“Okay, honey. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Hanging up, Mickey leaves her hand on the phone, needing an extra second, an extra breath, before she rises.
Wes nods to the review on her desk. “I think the Sun likes us.”
“They like us,” Mickey says. “But they love you.”
He stretches his mouth into a crooked grin. “Is that why you’re hiding up here? Because you’re jealous?”
“Why does everyone think I’m hiding?” Mickey tosses the pencil back onto her desk and pushes her hair behind her ears. “And I’m not jealous,” she says. “I just came up to … you know…” She gestures lamely at the cluttered surface. “Organize.”
“Organize later, Beautiful,” Wes says. “There are about a hundred people downstairs waiting to buy you a drink.”
“So I heard.” Perspiration prickles the back of her neck. She spins her long strawberry-blond hair into a twist and holds it up, wanting to get air on her damp skin. Why can she never remember to keep a clip in her drawer?
He pushes off the file cabinet and comes around the desk. “You tell your mom about the review?”
“Nina did before I could.” Mickey lets the heavy coil of hair drop to her shoulders again, a deep sigh releasing with it. The mention of Piquant’s manager reminds her, giving her a perfect opener—And speaking of things I need to tell people—but the words stick in her throat. As much as Mickey vowed to confess their money troubles to him tonight, this news of Cora getting married in six days might mean having to table the truth for a while longer.
“Mick…” Wes narrows his gaze. His voice drops an octave. “Is everything okay?”
She picks up the pencil again and resumes a steady drumbeat against her fingertips. “My grandmother’s getting married.”
“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”
“Neither did I.”
“But I thought you guys were close.”
“We are,” she says, feeling suddenly as if she’s on some kind of trial, the urge to defend herself overwhelming. “I’ve just been so busy. First trying to get the restaurant open and then trying to make it work.” She’s tapping the pencil faster now, the reality of all she’s put aside to get Piquant off the ground hitting her at once, and that it might be for nothing. “I can’t just pick up and run off like I used to, and I didn’t exactly think Grams would go and get engaged—”
“Hey…” Wes eases the pencil from her hand and pulls her into his arms. Mickey falls against his chest and pulls in a hard breath. “So when’s the wedding?” he asks.
“This Saturday.”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“You told her you’ll be there, right?”
“Actually … I haven’t decided yet.”
Wes leans back abruptly, narrowing his dark eyes on her. “Mick. As long as we’ve been together, I know exactly two things about your life growing up: your grandmother and that house.” Mickey wrinkles her lips in a sheepish smile—he’s not exaggerating. “You have to be there.”
She spreads her hands over his chest and slides her fingers through the two rows of buttons that march up the front of his jacket. “Grams says I can bring a date…”
But when she looks up again, Wes’s dark eyes are strained, lines of worry carved deep in his heavy brow. “You know I’d go with you in a heartbeat, but that’s going to be tough to swing on short notice. There’s no way I can get Pete up to speed in time to take over the kitchen for me.”
Even as disappointment blooms in her chest, Mickey manages to rearrange her lips into a stoic smile. Bringing Wes to Beech House, to the place where she first learned to love cooking, has been a dream of hers since the first time they cooked together. But even if Wes doesn’t know the danger they’re in financially, he’s right: His brilliant dishes are the reason people are filling their seats—having him gone for even a few days would be disastrous.
Still tears prickle behind her eyes as she worries the curved edge of his collar, not yet daring to meet his gaze.
“Next time, okay?” Wes tips her face up to his, his dark eyes holding hers. “I promise.”
Even as he kisses her deeply, her body softening under his mouth like butter left out, a knot of dread cinches in Mickey’s stomach, the possibility that after Wes learns she may have mismanaged them into bankruptcy, there won’t be a next time.
“I should get back downstairs,” he says, pulling away. “Just don’t stay up here all night, okay?” Wes raps his knuckles for emphasis on the desk as he rounds it. “By the way…” Almost to the stairs, he slows, pivots back. “I thought we were paid up with Sullivan.”
Their seafood vendor. Shit.
Dread sprints across her scalp. Mickey swallows, praying her voice won’t crack. “Why?”
“They never made today’s delivery. We had to eighty-six the prawns. You might want to call them.”
She manages an agreeable nod, waiting until he’s down the stairs before she falls into her chair and drops her forehead into her hands.
Almost fifteen years working in restaurants and Mickey knows all the ways to cut corners: Smaller buns so guests don’t notice that you’ve shaved an ounce or two off their lamb burgers. Up-charging the cheap wine. Replacing twelve-inch plates with eleven-inch ones. Putting fewer berries on the spinach salad. But their money troubles are way past that. And even if the alterations might save them a few bucks, she would never stoop to tricks.
Her gaze drifts back to the phone and her mother’s news, and the thought of returning to the warm hug of Beech House fills her tangled heart with calm.
Maybe getting away for a few days wouldn’t be such a bad thing?
After all, hadn’t the Vineyard and the sanctuary of Beech House always been that for her all those summers growing up—escape? A place to call home when life with Hedy was always up in the air, her mother constantly moving them from apartment to apartment?
Maybe the security of home is just what Mickey needs right now.
Leaning back, she closes her eyes, letting the possibility grow real, and images of Beech House take shape: Rambling rooms fragrant with the smell of the sea, wood floors gritty with beach sand, doorknobs and drawer pulls sticky with watermelon juice and slick with suntan lotion. A kitchen bright with sunlight, bouquets of just-picked herbs fanned out on the counter. Mickey’s grandmother Cora pulling down pots and drawing out ingredients from the pantry and the fridge, and setting them down on her beloved kitchen island. Sticks of butter to soften, heads of garlic to roast. Cora’s cookbook—pages splattered with oil and floured fingerprints—spread open to a new recipe, the day’s treasure map to undiscovered flavors …
Longing swells behind Mickey’s ribs. If only she could be that girl again, hiding in the warm, fragrant bubble of Beech House’s kitchen, where there was no problem that couldn’t be washed down with a slice of lemon meringue pie, or, as she grew older, a foamy pitcher of lobster daiquiris.
One upon a time, Beech House was the one place heartbreak and hurt couldn’t stick. Water to the world’s oil—the two refusing to mix. All these years later, does she dare to think its healing magic might still work?