Page 30 of Windward Hearts

His feet were steering him automatically toward his favorite booth, one that overlooked a large willow tree that was just starting to get the first buds of spring on it, when he spotted Hope, sitting in a corner booth with an almost empty plate and…

Was that part of a quilt in front of her?

He had pivoted in her direction before he’d consciously made the decision to do so.

Hope looked up when he was a few paces away, her fingers pausing with her thread and needle still clasped between them.

“Hi,” she said, her bashful smile charming and frankly adorable. Jared noticed that and then pushed the thought away. The last time he’d commented on her (admittedly quite pleasing) appearance, things had gotten awkward enough that it was honestly a bit of a surprise to see her here at all, let alone seeing her here and apparently happy to see him.

“Hey,” he greeted. “Mind if I join you?”

He hefted his plate in illustration.

“Oh! No, not at all! Please, do.” She tugged her project closer to her to make space for him to eat.

He slid into the booth seat across from her. His body wouldn’t let him pause a single moment longer without eating, so he took a bite of his sandwich, letting the flavors sweep over him before he said anything further.

Sometimes, all it really took was an extremely good sandwich to remind him how very worth it all those years in culinary school had been.

“So,” he said when he’d gotten through half the sandwich and the black hole in his stomach was starting to feel a little more manageable. “I see that you are quilting.”

Hope’s grin was a little crooked, a little teasing.

“Keenly observed, Chef Novak,” she joked. “Maybe you should give up this restaurant thing and become a detective. Magnolia Shore’s very own Sherlock Holmes.”

He rolled his eyes playfully. “What I meant was, have you really gotten so bored in Magnolia Shore that you need to take up a ‘granny craft?’”

She pressed a hand to her chest in mock affront.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said haughtily. “I will have you know that I am, in fact, a very accomplished quilter. And I have recently rediscovered my passion for it. The fact that I rediscovered it while living with my actual grandmother is mere happenstance.”

He laughed at her performance, then matched her tone.

“My most sincere apologies, madam,” he said, sketching a bow as well as he could while sitting in a restaurant booth and holding a sandwich in his hand. “Please forgive the insolence. You are as accomplished as any of the grand quilters that this town has to offer.”

She scrunched up her nose. He, once again, had to push down any thoughts about how adorable she was, lest they find their way to his mouth.

“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” she said, spreading the square out in front of her. It was made of a series of triangles that pointed toward the middle of the square. “This is just a simple pinwheel pattern. It’s pretty basic, as far as quilt patterns go. But it does feel good to get back into a hobby that uses my hands. And my grandmother has about a million fabric options lurking in her back room. She let me help myself, so I’m indulging.”

“It does feel good to make things with your hands,” he agreed. It was part of what drew him to cooking. He liked knowing that he could pick up a knife and some ingredients and use his skill to feed people, to satisfy their stomachs and their souls, as only good food could do. “But you’re doing the entire thing by hand? Don’t people usually use sewing machines?”

“Oh, definitely,” she agreed immediately. “And I’m certain that I’ll end up doing part of this via machine, since I’ll be stitching for about the next ten years otherwise. But right now, it’s nice that I can pack up a little sewing bag and take it with me around town. It feels good to get out and about.”

He raised an eyebrow, then speared a forkful of salad. “I don’t want to bring up the word ‘bored’ again,” he said, letting the implication hang. He ate the bite of salad. Ooh, that goat cheese really was delicious.

Hope wobbled her head from side to side. “Yeah, maybe,” she admitted. “Or, I don’t know that I’d call it being bored. Everything here feels kind of new to me, even if I used to spend time here as a child. But I’ve been so preoccupied the past few years with work that I haven’t visited. Since my sister and I both live in Boston… or I guess lived in Boston, in my case, Miriam always came to visit us, rather than the other way around. So, it’s been a while since I’ve been here, and it’s exciting to see it all again.”

She paused again, gazing out the window. Jared let her ruminate and busied himself with another few bites of his meal.

“I guess I just feel a lack of purpose,” she said. “There’s taking care of my grandmother, obviously. That’s really important to me, of course. But she’s getting better every day, and that’s good. But it does leave me… a little at loose ends, I suppose. It reminds me that I miss my job, and sometimes that feels hard to explain, because so many people think of it as ‘just being a waitress.’ But I really liked that job. I liked feeding people, even if I wasn’t the one cooking it.”

Jared, in his career, had worked nearly every role that a professional chef had to offer. He’d been a busboy as a teenager; he’d waited tables to earn some extra money in culinary school. Then, there had been the usual rise through the ranks. He’d worked as a prep cook, a line cook, a sous chef. He’d worked catering gigs and a short stint as a private chef for a handful of rich clients. He liked running his own kitchen the best of all these, but the constant had always remained.

Feeding people.

“That makes perfect sense to me,” he said to Hope quietly, meaning every word. “It’s the best part of the job, no matter which part in the process you actually have.”

She paused for a moment, and he could see that she was biting the inside of her lip, considering something.