For a moment, Claire didn’t say anything. Her mouth was pursed. She was clearly thinking hard.
He counted that moment as a triumph. If she wasn’t dismissing the idea right off the bat, he was starting to get through to her. The evidence of progress made his heart sing. He didn’t mind putting in a little extra effort for Claire.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good. Can I help you clean up?” He picked up his plate and mug, then stood, the chair scraping back on the floor.
“Oh, no. It will only take me a second.” She took the plate and mug from him.
“Okay then. Thanks for the snack.” He started toward the back door then turned. “Let me know what you decide either way. I promise you, I only want what’s best—for both of us.”
Words would only take him so far. He didn’t want to overstay his welcome and give her a chance to distrust him. He bid her goodnight and left. He didn’t want to leave. He could have stayed up all night talking to her. There were still so many things about her that he didn’t know, so many things about his life he wanted to share. But all of that would come in time, if he had his way.
He hadn’t become the owner of a successful business with multiple locations by giving up at the first sign of trouble. He wasn’t going to quit now, not when he was just starting down the path to his well-earned new beginning.
This time, he was going to get things right.
Chapter Eighteen
Claire completed her morning routine on autopilot. Her body was there, petting and feeding Urchin, getting ready for work, but her mind remained on Rob’s proposal. Work together. Could they?
Had she gotten him all wrong, jumped to conclusions about his intentions with setting up a bakery across the street from hers? Sandcastles was a symbol of her success, a part of her, but was she too close to her business to think straight? Jane and Maxi certainly thought so, and they’d never steered her wrong before.
And then there was the attraction. Rob certainly was easy on the eyes, and working with him wouldn’t be a hardship. Though, Claire didn’t want to take things any further than business. Peter’s betrayal still stung, and she didn’t want to open herself up to that again.
Claire felt a pang of guilt for not admitting to Rob she indeed remembered him from fifteen years ago. At first, she’d been afraid it would give him the upper hand to know she recalled that night, and her ego had been bruised. He hadn’t bothered to contact her.
Now that she knew about his mom getting sick, it made sense that he never returned. He had more important things to deal with than finding a girl he kissed once in the moonlight.
Claire was feeling pretty positive when she finally settled onto her Vespa and cranked the key. But as the engine purred to life, doubts crept into her thoughts. Why was he working so late at his bakery? He’d said he was baking bread, but why couldn’t he get that done during the day? It wasn’t like he had to wait on customers like she did. He wasn’t open yet. Maybe he preferred to bake at night.
But he’d fixed her pipes, which enabled her to stay open. If he really wanted her to fail, wouldn’t he have just claimed he didn’t know anything about plumbing? Claire didn’t know if she was being overly suspicious. She needed advice before she made any decisions about teaming up with Bradford Breads. Would that be a good marketing move, or would it be a mistake?
Luckily, Claire had an expert in marketing at her fingertips. Tammi. Claire would call her as soon as she reached the shop.
Doubts tickled her stomach in the predawn light as she drove to the store. The gray sky was starting to lighten when she parked her Vespa and walked the short distance to her bakery. In the early morning, before anyone else was out, she could hear the ocean waves and smell the sea. As she was about to unlock the door, movement across the street caught her eye. Rob. Claire stopped short, her key halfway to the lock on the front door. Doubts warred with a warm, fuzzy feeling in her stomach. It swarmed like butterflies taking flight as their eyes met across the street.
He lifted his hand in greeting. With nervous electricity zinging through her, she did the same. As he disappeared inside his store, she turned her back to enter hers.
Although the shop was dark and empty, the quiet reminded her of their evening together the night before, filling in some of the blanks in their lives since they’d first met. Of the way he’d fixed the leak in her pipe. And that friendly wave that, for some reason, filled her with energy.
As she stepped into the kitchen and groped for the lights, she fiddled with the zipper on her purse, in search of her phone. Hopefully Tammi would answer and be able to talk.
As the phone rang, garbled in her ear, Claire crossed to the table in the kitchen and dropped the oversized tote bag she carried onto it. She took stock of the kitchen.
Everything was neat and tidy, exactly as she had left it. She had muffins to bake this morning as well as croissants to finish and put in the display case.
“Hello? Mom?”
Claire smiled at her daughter’s voice. The quality of the call was a bit tinny, but warmth bloomed in her chest even so. When Tammi had gone to college, Claire had gotten used to not seeing her every day, but it was still hard. She never felt she had enough time for Tammi when her daughter came home.
“Hi, honey. Do you have a minute? I could use some advice.”
“Advice?” Tammi sounded instantly more alert, maybe even excited.
“I told you about the bakery going up across the street, didn’t I?”
“Yes…”
“Well, the owner came in to talk to me. We’re both having sales tomorrow. His is a two-for-one on bread, and mine is buy one cupcake, get two free. He said he wants to work together to send customers across the street to each other’s stores.”
“Oh! Cross-promotion.” Although she didn’t say as much outright, Tammi sounded approving. A note of hesitation crept into her voice as she asked, “Does he sell cupcakes too?”
“No, his store strictly sells bread.”
“Well then, I don’t see how you have anything to lose. What sort of cross-promotion did he have in mind?”
Claire leaned her hip against the counter, her mind returning to that late-night conversation. “He wants to set up a table in each other’s stores with free samples and flyers pointing to the sale.”
“That sounds like a great idea! Nothing like a free sample to get people to try out your goods, and you make great cupcakes, Mom. I’m sure you’ll have customers stampeding across the street to take you up on the sale.”
Claire laughed at that image. Her daughter had been the eternal optimist and her biggest cheerleader ever since Claire had opened her bakery in the charming, old building. “I don’t know about that. But you think I should take him up on the offer?”
“Yeah. It sounds like it would cost you nothing and gain you a lot. Do it!”
A knot of tension unwound from between Claire’s shoulders at the cut-and-dried answer. Now she didn’t have to keep wallowing in indecision. Tammi knew more about marketing and promotion than Claire did. If her daughter said to do it, then she would do exactly that.
“Thanks, baby. I don’t want to keep you from your vacation.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“Love you too.”
Claire’s chest ached a bit as she hung up the phone. The sooner her daughter returned from Europe, the better. As much as Claire knew she was having fun and experiencing something that most people never got to, she couldn’t help but worry. Although, ever since Claire had decided to have the cupcake sale, she’d been too busy with preparations to worry. She didn’t know whether or not that was a good thing.
Hailey wasn’t scheduled to come in until later, which meant Claire had extra work to do, so she tried to put it out of her mind as she prepared for the day. After she had the muffins baking in the oven and the croissant dough arranged on a cookie sheet, ready to go in next, she went to the front of the store. The sun had come up, beaming down out of a sky
dotted with wispy clouds. As she went about the business of opening up, her eye was drawn to the bakery across the street. Rob must have gotten new blinds, and they were down across all the windows, so no one could see inside.
She wasn’t hoping to see him, of course, but she was curious if he would rearrange things based on her advice. Perhaps he needed help setting up. If she was going to team up with him to cross-promote during the sale, she would need to bring over a few things anyway, including the cupcake samples. She needed to frost those first and make a space for his samples in her shop.
She pulled two tables together along the wall next to the sugar and milk station, removing the chairs. A table alone wasn’t enough of a draw. She needed to do something to make it look homier.
The timer on her phone beeped, and she hurried into the back to remove the muffins and get the croissants baking. Then she rooted around the kitchen, searching out everything she had that she was not already using. She found three wicker baskets and a crisp white tablecloth to arrange on the tables and set them aside. By the time she filled the display case with the baked goods she’d made that morning, still warm from the oven, it was time to open the store.
Bert and Harry waited outside her door with broad smiles and cheery waves. She answered them, her gaze slipping past to Bradford Breads. The bakery still showed no signs of life.
She opened the door and shooed the two old men inside. “Go ahead and sit at your table. I’ll bring you the usual.”
“You’re a doll,” Harry said with a fond smile.
Within minutes, she had set them up with steaming cups of coffee and warm blueberry muffins at their usual table.
“How goes the cupcake preparations?” asked Bert.
“Very well,” Claire responded, relieved not to have to lie on that front. After last night, she had baked the last of the cupcakes she would need to make. Tonight would come the colossal task of frosting them all.
“Are you going to give us a hint at the flavors you’ll be having? I need to prepare myself for how many I’ll be taking home.”
Claire laughed at Bert’s question. “The usual chocolate and vanilla, plus red velvet, chocolate mocha, lemon raspberry and the others I’ll leave as a surprise. If you come to the sale I’ll set aside some samples,” she said with a wink. “I promise you’ll be pleased.”
Another customer entered, someone Claire didn’t recognize—a tourist. She hurried over to serve them. Hailey would arrive any minute for her shift, but in the meantime, Claire was consumed with serving her customers. By the time her help came in, Claire was relieved. She handed over the front of the shop to Hailey and retreated into the back to fetch the baskets.
When she brought them to the table, she was satisfied to note that the tables inside and outside were cluttered with customers. More took their coffee to go in paper cups and carried out paper bags with their purchased baked goods. A thrill of gratification buzzed through her as she noticed early-morning tourists pausing to look at the sandwich board Hailey had set up outside announcing her sale. Everything was finally coming together.
Humming cheerfully under her breath, Claire arranged the baskets on the table invitingly. She left space for the flyers Rob had mentioned advertising his sale. With the free samples of his bread in the basket, and the bright red of his sale flyers she saw around town, customers would flock to that corner after purchasing their cupcakes at the counter. Thinking about the flyers reminded her that she still needed to give some of hers to Jane. Stacy had dropped them off, and they were in the kitchen. She could give them to Jane tonight when she came over to frost unless she got a chance to drop them off earlier today.
“What’s all that about?” Harry gestured to the display at the nearest table.
Bert lowered his newspaper with bald curiosity.
Claire smiled. “It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait to find out.”
The old men chuckled. Harry said, “You sure are keeping the mystery about yourself today. You know how to string an old man along.”
Claire winked. “And hopefully the rest of the town too.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll get a fair few in here tomorrow. The only question is if we can get here early enough to claim our table!”
Claire wanted to promise to save it for them—after all, it was regulars like Bert and Harry who kept her afloat when the tourists left. However, at that moment, the bell over the door chimed, and Claire looked up.
Her stomach sank like a stone as first Sandee then Claire’s ex-husband stepped into the shop. Leave it to them to ruin a happy morning simply by showing up. Maybe they would just make their purchase quickly and leave. Too bad she couldn’t sneak out back and have Hailey wait on them. She would have to walk right past them to get to the kitchen.
Claire plastered a smile on her face. “Good morning.”
She didn’t see Peter often since the divorce, thankfully. Tammi had just graduated high school when it happened, so she was old enough to visit her father on her own. Claire’s stomach still tightened a little whenever she saw him, like she was waiting for the next nasty thing he would say. But that was simple self-preservation. She knew him well enough. He might have a new, younger wife, but Sandee hadn’t sweetened his disposition.
He grunted and jerked his chin at the store across the street. “The new bread place isn’t open yet? I was hoping to stop in there.”
Claire held her smile in place through will alone. If there was one silver lining, it was that the years hadn’t been kind to him since they’d parted. His hairline had receded almost to the crown of his head. His comb-over was doing a poor job of hiding that. The fact that she had ever loved him was a mystery to her. How had she not seen through his bullshit?
“He’s not opening until Saturday. Maybe you should come back then.”
Peter swung his gaze to meet hers again. “You don’t seem worried about a bakery going in across the street.”
“I’m not,” she said, biting off her words. “He only offers bread. I offer so much more.”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure that nice little bakery in Bar Harbor offered much more than bread too. That didn’t stop Bradford Breads from putting them out of business last summer. Right in the middle of tourist season.”
Claire frowned. Was that true? Would that happen to her? No, she had her cupcake sale, and she and Rob were working together. This was just the sort of thing Peter would make up to upset her. Well, it wasn’t going to work this time.
Sandee, turned away and tapping her chin with a long, ruby-colored fake nail as she peered through the glass at the baked goods on display, chimed in absently, “I heard that owner in Bar Harbor didn’t see it coming. I guess the Bradford Breads owner was as sweet as pie to him.” She straightened, gestured at the chocolate croissants, and held up two fingers to Hailey, who had just come out from the kitchen.
Claire didn’t say a word. They were only trying to get under her skin.
With a bright smile, Sandee settled into the crook of Peter’s arm. “If you ask me, I think the owner probably acts nice while he puzzles out what makes a bakery so successful. Then he emulates it and cuts into their business by doing more advertising. He can afford it with a big chain like that.”
Claire swallowed hard, trying to keep her expression confident. She was afraid she failed miserably.
Fortunately, Sandee and Peter weren’t looking at her. They were too preoccupied, staring across the street.
Sandee mused, “I have to admit, it’s brilliant the way he’s got the shades down. It really makes you wonder what it looks like inside.” She turned and leaned forward, delicately glossing her fingers over Claire’s shoulder. “Not that it will be able to compete with Sandcastles. You have a knack for decorating. I’m sure nothing Bradford Breads can come up with will compare.”
“Thank you,” Claire muttered, but it was through gritted teeth and a forced smile.
Had she handed her best decorating tips directly into t
he hands of the enemy?
“Your croissants?” Hailey prompted from behind the counter. Judging by the look on her face, she didn’t approve of the way the conversation was going. Claire imagined she was trying to push Sandee and Peter out of the store as quickly as possible. Sandee tugged Peter toward the register to pay for them, buying Claire some time to compose herself.
She found herself staring at the shaded windows of the shop across the street and kicking herself. Had she fallen for the exact game that Sandee and Peter had warned her about? Rob had been nice to her, had helped her, and now his windows were shaded, and he might be rearranging his shop last-minute to draw her customers away. Why hadn’t she known about Bar Harbor? Why hadn’t she done more research before she trusted the owner of a rival bakery?
The fact that her ex-husband and his wife were the ones to throw this in her face was adding insult to injury. Sick to her stomach, Claire tore herself away from the sight of the other shop.
See what happens when you try to be nice? When you trust others? She should have learned her lesson from her marriage. She stormed over and ripped apart the display she’d put together, returning the two tables to the way they had been previously.
How stupid could she be, agreeing to work with a man who was going to undermine her and put her out of business?
She tucked the wicker baskets under her arm and was about to stow them back in the kitchen when a tourist emerged from the washroom. He searched the shop, and upon seeing her fiddling with the chairs, he made a beeline for her. She straightened, ready to greet the customer despite how drained she was.
“Uh, ma’am? The water pressure in the bathroom is a little low. I thought you’d want to know.”
She pressed her lips together as her heart raced. She set the wicker baskets on top of the display case. Calm, slow movements. She wasn’t panicking.
How could the water pressure be low? They repaired the pipes last night. Her eyes flicked to the store across the street. Had Rob really fixed them, or had he done something to sabotage her so she wouldn’t be open tomorrow for the cupcake sale?
Saving Sandcastles Page 12