Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series (14 page)

When the bar did close down,
Angela waited and Jeff came out. He took her arm and they walked up
the staircase to the second floor. Where Jeff’s room was. Where
Jeff’s bed was. Serena felt a pang of jealousy. She knew that was
ridiculous and she tried to shove the feelings away. But the jealous
feelings were there anyway, no matter what she did. She didn’t
think about the dates she had with Jeff in Atlanta. They were
unremarkable and seemed now in retrospect to be only about nightlife
and sex. She thought instead about how Jeff had come unexpectedly to
her mother’s funeral. How tender Jeff had been with her. And then
the second visit he made to Luna Bay. She had needed him then, needed
to feel the comfort of his body, and he had given it to her under the
trees, in the moonlight.

Serena decided on that night that
she would not stay until closing at the bar. In fact, she wouldn’t
even go to the bar at all until Steven returned. He had texted her a
few times and called her once. It was boring, bureaucratic stuff he
was dealing with at the meeting in Tampa. He wanted to come back to
Luna Bay as soon as possible. He missed her. She missed him. He loved
her. She loved him.

She spent the rest of her
evenings without Steven at the cottage. Nonna was usually in bed by
the time she got home after the dinner rush, but one night she was
sitting in her chair in the living room, drinking a glass of red wine
and watching television. Serena put on her gown and robe and went
downstairs to join Nonna. She realized she had been missing her
grandmother. She got a glass of wine and sat down in the living room.

“
What are we watching?” she
asked.

“
Oh, it’s that “Storage
Wars” show. I like to see what they get when they open the storage
units.” She watched the show with Nonna without talking. When it
was over, Nonna turned the television off and turned to Serena.

“
What brings you home so early
tonight?” Nonna asked.

“
Steven’s out of town and I
decided to spend some time at home,” she said.

“
Oh,” Nonna said
noncommittally. “When will he be back?”

“
In a couple of days, I think.”

“
How is Jeff doing? I’ve been
meaning to come down there, but I’m so tired when lunch is over
that I just want to come home.”

“
He’s doing great,” Serena
said. “The girls love him.”

Nonna looked over at her then and
studied Serena’s face in a way that made her slightly
uncomfortable.

“
Does that bother you?” she
asked.

“
Of course not,” Serena
answered. “It’s good for business. You should come down there and
see him one night. You’ll be amazed.”

“
I think I will,” Nonna said,
taking a sip of her wine. “I think I’ll go tomorrow night, as a
matter of fact.”

And that’s what Nonna did.
Serena went home to get her after dinner and took her back to
Rossetti’s. She and Nonna sat on barstools and ordered martinis.
Jeff made them in his usual way, throwing the shaker, pouring the
drinks dramatically into the glasses. Nonna laughed. Jeff set the
drinks down and stayed there to talk to Nonna. Angela stood at the
end of the bar. Jeff walked over to her, talking to her, explaining
it to her, Serena supposed. And then he was back to her and Nonna. At
one point, Nonna and Jeff spoke Italian to each other and Serena only
picked up a few words that she knew. Nonna sparkled with happiness
and that made Serena happy.

When they left, Serena said, “You
should come to the bar more often, Nonna. Jeff was really happy to
see you.”

“
I think you’re right. I
should come more often.”

When they got home, Nonna said
she was ready for bed. It was late for her. Before she went upstairs,
she said, “I noticed Angela seems to like Jeff a lot.” She looked
closely at Serena after she said that, waiting for a reaction.

“
Yeah. She does. I think he
likes her a lot, too. I think they’re seeing each other.”

“
That’s what it looks like,”
Nonna said before she walked up the stairs.

Serena got a glass of wine and
went to sit on the back porch. She lit a candle, which cast a
flickering light over the porch. She remembered how she and Jeff had
sat on the porch with the same light. She remembered how they had
gone out in the yard to the cypress trees and laid a blanket at their
feet. She remembered how they had made love out there, under the
moonlight. Two nights in a row. Then she heard her text signal,
bringing her out of the past with Jeff.

It was Steven. “I’m coming
home tomorrow,” he texted. “I want to see you as soon as
possible. I miss you.”

“
I miss you, too,” she
texted. “I can come over after dinner tomorrow, okay?”

“
See you then,” he wrote. “I
love you.”

Serena continued to sit on the
porch for a little while longer. For the first time in a long time,
she had solitude to think. Really think. She asked herself why she
was jealous over Jeff and Angela if she was so in love with Steven.
She didn’t have the answer.

She asked herself why Steven left
the room whenever Carlos called. She asked herself why Carlos called
all the time, why Steven didn’t just turn his phone off if it
bothered him so much. She wondered why she hadn’t received Steven’s
text when he went to deal with the oil spill. She wondered why she
hadn’t heard anything about an oil spill.

With those thoughts, Serena went
to the Internet and keyed in “oil spill in Louisiana.” Thousands
of sites came up about the big BP spill. The Louisiana governor had
been all over the news at that time. She keyed in “oil spill in
July in Louisiana.” The only sites she got were still related to
the BP spill, mostly about payments to the victims. Steven had never
discussed the spill again and she had never asked about it.

With these thoughts weighing on
her mind, Serena went to bed. She couldn’t go to sleep no matter
how much she tried. She couldn’t relax her mind or stop the
thoughts that were swirling there. The covers became a prison and she
threw them off. The ceiling fan blew warm air across her. At one
point, she gave up and went downstairs and poured a glass of wine.
She found herself back on the porch with its flickering light.

She picked up her phone and keyed
in “Steven Calloway.” Hundreds of sites came up—writers, track
stars, LinkedIn pages, Facebook pages—but none of them were Steven.
For the second time in that long night, she gave up and went to bed.
Finally, after a few minutes, she fell into a restless sleep.

When she woke up it was after ten
and Nonna was already at Rossetti’s. After showering, she did a
load of laundry and watched television. Before she left for the diner
crowd, she packed an overnight bag. It wasn’t Saturday, but she
missed Steven so much she wanted to spend the whole night with him.

When she went into the kitchen at
Rossetti’s, Brittany was at the bread station.

“
I wanted to ask you about
something,” Brittany said. She looked a little nervous.

“
Okay. What?”

“
You know how much I love
making bread,” she said. She took a tendril of hair and began to
twirl it with her fingers. Serena had seen her do that before, when
she was stressed or nervous.

“
I’ve been watching people on
TV make bread a lot and a lot of them use a food processor to help.
It’s not that I don’t love kneading, but we have so much to make
here, I was wondering if we could do that.”

Serena thought for a moment.
Rossetti’s bread had always been hand-made without mechanical
assistance. But Brittany was right. There was too much to get done
without some kind of help.

“
You know what I think?”
Serena asked. Brittany looked like she was expecting the worst. “I
think that we should get a Kitchen Aid mixer with dough hooks and a
food processor if we need it. You’re right. We’ve got too much to
get done without some help.”

Brittany’s smile was wide. She
hugged Serena. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll
regret it.”

“
I’ll go out in an hour or so
and get one,” Serena said decisively. “I guess your job will be
to figure it all out once we have it.”

“
That’s no problem,”
Brittany as she punched down dough in the large bowl.

Serena heard her text signal.
“Excuse me, Brittany,” she said as she walked to the office.

Steven texted, “I’ve had car
trouble. They can’t get the part until tomorrow. I’m delayed
getting back. Looks like it won’t be until day after tomorrow.”

The disappointment at not seeing
Steven that night or the next hit Serena hard. She didn’t realize
how much she’d been counting on it.

“
I’m sorry,” she texted
back. “I’ll see you when you get here.”

Then she wondered, why the hell
isn’t he calling me? So she called him. His phone rang and rang,
but he didn’t answer.

She put her phone back in her
pocket and sat down behind the desk. If Steven was coming home today,
then he would have gotten on the road early in the morning. Why was
he just now letting her know in the early afternoon that he had car
trouble? Wouldn’t he have known that early in the morning?

Serena wasn’t happy with where
her mind was going these days. But she couldn’t stop it. Steven’s
absence over the last few days had given her breathing room. Room to
think without constantly thinking about Steven and when she would see
him. Steven and his touch. Steven and his jokes. Room to breathe.

It was just as well Steven
wouldn’t be home that night because Serena was exhausted from a
night of no sleep. She needed rest more than anything. She did go to
Fort Walton to buy the Kitchen Aid and a Cuisinart food processor for
Brittany. The girl looked like a kid at Christmas as she took the
mixer out of the box and set it up.

When Rossetti’s closed for
dinner, Serena didn’t hang around for a drink at the bar. She went
straight home and straight to bed where she slept deeply through the
night. The next morning, she checked her phone and Steven had left
her a voice mail. “Hey, sorry I missed your call. I was dealing
with the car and left my phone in the car. I had to go back and get
it later when I realized it. Anyway, I’ll see you soon. I love
you.”

Nonna was walking up the porch
steps as Serena was closing the door on her way to Rossetti’s.

“
I feel like I haven’t seen
you lately,” Nonna said. “I heard you up last night. Is
everything all right?” Nonna looked concerned and Serena hated to
cause her grandmother worry.

“
Everything’s fine,” she
said. “Steven was supposed to come home yesterday but he had car
trouble. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

Nonna put her hand on Serena’s
arm and looked intently at her. But she didn’t say anything else
except, “Have a good evening.” As Serena walked down the porch
steps, she felt guilty about lying to her grandmother. The truth was
that everything felt off kilter. Nothing seemed right. But she
couldn’t worry Nonna with her problems.

It was Friday and Rossetti’s
had a good band scheduled for the after-dinner crowd. Serena decided
to stay for a couple of drinks. Without asking, Jeff brought her a
Cosmopolitan and set it on the bar in front of her. She took a sip of
the icy pink liquid. Tiny shards of ice met her lips as she sipped.

After Jeff had filled several
drink orders, he came back over to Serena.

“
Where’s Steven?” he asked.

“
He’s in Tampa for a meeting.
He was supposed to be back yesterday but he had car trouble.”

“
Oh,” Jeff said.

They talked for a few minutes
about Rossetti’s and the upstairs that Jeff was going to start
working on soon. He asked her if she would help him pick paint
colors. “I don’t know much about colors and what would be right,”
he said. “Could we go to the paint store and pick it out?”

She agreed. In between filling
drink orders, Jeff came over to talk to Serena. At one point, he
asked her about Steven and where he was from. “It’s one of the
Carolinas, I think,” he said.

“
He’s from South Carolina.
The Charleston area,” she said.

“
My roommate in college was
from that area,” Jeff said. “His parents had a house on one of
the islands around there and I spent a spring break with them. It was
incredible.”

“
I’ve never been there
myself,” Serena said. “She wondered if she ever would go there,
to meet Steven’s mother. That would be the only reason she could
see herself ever going there, but Steven had never suggested it. He
had never even mentioned the possibility of taking her there, showing
her where he was from. Steven knew all about Luna Bay and the coast.
He had met her grandmother. But they were still early on in their
relationship, Serena reasoned. There would be time for meeting his
family down the road.

Late in the evening, Jeff came
over to Serena. He took her hands in his. “You seem troubled,
Serena,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

Serena looked into Jeff’s blue
eyes. She wanted to talk to him, tell him everything that was on her
mind. That’s what bartenders were for, right? Tell them your
troubles? Jeff’s big hand felt warm and comforting on her smaller
hands. Protective. She started to speak when a clattering on the bar
beside them drew their attention. Angela had put her tray down on the
bar, loudly, and she didn’t look happy.