Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series (8 page)

Brittany turned around. “Okay.
That’s nice.”

Trey’s price to do the website
was more than reasonable, with an added price to create a logo based
on the neon sign that had stood in front of Rossetti’s for decades.
Serena wrote some text for the About section of the website and gave
Trey some old black and white photos from Rossetti’s glory days.

Brittany created a Facebook page,
linking to the website and featuring the old photographs. She started
posting the lunch special every day and sent it to all of her eight
hundred friends.

By February, business had picked
up so much at Rossetti’s that Serena had to add another cook and
three more waitresses. The
Luna Bay News
ran a story about the
“new” Rossetti’s, which was picked up by the newspapers along
the coast.

Old Joe played piano Monday
through Thursday. He was a Rossetti’s institution and young people
started taking photos of him with their phones and posting them on
Facebook. Serena started hiring small groups to play Friday and
Saturday nights, and Brittany promoted that on Facebook.

When Serena got home every night,
exhausted, Nonna greeted her with a brandy or glass of wine. They sat
at the kitchen table for a while, talking about the day behind them.

“
Oh, Nonna,” Serena said one
night. “I totally forgot to show you how to do text.”

Nonna smiled. “It’s okay,
honey. I figured it out for myself.”

“
Oh,” Serena said. “Are you
doing a lot of texting?” Serena wondered who her grandmother could
be texting. She couldn’t imagine that the senior crowd was doing
much of that.

“
A little. I text with Jeff and
a couple of other people.”

“
Jeff?” Serena was more than
a little surprised.

“
Yes, Jeff. He’s Italian, you
know. He even speaks Italian. He sends me texts asking how I’m
doing. And I text him back.”

Jeff had texted Serena a few
times since the last time she’d seen him. He asked how she was and
she texted back that she was fine.

“
He’d like to come for a
visit,” Nonna said. “And I told him yes. I want to see him.”

“
I want to see him too,”
Serena said, decisively. “I’d really like to see him.”

“
Good,” Nonna said. “Because
he’s coming this weekend.”

Serena wasn’t expecting that.
It was one thing to say she wanted to see him, another to have him
actually coming that weekend.

“
He’s staying here,” Nonna
said before Serena could ask.

“
Okay. Good,” Serena said.
She guessed it was good. She really didn’t know the status of
anything with Jeff. But Nonna seemed to like him, and that was
something. Definitely something.

Chapter
Six

On Friday night, Serena was
sitting at the bar sipping on a glass of chardonnay when Jeff walked
in. She didn’t see him come in, and suddenly he was sitting on the
barstool beside her. He ordered a martini.

“
Hey, stranger,” he said.

“
Hey,” she said. “Nonna
told me you were coming this weekend. I was getting ready to go
home.”

“
I was thinking after we leave
here, that we could go to the beach. It’s a full moon tonight.”

“
Okay,” she said. “She
hadn’t been to the beach in a while since she’d been spending
every second of her day at Rossetti’s. “I guess I need to let
Nonna know I’ll be in late.”

“
I’ve already told her,”
Jeff said.

“
Oh. Well of course you have
since you’re text buddies now.”

“
Does that bother you?” he
asked.

Serena realized she did feel a
little jealous about Nonna’s relationship with Jeff, but then
thought how ridiculous that was.

“
Of course not. I’m glad you
and Nonna seem to have hit it off.” She smiled at him then.

They finished their drinks and
left Rossetti’s. Jeff led her to his car and they drove to the
beach. Jeff took Serena’s hand and they walked along the shoreline
with the full moon shining its light down on them. The tide brought
the waves, over and over again. At one point, Jeff stopped and put
his arms around Serena and kissed her. She kissed him back. She
didn’t realize how lonely she was, how stressed out she had been,
until that moment.

“
I miss you being in Atlanta,”
Jeff said. Serena found that sort of hard to believe, given how
noncommittal their relationship had always been. She didn’t even
know if Jeff saw other people, but assumed that he did.
“Bridgewater’s is different now. They’ve dropped the Steak
Daniel. That was my favorite.”

“
They had to do that since they
fired him,” she said.

“
That manager, what is his
name? He told me how sorry he was for you to leave. He said he
offered you the head chef job.”

“
That’s true, he did. But I
had already committed to come back to Luna Bay and work at Rossetti’s
by then.”

“
I know. Your grandmother told
me,” he said.

“
How have you been, Jeff? How’s
it going for you at the firm?”

He stopped walking again and
turned to her. “It’s crazy busy, like always. I work late almost
every day. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Wondering if this
is really what I want my life to be. Working until insane hours of
the night, going to clubs afterward just to try to kill the stress.
Getting up in the morning to do it all again. I’ve really been
giving it a lot of thought.”

“
Didn’t you go to law school
to be a lawyer?” Serena asked. “I mean, I thought that’s what
you wanted. To be a partner one day and all of that.”

“
I thought that’s what I
wanted, but now I don’t think that’s what I want,” Jeff said.

“
What would you do if you
didn’t do that?” Serena said.

“
I’m not sure,” he said.

They walked a while longer, then
headed back to the car. Once inside, Jeff leaned over and kissed
Serena.

“
I wish we could go somewhere,”
he said.

“
There’s nowhere to go but
back to the cottage,” Serena said. And Jeff headed that way. They
tiptoed into the cottage when they got there.

“
Nonna’s asleep, I’m sure,”
Serena whispered. “I’ll get us some wine and we can sit outside.”

They sat in the chairs on the
porch and Serena poured glasses of wine. The lantern was turned down
low so it only gave out a faint light. After a few minutes, Serena
picked up an old quilt she had brought out and suggested they walk
around the yard. The very back of the yard was lined with Leyland
cypress trees, which provided a woodsy shelter. The trees were
planted four deep and if you walked into the center, you could not be
seen. You were in your own forest. She laid the quilt on the ground
and they sat down. The cypress stood like soldiers, tall and
majestic, around them. The full moon shone on the tops of the trees,
but could not penetrate the closely planted cypress, the forest.

Serena was hungry, but not for
food. Jeff put his arm around her and nuzzled her neck. She turned
and met his lips with hers. They teased each other with their tongues
while they slipped out of their pants. Serena pushed Jeff back on the
quilt and climbed on top of him. She had never done that before with
him. She guided him into her and began to slowly rock her body. Back
and forth. Back and forth. Jeff reached out to touch her as she
rocked and she cried out in pleasure. She bent down to kiss him as he
groaned.

Afterward, Jeff put his jacket
around Serena. It was a warm night for February but still had a
chill. She lay beside him and stared up to the tops of the cypress.

“
Does Nonna know you’re
here?” she asked him.

“
Yes. I went to the cottage
first. She told me I should go to Rossetti’s to find you. She said
she was tired and not to worry about getting in late.”

Serena began to wonder if Nonna
had an agenda about her and Jeff.

Serena and Jeff lay on the quilt
for a while before getting dressed and going inside to bed.

“
I’m sorry, Jeff, but I’ve
got to work,” she told him the next morning over coffee and
breakfast made by Nonna.

“
I know. It’s okay. Elena and
I are going to spend the day together.”

Serena looked at her grandmother,
who had a smug smile on her face.

“
I’ll come to Rossetti’s
tonight. Don’t you have some music group playing there?”

“
How did you know that?”
Serena asked.

“
I saw it on Facebook,” Jeff
said. He and Elena laughed then. Was her grandmother on Facebook now?

“
Okay. That’s good. We’ll
see each other tonight then,” she said.

Serena worked all day. She worked
hard. And when the dinner crowd was finally gone, the after-hours
people started streaming in. Serena had hired a duo who sang blues
and popular songs, a good combination. She sat at the bar and ordered
a martini from Sandy while the couple set up. A few minutes later,
Jeff joined her and ordered a martini for himself.

“
You’ve done a good job with
this place,” he said.

“
Thanks. It’s been a lot of
hard work. A lot. I hope it pays off.”

“
Looks like it is paying off,”
Jeff said. “You’ve got a full house here.”

The duo started singing and she
and Jeff didn’t talk anymore because it was loud. People started
dancing in the area that Serena had created, a larger area than
before. Jeff got down from his stool and held his hand out to Serena.
“Let’s dance,” he said.

She took his hand and moved to
the dance floor. The duo sang “Angel Eyes” by Jeff Healey. It was
a very slow song, and Jeff put his hand at the small of her back and
he moved her slowly around the floor. He leaned down to kiss her at
one point. Serena felt in that moment that she could fall in love
with Jeff—this new Jeff—but she knew that was very dangerous. She
really didn’t fully trust him. Until recently, he had never shown
any personal interest in her. The last thing she needed was to get
involved with Jeff only to have him lose interest in her.

They danced several songs
together before leaving Rossetti’s and returning to the cottage.
Again, Serena got the quilt and again they went out to the cypress
trees. This time, Serena brought the wine bottle and plastic cups.
Again, they made love in the cypress forest. It was good, but Serena
was not going to plan her life around it. Jeff had his life in
Atlanta and she had hers in Luna Bay. The two really did not mesh
together.

Sunday morning, the only day that
Rossetti’s was closed, Nonna made a big breakfast of pancakes and
sausage and fried eggs. Nonna and Serena and Jeff sat around the
kitchen table, eating and drinking coffee. Jeff paid a lot of
attention to Nonna. Her grandmother laughed and seemed to be flirting
with Jeff! This was weird. But Nonna was just happy. She liked Jeff a
lot, that was obvious.

After breakfast, Jeff packed his
bag and Serena followed him to his car.

“
It was good to see you,
Serena,” he said.

“
You too,” she said,
casually.

“
I love your grandmother.
Seeing her makes me feel like home.”

Serena laughed. “It is home for
me,” she said. “I’m lucky to have her.”

“
Very lucky,” he said before
leaning down to kiss her.

“
I hope to see you soon,” he
said. She waved as he drove down the driveway and into the road. He
stuck his hand out of the window and waved back. And then it was time
for Serena to get back to her regular life, without Jeff in it.

********************

February turned into March and
Serena had the vegetable beds turned over by the gardening crew. They
replenished the soil with compost and natural fertilizers. One day in
late March, she and Brittany went to a nursery in Mary Esther and
bought eggplant and basil plants and peppers. Serena searched the
seed counter and got basil seed. “We’ll sprinkle the basil seed
among the plants and before long, it’ll be a sea of basil,” she
said. She also bought zucchini seeds.

By late April, they were starting
to snip the herbs and the tomato plants were covered in tiny green
tomatoes. Some customers came into to Rossetti’s and asked if they
could have their photo taken with Nonna Elena, which is what she had
become known as on Facebook and the website. Nonna was reticent at
first about that, but she finally gave in. Serena had a couple of
pergolas built near the garden and tables and chairs were set up for
alfresco dining. Everything was going better than Serena could have
dreamed. Was it perfect? Of course not. She had to fire Davey, one of
their best waiters, when Jimmy discovered he was giving food away
free to his friends. Brittany had stepped in then to wait tables and
Serena was so grateful to her. But she needed to concentrate on the
bread making, so Serena herself waited tables for a few nights until
they could replace Davey. That was the cost of doing business with a
restaurant. You did what you had to do. There were days when they ran
out of key ingredients and had to take certain items off of the menu.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was going all right.