Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series (12 page)

Serena didn’t get it. She did
not understand Nonna’s friendship with Jeff. How could that have
happened when Serena herself wasn’t even friends with him anymore?
Once again, it made everything more complicated for her.

“
I’m going over to Steven’s
after everyone has left. Okay?”

“
You don’t have to ask my
permission, cara,” Nonna said.

“
What did you think of Steven?”

“
He seems nice,” Nonna said
noncommittally. “I really didn’t get to talk to him.”

“
Well, how could you when Jeff
was hanging around you the whole time? Not exactly the ideal
situation for getting to know my boyfriend.”

“
Are you angry with me?”
Nonna asked.

“
I’m just wondering why you
didn’t tell me you had invited Jeff to our party. It would’ve
been nice to get a heads up on that.”

Nonna didn’t say anything for a
minute. “I knew if I told you that you’d tell me not to let him
come. And I wanted to see him. He’s my friend and I like him. I
have a right to have him at my restaurant’s party.” She
emphasized the word “my,” letting Serena know that Nonna Elena
was ultimately in charge of Rossetti’s.

Serena turned away from her
grandmother, tears stinging her eyes. She couldn’t believe that
Nonna had pulled rank on her like that. After everything Serena had
done to bring HER restaurant back from the brink of ruin. She
couldn’t believe it.

“
Cara,” Nonna called after
her as she ran from Rossetti’s. “Cara, I’m sorry.” Serena
kept running, through the restaurant, out the front door, and down to
the bay. She sat on the shore and cried. She put her head in her arms
and cried a thousand tears, sobbing like a baby. She cried for her
mother. She wanted her mother.

That’s where Steven found her.
He sat down beside her and took her hand.

“
Your grandmother asked me to
find you,” he said. “She’s worried about you.”

“
I’m sorry I ran out on you
like that. I didn’t want you to see me at my worst.”

“
Is this your worst?” he
said. “I think I can handle it.” He pulled her over to him and
she cried against his chest. He stroked her hair and kissed the top
of her head.

“
It’s okay,” he said. “I
love you.”

After a few minutes, Serena stood
up. She looked out over the blue waters of the bay. Dark clouds were
gathering in the east, but the water was eerily calm.

“
I think we’re in for a
storm,” Steven said taking her hand. They walked back up to the
restaurant. Everyone was gone except for Nonna and the staff. Nonna
was standing by the door when they walked in.

“
I’m sorry I said that, cara.
I didn’t mean it,” Nonna said. She held out her arms and Serena
hugged her grandmother.

“
It’s okay, Nonna. I think
I’ve been taking over too much here and not letting you be a part
of it.”

“
I said you could do what you
wanted,” Nonna said.

“
I know you did, but I should
have been more sensitive,” Serena said.

“
Maybe you need to take a few
days off,” Nonna suggested. “You’ve been working yourself to
death.”

“
Do you think you can manage
without me?”

“
No, but we’ll get by,”
Nonna said with a smile. “I could never manage without you.”

“
Okay, then. I think I’ll do
that.”

Nonna walked over to Steven, who
was sitting in a dining chair, away from the personal conversation
between grandmother and granddaughter. “Thank you,” she said to
him.

As they walked out, Serena told
Steven that she was taking a few days off.

“
You can come stay with me if
you want to. I can take off the rest of this week. We could do some
stuff.”

Serena smiled, then laughed. “I
know what kind of stuff you want to do,” she said.

He laughed too. “You’re right
about that. But we can do other stuff, too. Like go out on the water
or go out to eat someplace other than Rossetti’s. Check out the
competition.”

They stopped at Serena’s car.
“Are you sure?” she said. “You might get sick of me after a
couple of days.”

“
I doubt that. And yes, I’m
sure.”

“
I’ll go home and pack a few
things and be over in a little while, then,” she said. She kissed
him lightly on the lips and got in her car. She waved at him as she
drove away down the road that led to the cottage.

Serena wasn’t sure what to
pack, so she packed jeans and cotton tops, two sundresses, a nice
dress for evening wear if they went somewhere extra nice, shorts, and
her bathing suit. She added several open-toed shoes and sandals and
her toiletries to the suitcase. She was ready for whatever. Nonna
came in the door as she was walking through the living room to leave.

“
I’m going to stay with
Steven for a few days,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what
we’re going to be doing, but we’ll be on the beach and the boat.
And we might go out to eat, too.”

“
That sounds fun,” Nonna
said. She put her arms around Serena. The top of her graying head
reached Serena’s shoulders. “You deserve some free time.”

Serena kissed the top of Nonna’s
head much as Steven had kissed the top of her head earlier. “Thanks
for suggesting it,” she said.

“
I love you, cara,” Nonna
said as Serena closed the door.

“
Love you too, Nonna,” she
said.

And then she was down the steps
and in her car, feeling the first sense of freedom she had
experienced in years. She turned the radio on and sang all the way to
the beach, to Steven’s gray house on stilts. The gathering dark
clouds had intensified by that time and she felt the first drops of
rain as she got out of her car. They fell in big plops onto her hair
and face as she climbed the stairs.

“
It’s starting to rain,”
she said laughing when Steven opened the door. He swooped her up in
his arms and she dropped her suitcase to the floor.

“
Then let’s have a rain day,”
he said. She followed him to the bedroom. Two glasses of wine sat on
the nightstand and Serena picked one up, taking a deep sip. “I need
this,” she said.

“
Is everything okay with your
grandmother?” Steven asked, pulling her down to the bed. He began
to unzip her dress and she slid out of it.

“
Yes. Everything’s fine.
We’ve all been under a lot of stress at the diner, and I guess it
just came out today. But it’s fine.”

The rain began to beat harder and
the waves crushed the shore. Thunder rolled deeply, followed by
lightening cracking the sky. The sounds echoed Serena’s wild heart.
She pulled Steven closer and closer to her fiery body. She kissed him
and licked him and then guided him into her. They crashed against
each other like the waves on the coast, reaching a crescendo as
thunder clapped loudly in the background.

Chapter
Eight

When she woke up she was alone in
the bed. She hurriedly put her dress back on and walked into the
living room. She could see Steven on the deck staring out at the
water. The rain had stopped and the skies were clearing as the sun
went down. His cell phone started to ring on the coffee table. She
opened the door and walked out. Smoke rose from a grill into the
darkening night.

“
Your phone’s ringing,” she
said.

“
Dammit! I’d better see who
it is,” he said as he passed her, pausing long enough to lean down
and give her a kiss. “I’m making steaks,” he called to her as
he closed the door. Serena walked to the railing of the deck and
looked out at the clearing sky, the calming water.

A few minutes later, Steven came
back out. “It was Carlos, of course,” he said. “I wish that kid
would leave me alone.”

“
What’s the trouble now?”
she asked.

“
Oh, more of the same. His
girlfriend, if that’s what she still is, didn’t call him all day
and he spent the Fourth alone, waiting on her.”

“
That’s sort of sad,”
Serena said. “I feel sorry for him.”

“
I feel bad for him too, but
I’m sick of dealing with the whole thing. It’s not like I’m his
therapist. I’m not getting paid to listen to his pitiful stories.”

Serena laughed. “No, you aren’t
getting paid. But he obviously thinks of you as his friend and values
your advice.”

“
Yeah, I guess so. Except he
never takes my advice.”

“
Right,” she said.

Steven brought his laptop to the
table while they were eating. “I thought we could look at some
places we might want to go this week,” he said. “Or we can just
get in the car and go wherever you want without a plan.”

“
Let’s look at the
possibilities,” she said, before putting a juicy bite of grilled
steak into her mouth.

“
I’d definitely like to go to
Antonio’s,” she said after she swallowed. “That’s where Jimmy
and Olive were going before they decided to stick with us.”

“
Antonio’s it is,” he said,
closing the laptop.

And they did go to Antonio’s
the next night. It was a nice place, but the food wasn’t as good as
Rossetti’s. Serena got shrimp scampi with angel hair pasta and
Steven got spaghetti and meatballs. They ate off of each other’s
plates, sampling the food.

“
This is pretty good,” Serena
said.

“
Yeah, but not as good as the
diner’s.”

“
I guess you’ve got to have
the special Nonna love to make it spectacular,” she said laughing.

Over the next few days, Steven
and Serena did whatever they wanted, whatever struck them. One day,
they spent on the beach with a cooler of beer and baloney sandwiches
with chips. They slathered each other with sunscreen and floated in
the warm salty sea on doughnut floats. In and out they went with the
tide, moving further and further down the beach before walking back
to where they left their towels and starting all over again.

Another day they spent on the
boat fishing. They caught several fish that Steven cleaned and Serena
cooked for supper that night. Every day was a different day, and
before she knew it, Sunday evening had arrived. Serena planned to
leave Monday morning.

“
This is the best vacation I’ve
ever had,” Steven said. “I guess you’d call it a staycation,
since we stayed around here the whole time.”

“
I guess we’re lucky to live
in a vacation area so we can have it all the time,” she said. “I
like it better in the off season, though, when it’s not so
crowded.”

They made love that night, as
they had every night, but both knew the vacation was coming to an
end. Time to get back to reality and the daily grind.

“
I hate you’re leaving
tomorrow,” Steven said. “I’ve gotten used to you being around.”

“
I hate it, too,” Serena said
rubbing his leg with her foot. “But I’ve got to get back to Nonna
and Rossetti’s. They need me.”

“
I’m gonna miss you being
here,” Steven said the next morning at Serena’s car.

“
I’ll see you tonight,” she
said with a laugh. “Right? You are coming to Rossetti’s tonight,
aren’t you?”

“
Of course,” he said. “See
you tonight.” He closed her car door and she drove away from the
beach and toward Luna Bay.

Steven came to Rossetti’s on
Monday night and almost every night for the month of July. On
Saturdays, Serena stayed with him at his house. Carlos called him a
lot, and it was beginning to get on Serena’s nerves. Shouldn’t
Carlos have resolved his problems by that time? Steven always walked
out of the room when he took the calls.

In early August, when they were
lying in bed, Steven said, “I miss you being here all the time like
you were. I wish you could be here all the time.”

“
Well, I live with Nonna and
work at Rossetti’s, so I don’t know how that could be possible,”
she said. “As it is, I haven’t been paying enough attention to
Nonna. I need to do something about that.”

Steven didn’t say anything for
a moment. “Are you going to live with Nonna for the rest of your
life?” he asked.

“
I guess not. But right now it
seems the thing to do.”

“
What if you got married?” he
asked.

“
Then I’d have to do
something different,” she said, looking over at him. Was he going
to ask her to marry him? She wasn’t expecting that, but she
realized she did want that.

“
I guess you would,” he said.
“Have to do something different.” There would be no proposal that
day and Serena was a little disappointed. She was in love with
Steven, and if he asked her to marry him, she would say yes. She
would scream yes. She never wanted to be without him.

But he didn’t ask her to marry
him that day or any day after that. Serena started expecting it. Why
else would he bring it up, her living forever with her grandmother,
his missing her being with him all the time? Why else? She hated that
it was in her mind, when it hadn’t been before. She hated that she
was expecting it and that it never came.