Page 30 of Tart
“If you had the opportunity to work in the back of the bakery full-time, is that something you’d be interested in doing?”
Her eyes widened double in size, and she swallowed nervously. The answer was evident on her face while she searched for a way to say it without losing her job or making me angry.
I held up my hand to calm her fears. “You don’t have to worry about upsetting me. I want to solve the problem we’re having here. I can’t do that if people aren’t honest with me.”
Her shoulders deflated, and she nodded, but I noticed her neck bob with emotion all the same. “I would love to work in the kitchen full-time, but at the same time, I know that you need me in the front. I’m not going to make things harder for you than they already are.”
I waved my hand in the air. “No, you wouldn’t be making things harder on me. You’d be making things easier on my business partner and sister, so either way, it’s a win for me. I already know I need to hire help for the front of the bakery. In that process, I want to move people around to do jobs that interest them the most. I want you to stay at The Fluffy Cupcake, Taylor. You’re a wonderful person and employee. You are talented in so many aspects of the business that it’s hard for me not to spread that around, but I know that spreads you too thin. If I can count on you to help me train a few new counter people, then I’m more than happy to let you find some happiness again working here.”
“Seriously?” she asked, her excitement obvious now that she knew I wasn’t going to be upset. “I would love that so much!” she said on a squeal. “I would never leave you in a bind here, so whatever you need, Amber. I’m here to help. I know a couple of people looking for part-time hours if that helps.”
“It would,” I said quickly. “Have them come in and fill out an application, please? We need at least two more part-timers and a full-timer. If I don’t have to advertise, that saves time. Besides, I know you don’t hang out with people I can’t trust.”
She grinned and bounced up on her toes. “I would never let anyone work here I didn’t trust, Amber. Never. I’ll text them and have them come by today.” She cleared her throat and looked over my shoulder for a minute. “My good friend, Sara, she just got laid off from her server job in St. Paul. She’s looking for full-time work right now. She’s organized, a quick learner, and knows customer service like the back of her hand. Should I start with her?”
I folded my hands and shook them. “Please. That would be heaven if we could get someone in here this week. The other boss has told me I’m not allowed in this place until I get my leg fixed.”
“Which makes me wonder why you are here,” said a familiar voice from the doorway.
I rolled my eyes at Taylor, where only she could see. “I’m here because even though my bestie thinks she runs the place, she doesn’t. Blindsided or not, I have decisions to make.”
Hay-Hay made the snorting sound she always made whenever I decided to pull the drama queen card. “Blindsided. Please. You’d have to be blind not to see what was going on here the last year. I’ll be in the office. Join me with a pastry or two when you’re done here.”
My eyes rolled again, and Taylor was biting her cheek to keep from laughing. “She’s so bossy. Geez, you’d think she owned the place or something.”
Taylor couldn’t hold in her laughter any longer and let it out, filling the bakery with a light that even the sun couldn’t offer. “She loves you, so we’ll forgive her. We all love you, and we don’t want to see you in pain the way you have been the last few months. You can’t keep going like this.”
“I know,” I said on a sigh. “It sucks to get smacked in the face with the truth sometimes, but at least it was by someone who cares and wants what’s best for me. We’ll figure this out together, I promise,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “Just be patient with us as we shift things around. Hopefully, by August, you should be in the back full-time, especially if your friend works out. I need to find someone I trust to take over the majority of my hours up here for the foreseeable future.”
She held up her finger and grabbed a bakery paper and a container, setting two Danish in it. “I’ll call her as soon as I carry these, and two hot, black coffees into the office for you. Even if you weren’t offering to let me work in the back full-time, I’d be doing anything I could to get you out of pain. I know Sara will be here before your meeting with Haylee is done.”
“It’s seven a.m.,” I said, laughing. “You can give the girl a chance to wake up.”
“She’s up. She’s an early bird like me.”
I waited while she poured two cups of coffee and then followed her back through the bakery to the office. Brady was at the bench, and I growled at him as I went by.
“Geez, who spilled your coffee this morning?” he asked lovingly.
“More like who spilled my secrets to my next-door neighbor,” I responded in kind.
“I didn’t know it was a secret, Amber. Everyone in this town knows what happened to you. Besides, he might be a man, but he’s not obtuse. He was the one to bring it up. I apologize if trying to put his mind at ease upset you.”
“I’m messing with you, Brady. I know he could ask anyone on the street, and they could answer him without even thinking about it. I appreciate that at least you were discreet.”
He smiled in a way that softened his eyes and smoothed out the lines of his face as he leaned on the bench, his hands still full of flour from his dough kneading. “I’m always discreet, but he was so worried after you fell the other night that I felt like I should at least try to put his mind at ease a little bit. I’m glad you’re not upset.”
I winked and returned his smile. “I could never be upset with you, Able Baker Brady, but I would appreciate if you’d let a bitch have a little bit of mystery about her, eh?”
He snorted and saluted me, flour floating through the air from his fingers. “You got it, sarge.”
I laughed aloud and realized how long it had been since the bakery was filled with our laughter. That used to be the only sound you heard other than the drumming beat of the mixer or the timer going off on the oven. Now, there was a pervading silence to the place I worried we couldn’t fill. Taylor passed me on her way back to the front and patted my shoulder.
When I got to the office, I was surprised to see the disarray. “What’s going on here?” I asked Hay-Hay as I sat in the chair across from the desk, piled with papers.
“I thought about what you said last night, and you were right. I can’t just kick you out of here and expect you to be okay with that. What I can do is make this office functional, so you have a place to manage the business better. My crap is always strewn around here, which makes it hard for you to find anything. I have to do better.”
I motioned at the paperwork while I sipped at the coffee Taylor had brought for us. “Seeing this, I know you’re right. We do have some work to do if we want to get this place running smoothly again. It’s been neglected for too long. The majority of that is my fault.”
