Deirdra looked at Cait and said, “That means there’s something juicy going on between them, but she doesn’t want to share.”
“How can you tell?” Cait asked.
“Because when little Miss Warm and Fuzzy avoids people, she’s holding secrets. How long can you stay, Cait?”
“I have to go back Sunday for work.”
Abby looked up from where she was sweeping, glad Cait could stay a few days, and said, “You can stay with us at the house. As I mentioned, there’s an apartment above the garage. It’s fully furnished and even has a kitchen, although I’d rather you ate with us so we can get to know each other.”
“And we can ply Abby with alcohol to make her spill her secrets,” Deirdra said, earning a genuine smile from Cait.
Deirdra and Abby had talked last night about Cait. They had a million questions, but they agreed that if she showed up to help today, they wouldn’t grill her. Instead, they’d try to get to know her a little at a time, to help put her at ease.
Abby was surprised to see Deirdra jumping in to help clean, especially since she’d made several rhetorical remarks about having an offer on the table to sell the Bistro as is, but she was thankful just the same. They talked as they worked, tiptoeing around each other’s lives and breaking only to eat the pizza they’d ordered. They learned that Cait had worked at Wicked Ink for the last few years, had grown up in Connecticut, and hated pepperoni. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
Hours later, Deirdra collapsed into a chair and kicked her feet up on the chair beside her. “I’m fried. I haven’t done this much manual labor in forever.”
Cait leaned on the mop handle, looking as worn out as Deirdra.
As a cook, Abby was used to being on her feet for hours, but she’d forgotten how long it took to clean a restaurant. And this one needed deep cleaning. Some of the grime was so caked on, she wondered if her mother had ever wiped down the furniture after Abby had moved off the island. It was taking forever to clean between the grooves on each of the intricately carved café chairs. But it was worth it. The tile floor sparkled, and the warm wooden tabletops gleamed.
But that was only the tip of the iceberg. The grout in the floor needed repointing, the wallpaper needed to be scraped off, and the whole place needed to be painted. They hadn’t even begun tackling the windows and rafters, much less the kitchen, office, and bathrooms—although they did scrub one stall of the ladies’ room so they could use it. That morning she’d noticed that the patio needed repointing, and some of the stones needed to be replaced, too. The siding needed to be repaired and replaced in a few areas, and the whole building could use a good power washing. The overgrown bushes and broken fencing were projects in and of themselves. But none of that deterred her joy of watching the restaurant start blooming to life like a seedling finally seeing the sun.
“I feel like I have grime from head to toe. I want to take a shower and flop on the couch to get some of my work done. What do you say, Cait?” Deirdra asked.
“I’m good with that,” she said. “I’d like to lie down and read for a while. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“I don’t think any of us did,” Abby said. Her thoughts had bounced between her sisters, their mother, and Aiden all night. She should be exhausted like they were, but she felt invigorated and far too excited to flop on a couch. She pulled out her phone to check the time—4:40—and wondered if Aiden was still flying a kite. “I rode my bike here, and I’m not ready to flop just yet. Can I catch up with you guys in a little bit?”
“Going to find Aiden?” Deirdra waggled her brows.
There was no stifling her smile. “Maybe.”
“Abby, how do you know you can trust him?” Cait asked.
The question took Abby by surprise. “Well, he raised his younger sister, so that says a lot about him. And I highly doubt a creeper would set up breakfast on that patio out there with a white linen tablecloth and real china.”
Deirdra’s eyes opened wider. “He did that? See, Cait? I told you she had secrets to tell.”
“No secrets, but yes, he did. And then he jumped in to help me clean in his nice clothes. I don’t really know what to make of him yet, but there’s something about the way he listens and the things he says that make it easy to trust him. He’s in finance, so he has that kind of personality, you know? A little tightly wound and very much a gentleman. But I could tell there was a lot more to him. He knew the lyrics to all the songs on Dad’s favorite station, and he danced a little, twirling me around, and . . . I want to get to know him better and strip back some of those layers to see who he is. It’s not a big deal,” she said more casually than she felt.
Deirdra barked out a laugh. “I bet you’ll find a very big deal after you strip the layers off that man.”
Abby rolled her eyes.
“Whatever you do, be careful,” Cait said softly. “Lots of men know how to act to gain a woman’s trust while they spin a web around her. Once they’ve got her where they want her, that’s when they show their true colors.”
“I hear ya, girlfriend,” Deirdra said.
The warning in Cait’s eyes worried Abby. Had someone hurt her? Was that why she had scrutinized Aiden so closely? “Sounds like you’ve run into a few bad guys.”
Cait put the head of the mop in the bucket and said, “Haven’t we all?”
CHAPTER FOUR
AIDEN WAS ALL knotted up, like the damn kite lying in the sand beside his chair. He’d gotten so frustrated trying to get the kite to catch wind, he’d given up—and he was not a quitter. He was used to going after what he wanted, overcoming every obstacle, and surpassing every goal. The trouble was, he didn’t give a damn about the kite. The only thing he wanted to go after wasn’t a thing at all. She was a beautiful free spirit with the most stunning green eyes he’d ever seen. When Abby had stumbled into his arms, he’d gotten lost in those emotive eyes, swept up in the flecks of gold and amber in them, like sparks of hidden treasures, which was what she felt like in his arms. He wanted to bask in Abby’s carefree nature, get caught up in it and go wherever she took him. Before meeting her, he’d been this close to telling Remi he was done with this charade of a vacation and was heading back to work. But the prospect of spending time with Abby changed that.
If only it were that easy. He knew Abby needed time with Cait and Deirdra to figure out their new normal. He didn’t envy her position, and he had the strongest desire to help her weed through the mess her mother had left behind. But he wasn’t there to take over and lead her down wiser paths, which left him sitting on a beach with a book in hand, anxiously passing the hours until tomorrow morning, when he could see her again.
He tried again to focus on the horror novel Abby had recommended, wondering if she’d read it. He’d pegged her as more of a chick lit reader. He read a few pages, then gazed out at the water thinking about Abby’s smile and how much he’d enjoyed getting to know her and helping her in the Bistro. He looked down at the book again and couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat on a beach and read.
“Waiting for a boat to come in?” Abby asked as she walked up behind him.