The Trouble with Exes by Sera Taíno

Author:Sera Taíno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-01-31T16:16:26+00:00

Chapter Nine

Nati

Nati had been busy the last couple of weeks, so she had not seen Val’s final touches on the restaurant. When she and Olivia arrived at the restaurant on the afternoon of the opening, they stood at the swinging doors of the kitchen, taking in the dining room. It was stunning, recalling the lush, warm influences of the island together with the spare grace and elegance of a city eatery.

“Looks good all put together like this,” Olivia whispered.

They were surrounded by wooden beams and floor, mosaic accents, walls painted the palest yellow that called to mind the villas of the south of Puerto Rico. Nati had recalled it being open and airy during the day, but in the evening, with electric lanterns casting a golden glow, the restaurant pulsed as if the venue had swallowed candlelight. Val had once told her that she’d never forgotten the restaurant Philip had taken her on their first date and wanted to recreate that warm glow. Plants and flowering trees adorned the corners of the room, bringing the tropical forest indoors, and Nati almost expected the cry of the coqui or the flutter of hummingbirds to fill the air. If she let her imagination roam, she would no longer be in a restaurant but in a land of myth that recalled the stories her mother told her when she was young.

An unbidden memory came to the fore of Nati’s mind. Leo’s nickname for her. He used to call her mi colibri, or my hummingbird, because of the way she went from one thing to the next with boundless energy. Her brain had somehow hidden those memories from her, perhaps as a coping mechanism, but now they exploded into her consciousness, a cascade of moments when Leo had referred to her by a nickname only they knew and understood. Every context surged to life—the flush of new love, the domestic day-to-day of lives circumscribed by responsibilities, the heat of unrestrained abandon. And in every one, his words for her were the same:

Mi colibri. My hummingbird. La mujer de mi vida.

If Nati didn’t stop, that well of emotion she kept stoppered through sheer will and distraction would come undone, rendering her unrecognizable to herself and everyone around her.

Game face. It was family time.

Thankfully, Val emerged from the kitchen, giving Nati something else to think about. Her chef’s outfit was stylish and clean, her thick curly hair tied back, the angles of her face immaculately made up. Their mother’s rosary, which Val never left home without, winked at Nati from the valley of her sister’s button-up. “What do you think? Caio did a wonderful job with the wood, didn’t he?”

Caio was one of Rosario’s cousins, and the owner of Aguardiente, a local club/restaurant that served as the social center of the community. In addition to pitching in to help Rosario as a bouncer a few nights a week, he owned a local small home-renovation company. The Navarros been going to Caio for years. It would have been inconceivable for Val to go to anyone else for the renovation of the restaurant space.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.