Her mind went on a tangent to the giant tub at the hotel in San Francisco. But she quickly banished the memory. The last thing she wanted to think about was Caleb.
“Did something happen when you visited Dad?” Melissa asked her.
The question seemed to come out of the blue.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been off. And I realize it’s since you got back. You’re a little blue and unhappy. Did he get inside your head?”
“Nothing more than usual.” Jules didn’t want to consider the lingering memories of sleeping with Caleb might be affecting her. “Dad blames me for leading you astray.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Jules linked her arm with Melissa’s. “Sometimes I wonder. If it wasn’t for me, would you be here?”
Melissa could use her business degree in any number of industries. Jules was the one who’d become a chef. She was the one who’d spent hours as a teenager sitting inside the closed-down Crab Shack, musing on its possibilities. And she was the one who’d promised her grandfather they’d reopen.
“I suppose you are the more passionate of the two of us.”
The answer gave Jules pause. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No. Not second thoughts. But you have to admit, we’re in pretty deep financially. And lately you seem so tired.”
“I’m not tired. Okay, I’m tired right now. But that’s from working on the floor all day long.”
The trail became steeper as they approached their house.
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Melissa asked.
“I’m positive.” If Jules was coming across as blue, she was simply going to readjust her attitude. She wasn’t truly blue, and there was nothing messing with her enthusiasm for the Crab Shack, not Caleb or anything else.
“Because we have options, you know.”
Unease rose in Jules. She slowed to a stop, turning to face Melissa. “What do you mean we have options?”
Had Caleb somehow gotten to Melissa? If he had, there was going to be trouble, Jules vowed.
Melissa kept walking as if they were having a perfectly ordinary conversation, and Jules had no choice but to move with her.
“Noah said something interesting today. I was talking to him. Okay, I was flirting with him. But I think I’m losing my touch. I’m acting like a schoolgirl, and it’s like he’s completely oblivious.”
“You really have a thing for him, don’t you?” Jules’s heart went out to her sister, and she relaxed a bit, far more comfortable with the topic of Noah than with any talk of options for the Crab Shack.
“Who wouldn’t? He’s so, I don’t know, solid, laid-back. Nothing rattles that guy. You’ve seen that, right?”
Noah was always there, lifting, carrying, power tools reverberating through the building. He’d become background noise.
“I can’t say that I’ve paid all that much attention.” Jules was usually focused on what she was doing herself.
“He’s so efficient,” Melissa continued. “He makes it look easy, but he gets a ton of work done.”
Jules agreed with that. “We’re lucky we hired him.”
“And his hands. I have a thing for his hands. They’re so capable. You know, scarred, callused, big, über-sexy.”
Jules couldn’t help but smile at her sister’s confession.
“But he won’t notice me.” Melissa sounded both earnest and sorry for herself. “Why won’t he notice me?”
“Maybe you’re trying too hard. Guys usually want what they can’t have.” Jules shrugged. “Maybe don’t be so obvious. Let him chase you for a while.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“You’re no further behind.”
“Hmm. I could try that. I have to say, he did come up with a good idea.”
“Tell me.” Jules felt like a better big sister than she had a few minutes ago.
“Noah thinks we should consider selling to Caleb.”
Jules stopped dead on the pathway. “Sell Caleb the Crab Shack? Why would we do that? Why would he even want it? We’re not in the market to sell. We’re in the market to succeed. What’s Noah even talking about?”
“He figures Caleb would easily give us jobs at Neo. You could be a chef. I could go into management. We could make it part of the deal that he had to give us careers.”
Jules couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “We’d bribe Caleb to employ us? We’d help the Watfords make Neo even more successful and give up the Crab Shack?” She tried to imagine her grandfather’s reaction. “You know Caleb would bulldoze the place.”