Page 3 of Royal Icing
“Maybe, but do they have espresso croissants? No,” Ruby said with a look that was startlingly similar to their mother. “Besides, look at them.” She showed him a short video of complicated-looking fruit tarts sliding into a display case.
“Social media is not real life,” he said flatly. They had way more important things to worry about than a damn dessert.
CHAPTER TWO
EMMA
“What the hell is this?”
Emma Clark cringed as something solid landed on the stainless steel countertop behind her. There was no mistaking that voice, even over the Christmas music crooning in her earbuds.
She pulled her hands out of the dough and took a deep, cleansing breath before swiveling to face the intruder.
Maya, her boss and a canker sore of a human being, tapped an impatient foot on the tile floor. Her astonishingly long ponytail brushed over a rolled-up mat slung over her back. Must have been on her way to Pilates.
She didn’t have time for whatever this was. It was six a.m., they were opening in less than an hour, she’d had only had two sips of coffee, and her mother had fallen while trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Emma’s gaze slid from Maya’s monogrammed chef’s coat—that had never seen a teaspoon of flour—to the muffin on the countertop. Shit.
“Looks like a muffin to me.”
Maya’s manicured finger pointed in Emma’s face. “Don’t play coy with me. This was found at the farmer’s market in Williamsburg.”
Emma pressed her lips together. Who had ratted her out? She had gone through great pains to cover her steps. She had given the muffins to a trusted friend to sell at her alpaca scarf booth. She’d done everything short of leaving them in a shipping container at a dock in the middle of the night. But what Maya lacked in baking ability and common decency, she made up for in snooping prowess.
“You think I can’t spot your crumble topping from a mile away?” Maya grabbed a pinch off the top and ground it between her fingers. Great, now the floor was going to be crunchy.
“I know it’s yours,” Maya continued. “And you know this is a violation of the noncompete. You can’t sell anything outside of these four walls. Not. A. Single. Macaron.” She stabbed the counter with each word.
Emma turned back to her dough and rolled her eyes. Maya could never prove it. Besides, now that the insurance was dropping coverage on one of her mother’s medications in the new year, she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t maintain her savings percentage and afford the medication without supplemental income, and the freelance social media work she did on the side wasn’t cutting it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but there was a tremor in her voice. “Do you mind? I have a lot of work to do.”
Two more years and she would be free of this overhyped hellhole. She would be her own boss, and no nepo baby with a skull full of termites and glitter would ever take credit for her hard work again.
The timer on the oven dinged, and Emma hurriedly washed her hands.
Maya’s expression instantly changed from one of suspicion to delight. “Let me.” She tossed her phone to Emma and shrugged off her yoga mat. “Tooth check?”
Stress coursed through every vein in Emma’s body. Would there be no end to the interruptions today? The Fulton Foundation had placed an order for five hundred assorted croissants to serve at their fundraising brunch the next day, and she had only made two hundred of them. Gaby had called out sick and Isaiah was working the counter, so she was making everything herself. And that didn’t even address the mountain of administrative tasks that waited. The sooner she got Maya out of the kitchen, the better.
She turned to her boss and barely kept herself from reaching over to strangle her. She pulled up the camera app and lifted the phone. “You’re good.”
She would have given the all clear even if Maya had a California redwood between her front teeth.
Maya smoothed a hair back and slid her hands into hot mitts.
Emma took three different videos of Maya removing croissants from the oven. After Maya approved one, she stood there watching until Emma edited it, added some festive music, and posted it to the bakery’s Instagram.
“Thanks. Anyway, don’t let the muffin thing happen again. I’m not?—”
“Maya?” Isaiah’s head popped through the double doors. His hairnet barely contained his black ringlets, and he looked flustered. A candy cane pin on his apron flashed red and white.
“What is it?” Maya asked.
He jerked his head toward the counter. “There’s some European lady knocking on the front door claiming to be representing the kingdom of Longoria? Something like that.”
The kingdom of what?
