Page 43

The space didn’t have a window, but it did have a door, and if I pushed my desk against the far wall, I could glance over my shoulder and see the winery and the brick oven with ease.

I could also hear what was happening in the kitchen.

For some reason the sound traveled right through the ceiling of my office. That was going to be good and bad.

Despite the office’s shortcomings, it was done, and after I applied a coat of paint, construction could be classified as officially over.

I’d considered several colors, but in the end chose the yellow paint left over from the front of the shop.

It was enough to cover my walls in two coats, and best of all it was already paid for.

Watching the money going out in the last week and a half had been stressful, and I was looking forward to seeing it come back into the bakery.

And so I finished the paint job and tossed out the empty paint can and paint brushes in the dumpster.

I headed up to the front of the store to hang what had been on the walls before.

In the end I settled on rehanging the cupcake clock.

I didn’t want to rehang the posters Mike had liked and decided to dig through the old bakery pictures and put together a collage.

Another project, one I didn’t need, but it made sense to celebrate the bakery’s history.

I pushed through the saloon doors so I could offer my help to Rachel.

My sister stood over the large mixer and was dropping in chunks of butter while Meg watched.

Meg had tied back her blond hair and wore a frown on her face as she listened to Rachel’s explanations about mixing.

The girl wanted to learn, and as far as I was concerned that was more than half the battle.

“Did Margaret go back to her dig?” I asked.

Rachel unwrapped another pound of butter and dropped it into the mixer. “No, she had an errand to run.”

Annoyance snapped. “She says she’s here to work, and now she’s running an errand?”

Rachel shrugged. “She took the girls with her, which gives me time. That makes her a goddess in my mind.”

“Margaret and the girls. What could those three be up to?”

“My guess is it has to do with chocolate ice cream. I’m fully expecting the girls to come back covered in dirt and hyped on sugar, but at this point, I don’t care if it buys me an extra hour to double-check all the details for Simon’s party.”

She met my gaze, her cheeks flushed. A lock of her hair stuck up, and her mascara looked a bit smudged, as if she’d been rubbing her eyes.

“Take a deep breath, Rachel,” I said.

“A deep breath?”

“We’ll get it all done.”

Rachel shook her head and then glanced at Meg. “Have you heard curse words before?”

Meg giggled. “Yes.”

“Well, you still might want to cover your years because I’m about to say one.”

Meg unwrapped the next pound square of butter. “My mom says bad words. A lot. She said she used to be a nice person before she had kids.”

Rachel nodded. “And it’s not that she doesn’t love you. It’s not that I don’t love my girls. But I’m about to lose my, well, you-know-what mind.”

Meg giggled.

I saw the signs of my sister’s impending breakdown. “Rachel, what can I do?” I asked. “Put me to work.”

She turned on the mixer, and the large paddles creamed the butter. “Meg, when it’s creamy, then drop in another chunk of butter. One at a time.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

Rachel wiped her hands on her apron and motioned me toward a rack filled with trays of cookies. “These need to be iced, and these need to be dunked in the chocolate. And they all need to be set back on the tray to dry.”

“I can do that.”

“You must be precise. Sloppy does not work.”

I grinned. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“When it comes to the numbers, you’re on track, Daisy. But your mind can wander when you ice. I can’t have that.”

I patted her on the shoulder. “You’re such a bossy little girl. I’m so proud.”

A half smile tugged the edge of her lips. “Let’s get to work.”

Margaret arrived back at the shop three hours later with the girls, just as we were putting the last of the cookies on the trays.

The girls were covered in dirt. Chocolate ice cream stained their clean T-shirts.

Their shoes were untied, and Anna was missing a sock.

Margaret looked as she always did, a bit disheveled but unworried as she slurped the last of a milkshake from a paper cup.

“Hola,” she said.

The girls ran up to their mom, their dirty faces beaming. They talked so fast and quick, no one could understand them.

Rachel absently plucked a leaf from Anna’s hair and smoothed out Ellie’s bangs. A year ago, if the girls had marched in here this unkempt, Rachel would have scurried them to the showers and cleaned them right up. Now, she seemed in no rush to reestablish perfection.

Ellie’s eyes widened. “And then we went to the park, and Margaret bought us ice cream.”

“And then,” Anna said, “we ate cotton candy and took our shoes off in the park.”

Ellie smirked and in a loud whisper said, “And then Margaret told a guy to go to hell.”

“And she showed him her finger.” Anna held up her index finger.

“No,” Ellie said. “It was this finger.” She held up her middle finger.

Margaret’s eyes widened and she moved to explain when Rachel said, “My goodness, it sounds like you had a great day.” Rachel slowly lowered Anna’s index and Ellie’s middle fingers.

“Can we go with Margaret again?” Ellie said.

“She said she’d take us swimming,” Anna hurried to add.

Rachel nodded. “Sure, sounds good. Maybe you could hang out with Margaret a little longer today. Maybe she could give you dinner while Daisy and I deliver these cookies.”

Margaret shrugged. “Sure. I can feed the munchkins, and I can hose them off if you like and toss them into bed.”

Rachel brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “Sounds like a plan.”

Margaret glanced at me. “She’s not freaking out about the girls being such a mess.”

I shrugged. “I think we broke her.”

Rachel lifted a tray of cookies. “I’ll freak out later. Right now, we need to move it.”

I glanced at the clock. We had a half hour. Just enough time.

Fifteen minutes later the bakery van sputtered and stopped in the loading dock of Simon’s sleek office building on Duke Street. I snagged a delivery cart from the loading dock and pushed it down the ramp to the van, and we carefully loaded the cookies onto the cart.

Rachel glanced up at me. “This is a hell of a way to earn a living.”

Laughter bubbled in me as I hefted a tray. “You are telling me.”

Rachel’s eyes didn’t reflect humor. “No really, there must be an easier way.” Fatigue added brittleness to her tone.

“If I knew it, I’d do it.”

We pushed the cookie cart up the ramp to the elevators, and I pressed the button.

“Seriously,” Rachel said. “My kids look like vagrants, and I don’t have time to clean them up. We’ve been busting our asses the last ten days, and we’re how many thousands behind?”

“I don’t know.” I did, but Rachel didn’t need a blow-by-blow of our finances. “And the girls are happy, Rachel. That’s all that matters.”

Tears pooled in her eyes. “But they weren’t having fun with me. In the last two weeks they’ve had more fun than they’ve had in their entire lives, and I wasn’t there for any of it. I was working.”

“The last two weeks have been a little crazy. And the exception to the rule.” The doors dinged open, and we pushed the cart into the elevator.

“I’m afraid it’s always going to be this way.

I was back to work when they were three weeks old.

We had a big order, and Mike needed me. When they turned two, I had to get up early to decorate a wedding cake.

I didn’t have time to ice their birthday cake.

They start first grade in six weeks, and I honestly can’t tell you where the time has gone. ”

I wanted to assure her there’d be no more missed special days, but I couldn’t. “You’ve said it yourself. The bakery takes a chunk out of your life.”

Anger brightened her blue eyes. “Yeah, well, what if I don’t want to do it anymore?”

Shit. Rachel was talking about abandoning the ship.

Where she’d go, I didn’t know, and I doubted she did either.

But I did know if she bailed, I couldn’t hold it together.

And if the bakery went under, where would the kid and I go?

And what if I did manage to keep her on board?

Did I want her life? Did I want to leave a three-week-old infant to return to work?

I glanced in the mirror doors of the elevator and studied my reflection. My hair stuck up, and the buttons on my chef jacket were fastened one loop off. I quickly refastened the jacket and smoothed down my hair.

I did my best to keep the panic out of my voice. “Let’s get through tonight, and then we’ll talk. I’ll figure it out.”

She nodded, and for a moment we were both silent. Elevator music hummed above our heads.

“I had two more orders for frozen dough yesterday,” she said as an afterthought.

“Really?”

“For chocolate chip cookie dough. Seems Mrs. Ably has been talking about us.”

“How much did you charge them?”

“Twenty-five dollars for three dozen.”

“And if we’d baked them, we’d have made thirty-two dollars.”

“But half the labor and electricity.”

I did quick calculations. “The profit is slightly higher when we sell the dough.”

“That’s what I thought but didn’t have time to crunch numbers. Have you thought about being more of a mail-order business?” Rachel said. “We could actually be open for business Friday and Saturday, and the rest of the week we make and sell dough?”

The idea was different. Our business model would change radically.

But the idea had merit. “I’m surprised I didn’t think of it.”

Rachel straightened her shoulders as if a little bit of the weight lifted. “You’ve been distracted.”

“I’m going to have to really run the numbers, Rachel. It’s not a change we can make overnight.”