trusts me,” he said, not even slowing as he continued down the hall. “Employee break room is here.” He shot another glance over his shoulder. “We try to keep the staff from eating out in the shop.”

God, could he be more condescending? How old did he think I was?

“Bathroom is that way. Storage cooler is here.” He stopped at the end of the hall. It was a little dark; one of the overhead lights had burned out. In the shadows, his scowl wasn’t so pronounced. He almost looked… nice.

Luckily, he opened his mouth a few seconds later, leaving me in no doubt of just how
not
nice he was. “There’s a security door back here that opens into the alley. We only go out this way at the end of the night, once we’ve set the alarm.” He studied my face for a second, as if trying to decide something. “I guess Posey can give you the alarm code…if she wants to.”

I’d spent a good amount of time with David Jenkins once upon a time. I certainly don’t remember wanting to punch him in the face every second that we spent together back then. “You think I’m not entitled to the code?” I asked, crossing my arms. “Seriously?”

He shrugged. “I’m not giving out the code to someone without instructions from Rose to do so.”

“Instructions from Rose. You mean my
grandmother
? God, David! I’m family! Of course she wants me to have the code!”

He shrugged again, and I swear my blood pressure must have gone up ten points. “Then I suppose she’ll give it to you.”

I could feel myself actually shaking as I glared at his smug face. “I’m getting that code.”

“Good for you.” He turned to head back down the hall, and for one blissful second, I thought I’d won that round. Then he had to open his mouth. “But not from me.”

I satisfied myself by glaring at the back of his head the entire way down the hall and out into the café.

“Coffee’s on this side,” he said, pointing at the left counter. “Fudge and candy is over there. But customers can buy from either side.”

“Thanks,” I sneered. “I never would have been able to figure out which side the coffee was on without your stellar guidance.”

He ignored me, ducking under the counter to the coffee area. “We keep a supply of stock up here in the cabinets so we’re not constantly running back to the stock room.”

“What’s the procedure when you need more?”

He sighed as he turned back to me, as if my asking a simple question had completely exhausted his patience. “What?”

I spoke as clearly as possible through clenched teeth. “What’s the procedure when you need more stock?”

He blinked at me. “You go in the back and get more.”

You’re here to help Posey
, I reminded myself. Murdering this jerk in the middle of the store would be decidedly unhelpful. “And do you write it down somewhere?” He blinked some more. “Fill out an inventory sheet? Some kind of request slip?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, we mostly just grab what we need.”

I frowned at that. I’d spent a lot of time in kitchens around the world, and I’d never seen a successful set up where employees were allowed to just go grab whatever they wanted without any record. How would management know what needed to be reordered? How did they prevent theft? “Well, that’s gonna change,” I grumbled, more to myself than to him.

“Fantastic,” he said. “Some off-island outsider coming in and switching everything around is exactly what this place needs.”

Before I could do more than sputter at him wordlessly, he turned on his heel to stalk across the store to the other register. “You know what, Iris? I have a lot to do. And like you said, you’ve been working here since you were a kid. So why don’t you get to whatever it is you think needs improving, and I’ll do some real work, okay?”

“I’m just trying to help my grandmother,” I started to say, anger making my skin feel hot, but David cut me off before I could finish.

“Yes, it’s obvious from the past twelve years that you’re all about helping family.”

In retrospect, it was a really good thing Cora Hanson walked into the café at that moment. Because otherwise, I might have actually smacked him. When he smiled at her like nothing was happening, my anger grew. “Hey there, Cora,” he said, his voice all sweetness. “It’s good to see you so early in the morning.”

She started to say something about her coffee machine being down, but I barely heard her. My hands were shaking, and I knew I had to get out of the café. I turned and practically ran down the hallway to the manager’s office, which, luckily, David had left open.

I paced the room for several minutes, trying to get myself together.
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about
, I told myself. How dare he think he can make judgments about my relationship with my family? He didn’t even know me.

Which, okay, wasn’t exactly true. I spent a lot of time talking to David Jenkins during my months on the island. I knew the topic of my family had come up on more than one occasion. As had my feelings about the island. But that was years ago.

And it was also the last time you came back
, a little voice in my head reminded me.

I sat, feeling a bit sick to my stomach. It wasn’t exactly a mystery to me that some people might not consider me the model granddaughter. But that didn’t give David Jenkins, of all people, the right to criticize me in my family’s own shop.

Besides,
I reminded myself,
I’m here now. And I’m here to help
.

I picked up the ledger closest to me, rubbing at my temples. “Concentrate on this,” I muttered out loud. Numbers and receipts. Balance sheets. Profits and loss. The running of a business. That was what I was good at. That was how I could help.

Two hours later, all thoughts of the encounter with David had left my head. I was completely engrossed in the books in front of me. The sick feeling his words instilled had been replaced by a sicker feeling of dread. The books were a mess.

I knew that most businesses on the island didn’t come close to turning a profit until the summer tourism season started. Businesses here were made or broken based on the season. A good season meant you might just have enough cash to get you through the rest of the year. A bad one…well, it wasn’t exactly easy surviving for any amount of time if the tourist season was bad.

To be fair, my grandmother’s café was closer to operating in the black than a lot of local businesses would be this time of year. It was obvious that she had a loyal, yearlong customer base on the island. And that was a good thing. But God, it was close.

Looking at the profit margins made me feel ill with nerves. There just wasn’t an inch of room for a mistake. If anything went wrong this season—say, if the weather was bad or a cooler needed to be replaced—there was nowhere near a big enough cushion for them to cover such an unexpected expense. And with my grandfather’s medical issues and the stress Mimi Rose was clearly under… I swallowed, pulling another ledger toward me. I would just have to find ways to increase those margins. There must be some improvements that I could make to save money. There had to be.

I had no idea how long I sat like that, ledgers covering the desk in front of me, a notebook at my side to scribble down ideas. The good news was that I’d found a ton of inefficiencies already. The bad news was that I’d have to convince my grandmother to make changes. Not something she was particularly well known for.

I shoved the notebook away, rubbing my eyes and stretching out a kink in my neck, wishing I would have brought some coffee back with me.

A noise at the doorway made me jump, and I spun in the chair to see David standing there, a mug of coffee in his hand.

“I thought you could use this,” he said, his eyes not meeting mine as he thrust the cup toward me. “You’ve been at this for hours.”

“I have?” My burning, bleary eyes should have been all the proof I needed to trust his assessment. I glanced at the coffee mug, surprised he would go to the trouble.

“Jesus, I didn’t poison it,” he groused, pushing it closer to my face.

“Thank you.” I took the mug from him and breathed in the aroma, feeling slightly more awake already.

“So.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the mess on the desk. “How’s it looking?”

I took a long pull from the mug before answering. The coffee was strong and good, just like I remember it being. My grandmother always prided herself on offering a good cup of coffee to her customers. “It doesn’t look great.”

He nodded. “I figured. It’s been…tough on your grandmother, without Frank around.”

It startled me a little, to hear him refer to my Pops by his first name. How close had they gotten, I wondered, in the years since I left Lilac Bay?

“I do the best I can to help,” he said quickly. “But like I said, I can only be here part-time and…” he trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know it’s not enough.”

“What else do you do?” I asked. “If you’re here part-time, I mean.” He finally met my eyes, and my breath caught a little. They really were beautiful eyes.

“I work at Cora’s pub,” he finally said, looking away. “And down at the Elks.”

“That sounds… busy.”

He shrugged, the action not bothering me nearly as much as it had that morning. Maybe it was the lack of open hostility rolling off of him. “I like to be busy.” His grey eyes found mine once more. “Something we always had in common, if I remember.”

I swallowed, directing my attention to the coffee mug. There was something unsettling about looking right at him when we weren’t furious with each other.

“Anyhow.” He cleared his throat. “I’m actually heading out now. Mike is here for the afternoon shift. He might get a little busy around three—lots of kids from the school stop by then.”

I had a feeling by “lots of kids,” he meant lots of girls. And I was confident the timing of their stopping by had as much to do with the start of Mike’s shift as it did with the end of the school day.

“So he might need a hand,” David finished.

“I’ll let him know he can call me up,” I told him. “Thanks.”

He stood by the desk for a long moment, and I wondered if the awkwardness I felt radiating from him was in my head. “I shouldn’t have said that, about… you know. The last twelve years.” He rubbed the back of his neck, something he seemed to do whenever he was agitated. It must have been a new habit, picked up sometime in the years after I left.

“Well, it’s not like you were saying anything I haven’t thought myself.”

“Doesn’t make it right for me to say it.” He gestured at the mess of books and papers on the desk “It’s, uh, pretty obvious you care about your family. I shouldn’t have… well. I shouldn’t have implied.” He let out a loud, frustrated sigh. “Look, I’m sorry if I was kind of an asshole this morning. I just didn’t expect to see you.”

I knew he was making an effort, and it was obviously hard for him. I should have accepted his apology and kept my mouth shut. But I could still feel the way he had looked at me—the way he had been looking since I arrived on the island. Like I was some kind of disappointment. Like I had offended him in some way. And it still stung. I took a deep breath. “And what about seeing me makes you feel like you have to be an asshole, David?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment, his eyes searching my face. I wanted to look away from the power of that gaze, but I forced myself to sit up straight, chin high, unblinking. What was it Libby had said the other night? About what she saw in his eyes when he glared at me?
Passion
. I somehow managed to suppress a shiver. Is that what I was seeing in his eyes now? But that was just silly. He obviously couldn’t stand me. I lifted my chin another millimeter, determined not to let him see what effect he was having on me with his scowls and searching gaze. When he turned away first, I felt a ridiculous rush of satisfaction. If there were points to be had, I had definitely won that one.

“I’ll see you around, Iris,” he mumbled, grabbing his jacket from the hook by the door. Before I could say another word, he had gone.

Good fricking riddance,
I thought, turning my attention back to the open ledger.

M
y grandmother found
me at the kitchen table early the next morning, nose buried in the lists and ledgers I had brought home from the café the day before.

“Iris!” She cried, placing a hand on her chest. “Good lord, what are you doing up already?”

I blinked up at her, feeling disorientated, my eyes blurry from staring at the notes and numbers for so long. “Couldn’t sleep,” I explained, rubbing my face. “Sorry, Mimi. Did I frighten you?”

She waved her hands as she walked to the coffee maker. “It’s not your fault. I’m just used to being the first one up.” She held up the half empty coffee pot, raising her eyebrows at me. “How long have you been out here?”

“I already fed Jasper,” I told her instead of answering, not wanting to tell her I stumbled downstairs before dawn. I had again been plagued by those ridiculous falling nightmares. I tossed and turned in bed for hours before I admitted defeat, pulling out the work I’d brought home to give myself something to do.

She poured herself a cup before walking to the table with the pot to refill my own mug. “Thanks,” I said gratefully. The last inch of coffee in my mug had long since gone cold.

“What’s all this?” she asked, sitting next to me and peering at the papers.

“I was going through the books at the café yesterday,” I told her, pushing the list I had been reading away. “They… aren’t in the best shape.”

She nodded, looking solemn. “I figured as much.” She let out a barely audible sigh. “It’s been hard to stay on top of things, what with your grandfather and all. Your cousin tries, but she has her own career, and math was never
quite
her…” She gave me a weak smile. “Anyhow. How hopeless is it?”

“It’s not hopeless,” I assured her quickly. “Nothing is missing, or anything like that. Your payments have all been made on time. You’re close to being in the black for the year, which is pretty impressive, considering.”

She frowned down at the books. “Then, uh, what’s the problem?”

“There are tons of inefficiencies here,” I said, pulling the list toward me again. “Look at these inventories, Mimi. You’re ordering way more than you need here and here.” I pointed as I talked, hearing my voice get more and more animated. I couldn’t help it. There wasn’t much I liked better than trying to force a messy situation into neat and tidy submission. “You really need to cut out this delivery on Wednesdays from Jerry’s farm and add that stock to your weekly big order from the mainland.”

“But, sweetheart, we’ve ordered eggs from Jerry every year since we opened.”

I struggled not to roll my eyes. “But it’s not good business, Mimi—”

She patted my hand. “Sweetie, it’s the way we do things. We want to support the other businesses on the island. It’s the right thing.”

“Not if it loses you money!”

Her eyes narrowed a little as she searched my face, like she was trying to read something there. “It’s not hurting us, Iris. You said yourself that we’re in the black already, before the season has even started.”

“
Nearly
in the black—”

“If we don’t support the businesses on the island, how will they be able to support their employees? And if they can’t support their employees, who do you think is going to be buying our coffee and sandwiches before the tourists come in?”

“Mimi, that’s a very nice sentiment and all—”

Her eyes flashed, and when she spoke again, there was a tightness to her voice. “A rising tide lifts all boats, Iris. That might seem like a quaint sentiment to you, but it’s a fact of life when you live on this island. We’re on our own out here. All we have is each other.”

I felt chastised. It was clear from her tone that she thought I was being condescending, not to mention unfeeling. And maybe that was true. But it was hard to wrap my mind around this mentality. No matter what these people said about community and relying on each other, at the end of the day, the only way you kept the lights on was by making good business decisions. I knew that better than anyone.

“I was just trying to help.”

Mimi brushed a strand of hair from my forehead, her soft palm smoothing over my skin as she went. It was instinct to close my eyes at her touch. It was so familiar, the feel of her work-worn but surprisingly soft and smooth skin against my temple. “I know, sweetheart. I appreciate it, I do. Your grandfather and I just do things a little differently, that’s all. And it’s important to us.” She looked down at the pile of papers. “All of that is beside the point. You came here to relax, Iris. Not wake up at the crack of dawn to work on my books.”

Her hand slipped from my forehead to my shoulder, and I leaned into her a little. “Numbers are relaxing for me.”

She laughed. “Are you sure you’re related to me?”

“Nice, Mimi.” But it was impossible not to smile when she laughed like that.

“I mean it, Iris. I forbid you to spend this entire trip working. I know that Posey can use your help until school gets out, but I’m not going to let you overdo it. You came here to heal, sweetheart.” She peered into my face, her brow wrinkling in concern. “I’m not sure exactly what led you here, Iris. But I have a feeling you could use some pampering.”

I blinked and looked away, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. Just like my grandmother to see through all my bullshit bravado. “You don’t have to talk to me about it,” she added softly. “Whatever it is. Of course, you
can
—I’d love to help you, Iris.”

“It’s not… I’m fine, Mimi. Like you said, I just need to relax a little.”

She watched me for a long moment. “Well. I’m here to talk if you ever want to. Okay?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. It was the most maternal attention I’d had in years. What did it say about my own mother that I was getting it here with Mimi instead of with her?

“Enough of that,” she said, her voice taking on the brisk tone I associated with her. “Let’s do something together today, shall we? We could go visit your grandfather. Maybe have a nice meal out?”

I wanted to see Pops. I really did. But thoughts of the ferry had me swallowing hard. “I was going to go back to the café this morning—” Her glare kept me from finishing the sentence.

“What did I just say about pampering?” she asked, and I suppressed a shiver. She had this way of talking that physically compelled you to follow her instructions. Something about the set of her shoulders, the flash in her eyes. It had always been that way. She was the only person I knew, and that included my father, who could make grown men cower
without
raising her voice.

“Spending the day together sounds good,” I said quickly, relieved when she smiled. “Really good.”

“Excellent. Why don’t you go get ready, and I’ll meet you down here in half an hour.”

I jumped up from the table, dropping a quick kiss on her cheek before scurrying upstairs. That was the thing about my grandmother—she always got her way in the end.

* * *

“
I
sn’t this a lovely day
?” my grandmother asked, looking around the hillside with something like wonder on her face.

“It’s great,” I said, trying to smooth my hair for the hundredth time.

“You’re a terrible liar, Iris,” she said, linking her arm through mine. “Anyone can see you’re miserable. Look around you, child! Look at that sky! Look at that gorgeous blue water!”

“It’s a little tricky to see with this wind stinging my eyes, Mimi,” I said, sounding a bit whiny, even to my ear.

“Oh, it’s not that windy. Besides, can’t you just smell the water on the air?”

I didn’t want to point out that the Lake Michigan water, unlike salt water, didn’t actually smell like anything from a distance, but I bit my tongue. She had that look on her face, the one I had seen on all the islanders I’d encountered at one time or another. The one that meant they were completely enraptured with this little rock, and it would be useless to say a single word against it.

“Come on,” she said, pulling me along. “We’re nearly there.”

I let my gaze wander up the hill and had to bite back a groan. I wasn’t sure what her definition of nearly was, but it was certainly different from mine. The hotel would have to be situated at the very top of the hill, of course. With the wind stinging my face and the steep incline of the road, I wasn’t exactly feeling pampered. And it was more than a little humbling that of the two of us, I was the one out of breath. My grandmother, decades my senior, seemed to positively bound up the hill.

“Come on, Iris. The eggs Benedict at the Big Hotel is worth the walk. Best breakfast on the island.”

“Pops made the best breakfast on the island,” I mumbled, but I slipped my hand into hers and tried to keep up as she led the way up the hill to the Big Hotel. It wasn’t actually called that, of course, but everyone on the island referred to it that way and always had. Of the island’s many inns, hotels, and bed and breakfasts, the Ottawa Hotel was the most grand and, obviously, the largest. Situated on the island’s bluff, it could be seen from everywhere in the town and harbor. The Ottawa had been keeping watch over the island for more than a hundred years, entertaining presidents and auto barons and various members of the rich and famous looking for an escape as far back as the gilded age. My parents and I had stayed there, once, back when we used to visit the island every summer. My father decided he’d had enough of spending his vacation in his mother-in-law’s spare room. When he put his foot down and demanded we stay in a hotel, it was only natural that he picked the swankiest place on the island. He had then proceeded to spend the week grilling everyone there, from the manager to the housekeeping staff, on the operation of the hotel, the expense of running it in the winter, the profit margin for the previous quarter. He had never been able to turn off his developer’s brain, even on this little island in the middle of nowhere.

“There now,” Mimi said once we were seated. “This is worth a bit of a hike, isn’t it?”

The dining room
was
beautiful, like something from a book on the gilded age. Filling the room with natural light, an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling picture windows looked out over the bluff and the bay far below. The tables were dressed with crisp white linens, real china, and cut-glass vases filled with flowers, and real crystal chandeliers hung from the towering ceilings.

“Do you remember when I would bring you and Posey here for tea when you were little?”

I grinned at the thought. Mimi always made those afternoons out to be the biggest deal. We would get all dressed up in our nicest things, our grandmother included, and then stop in town to have our nails painted or our hair curled. It was only us girls, Mimi, Posey, and me. Our precious time, as she used to call it.

“As if I would forget that. Those are my favorite memories of the island.”

“I have a lot of happy memories of you on the island,” she murmured, reaching over to pat my hand. “You always belonged here a great deal more than you realized, Iris.”

I was saved from having to argue by the arrival of Zane, who managed the restaurant here at the Big Hotel. “Rose,” he said happily, swooping down to kiss her cheek. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room.” He winked at me, “No offense, Iris.”

I grinned. I didn’t know my cousin’s boyfriend all that well, but I liked him already.

“I’m in perfect agreement, Zane,” I said with a wink.

“Your restaurant looks fantastic,” she told him. “Look at those peonies! I can’t believe they’re blooming this big in Jerry’s hot house already.”

He met my eye, and I got the distinct impression that the peonies had not, in fact, come from Jerry’s—or anywhere else on the island. But he obviously had the good sense not to say so to my grandmother.
I definitely like him
, I thought, hiding my smile with my napkin.

“And are those new sconces?” she continued, oblivious. “I don’t remember those.” She nodded at him approvingly. “Very nice, Zane. You have a wonderful eye.”

“This is why I love it when you come to visit, Rose. You appreciate me.” He laughed a little, rolling his eyes. “Much more than I can say for the stuffy buddies who run this place.”

“They may own this place,” she said, leaning forward and lowering her voice. “But you run it. He who runs the dining room runs the whole shebang. That’s what Francis and I always said.”

Something caught Zane’s eye across the room because he straightened. “Sorry, ladies, duty calls. I have mimosas on the way for you, and your waiter will be here in a second.” He kissed Mimi’s cheek once more, waved to me, and was off across the room.

“That boy is a wonderful manager,” Mimi said, watching him as he greeted a table of well-dressed ladies—probably VIP guests from the hotel, if I was guessing. “I’m sorry your grandfather and I never had the chance to hire him. Things probably would have been a lot different at Rose’s if he’d been in the family before Francis’s heart attack.”

“Well, he’s not technically in the family now, Mimi. He and Edward are just dating.”

She scoffed. “He and Eddie are made for each other. Everyone can see that.”