Page 10 of The Grump

The next morning when Avery came into the kitchen, she took one glance at me and said, “Your spark is gone.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“You didn’t put on Christmas carols. You look like you’re lost in your thoughts, and not the good kind. What’s wrong?”

I sighed. “I’d planned to tell you this over lunch, but I’ll just rip off the Band-Aid.”

She grimaced. “Don’t scare me.”

“Xander paid a visit yesterday.”

“Xander LeBlanc?”

“The one and only.”

“He dropped by unannounced? Ballsy of him.” That made me laugh. “You should’ve called me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve already met the guy once when I took pralines to the LeBlanc-Broussard restaurant. He’s an acquired taste.”

That made me laugh even more. “You could say that.”

“Although, I do remember him being quite good-looking. Though that’s not saying much. I swear to God, all the LeBlanc guys are drop-dead gorgeous. They could be Hollywood stars.”

“I agree with that,” I said, focusing on the batter. What was there not to like about Xander LeBlanc? He was probably six feet, with thick dark hair and very penetrating eyes. “I wouldn’tkick him out of bed... if he weren’t such a grump trying to shut down the operation.”

My sister came closer. “He actually said that?”

I looked up at her, setting down the batter bowl. “No. He said he’ll ‘assess things,’ but I could practically feel his disdain for this place. Like he was looking around and constantly thinking, ‘This is just a waste of money. And this is just a waste of money.’ He said he’ll keep an eye on things, and we’re set for this Christmas anyway.”

“Right,” Avery said, taking out ingredients for more batter.

“But you know what? Maybe this will be a good opportunity to convince him that our work is important.”

Avery smiled from ear to ear. “Nothing can dampen your optimism, can it?”

“No, but really,” I went on, managing to hype myself up, “just think about it. He probably sits in his office all day, looking at numbers and trying to make decisions based on that. As far as I understood, unlike his brothers, he isn’t in charge of a full branch. He’s not a hands-on type of person. But if he watches us closely, sees what we do and how much joy our business brings people, maybe he’ll change his mind.”

Avery grimaced.

“Stop making that face,” I chastised.

“I’m sorry. But I don’t think that’s how Xander operates. As far as I’ve heard, the guy is a genius with numbers. He managed to raise the profits of the company exponentially. Not that it wasn’t doing well before, but now it’s performing even better.”

I deflated a bit at that. “He raised profits, huh? By cutting off other branches like ours?”

She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know any details.”

I bit my lower lip, thinking hard. “We’ve encountered skeptics in our career, and we won them over with the pralines.”

“That was different, and you know it,” my sister said as we both got to work on our respective batters. We had plenty of kitchen machinery, of course, but some things still had to be done by hand. “We’ve had great success bribing guards with pralines to let us stay past visiting hours in the hospital. Convincing Xander LeBlanc not to shut this down is different.”

True, those weren’t comparable, but I couldn’t help being optimistic. As the day went on, I kept thinking about ways I could prove to Xander that the confectionery business was valuable. I just had to show him how much love went into this and how much joy it brought to people. Surely that had to count for something.

In the afternoon, I sat down in the small makeshift office I’d built in the corridor between the two rooms and opened my laptop.

“Oh no.”

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