Page 18 of Billionaire and the Barista

I shook my head. “I didn’t. Four packs?”

“Fours and sixes,” he said.

If baking was my happy place, then ordering the proper amount of supplies was on the other side of a barbed wire fence to my comfort zone. I had been more content lately, maybe I had really been baking a lot more and accepted being happier while I clearly had not been paying proper attention to my supply needs.

The phone rang interrupting my thoughts. Yeah, I needed to call in this order.

“Love Buns.”

I half paid attention to Miguel as he answered the phone and distracted headed back to my little office space. The phone burped. I pushed the speaker function. “Yeah?”

“Some real estate agent wants to talk to you,” Miguel’s voice sounded distorted through the speaker.

“Thanks,” I said. I lifted the handset. “May I help you?”

“Today is your lucky day,” the woman on the other end of the call gushed. “We’re getting exciting offers on your property.”

“Uh, you’re getting offers? Interesting, considering my property is not for sale. Buh-bye.” I hung up and rolled my eyes. The gall of some people.

I went to pull down the ingredients I needed for frosting. I was insanely low on powdered sugar. I wrote powder on a sticky note and slapped it against the growing stack of sticky notes that made up my shopping list.

The kitchen doors swung open again and Lacey leaned in. She was only a few years younger than I was, but she looked like she was barely fourteen, all fresh faced and full of enthusiasm and exceptions for her future. A senior at Washington University, she rented my top floor, for cheap, because she also watched Robbie for me all the time.

“Hey Gabby,” Lacey said with a wave.

Her blonde hair swung like heavy silk thread, smooth and shiny. I was pretty sure that I had flour in my hair. My unruly mop was pulled back and hidden under a bandana. Compared to her, I was the personification of jaded and bitter.

“I’ve got Robbie. We’re headed upstairs. I saw a video of this great recipe, it looked really yummy, mind if I make dinner?”

“What is it?” I asked, more out of curiosity than concern.

Lacey’s culinary experimentation was mostly hit, with a few instances of miss. If she wanted to cook, she was welcome to the food in my kitchen. The second-floor apartment had a decent sized kitchen. Nothing like the commercial one for the café, but it was huge in comparison to the kitchenette on the third floor.

“Shakshuka,” she said. “It’s some egg dish with peppers and tomatoes, and it looks really good,” she said.

“Sounds good to me. You know where to find me if you need anything,” I said.

I waved as she left. I turned my attention to mixing the frosting I would use on the cooling cupcakes. I set that aside and returned to my order list.

The phone rang. I picked it up.

“Love Buns,” I said.

“This is an inquiry call regarding the property your café is located in. Do you have contact information for the owner?”

“How can I help you?” I asked.

“Are you aware of your property’s value?”

“Seriously?” I hung up without saying anything else.

My list was almost finished. I hated calling my supplier without a detailed list of my needs. He let me still call in the order when I knew he preferred it to be placed over the internet. I ignored the phone when it rang again, letting Miguel handle it.

The phone buzzed again. “I’ve got it,” I said over the speakerphone.

“This property is not for sale,” I immediately said, picking up the call.

“Ah, I was calling about cupcakes, do I have the wrong number?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ve had two weird calls back-to-back about buying this place,” I explained. “You wanted cupcakes. How can I help you?”

I took the special cupcake order, and finally called my supplier and ordered more of everything than I thought I would need. I finished frosting the cupcakes, and then I looked at the clock. How was it almost five? Lacey had just been here, and that had been three-thirty.

I pulled my kitchen apron off and tossed it in the laundry, washed up, and put on a clean apron to help out front. Miguel was good, but the evening rush could be crazy.

I carried a tray of cupcakes out and began stocking the case. The flow of customers increased as expected. Nothing out of the usual for us on a weekday.

Except for when the ghost of my past walked through the doors. He had to be a ghost because Nathan Anderson had stopped calling my phone at some point in the past three or four years.

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