"That's fair."
Juliet glanced toward the back door. "Should we put Eileen out of her misery and tell her I'm staying?"
"No, let's enjoy a little peace for a while. If we tell her we've decided to make a go of things, she'll be planning weddings and christenings before we can blink."
Juliet blanched. "Oh, I'm not sure I'm ready for that."
"Don't worry, I'm not either."
But one day I would be, and I knew with bone-deep certainty that Juliet would be the woman I'd want to marry and have children with.
Chapter Nineteen
Juliet
The November menu for the supper club was giving me more trouble than I'd expected. The problem was the fish course. I'd been happy with the cured salmon for weeks, had written it into the plan and defended it against Eileen's skepticism. Now I was sitting at the kitchen table at ten in the morning, looking at it written on the page and feeling totally uninspired.
Cured salmon with crème fraîche and dill. It was fine. It was perfectly fine. That was the problem. There was nothing exciting about it.
I crossed it out and wrote crab bisque underneath.
"You've changed it again," Eileen said without looking up from the sink.
"How do you know?"
"You've been huffing over it for ten minutes, and I heard you scribbling."
"The salmon was too safe."
"The salmon was good."
"Good isn't enough for a two-hundred-dollar-a-head supper club."
Eileen turned around and dried her hands on the tea towel. She came to the table and looked at what I'd written. She stood there for a moment, lips pursed.
"I suppose bisque is easier to execute for a large group," she conceded. "One big pot, rather than lots of fussy plates."
"Yes." I picked up my pen. "It's better."
She went back to the sink. I looked at the notebook. Chestnut soup, crab bisque, braised short rib, cheese, apple tarte tatin. Damn. Now I had to do something about the soup. Two rich dishes to start the meal would fill people up too soon.
I turned to look out of the window, hoping to find inspiration in the clear morning sky. I'd always thought of myself as a summer person, but I found I liked the almost silvery light of a cooler November sky. From this vantage point, I could see all the way down to the lower vines.
Ramon was walking the eastern block alone, checking on the state of the vines. Nate had planned to be out there with him, but instead he was locked in his study working through a stack of contracts his assistant had sent from his offices in L.A.
I returned to the menu, unsure what to do about the chestnut soup. It had been one of the dishes I was excited about. Perhaps I should keep it and lose the crab bisque. There were plenty of other fish dishes I could use. As I agonized over it, Eileen received a notification on her phone. She looked up, surprised.
"Seems we have a visitor."
Without elaborating, she set down the frying pan she'd been trying to scrub clean and left the room. I heard her go to the foot of the stairs and call up to Nate. A moment later, his footsteps thundered down the stairs.
When Eileen returned to the kitchen, she shot me a strange look.
"Who's the visitor?" I asked.
"Your mother."
I blinked in surprise. She'd known I was here for weeks. Why had she suddenly decided to turn up unannounced? It went against everything she'd drummed into me about good manners.
