Page 15 of Frosting and Flames

Maybe it’ll be good, even. Like I thought when he last left the bakery, a chance to get rid of that unsettled feeling. Plus, it’s only one day.

What do I have to lose?

CHAPTER FOUR

RACHEL

“Aurora Bakery,” I answer, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder as I give Mr. Kidaris his change. “This is Rachel. How can I help you?”

“Hi, honey. Where’s Hailey?”

It takes me a moment to place my mother’s voice. “She’s on lunch break.”

“Oh, will you tell her I called? She said the ice maker was acting up upstairs.”

“Yes, I will.” I smile at Mr. Kidaris as he leaves, my pleasant expression dropping as soon as he’s gone. “Actually, I need to talk to you about something.”

I head in the back and ask Sydney to cover the register while I talk to Mom, then head into the miniscule office in the back corner of the bakery, shutting the door behind me.

“How long have you been giving five hundred cookies to the fire station?”

She laughs, a breezy sound that sets me on edge. Nothing’s ever serious with her.

“I already explained that to Hailey the other day.”

“Okay, but you never told me about it. You know, me? The person who handles the finances? The person in charge of anything business-related?”

“No, this is a donation,” she says, as if that explains everything.

“I understand that. But it messes up my inventory system when that many ingredients go unaccounted for. And when the rest of us don’t know it’s happening.”

She sighs. Probably because we’ve been over stuff like this before. “Rachel, it’s for the kids. How are you going to deny children delicious cookies?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Half of those kids can’t tell the difference between a chocolate chip and an oatmeal raisin. A cookie is a cookie to them.”

“We would never trick them with oatmeal raisin,” she says in a shocked tone. “That’s cruel.”

I’m actually in agreement with her, but that’s not the point. “Do we at least have some kind of signage at the event letting them know the cookies come from Aurora Bakery?”

“Oh, you and your advertising.” I ignore the irritation in her voice. “Honey, we don’t need to advertise. We’re the only bakery in town.”

And we’ve definitely been over this before, too. Little does she know I’m putting an ad in the paper for Mother’s Day. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, though. “People have more options than ever. We need to stay in people’s minds. Otherwise they can order from places online, go to the grocery store—”

“They don’t even have a proper bakery.”

A small smile touches my lips, thinking of me saying the same thing to Nick the other day.

I frown, wiping my smile clear. Stay focused.

“Well, they just opened the supercenter in Kaysville.”

She makes a sound of dismissal. “That’s half an hour away. No one’s going to drive that far.”

She’s delusional. She’s lived in Aurora her whole life, where it takes no time to drive anywhere. Even better, the bakery is smack dab in the middle of town on the main road. And even better than that, her and Dad live in the apartment above the bakery, so they don’t own a car and have no concept of driving anymore.

“Regardless, we need to put stuff like that in the system.” I’m not even going to bring up that we probably shouldn’t be doing unpaid work to begin with, because I have something more pressing to discuss. “Anyway, now that you and Dad have been gone for about a month, I have a better idea of our staffing needs. We’re running ragged on this ten hours a day, six days a week schedule—”

“Oh, it’ll be fine. We’ll only be gone five more months.”

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