“Don’t apologize for being yourself. It’s refreshing, and I’m taking mental notes. My sister tells me I need to relax, and I’m starting to think maybe she’s right.” He took the half she’d picked up and set it on his plate. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had breakfast with a woman who wasn’t a business associate. I’ve kind of forgotten how to turn off my work etiquette.”
She took her half of the Danish and said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve had breakfast with anyone other than my sister. We’re total finger foodies.”
Finger foodies? She was too damn cute. “This sister of yours sounds like a big part of your life. You must be close. Do you work together?”
“No, but we took care of each other when we were growing up.” She bit into the Danish and moaned. “You are a god for sharing with me.”
“You should probably set that bar a bit higher,” he said, and bit into the Danish. “Mm. You were right. This is fantastic.”
“I know my baked goods.” She sipped her coffee, and her eyes lit up, her every emotion on display. “I need to ask Keira where she got this new coffee. It’s delicious.”
“Actually, I wish you wouldn’t do that. I’m a bit of a coffee connoisseur. I went to three coffee shops before I found Keira’s, and all of them served something that could pass for coffee, but . . .” He shook his head. “Keira’s was better than the rest, but this coffee is made from my personal stash of beans from northern Indonesia. Keira made me promise not to tell anyone she was doing me a special favor by making it for me each morning.”
She tilted her head and said, “So you’re a coffee snob.”
“I prefer connoisseur. Let me guess. Keira is your sister.”
“Okay, we’ll go with your fancy word, and no, Keira isn’t my sister. She’s a friend I grew up with here on the island.”
“Ah, the plot thickens. So you live here and know all of the island’s secrets.”
“I know most of the island’s secrets, but only because my best friend, Leni, has siblings who still live on the island. She keeps me up to date on all the gossip. But I live in New York, and my sister, Deirdra, lives in Boston. How about you? Where do you call home?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. I guess LA is considered home, but I’m not there much. I’m in finance, and I travel a lot, living out of hotels.”
She took a bite of the Danish, making another appreciative sound, and man, he liked those sounds.
“Tell me, Runner Girl, why were you so stressed yesterday?”
“Oh my gosh. So much has happened since I saw you, it seems like it was ages ago. For starters, this was my mother’s restaurant. She passed away three months ago.” A hint of sadness tainted her voice. “Two days ago we received an offer on the Bistro, and the night before I saw you, Deirdra had kept me up half the night trying to convince me to sell it, which is why I was stressed.”
Well, hell, his life just got a little more complicated, and there was no denying the tug he felt at the tinge of sadness he’d heard in her voice, which outweighed the minor complication. “I’m sorry for your loss. I know how hard it is to lose a parent.”
“Thank you. We weren’t that close these last few years, although I was closer to her than Deirdra was. Our father died when I was nine and Deirdra was eleven.” The sadness returned, thicker this time. “It’s a strange realization to accept that they’re both gone.”
“Oh, Abby.” He reached across the table and caressed the back of her hand, bringing her eyes to his. Her skin was soft as a rose petal, her gaze even softer. He had the urge to move his chair closer, to let her know she had a shoulder to lean on if she needed it. But he stayed where he was and said, “My parents are gone, too. We lost them when Remi was twelve. I was twenty-four at the time, running the Los Angeles division of my father’s company. I raised her from then on. I understand what you’re feeling, but I think strange realization is putting it mildly. I loved my parents deeply. If I hadn’t had Remi to raise, I probably would have lost my mind for a while. But she was so young and vulnerable and so very heartbroken. I didn’t have the opportunity to fall apart, and that was definitely a good thing.”
“Aiden . . . ? I’m so sorry. Looks like we have more in common than I would have guessed. I adored my father, and my mother was great when he was alive, but that was so long ago. She was never the same after he died, and neither were we. Deirdra and I pretty much had to raise ourselves after that and pick up the slack here at the restaurant.”
His heart took another hit, a bigger one, the kind that was usually reserved for Remi and the girls.
“Deirdra has a lot of resentment toward my mother. Plus, she’s a corporate attorney and busy all the time. In fact, she’s working today from our mom’s house while I get started cleaning up the restaurant, and she has to go back to Boston tomorrow morning for a meeting. Needless to say, she thinks the Bistro is a money pit and wants to sell and leave the bad memories behind.”
It could be a money pit in the wrong hands. It might not look like much, but it was sitting on prime waterfront real estate and worth every penny of his three-million-dollar offer. For the first time in his life, Aiden hoped his offer would be turned down.
“And you?” he asked. “What do you want to do with it?”
“I want to keep it,” she said excitedly. “I know our mother was a mess after our father died, and that sucked. There’s no other way to put it. But I have years of happy memories of my parents, and those are the ones I hold on to. My mom was once so happy and in love, it radiated from her. I used to think I wanted to be happy like she was when I grew up, and work in a restaurant, cooking like my dad. But then I realized I don’t want to be her type of happy, because she wasn’t enough for herself after he died, and I get that. My father was an amazing man. He was French, and when he wasn’t behind the stove, he’d pull up a chair to chat with customers while they ate dinner. I watched their faces light up when he stopped by their tables, like he was some kind of celebrity or a member of their family they hadn’t seen in a while. He knew everyone, and if he didn’t know them when they walked in, he did by the time they left. My mom was the sun to his moon. She was as friendly and outgoing, but she also watched out for him. When he’d talk for too long, she’d put a hand on his shoulder and say, ‘Is my Olivier bothering you?’ and of course the customers would say no. But my dad would take the hint, and he’d say something like, ‘Mon amour misses me.’”
If Aiden knew one thing, it was that there was no room for emotions in business decisions, and Abby was clearly leading with her heart. Had she even reviewed the restaurant’s financials or worked up any future projections? Did she know what the operational costs were to run the business? Did she have the capital to fix the place up? To hire staff? Her sister called the place a money pit. Had Deirdra studied the data and made that call, thinking it smarter to sell? Every iota of his being wanted to warn Abby, to walk her through the necessary steps of due diligence before she made that big a decision, but that wasn’t his place. He was supposed to be Aiden the regular guy, not Aiden the investor, so he took a drink of coffee, swallowing those urges down deep.