Heron's Landing: The Complete Series

by Iris Morland

  She’d loved him ever since.

  For five years, she’d loved him from afar. Until the wedding, when she’d ruined all of it by asking him to kiss her. She hadn’t expected that he’d kiss her like he’d waited ages to do it. But then he’d pushed her away and told her they couldn’t do this, and Grace had avoided Jaime ever since.

  “Grace.”

  She froze. She was turned away from the source of the voice, and she wondered—rather wildly—if she could act like she hadn’t heard. But then she heard the person step toward her, and she knew the reckoning had come.

  Turning, she looked at Jaime for the first time in a week, and her heart almost burst from her chest. He wore his usual jeans and t-shirt with an apron tied around his waist, although unlike his sous chefs, few stains marred the bright white. His hair had grown overlong, and the ends curled slightly. His eyes, dark and usually full of mischief, were now looking at her with an expression of discomfort that filled her with guilt.

  “Your brother wanted me to tell you he was out giving a tour but will be here soon. Or you can give me whatever it is you brought for him.” Jaime sounded normal, except for when he’d said “your brother.” His voice had grated on the phrase, like it was painful to pronounce.

  Grace stepped backward. She couldn’t speak; her throat closed. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  Jaime stepped toward her, and she stepped back. She didn’t even realize she was doing it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice quiet.

  She almost laughed. No, my heart’s broken and I’m an idiot, but what’s new? She wanted to tell him that seeing him made her want to crawl into a hole and die. She wanted to apologize. She wanted him to kiss her again.

  She stepped back. Then back again. And then she realized too late that her heel had hit the wall, and she was pitching backward, falling through the open window into some shrubbery below.

  But she didn’t fall into the shrubbery. Jaime moved with more speed than she thought possible, and then his arm was around her waist, keeping her from tumbling headlong out the window.

  He hadn’t let her go yet—that was the first thing she noticed. The second thing she noticed was how warm his arm was around her waist. And the third thing was that he gazed at her with such naked longing that her skin prickled.

  Her voice finally returned. She whispered, “I’ve wanted to tell you. I just, I’m…”

  His gaze roved over her face. She could feel his fist clenching against her back. He opened his mouth to speak—

  “Jaime,” Adam asked as he approached them, “why exactly are you holding my sister out a window?”

  Grace squeaked. Jaime yanked her upward and then let go, so quickly that Grace felt dizzy. Had he almost kissed her? But now he wouldn’t even look at her, so was that just some kind of fluke?

  Then she realized they hadn’t responded to Adam’s question. Her brother stood, his arms crossed, looking at them suspiciously.

  “I almost fell out of the window,” Grace blurted. At Adam’s eyebrow raise, she explained, “I wasn’t paying attention and tripped. Jaime kept me from falling, that’s all.”

  Jaime stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Yep, I didn’t want her falling into some prickle bush.”

  “Uh huh,” Adam said. He kept glancing back and forth between the pair, and Grace could feel a blush climbing up her cheeks. Did he know that they’d kissed? Her blush grew brighter. She couldn’t look at Jaime. She was sure her guilt was written all over her face.

  “Well, I’m going back to my office. Jaime, could you give me the next week’s menu whenever you get a chance?” Adam uncrossed his arms, but he still kept watching them.

  “Sure, I’ll get it to you within the hour.”

  If Grace didn’t know any better, she’d say that Jaime’s voice was forced. If she strained her own eyes, she could make out how stiff his shoulders were and how he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than in front of his boss and friend, Adam Danvers.

  “Okay…I’ll see you two later. Be careful, Grace.”

  As Adam left them alone, Grace let out a soft sigh of relief. She really, really, really didn’t want her older brother to know she kissed his executive chef and that she’d really like it if he kissed her again, even if it was probably the worst idea this side of the Mississippi.

  “I need to get to work.” Jaime didn’t even give her a chance to respond before stalking off to the kitchen. Grace watched him, his shoulders still stiff, his hands in his pockets, and all she could think about was how he had groaned against her mouth as he’d kissed her. She’d had a feeling Jaime Martínez would be an amazing kisser, but that kiss had surpassed her wildest imaginings.

  What a shame that any more kisses would just be that: in her imagination.

  Guilt coiled in her gut, along with the desire and the emotions and the love that made Grace Danvers’ inner life more interesting than her outward life. Jaime obviously wasn’t happy about what had happened between them, and she’d instigated it. Grace hated when people were upset with her; her family called her the queen of apologies, even when an apology wasn’t necessarily warranted. But she had a feeling she needed to apologize this time because she made things uncomfortable between them. Maybe Jaime wouldn’t have kissed her if she hadn’t pushed. Maybe she’d pushed herself on him and he felt used because of it. At that thought, she felt even worse.

  She followed Jaime into the kitchen, where his sous chef, Eric O’Neill, worked alongside him. A few other younger chefs, including some interns, bustled about the kitchen, chopping carrots and cracking eggs and trying to avoid Jaime’s wrath if they dared to cut the carrots julienne instead of diced. Jaime had created a reputation for himself as exacting and rather ruthless, but no one could say that he hadn’t also created a restaurant that happened to be a jewel in the middle of nowhere Missouri. When he’d first come on, the restaurant had been little more than a café. Now it was a four-star restaurant with reviews being published in international magazines and blogs, with government officials, celebrities, and other notable figures coming to sample the food.

  “Eric!” Jaime picked up a plate of chicken with asparagus spears and polenta. “Did you look at this chicken? This is definitely not cooked through.”

  Eric, a rather short, bland kind of man in his mid-twenties, made a mulish expression and continued chopping onions. “Yeah, I checked it. It’s done.”

  Jaime just stared at him. Then he set the plate on top of Eric’s cutting board with a thump and snatched his knife. He cut into the chicken, revealing a pink center.

  Grace winced.

  “Does that look done to you? No? Then do it again, and do it right. You’re my sous chef, not some kid still in school. I expect you to do better.” Jaime waited for Eric to respond, but his sous chef just made another face and then nodded tightly.

  Everyone else in the kitchen was staring, but when Jaime looked up, they all scurried to finish their tasks. Grace almost wanted to pick up a knife and begin chopping, just to avoid Jaime’s wrath.

  She’d been around River’s Bend and Jaime long enough to know that although he was a perfectionist, he was also fair. He’d been patient with Eric in the beginning, but that patience was running thin with the constant mistakes and, she had a feeling, pure laziness. But Adam had told Jaime he couldn’t fire another sous chef, so he’d stuck it out.

  Grace wasn’t sure if Eric would make it to the New Year.

  Jaime still hadn’t noticed Grace, and she watched as he walked back into the pantry. No one else paid attention to her—she blended in fairly easily and was just known as the boss’s little sister—so she followed him into the back. The pantry, brimming with cans and bags of ingredients, was organized and spotlessly clean. Grace had to admire how everything was stacked according to type of ingredient, with nothing in the wrong place. When Jaime had first come to River’s Bend, the previous executive chef hadn’t cared what the pantry had looked like, and more tha
n once an infestation of cockroaches had resulted.

  As Jaime looked for a can of something, Grace cleared her throat. He glanced up, his dark eyes widening.

  “Grace.”

  Her throat closed up, and her heart was pounding so fast she saw stars. It wasn’t helpful that Jaime was so handsome. That dark hair and those dark eyes and the way he picked up a knife and could chop anything within seconds and how he brushed sweat from his brow and how he rolled his r’s ever so slightly—not enough that most people noticed. But Grace noticed.

  She noticed everything about him.

  She cleared her throat. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.” Her voice was rather high, like a squeaky mouse, and she blushed at the sound of it. “I’m sorry if I put you in an awkward position.” When he didn’t reply, she added, rambling somewhat, “Like if I made you feel uncomfortable, or if I did something you didn’t want, because I’d hate to think I did that at all. I wasn’t necessarily thinking as clearly that night as I should’ve been, although that’s no excuse, I know that. I just…wanted you to know.”

  Jaime stared at her, and Grace began fiddling with her braid. It was a compulsive gesture, and if she could pull the elastic out of her braid and redo it, she would, just to give herself something to do. Instead, she pulled on the ends until she knew she was making them more ragged as a result.

  Jaime glanced upward, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. “You don’t need to apologize,” he said gruffly. “I was just as much at fault as you.”

  That wasn’t particularly comforting, but at least he wasn’t mad, Grace thought.

  “But I did want to tell you,” he continued, “that it can’t happen again. I wasn’t in my right mind at the wedding. I mean, I was kind of drunk, and it just happened. It shouldn’t have happened, though.” His darkened gaze met hers, and he said in a voice that made her heart stop, “It was a mistake. A big one. It won’t happen again.”

  Grace almost laughed, because it would be easier than crying. The hilarious thing was that she’d come here to say the exact same thing: it’d been a mistake, it shouldn’t have happened, she was sorry. But hearing Jaime say out loud that he shouldn’t have kissed her? It pierced her clean through. She’d thought, she’d hoped…but no. She should’ve known.

  Don’t be naïve, Grace. Just because a guy kisses you doesn’t mean he’s in love with you.

  Her mouth trembled. She tried to smile, but she had a feeling it came off as lopsided. The lip tremble always precipitated tears. Biting her cheek, she pulled herself together long enough to say, “Okay, then we’re on the same page. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.” Her voice caught, and she had to stop talking.

  Jaime looked at her, as if he knew she was struggling not to cry. He took a hand out of his pocket. But he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he shrugged and said, “I need to get back to work.”

  Grace walked home, hands around herself, letting the tears fall freely and telling herself this was the last time she’d cry over Jaime. She felt stupid, childish, and hurt, and because her mind enjoyed being cruel, she relived their kiss over and over again until she felt bruised inside.

  As she approached her parents’ house and her childhood home, she wiped her face with quick movements and hoped against hope she could get upstairs to her room before anyone noticed. At the very least, she could say it had been colder than she had anticipated and, in a hurry to get home, she’d gotten rather flushed.

  The Danvers’ home was a two-story bungalow with a wrap-around porch that had been built in the 1930s. Although they’d since installed central heat and air, it still tended to get drafty in the winter and sticky in the summers. Grace’s mom Julia had had the shutters painted blue to go along with the taupe paint, and a few petunias still bloomed in pots out front due to the rather warm November weather. Grace heard a few birdcalls in the nearby trees as she stepped inside the house, the hardwood floor creaking underneath her feet.

  She hoped her parents were out on the porch out back, but as luck would have it, her mom stepped into the kitchen and saw Grace the second she stepped inside.

  “Oh good, you’re back,” Julia said, going into the bright kitchen to pour a glass of lemonade. “Did you give Adam the cell phone charger?”

  Grace’s shoulders slumped, feeling the charger in her back pocket. “No, I forgot,” she said, wincing. “Sorry about that.”

  “You went all the way out to the vineyard but still forgot? Did you tell him about dinner tonight?” At Grace’s headshake, Julia sighed. “What a space cadet you are. Sometimes I worry about you.” She placed the pitcher of lemonade back into the fridge. Dressed in a pale pink blouse with dark trousers, Grace’s mom looked like she’d stepped out of a J-Crew catalog, even though she didn’t work and stayed at home most days. But Julia Danvers never eschewed style, and Grace couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen her mom in something as sloppy as pants with an elastic waist.

  Grace sat down at the dining room table. Her head hurt. Her heart hurt. Julia sat down across from her, sipping her lemonade.

  “Everything okay?” Julia asked, her voice soft.

  Grace was tempted to spill everything to her mom, but how could she admit that she’d kissed Jaime and now he wanted nothing to do with her? Talk about humiliating. So she got up, got a glass of lemonade, and said with a shrug, “I’m just tired. I think I’m going to take a nap before my shift tonight.”

  Julia cupped her glass in her hands, saying nothing.

  Grace was about to go upstairs when her mom said, “You’ll tell me, won’t you, if anything’s wrong?”

  Grace wasn’t a good liar. So she didn’t look at her mom when she replied, “Of course I will.”

  Upstairs, she gazed out her window, sipping the tart lemonade. She glanced at her art supplies in the corner, a blank canvas sitting on its easel. After attending the University of Missouri and graduating with a degree in studio art, Grace had returned home, unsure of how to proceed. She’d loved painting since she was a young girl and had even won a number of awards for her work. But after graduation, she’d found herself burnt out and unable to paint a thing. Not to mention, there were few jobs out there for painters.

  Suddenly determined to do something, she set her glass on a side table and sat down on the wooden stool in front of her easel, setting up her paints and beginning to mix some colors. She tended to paint abstract paintings, with layers of color and emotions bleeding from the pictures like tears on a page. Swirling the yellow paint, she began lightly creating strokes across the canvas, not even sure what she wanted to paint. She just wanted to see if anything resulted.

  Grace layered orange and red and then blue, a blur of colors manifesting on the canvas. It seemed startlingly bright in the dim room, and after a couple of hours had passed, she stood back to examine her work.

  It looked…lifeless. Uninspired. It wasn’t even a painting of a particular figure or scene: just colors. Smeared, pointless colors. She hated it on sight. Tossing her brush onto a table, she flipped the canvas around so she wouldn’t have to look at it. She wondered if her parents would freak out if she started a fire in the fireplace to burn it.

  Instead, she got ready for work and made sure to scrub the paint from her fingers until they ached.

  2

  When Jaime found Eric outside smoking instead of prepping for tonight’s dinner, he had to restrain himself from kicking his sous chef in the shins and send him packing.

  To be fair, he wasn’t in the best of moods. He hadn’t been the moment he’d seen Grace in River’s Bend’s front room, looking like some kind of angel out to haunt him—did angels haunt people?—with all of that long, blonde hair and light eyes. She had the creamiest complexion with freckles dotting her nose, and he was pretty sure even her eyelashes were tipped with blonde. Add to that a swan’s neck, a rosebud mouth, a sweet smile…

  Jaime groaned. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t lust after his boss’s younger sister who also happened
to be seven years his junior. What kind of asshole did that make him? He’d already fucked up by kissing her at Sadie and Robert’s wedding, and now he’d definitely hurt her when he told her it had been a mistake.

  Standing outside, he shaded his eyes, taking a deep breath. He couldn’t take his frustration out on Eric—even if the lazy asshole deserved it—and he couldn’t take it out on his staff, either. They didn’t know he’d effectively cockblocked himself and was dealing with the consequences. Maybe he just needed to get laid. It had been six months, but who was there to date in tiny Heron’s Landing? The pickings were slim in terms of single, eligible women, and Jaime had already slept with two of them (which seemed excessive, given how small the population already was). He didn’t want to expand that list any further.

  Thus, his current torment. He told himself he just wanted sex. He refused to think that he could just want Grace Danvers. She was like a younger sister to him: he’d known her since she was eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake. She’s been starry-eyed and hopeful for the future, just about to attend college and do all of the things you’re supposed to do when you’re in your early twenties.

  Jaime envied Grace that, in a way. His parents had fled El Salvador right before the civil war got to its bloodiest, coming to Missouri with next to nothing except a job offer from Washington University in St. Louis for his dad, Fernando. An archeologist specializing in Mayan culture, Fernando had worked at the university for close to three decades now, while Jaime’s mother Ana had owned her own jewelry store—now expanded to two more locations—for just as long. They were the embodiment of the American dream, although a lot of racist assholes refused to think so. Jaime had been born—a surprise to both of his parents—five years after their arrival in the States.