Page 64 of Meet Jon, the Billionaire

“Done,” I said.

She scoffed a bit but didn’t call me out on it otherwise. “Number two, if you really want to make it up to me and to Amelia, then you should reach into those deep pockets of yours and make our charity bake sale the biggest success it can possibly be.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Charity bake sale?”

“To help repair our damaged reputation. Well, are you in, or are you out?”

I stood up and puffed my chest out. “Aunt Petunia, I am most emphatically in.”

She cackled. “For heaven’s sake, man, put down the teddy bear. I can’t take you seriously while you’re standing there holding it.”

I looked down at my arm and then I laughed. Petunia joined in, and I started to feel a glimmer of optimism.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Amelia

The early morning sun stretched my shadow long as I strode up the sidewalk toward Breadcetera. I was getting into the bakery a bit late because of traffic. When I hit the door, Pedro and Yerkov were already bitching about the bake sale.

“I’ve never proofed this many fucking donuts at once before,” Pedro said. “Like, I can’t even close the door to the proofer because there are three racks in there.”

“Use towel to tie door shut. Is what I do at my restaurant.”

I came into the kitchen, and they both glared at me. “Here comes Ms. Bake Sale.”

“Reason we must do all this extra work, da?”

“Do you guys want the corner lot or not?” I growled. “That scheming snake Jonathon Thomas stuck a big fat knife in our backs, and we have to do something extreme to make up for it. Desperate times, and all of that jazz.”

“We told you not to date him,” Pedro said.

I felt a stab of pain in my chest, but I covered it up well, I think.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t fall all over yourself saying I told you so, or break your arm patting yourself on the back there, champ.” I put my hands on my hips. “Look, boys, I’m going to level with you. The last three days have had a big decrease in our sales and walk-in traffic, and it’s all because of that stupid article. Even with the paper printing a follow-up admitting the bribe was made in the form of baked goods, we’re still reeling. We need this bake sale to be a smashing success. Do you feel me?”

“I thought there were a lot of day-olds left in the case.”

I tied my apron on and settled into work. “We can do this, guys. If we all pull together as a team. Who’s with me?”

I put my hand out, so we could do that thing where everyone stacks their hands on top of each other. I’m sure you’ve seen it in a movie or somewhere, maybe a locker room. I think I stood there for a good minute staring at them before I realized that they weren’t going to participate.

“You guys are no fun at all, I swear.”

“We too busy to be having the fun,” Yerkov replied.

The kitchen became a whirling dervish of activity. Pedro, Yerkov and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I don’t know how we avoided getting in each other’s way.

The three of us were like a well-oiled machine, a busy beehive of baking. The only problem was, I couldn’t afford to shut the bakery down so we could work on stuff for the sale. If the last couple of days hadn’t been so bad, I may have had the opportunity to do so, but we had to stay open for business.

The bake sale was to take place on a Saturday morning, which meant we were making the stuff on a Friday. Remember how I said our sales were really weak the days before? Well, on Friday everybody who skipped out on us the rest of the week showed up, and they brought their brothers.

We were scrambling around just to try and keep up with orders. There was no time to work on stuff for the bake sale. We were totally swamped.

Sascha threatened to quit again, so I switched places with her and worked the register for a while so she could take a smoke break. Or two. Or three. When she finally returned, I was way behind on everything.

The rush ended, and I helped Sascha clean up the lobby before returning to the kitchen. At that point, I had not sat down except to use the toilet, and my dogs were barking. That’s restaurant talk for my feet were fucking killing me.

Just when we started to make a little bit of headway on the bake sale, the next rush hit. Even with Yerkov no longer having to split his attention between making breakfast sandwiches and working on the sale, we couldn’t even keep up with demand.

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