Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1)

by Rachel Schurig

  “What, no dessert?” I asked sarcastically. The feast he’d put together was totally restaurant-worthy, far beyond what you’d expect for the Friday night social gathering at the senior center. He grinned at me, pulling a piece of tin foil from a platter of cookies.

  “They’re not warm, but they should be okay.”

  “Are those cherry fudge?”

  “Rose’s recipe,” he confirmed.

  I inched my fingers toward the tray. “Those are my favorites.”

  “I know. That’s why I made them.”

  I looked up at him, searching his face. “Are we eating here?”

  Apparently, the disappointment in my voice was evident. David grinned. “Not a chance. I have extras of everything back at my place.” His eyes darkened. “If you don’t mind eating there, that is. We could go to a restaurant.”

  “And miss out on all of this?” I gestured at the food, but I think he knew I was referring to a whole lot more than that. A growing noise near the doors distracted me from the way his eyes kept dipping to my lips. “I think the dinner guests are coming in.”

  David’s eyes widened a little. “Do you mind leaving without saying goodbye to your grandparents?”

  “Why? Worried the little old ladies will fuss over you?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’m actually just impatient to get you out of this building so I can kiss you senseless.”

  Well, then.

  I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the back door. “Hurry!” he half-shouted in mock panic. “The little old ladies are coming!”

  I was giggling as we ran out into the cool night air. At least I was until he pushed me up against the concrete wall of the building and proceeded to keep his promise, kissing me until all sense left my head—and air left my lungs.

  “Thank God,” he whispered against my mouth when we finally came up for air. “You were killing me in there.”

  “I was killing you? You’re the one who was being all sexy, Mr. Chef.”

  He grinned. “You think I’m sexy when I’m cooking?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You know you are.”

  “Then let’s go back to my place, and I’ll cook whatever you want.”

  I grabbed the soft material of his T-shirt, pulling him closer. “We’ve done that already.”

  God, his eyes were so dark as he looked down at me. The heat of that gaze sent chills rushing down my spine. There was a promise there—a message that assured me I hadn’t imagined the sparks I’d felt earlier in the kitchen.

  “Then let’s try something we’ve never done before.”

  “Something we’ve never done?”

  He leaned his forehead against mine. “If I’m remembering my history correctly, we’ve actually made out quite a bit.”

  I had a sudden memory of us fumbling around in the back of his dad’s boat as teenagers, and let out a snort of laughter. “Indeed. You were rather good at it, too.”

  “You weren’t so bad yourself.”

  “So it sounds like we’re well practiced with the making out with each other thing.”

  “We should try something new for us.”

  I swallowed, suddenly feeling shy. “Like what?”

  He leaned in even closer so that his lips were right up against my ear. “I’ve never taken you to bed.”

  My knees went to jelly, and I clutched his forearms, hard, to keep myself upright. Had I thought sultry-cooking-in-the-kitchen David was insanely hot? He had nothing on dirty-whispers-in-the-ear David.

  “Iris?”

  I looked up into his eyes, still dark, still intense. But he was smiling. For a brief moment, he looked the way he had that day in the water, waiting for me to jump in and join him. A calm filled my chest, banishing any doubt or fear I might have felt, and I grinned. “Well, I think we should rectify that immediately.” Then I pressed my lips to his, pulling him closer, holding him as tightly as I knew how.

  We did go back to his place, eventually. But it was a long time before we ate dinner.

  Chapter 15

  It was a week before Posey cornered me at the restaurant. I had just gotten off the phone with OnTime, one of the biggest lifestyle magazines in Michigan, and gotten a provisional yes to my invitation for Rose’s opening night. So I was riding pretty high at the moment. In other words, my guard was down.

  “There you are!” she cried triumphantly, entering the little office off the kitchen and shutting the door behind her.

  “I’ve been at the restaurant all morning,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, and you’ve been surrounded by other people. By our boy cousins, more importantly. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Iris. Well, the game ends here. I want details, and I want them now.”

  “You’re as bad as the Libbies.” I closed my appointment book and tried to ignore the outraged grunt from my cousin.

  “I am a founding member of the Libbies,” she said. “Who do you think they learned their tenacity from?”

  I laughed. “The behavior of that group makes a lot more sense to me now.”

  “Iris!” she cried, collapsing in a chair across from me. “You have been avoiding being alone with me all week. Ever since your date. It’s not fair. You’re in the hottest relationship this island has seen in years, and you’re not sharing the details with me!”

  “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?”

  “Hey.” She pointed a baby-blue polished fingernail in my face. “This is a small town. We take our entertainment where we can get it.” Then she did the thing guaranteed to make me cave. She pouted. “Besides, I’m your cousin. Your best friend. I thought we shared everything.”

  “Fine.” I threw up my hands, laughing. “What do you want to know?”

  She sat up straighter in her chair. “Is it true you’ve been knocking boots all week?”

  “Posey!”

  “What? Mimi said you’ve only slept in your bed twice since your date last Friday.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “My own grandmother is spying on me now?”

  “Spill, Iris.”

  I lifted my head from my hands so I could look at her. The fascination with my relationship might be annoying, but that didn’t mean I wanted to miss her reaction. “Fine. I’ve been sleeping over at his place.”

  She didn’t disappoint in the reaction department, letting out a little whoop of excitement while punching the air. “I knew it! I knew there was still a spark between you two. So tell me! How is he?”

  “You are amazingly crude for a elementary school teacher.” She merely rolled her eyes and made herself comfortable in her chair.

  “David is… well, he’s perfect. I mean, that probably isn’t much of a surprise, right? He’s gorgeous and nice and actually really funny when he isn’t being grumpy.”

  “And the sex?”

  I grinned. “Even more perfect than his looks.”

  She laughed. “We should have opened a bottle of wine for this discussion.” She looked over her shoulder at the closed door. “Actually, I think an order came in this morning. Think Eddie would notice if I grabbed a bottle?”

  “I think Zane would.”

  She visibly shuddered a little. “He can be pretty scary when it comes to his dining room.”

  “Here.” I pushed a half-empty can across the desk toward her. “You can have a sip of my Diet Coke to cool yourself down.”

  “I’ll pass. So. What does this mean?”

  “What?”

  “You and David! What does it mean?”

  “We haven’t really… I mean, we’re just having fun, Posey.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to hear that nonsense. You’re head over heels. You should see the look on your face when you talk about him. And…”—she pointed at me again—“you should see the way he looks at you.”

  “How does he look at me?” I asked immediately.

  She laughed. “I mean, you have it so bad. Are you not seeing this?”

&nbs
p; I sighed, leaning back in my chair and picking up a pencil so I had something to occupy my hands. “I don’t know, Posey. I mean, he’s great. I haven’t felt like this about a guy since…” since him, I thought to myself. “Well, I don’t know when. He’s amazing. But… he lives here, you know?”

  “You could live here,” she said. “Nothing to stop you.”

  “I don’t have a job here.”

  She waved her hands dismissively. “You could find something to do.”

  “I don’t want to find any old thing to do, Pose. I was good at my job.” Until the end, at least. “I want to do something that makes me feel the same way, you know? Passionate. Accomplished.”

  “And you have to be a real estate developer in Chicago in order to feel that way?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Did I need to be a real estate developer in Chicago? Was it the specifics of the job that appealed to me? Or was it the way it made me feel? And could I find something else that made me feel the same way? Could I find it on this little island in the middle of nowhere?

  A sudden shiver ran down my spine. Was I seriously looking for ways to move here? Here? I had hated this island my entire life. What was I doing?

  Before I could express any of this to Posey, my phone rang. One look at the screen had me grinning like an idiot. David. “Remember what I said about your face?” I heard Posey ask, laughter in her voice, but I didn’t even care. I was already bringing the phone to my ear.

  “Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Good.” I could hear the smile in his voice, the sound sending little shivers across my skin and completely obliterating the worry that had seemed so important only a few seconds before. “What are you doing?”

  I glanced over at Posey who was making ridiculous kissing faces across the desk. “Trying to ignore my cousin,” I told him. “It’s not easy.”

  He laughed, the sound a rumble against my ear. “Tell her I said hi.”

  “David says hi,” I told her. “He also said to leave me alone so he could talk dirty to me.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “But it’s not a terrible suggestion.”

  Posey was laughing as she stood. “Tell him I said hi, and I wouldn’t mind hearing some of that dirty talk myself some time.” She blew me a kiss and left the office.

  “You know that’s going to get back to the Libbies in approximately three minutes, right?” he asked me.

  “Like they needed any encouragement,” I replied. “They have my grandmother spying on me.”

  He laughed again, and I couldn’t help smiling, even knowing that it rather proved Posey’s point about my sappy David expressions. “Well, if they’re all talking about us anyway, we might as well spend more time together,” he suggested. “Give them a little more to gossip about.”

  “I could deal with that.”

  “Excellent. Because I have plans for us this afternoon.”

  “You do?” The grin slipped a little. “Wait. Is it Friday? Are you going to make me bowl with retirees again?”

  “You loved senior bowling, admit it.”

  “Well, it did turn out pretty good for me,” I pointed out in my sultriest voice. David made a growling noise on the other end of the phone and I laughed.

  “Alas, no bowling tonight. I made them a bunch of pizzas and left instructions for your grandmother to put them in the oven in between games. I had something else in mind.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s something I want to show you.”

  “Ooh,” I murmured. “I was only joking about the dirty talking thing but if you insist…”

  He chuckled. “I’ll pick you up in an hour?”

  I looked around the office. I’d been neglecting my duties here. “Can we make it an hour and a half?”

  “Sure. See you then.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up the phone and looked around the room, feeling even better than I had after my call with OnTime. The voice in the back of my head was trying to remind me about Posey’s suggestion that I stay on the island, but I decided to ignore it. If David had something planned for us tonight, I was determined to enjoy it without worrying. Besides, there was still plenty of work to be done on the restaurant before the opening night next week.

  I decided to head over and check the inventory that had started to come in over the last few days. David and I had sat down with Edward and Zane on Monday to work out vendors and finalize the menu. We were going to stick with limited offerings for the first few weeks, some of Pops’s most popular dishes to keep it simple while we got on our feet. I knew that David was already making notes for changes and additions. I smiled to myself as I slipped behind the bar. He was so excited about this opportunity. It was fun to watch the way his face lit up when—

  My phone rang in my pocket and my smile grew. David. “Hey,” I said, answering without glancing at the screen. “Missed me already?”

  “Iris?”

  Shit.

  “Dad. Hi! What are you—I mean, what’s up? How are you?” Shit, shit. I couldn’t believe that I was this stupid. I’d been going to great lengths to avoid this conversation over the last few weeks.

  “What in the hell is going on, Iris?” he bellowed, loud enough to make me wince. “You haven’t touched base in weeks. You’re avoiding my calls. Your emails ignore all of my questions. Where are you?”

  “I’m still on the island—”

  “Why?” he cried. Damn it. He was angry. Really angry. I swallowed, a familiar swell of fear filling my chest. I had made it my mission in life to avoid the disappointment I now heard in his voice.

  “Dad, things have been—”

  “I’m coming to get you.”

  “What? No, Dad, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “There is obviously something going on with you, young lady.” For one blissful moment, I felt a rush of love for him. He cared about me. No matter how gruff he might be, there was clearly a deep well of paternal— “Since you can’t seem to get your own life under control,” he continued, bursting the bubble of happiness before it had a chance to expand, “I’m going to have to step in and get you back on track.”

  “Dad, stop.” I ran my free hand through my hair, wondering what on earth I could possibly tell him to get him to back off.

  “You stop, Iris. Stop whatever this is that has you avoiding your responsibilities.”

  “I don’t have any responsibilities at the moment, Dad.” My voice was sharper than I intended.

  “You have a responsibility to yourself,” he countered. “To your career. You need to get over this fear, or whatever it is, and come back to Chicago. Now.”

  I don’t want to go back to Chicago.

  The thought came to me so quickly, so unexpectedly, that it took my breath away. Where did that come from? Of course I wanted to go back to Chicago. Just not… immediately.

  “Dad, I’m fine, okay?” I told him, but my voice was shaking from the surprise of my Chicago revelation, and I knew he could hear it.

  “Iris, I’m not going to let you do this to yourself,” he said, his voice slightly more gentle. “I’m not going to let you throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for to end up wasting time on that God forsaken rock. I couldn’t stop your mother from throwing her life away, but I sure as hell am not going to let you do it, too.”

  “I’m not,” I cried, stung by his comparison to my mom. I wasn’t like her. Not at all. “Dad, I’m working, okay?”

  “Doing what? Surely, your grandmother’s books weren’t so bad that you still need to—”

  “Not on the books, Dad. I’m getting Rose’s reopened.”

  That stopped his tirade. My dad had always respected, even liked my grandparents’ restaurant. It was one of the few things on the island he could stand. “Food good enough to compete in the real world,” he would say, and my grandparents would bristle at the compliment.

  “Rose’s?”

  I released a breath. Maybe
this would get him off my back. “Yes, Dad. Rose’s. Edward and his boyfriend, Zane, want to get the place running again. So I’ve been helping with the renovation.”

  “What’s your target market?” I could hear the change in his voice, the transition from Kenneth Holder the angry, disappointed father to Kenneth Holder the developer.

  “There’s been a considerable amount of high-end development in the area.” I realized that my voice had taken on a similar tone, and I winced, not liking the sound of it for some reason. “You may have heard that Traverse City has a booming economy. The entire northwest shoreline is developing, in fact. The tourist dollars have great potential, along with an increase in niche upmarket industries such as wineries and cheese-making. Rose’s could be a draw for those tourists.”

  It was all true. In fact, it was exactly the spiel I had put together for the business plan when Edward and Zane applied for their loan. But I hated the sound of the words coming out of my mouth right now. I wasn’t doing this for tourism dollars or to break into the upmarket travel market. I was doing this for my cousins. For Mimi and Pops. For David. And maybe for myself.

  My dad fired off a few questions that I answered automatically. Profit margins and marketing budgets and all the things that made up the bulk of our conversations over the last few years. By the time we exhausted the subject, I think I actually convinced him that I was making a smart business move, staying here on the island.

  “What I don’t understand,” he said, his voice thoughtful, “is why you aren’t trying to monetize this.”

  “Monetize it?”

  “For the family, of course,” he said quickly. “Though the deal could help with your employability prospects greatly.”