Page 26 of Windward Hearts

“Yes, you’re all right. I know you’re right. But I think I’m going to need some moral support on any further quests, because even the slightest glimpse of white lace is starting to make me break out in a stress sweat.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t stop us from offering moral support if you tried, you goof.”

“Yeah, I knew that,” Diana said, still looking as though it pleased her to hear it.

Hope, meanwhile, was grinning broadly.

“I get why Miriam misses coming to book club so much,” she said, chuckling. “You guys… you’re all pretty awesome, aren’t you?”

“We are,” June said cheerfully. “But it’s always nice when someone else knows it too.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jared wiped down the counters of the kitchen in his restaurant, thinking back, as he often did, to how onerous he had found this task at various points in his career. The dread with which he approached clean-up had always been a good litmus test for whether a certain job was a good fit or not. When cleaning up felt like a good conclusion to a good day filled with good food, the job was, in a word, good.

When he looked at his counters and thought that it might be easier to just set them on fire than do all the wiping and tidying, because, well, fire killed germs, right?

Yeah, that was a sign that it was time to move on, to find something better.

It was satisfying nearly every day at Riverstone Kitchen. Anything else was a blip, the normal frustrations that came with any job. A day when he’d had to peel like a thousand cloves of garlic, for example, and when he wanted nothing more than the longest, hottest shower of his life. That weeklong stretch last winter when it had been so bitterly cold that anything that had kept him from being piled under five to seven blankets received his fiercest resentment.

But mostly, it was like today. Satisfying. The people of his town had been fed. His kitchen was in order. He only had one more pickup order, and then he could put a check mark on the day.

Very, very satisfying.

And, he thought, looking around, something he could probably handle himself. He went into the walk-in refrigerator, where his kitchen staff was starting on some prep work for tomorrow.

“Hey, Isolde, Manny,” he said to the pair who were laughing over something while they chopped a massive pile of celery for mirepoix. “I think we’re covered for the rest of the night. You guys can head out.”

“Thanks, chef,” Isolde said at once, brushing her hands over her apron. “If I hurry, I might get to see my grandkids before my daughter puts them to bed for the night.”

Manny, a much younger guy, grinned at his co-worker. “We live very different lives. If I hurry, I might get to take out this cute girl for a drink.”

Once they were away from the food, Isolde reached out and ruffled his hair.

“Just you wait, young buck,” she teased. “One day, your bones will ache and the idea of going out after work will seem like a fool’s errand.”

“Yeah, that’s why I have to enjoy my youth while I can,” Manny replied.

Jared smiled, listening to their playful banter vanish into quiet as he finished up the last of the celery, then dumped it into one of the large containers they kept precisely for holding the vast quantities of prepped food that the kitchen required to run smoothly every day.

When he went back into the main area of the kitchen a few minutes later, he saw that there was a woman, peeking her head into the workspace. He was about to call out an apology for the apparently abandoned restaurant when he realized something.

He recognized those chestnut waves.

Jared was not usually a prankster, and especially not in the kitchen, which was typically full of fire and blades. Not a good environment for anything but the most professional demeanor. But the stoves were off and the knives were all washed and away.

So he indulged a little.

He walked quietly, which was easy on floors covered in shock-absorbing rubber mats, until he was only an arm’s length behind Hope. And then, in a slightly louder voice than usual, he asked, “Lost?”

It might have made him a bad person how hard he laughed when she jumped and let out a little squeak of alarm. When she turned, her hand was pressed to her chest and she was glaring, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“That was mean,” she accused.

“Sorry, Hope,” he said, still chuckling. “I couldn’t help myself. Besides, with our history, it’s totally normal for me to think that you were lost and in need of rescuing… again.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. It was absolutely adorable.