Page 17 of Billionaire and the Barista

GABRIELLA

“Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom,” Robbie came crashing into the kitchen. Everything was intensely urgent, all the time with him.

I held up my hand, fingers splayed.

He settled and didn’t say anything as I slowly began lowering one finger at a time. I don’t remember who taught me that trick, but it worked beautifully every single time. The rule was if he wasn’t bleeding or hurt, or about to throw up that hand meant he had to stop, think and be quiet. I needed a moment to finish what I was doing. And at that moment, it was scraping the sides of a mixing bowl, transferring out all of the batter into a cupcake pan.

I set the bow down and wiped my hands on my apron. “Okay, baby, what is it?”

I squatted down to his level, and he held up a picture from the coloring book he had been working on.

“Oh, wow, that’s really good,” I said as I took the colored picture from him.

The picture was from a recent cartoon movie with magic cars and their kids. For all the times I had watched it, I had yet to see it all the way through. The little girl had skin that was a mix of different colors, and her hair was green and blue. In the movie she was a kid with brown hair, I think.

“I stayed in the lines. Look.” He proudly pointed to the car, which he had colored in the exact colors it was in the movie, and a good seventy percent of his coloring was in the lines. It was as if he only wanted to color the car but felt obligated to finish the page before moving on to another page.

I took the picture and crossed the kitchen. “I think this one is good enough for the fridge.”

I pulled a length of tape from the tape dispenser on a nearby table and stuck the picture up with tape to the four corners. One of the nice things about having a commercial refrigerator was its large door space. I had room for lots of pictures, which was a good thing because Robbie loved to draw and color.

“I’m gonna tell Lacey you put it on the fridge,” he beamed, so completely proud of having his picture on the refrigerator.

“Is Lacey back from class already?” I asked as I slid the cupcake trays into the oven and set the timer.

I followed as Robbie pushed through the kitchen door and back into the café area. He had a little set up in the corner where he could color and play with cars during slower times and for when he wasn’t at school. He had grown up in the café. My staff and regulars had helped me to keep an eye on him.

No truer words had ever been said than that old saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’ Without his father in the picture, and without my parents, I needed my village.

I scanned the seating area. I didn’t see Lacey anywhere.

“I thought you said Lacey was here,” I said.

Robbie shook his head and pointed at the big clock on the wall. “She’ll be here when the big hand is on the six. She said three-thirty.”

My baby was getting so big, and so smart. When had he learned how to tell time? I picked him up and gave him a big sloppy kiss on his temple. He squirmed and giggled. In return, he gave me an equally sloppy, and infinitely stickier kiss back.

“Let me know when Lacey gets here, okay, baby?”

“Uh-huh.” he was already back to coloring another car.

Based on his genetics he should have been crazy for motorcycles, I guess cars weren’t too far removed.

I gave the front case a quick look. I needed to get those cupcakes finished for the evening after-work rush.

“I’m in the kitchen if you need anything,” I announced as I stepped back into my domain.

I loved baking. After all these years, I still wanted to make cupcakes. When I had inherited Love Buns, I had thought I wanted something else with my life, and I did the work because it was the only way I could hold onto memories of my parents. But now, this was mine. I had not only continued running the coffee shop successfully, but I had also created something with my baking. I had customers from the other side of town travel just to see what I had in the case for the day. People constantly asked me to branch out and make their birthday cakes, and their wedding cakes.

I hadn’t ever planned on taking the business in that direction. Then again, I hadn’t exactly planned where I was now. The buzzer sounded, and I pulled the pans from the oven and set them out to cool.

I crossed over to the table that served as my desk and picked up the list of supplies I needed to order. I needed to up my cream cheese order, and I was pitifully low on flour. If I hadn't checked in the last order, I would almost think I had been shorted. I looked at my production schedule and looked back at my order. Yeah, cupcake production was up. Way up.

I pushed back into the café.

“Hey Miguel, have cupcake sales almost doubled this month?” I waited as he finished with a customer.

“It seems like it. Did you see my request for more boxes?”

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