competition in town for a good bar and grille is the last thing she needs.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” I say.
Everyone laughs, but it’s Jo who has my attention. She looks up, her face half-hidden behind her hands with her elbows propped up on the table. She shakes her head again, but I can see the smile in her eyes.
“Just promise me you’ll think about it,” I say. “The world needs this kind of food.”
She giggles again and picks up a piece of bread, aiming for my head. “Let’s change the subject, before I run out of bread to throw.”
But I can see the pride in her eyes. I can see just how important something like this would be to her. And more than anything, I realize just how exciting it is to see her be truly happy.
Chapter Eleven
After lunch, the guys offer to clean while Leigh Anne and I relax by the lake. I look around. I’m not sure where Penny and Jenna have gotten off to. Maybe a walk with Penny’s little girl in the stroller.
I sit down on the dock and take off my shoes, dipping my feet into the water.
I shiver and pull them back out. “Ooh, that’s cold.”
“It’s hard to believe it’s fall already,” Leigh Anne says, leaning back on her hands. “Time seems to just be flying by.”
“You’ll be graduating after this year, right?”
She nods.
“Then what?”
Leigh Anne looks out over the water and shakes her head. “I have no idea,” she says. “Knox is just starting to get his woodworking business off the ground, so I’m sure he wants to stick around Fairhope. I haven’t given it much thought, though. I guess I better get on that.”
I laugh. “Maybe so,” I say. “You’ll figure it out. Just follow your heart.”
“Thanks,” she says.
“Hey, Leigh Anne? Can you come in here for a second?” Knox calls from the house. “I want you to show Rob that video you took the other day. I can’t find it.”
“Be right there,” she says.
Leigh Anne stands up and brushes her hands off on her jeans.
“That’s really good advice, you know.”
“What?” I ask.
“To follow your heart,” she says. “Maybe you should really think about that restaurant thing.”
I nod, my stomach filling with butterflies all over again.
She takes off toward the house, and I lay back against the wood of the old dock.
A restaurant?
I stare up at the changing leaves and try to imagine what it would be like to run and own a restaurant of my own. It’s a lot of hard work, but I can’t think of anything more fun. I could spend all day experimenting in the kitchen with new recipes and combinations. I could put together fun menus and better than anything, I could cook as much as I wanted to.
My heart races at the thought.
I love tending bar and taking care of my dad’s place, but adding a restaurant would make it my own in a way I never even dreamed about until now.
Is this really something we could do?
“Good idea,” Colton says, interrupting my daydream. He sits down beside me and leans all the way back until he’s lying down beside me with his arms propped under his head. “I could probably use a nap, too, after all the food. I’m stuffed.”
“Feel free to take some of the leftovers home with you, if you want.”
“Oh, I most definitely want,” he says. “I want to get a piece of that chocolate cake I heard about, too.”
I laugh. “I figured everyone was so full from lunch that it could wait a bit,” I say. “We’ll cut some up in a few minutes if you think you can handle it.”
“Have you always loved to cook?” He rolls onto his side and props his elbow against the dock.
I turn my head toward him, painfully aware of just how close we are right now.
“Growing up it was just me and Dad, and he doesn’t know the first thing about cooking,” I say. “I guess I picked it up out of necessity after Mom left. Lucky for him, I was pretty good at it.”
“I’m glad I got a chance to come over today,” he says. “I would have been sad to miss it.”
“If you missed it, you would have never known it was worth being sad about,” I say.
He laughs. “Don’t you know better than to talk in riddles when a man has a full belly?” he says. “I was trying to say I loved the food.”