“She was great,” he reassured her, and he meant it. “I’m glad she’s looking out for you.”
“Does that mean she didn’t scare you off?”
Scare him off? That was laughable. He was so taken with her, when Remi had texted last night to see if he’d made any progress on his list, he’d wanted to share his happiness with the sister who had sent him to the island. He’d sent Remi a few of the pictures they’d taken with the caption Made a new friend. Flew a kite and ate a sundae. See? I’m doing your list. Love you. He’d been forced to endure a mini inquisition, and while he hadn’t responded to most of her questions, he’d given her a little something to chew on—Her name is Abby, and we met when she was out for a run. I’m having breakfast with her tomorrow morning. He’d never talked to Remi about any of the women he went out with, and the fact that he wanted to tell her about Abby was not lost on him.
“Let’s put it this way: I was so anxious to see you today, I was up at dawn, read the newspaper twice, and was still so pumped with adrenaline, I went for a quick jog on the beach.” He pressed his lips to hers and said, “It’s going to take a lot more than a protective sister to keep me away from you.”
Later that afternoon, Aiden stood on the makeshift scaffolding he and Abby had made using ladders and wide planks of wood, wiping cobwebs from the rafters of the Bistro and watching Abby wiggle her hips to the music playing on her father’s boom box. She and Cait were removing wallpaper across the room. They’d been cleaning all day, and neither of them had complained even once. He liked getting to know Cait as Abby was. She was interesting and careful, what he called a watcher, someone who observed for a while before letting her guard down.
Abby glanced over her shoulder with an expression that was tentative and somehow also full of hope and desire. He had no idea how she could pull all of that off with a single glance, but that hope reminded him of something he’d read and wanted to share with her.
“Hey, Abs, I forgot to tell you that I read about the Best of the Island Restaurant Competition in the Island Times this morning. Have you thought about entering?”
“No, but have I told you that I like that you read the newspaper, even though it’s as outdated as Myspace?”
“Are you saying I’m old?”
She and Cait laughed.
“No,” Abby said. “My father used to scour the newspaper every morning and get his fingers all inky.”
“Don’t knock the ink,” he said. “It’s a relaxing way to start the day.”
“By the time you leave the island, you’ll have a whole new concept of relaxation.”
“I bet you both will.” Cait tossed a piece of wallpaper onto the pile at their feet.
Aiden chuckled.
“Deirdra has definitely rubbed off on you,” Abby said to Cait as she peeled off another strip of wallpaper.
“What do you think about the competition, Abs?” Aiden asked.
“It costs a small fortune to enter, and it’s only four weeks away. I’ll never be ready in time.” The competition was held the week before Memorial Day, and the winner would be announced Thursday morning, before the crowds arrived for the holiday weekend.
The entry fee was only seven hundred dollars, which told him something about Abby’s finances, spurring questions about how she was going to afford the start-up costs to launch the restaurant. If her finances were that tight, she could definitely use the advertising that came with the grand prize.
“The restaurant only has to be aesthetically pleasing when the judges come through. You don’t have to be open to the public or even fully staffed to enter,” he said, parroting what he’d read. “It’s basically a tasting competition judged by four food critics out of Boston and New York.”
“I don’t know. There are so many things to consider, like how all of this hard work is going to turn out and whether the community will embrace a reopening, or if our mom ruined that for us.” Confidence rose in Abby’s eyes, and she said, “Don’t get me wrong. I hope people love the restaurant and my cooking, and I’m determined not to fail. But what if I’m wrong and I can’t rekindle my father’s magic? What if the magic of the restaurant died with him?”
“Trust me, Abby,” he said. “You have your own brand of magic. I didn’t know your father, but I can’t imagine anyone lighting up a room the way you do.”
Cait looked curiously at him, and Abby looked a little dreamy-eyed, but he was only being honest. He’d seen businesses made or broken by attitudes. If Abby’s cooking was half as good as her personality, she had a winner on her hands.
“I mean it, Abs. You don’t have to be your father. Be yourself.”
“I appreciate that, and I feel like I”—she looked at Cait—“we can really do this. But I think I need to give it a year before I try to win a competition, especially the biggest one on the island. I’m still kind of in the Holy cow, I’m really doing this stage.”
Abby was too passionate about the restaurant to half-ass it. There was no way she’d make it anything less than the best it could be. He needed her to see that this could be the opportunity she needed to put the Bistro on the map, but Remi’s voice trampled through his mind—Just be Aiden . . . not Aiden the investor and billionaire—reminding him to take off his business hat and be a regular guy. He sucked at being a regular guy. How was he supposed to turn off instincts that were as innate as breathing? Instincts that could help Abby and keep her from making mistakes? She needed what winning the competition could offer.
Doing his best to put on his regular-guy hat, he said, “I thought you might be interested since, according to the article, the winner will be featured on the front page of the Island Times and in the Best of segment of the Cape Cod Times. The winner also gets six ad spots in the Island Times over the twelve months following the competition, and their logo and the Best of banner will be featured on the Silver Island website and the Times website. That’s a lot of free advertising.”
“I know, but as much as I believe in myself, paying a big entry fee and possibly not winning won’t do anything good for me. I’d be known as the restaurant that didn’t win the competition. My parents never bought into competitions or any of that type of thing. My father built this business on word of mouth. The Bistro doesn’t even have a logo,” Abby said as she pulled off another strip of wallpaper.
Aiden was trying not to push, but he believed in her and couldn’t bite his tongue without making one last effort to open her eyes to the realities of running a business in today’s marketplace. “Yes, but your father was running the restaurant when the island was much smaller and just starting to grow,” he said as he climbed down the ladder. “He got in on the ground floor of the biggest developmental years the island has ever seen, and the restaurant lost all of that traction when your mother was running it. You’re starting from a different jumping-off point. It’s a different world. You can’t rely on word of mouth the way he did.”
“He’s right,” Cait said, tossing another strip onto the pile. “Even in the tattoo industry, we need to have a presence everywhere—online, in bars, local businesses . . .”