The Nantucket Restaurant (The Nantucket Restaurant #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

J ill O’Toole wasn’t supposed to be surfing the net on a busy Thursday afternoon.

Her to-do list was a mile long, and the most pressing item was front and center on her desk.

A crisp, three-page Excel spreadsheet of candidate research that her assistant had printed out, highlighted, paper-clipped, and delivered to her an hour ago.

Names and numbers of people she needed to call ASAP.

Instead, she was mesmerized by a food blog, which was one of her guilty pleasures.

It featured mouthwatering photos, recipes, and related stories that made her long to be home puttering around her own kitchen, slicing and dicing, stirring and tasting.

No time to browse today however, for she was on a mission to find a foolproof recipe for the kind of rich, dense, fudgy chocolate cake that would inspire moans at first bite.

Jill could almost always tell just by reading the recipe what a dish would taste like, and she knew that the one she’d just found was as close to the signature dessert at Mimi’s Place as she was going to get. Hopefully, Grams would agree.

For as long as she could remember, they’d always gone to Mimi’s Place for Grams’s birthday.

An elegant, two-storied restaurant that was walking distance from Grams’s Nantucket home, Mimi’s Place served Italian-influenced meals that were simple yet exquisite comfort food.

Certain dishes, such as their wafer-thin eggplant parmesan, were so amazing that Jill finally gave up ordering them anywhere else.

Usually, these birthdays consisted of just the immediate family—Jill and her sisters, Emma and Mandy.

Mandy’s husband, Cory, and their two young children, Blake and Brooke, were always there too, since they lived on Nantucket.

But Emma’s husband, Peter, usually stayed home in Phoenix.

He barely knew Grams, and it was just so far to come.

Emma and Peter had separated two months ago.

And Emma hadn’t said why, only that she’d fill Jill and Mandy in when she saw them.

Jill and her sisters had always been close to Grams, but even more so since their mother passed away almost twelve years ago after an unexpected and short battle with pancreatic cancer.

Their father had followed six months later.

The doctors called it a massive coronary; Grams said it was simply a broken heart.

Last year, when Grams turned ninety, they threw a real party at Mimi’s Place.

Grams had always been a social butterfly, eating out once, if not twice a day, because she couldn’t justify cooking for one.

All her friends who were still living and able to make it came, along with what seemed like most of Nantucket.

Everyone knew and loved Grams and wanted to celebrate her.

They filled the entire restaurant, and it was quite a party.

This year, however, would be different. Grams had decided about nine months ago that it was time to downsize.

Her house, just off Nantucket’s Main Street, where she’d lived for over fifty years, was too big.

“As much as I hate to admit it, the stairs are killing me, and I don’t have the energy to start renovating now. I’m going to move into the assisted living at Dover Falls.”

Still determined and feisty at barely five feet tall and maybe ninety-five pounds, Grams had smiled brightly and added, “Connie Boyle is there. She goes to Foxwoods casino once a quarter. There’s a whole busload that goes. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

A month after making her announcement, it was a done deal. Grams sold two other properties that she’d owned for many years and rented out to summer tourists. She wasn’t ready to part with her main residence though, or even to rent it out just yet.

Grams settled in quickly at Dover Falls and always sounded happy whenever Jill or one of her sisters called, but recently she’d admitted to feeling a bit under the weather.

A nasty bout of bronchitis had turned into pneumonia and left her so weak that she didn’t have the strength to venture out at all, let alone make the traditional trip to Mimi’s Place.

Grams’s suite at Dover Falls had a small kitchen they could use, so the new plan was for Jill to make the cake ahead of time and then just see what everyone was in the mood for when they all arrived.

Jill was mentally making a shopping list of the ingredients she’d need when an instant message from her assistant flashed on the computer screen.

Billy’s on his way in. I told him you were busy, but he wouldn’t listen. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Thank God for Jenna. She was the best assistant Jill had ever had, and she couldn’t imagine working without her.

“I knew you weren’t on the phone,” Billy said, barging into the office and sitting on the edge of her desk. He picked up the spreadsheet of names. “Have you even called any of these candidates yet? You know how important this search is?”

Jill sighed. Her partner, Billy Carmenetti, was prone to drama.

He wore expensive suits, drove a shiny new BMW, and had house accounts at several of the hottest restaurants.

If you didn’t know him better, you’d think Billy wanted people to think he was someone important.

But Jill did know better. She knew that he just liked nice things because he’d grown up without them.

At six foot two, with thick, almost black hair, dark brown eyes that perpetually danced with mischief, and a long, lean body, toned from daily gym workouts, Billy was hard to miss.

He was also one of the most generous people she knew and one of the nicest, even if he did drive her crazy on a daily basis.

They’d been best friends and business partners for well over a decade, and it was only a month ago Jill realized that she might be in love with him.

The idea had slammed into her, fully formed and obvious, and she was struggling with what to do about it.

“I know, I know. I’m about to dive into it. I just had something important I had to handle first.”

Billy turned as the printer whirred and groaned. Curious, he leaned over and plucked the freshly printed page from the tray. He glanced at it, then raised his eyebrows at Jill. “Chocolate cake? Are you kidding me?”

“Oh, relax. It’s for Grams’s birthday. I’m on this search. Don’t worry. We’ll fill it.”

“We have to. If we don’t, we won’t get the rest of their business.

I heard from their CFO that they are using this search as a test to see how we do and what caliber of candidates we can produce.

If we get into this company, it could launch us to the next level. Continued business for years to come.”

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be, other searches of your own to worry about?” Jill teased.

“I’m going, I’m going.” He swung his legs off her desk and headed toward the door. He turned back and smiled, his voice softer this time. “Tell Grams I said happy birthday.”

And that was one of the many reasons why she loved Billy.

He adored her grandmother. More importantly though, he was just a good person, through and through.

And they were as close if not closer than most married couples.

Everyone said so and constantly asked why they weren’t a couple.

They’d always laughed it off and said it was impossible as they’d been friends forever.

They were like brother and sister as well as business partners.

So the realization that she might be in love with him was troubling.

Especially when she considered that Billy had never given the slightest inkling that he was even remotely attracted to her.