Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 59146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
“I know.” I straightened and walked out, leaving the door open behind me.
I left the compound, headed to Juniper. That itch between my shoulder blades built and built with each passing day. I’d reached a point I had trouble controlling my impulses to take over and protect her by any means necessary. And if I did, I’d lose her forever.
She had a piping bag in her hand when I came through the back, and she didn’t look up. The ovens were running. The whole kitchen smelled like butter and sugar and clean warmth. A full sheet pan of croissants cooled on the rack. Another batch was going in.
“Morning,” she said with a tight smile.
“Morning.” I found the stool in the corner I’d used before and sat on it and kept my hands off everything. I noticed she didn’t seem surprised to see me, nor did she seem angry.
She worked in silence for a while. Then she spoke, never taking her eyes from her work. “The health inspector came Friday afternoon,” she said. “He found nothing, though.”
“Yeah. I heard.”
“Then you know the complaint was fabricated.” She set the piping bag down and turned the board a quarter inch. “I know it, too. I can’t prove it, so…” A small shrug. She picked the bag back up.
A few minutes later she stripped a tier off a stand near the window and set it on the counter. It was half-decorated, pale pink buttercream interrupted at the midsection, and she started scraping it back with a bench scraper in long, efficient strokes.
“I made this for a wedding client,” she said. “They canceled this morning. The excuse was that they’d decided to go smaller, keep it intimate.” She didn’t change her tone. “They booked me four months ago for a hundred and twenty guests.” The scraper moved. The buttercream came off in long curls, and she deposited them in a bowl beside her without breaking rhythm. She’d reclaim it, I realized. Use it somewhere else. She wasn’t throwing anything away.
I watched her work down the tier and said, “I’m sorry, Juniper.”
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s a cake.”
But we both knew it wasn’t just a cake. Twenty minutes later she was tallying an invoice at the register and I refilled my water in the sink and kept out of her way. She marked something twice on the invoice, stared at it a second, then clipped it under the counter.
“You know,” she said. She didn’t look at me. “You can say ‘I told you so’ and I’m not going to get angry at you.”
“The very last thing I want to do is rub salt into a wound. I think you know that too.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.” She was silent for a long moment. “You know, my grandmother left me the bakery when she died. I was the only one of her children or grandchildren to take an interest in the place, so she taught me to run it from the ground up. I can make this place work on my own and the only thing I really need is someone working the register. Not only do I know how to make the recipes and all the wonderful icing sculptures, I know the accounting too. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and my mother’s brother lives in California. No one wanted to bother with all the taxes and stuff and urged me to just sell it. But that’s not what my grandmother wanted.” She looked up at me, a fierce determination shown through her expression even through her worry and melancholy. “You’ve heard about everything, haven’t you?” She looked away.
“Knight filled me in this morning. Before you get angry, all he did was watch your ratings and your website. Once things started popping up, he went looking for the rest.”
“I’m not angry.” She marked the invoice and clipped it under the counter. “He called me first. Before he called you.”
Georgia came in at seven to open. She and Juniper exchanged quiet conversation as I refilled my coffee. Then the morning rush started, and I stayed back, watching everything in the shadows.
It was during the mid-morning lull that Juniper told me what the conversation between her and Georgia had been about. “Georgia gave her notice. Her mother heard something.”
I set my cup down. “What did her mother hear?”
“She didn’t say.”
We stood in the kitchen doorway, not quite facing each other, the counter between us. This was how it had been all morning. There was a gap between us I didn’t know how to bridge.
“Let me extend Zero’s coverage,” I said. “Another week.”
“No.” She went back to the counter and checked her clipboard.
“Juniper --”
“No. We had an agreement and I held to it, and it ends today.” She made another mark. “Having your guys out there doesn’t stop what’s already moving. It just makes it look like the place isn’t safe. Not from your friends, but from something. Which is a whole different problem than the one I have. I can’t give this shit any accidental credibility.” She was right. That was the thing I kept running into with her. She was usually right, and it made the situation ten times more aggravating.