Falling for You

by Travis, Stacy

  And again, he was right. I was on my second cup of coffee and I was starting to feel my energy drop, which was unusual for me. I didn’t normally hit a lull until after noon.

  “Yeah, didn’t sleep well.” I opted against telling him why. He didn’t need to know that I’d spent half the night awake chastising myself for not woman-ing up and pulling the plug on Tom.

  Owen nodded, and I looked him over—about my age, maybe slightly older, always with a couple days of scruff on his face, which I might have noticed if I wasn’t in the throes of a breakup that had so far only happened in my head.

  Okay, fine, I absolutely noticed, and it was damn sexy, especially when he scrubbed his thumb under his chin while his eyes moved lazily over my face.

  A bloom of heat took me by surprise as it rose in my cheeks and on the back of my neck. Was it my imagination or was he staring at my lips like he wanted to bite them?

  Look away. Save your dignity. And . . . no, impossible.

  If he saw my blush, he gave no indication. His eyes stayed fixed on me, while mine roamed and took in the healthy tan of his skin and the generous, pillowy lips which he pressed together when he was thinking.

  And as long as I was noticing . . . holy hell, those eyes. They flashed a tranquil, deep blue that made me stare unabashedly. His hair was brown, mixed with subtle streaks of gold, like he’d spent a lot of time on horseback, at the top of a mountain, riding shirtless in the sun.

  Ahem.

  Or maybe that was just his normal hair color.

  All in all, with his easy smile, Owen painted a nice picture. It felt life-affirming to know that my lackluster year with Tom hadn’t dulled my senses completely.

  “Tell me about the flour blend you’re using,” Owen said. Again, not phrased as a question. I couldn’t recall if he made a habit of speaking in declarations. He was hardly bossy, but his authoritative manner was kind of appealing, like he knew what he wanted and asked for it.

  It made me wonder if he did that in bed. And…my mind was off and wandering again.

  “The flour?” I forced myself to focus on his question. “Did I tell you about the farmers in Vallejo? I was out visiting their crops a couple months ago and they’ve been harvesting like crazy after the rains we had.”

  It wasn’t easy to find farmers who’d reliably grind and deliver grain that they harvested within two days, so more of the protein remained intact. That was the key to good flavor.

  “Amazing. I love that you found those guys,” he said.

  I could feel the subtle difference in the air that came when the bakers opened the ovens to take out the fresh loaves. I tipped my head up like a dog who’d just heard a high-pitched sound.

  Owen’s eyebrow popped up. “Ready?” He checked the time on his phone. He knew the timing of the place almost as well as I did.

  “Soon,” I said.

  Owen nodded and smiled. I always let him take a loaf of bread before they were done cooling. And I always said the same thing to him when I sent him off with bread fresh from the oven. “You’ll wait a half hour before you eat it, right?”

  “Yes. I promise,” he’d say, with a wink and a flash of a smile that told me he probably wasn’t going to do what I asked.

  Owen sat back in his chair and looked around the room. “You replaced the wall sconces. I like these,” he said, pointing to the tulip-shaped glass that held candle bulbs. I’d swapped out the heavier brass sconces a couple weeks earlier because they didn’t emit enough light and I never liked the brass.

  I nodded. Of course he’d notice anything that was different. He practically lived here. “Owen, what do you do? For a job.” I didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but I realized my mistake when he visibly deflated.

  “You mean, other than make observations about your lighting? That’s not a robust enough job in your book?”

  “Ha ha. I’m serious. I never have time to talk and today I do. So tell me something. What do you do all day after you leave here?”

  I kind of expected him to say he didn’t do anything. Or he was retired or independently wealthy. There were a lot of those types around the Bay Area who’d made their money on stock options and had to find ways to spend it.

  Lurking in a bakery four mornings a week smacked of wealth and boredom.

  Owen raked a hand over his face as though answering the question pained him.

  Nailed it. He’s a wealthy boring guy.

  “I work in hotels. Generally small ones in cool locations. I’m kind of a jack of all trades.”

  Oh. That was kind of interesting and different.

  I wanted to know more. Was he a hotel manager? Handyman? Groundskeeper?

  “Hey, Isla, do you have a sec?” Camille asked, peeking out from the kitchen. The grimace on her face made it seem like she felt guilty to be interrupting. I gestured her over to let her know it was fine.

  “Camille, you know Owen, our lurker?”

  “Wait, I’m a lurker?” he said.

  “Of course you are. You hang here and lurk,” I said.

  “I’d rather be referred to as a hanger than a lurker.” He smiled and leaned back in his chair.

  “Salut Owen,” Camille said. “Isla, will you come look at something?” she asked without even glancing at Owen. It was odd.

  She beckoned me to the other side of the café, almost out of earshot of Owen, and leaned against a table for two, where I noticed a pot of lavender that needed watering. And the salt and pepper grinders were half-empty.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  She crossed her arms and looked down, so I braced for bad news—her telling me she needed time off, or worse, that she’d found another job. I didn’t have time to look for a new pastry chef. “I hate to be the one to tell you this.”

  “Just spill it. You’re freaking me out. Are you quitting?”

  “What? No. Of course not,” she said.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. Short of that, any news was tolerable.

  “Okay, good. You scared the crap out of me.”

  She still had that pained look on her face. Finally, she blinked heavily and showed me her phone, where there were several photos and a headline about Tom Stone, head of Fletcher-Stone, having a night out with his “new flame.”

  Only problem was that despite my breakup plans, I was still Tom’s old flame.

  Lo and behold, the gossip sites felt the need to bring that up two lines later. “Celebrity baker Isla Finley spurned by billionaire financier.” It was supposed to be one saving grace of being a baker—photographers didn’t follow me around and gossip rags didn’t care to know my name.

  But once my photo had started popping up in San Francisco food blogs and travel magazines, people sometimes recognized my face and snapped a photo. I ignored it unless they got pushy.

  “Wait, what?!” With shaking hands, I took the phone from Camille and scrolled through the photos. Tom coming out of a restaurant with his arm around the blond woman. Tom getting into a car with the blond woman. Tom . . . kissing the blond woman outside a Starbucks.

  “Damn him, he went to a chain coffee place?” I said, pushing the phone back into Camille’s hands.

  “That’s what you’re upset about? That he didn’t shop local?” she asked, incredulous.

  “No. Of course that’s not what I’m upset about. But geez, he knows how I feel about that. It’s like an extra hot turd on top of a flaming fuck you.” I didn’t know what I was saying or who was listening, and I didn’t care. I’d moved to the center of the shop and was gesturing wildly with my arms.

  The bakers had all stopped what they were doing and were staring at me. “This isn’t a circus side show. Keep baking!” I shouted.

  Crap. Now I’d have to apologize to them. It was a good thing we hadn’t opened for business yet or there would probably already be a viral video of the insane bread lady.

  “I’m sorry. This is so not cool of him,” Camille said. I nodded. It wasn’t her fault, but I appreciated the s
ympathy.

  “I can’t believe that a guy that smart would be dumb enough to get photographed. And who the hell is that woman?!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Owen taking all this in but I didn’t have the wherewithal to run interference between my mouth and my best customer.

  Camille guided me farther from the prying ears of my baking staff and tried to calm me down. “Do you want to get out of here for a little bit? Take a walk? Clear your head? I can run things.”

  “No. I don’t need to clear my head. It’s been clear for weeks. I was supposed to break up with him. Before there was cheating and humiliation.”

  “Maybe he knew it was coming. Maybe this is why he moved on before you could do it,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe she really thought that made sense. “He moved on to spare himself being dumped? If you want to spare yourself, you do the dumping first. You don’t go out and get photographed with some blonde you’re banging.”

  “No, you’re right. Of course you’re right.” She looked anguished and I realized I was taking everything out on her. I pulled her in for a hug, which she may have found strange, but she said nothing.

  “Thanks, Camille. I’m fine. Really. I just can’t believe he took her to dinner, then came to my house and slept in my bed. He’s such an asshole, a blonde-screwing, egomaniacal asshole.”

  “You sure you don’t want to get some air or something?” She looked wary, the way you look at a crazy person.

  I nodded. “No. I want to bake. It’s fine, I’m fine. I’m just really, really pissed off.” I turned back toward the kitchen, where everyone was making a point to make extra noise so I’d know they weren’t paying attention to me. And because I was insane, I contradicted myself in the next second. “You know what, maybe I should get some air. We’re ahead of schedule.”

  My brain spun off making a wish list of pain for Tom.

  Gah, forget him. He just proved he’s not worth it.

  And goddamn him for making me lose it in front of my staff and a customer. I’d apologize to the bakers in a sec, but first I needed to say something to Owen who’d clearly overheard.

  After barely having a conversation in over a year, I’d gone from bread starters to airing my whole sordid personal life. I rolled my eyes before even turning around to see the evidence of pity in his eyes.

  But when I looked over at Owen’s table, he was gone.

  Chapter 3

  Owen

  If anything can be said about me, it’s that I pay attention. I’d been hanging out at that bakery almost daily for over a year and I’d gleaned a hell of a lot of information about how bread was baked.

  I’d learned the difference between cracked wheat and milled wheat. I knew how gluten and water interacted and why fermentation was the holy grail of bread making. Sufficient moisture in the bread oven was a no brainer.

  But I didn’t know Isla Finley was dating the head of Fletcher-Stone.

  Was it willful avoidance because I preferred to think of her as gorgeous, sexy, and unavailable only because of her baking schedule?

  Perhaps.

  Tom Stone was legendary in the startup scene—legendary for being both a rainmaker and an asshole. I’d mainly experienced the asshole side.

  About ten years ago, my company had been one of the region’s many startups. Now we were solid, but in the early days, I’d prayed for someone like Tom Stone to cast a glance my way and sprinkle some of his venture capital fairy dust on my fledgling operation. He didn’t.

  Back then, I was small potatoes for a company like Fletcher-Stone, so I did what most other small companies did—I worked twenty-four-seven to find tons of tiny investors—literally everyone from my next door neighbors who pitched in a hundred bucks to my college roommate’s parents, who made a bigger bet because I’d saved their son from choking on a goldfish during a fraternity pledge dare.

  Eventually, I scraped together enough money to open a boutique hotel in Sausalito. Then I sweated for the next two years to make sure I could pay all of those kind folks back, with interest. I couldn’t bear the thought of my elderly neighbor Beatrice losing a quarter of the nest egg she insisted I sink into the hotel.

  She was one of the first ones I repaid once we had money coming in. It felt good to tell my investors they were getting their money plus an eight percent return inside of two years.

  It was a bloody, sweaty, and tearful two years.

  But the investors were happy, so they were ready and willing when I was ready to open a second hotel.

  And so on, and so forth.

  Now I was looking at opening a seventh hotel and most of my early investors had happily cashed out and been replaced by larger backers who could write checks for tens of millions instead of thousands.

  But I digress…

  What really surprised me was that Isla was dating that VC guy at all. I’d finally had an opportunity to get to know him better a couple years ago. My impression of him . . . well, I hated his damn guts.

  He’d taken notice of what we were doing and asked to have lunch. Still cowed by his influence in Silicon Valley and curious what he had to say, I took the meeting.

  It was a Tom Stone dog and pony show where he brought in three-dimensional renderings of sprawling hotel complexes and sick video presentations with maps dotted with all the places he’d envisioned for domination by my hotel brand.

  He proposed some big changes that would have doubled down on the quaint uniqueness of each property by making cookie cutter versions in far-flung locations, amping up the corporate money-making machine, and selling the company to the highest bidder.

  The local charm of the architecture would remain, but behind the scenes, everything would be replaced by a corporate structure that would snuff out all the local artisans I normally hired and raise prices in the process.

  All so rich investors could get richer.

  I hated the plan and told him so. He told me I was being naïve and proceeded to launch a petty spite campaign aimed at some of my celebrity clients—names we kept under a cone of silence, so it took some underhanded dealings for him to discover them—and said nasty things intended to make them stop staying at my hotels.

  It’s a point of personal pride that not one listened to him, especially given the money he spent trying to lure them elsewhere.

  Tom Stone hated to lose, that much was clear.

  So he went after me personally. That meant hitting me where it hurt more than a business transaction—my girlfriend. At first, it was a chance meeting at the coffee place near her office. He unleashed his charm offensive. He dangled his Amex Black Card and lavished her with attention.

  She flew to him like a paperclip to an industrial magnet.

  Maybe it says more about the frail state of my relationship than anything glorious about Tom, but the son of a bitch won that big dick contest and made sure I knew it.

  I couldn’t imagine what Isla saw in him other than the obvious—his brain, his irritating Dudley Do-Right chiseled jaw, or the money he made hand over fist through the ownership interest he took in every company he helped drive to billion-dollar success.

  Okay, fine, maybe she saw those things.

  Regardless, I had an impression of her as being oblivious to those trappings. She handled real dough every day for a living, not the venture capital kind. The bread baking made me think of her as a grounded, logical woman who was more concerned about the effects of annual rainfall on wheat berries than the strike price of stock options. Maybe I’d watched too much Little House on the Prairie with my sister as kids.

  It’s not like Isla and I talked—ever—about anything other than bread, but you’d think I’d have picked up on the Tom Stone thing at some point.

  And now, with news of his new girlfriend splashed all over the internet for anyone to see, it seemed like her personal life had become instantly complicated. That made me sad for her because it was clear she had no idea. I figured the best thing I could do to save her from embarrassment i
n her own shop was to get out of there.

  I thought about all of this as the train zipped me to the Palo Alto station, which was only a couple blocks from work. I’d clocked it, and it took me a half hour longer to get to work on foot and by train than if I drove door to door. But in traffic, the train was actually fifteen minutes faster. That’s how bad Bay Area traffic sucked, especially for people who worked south of the city, in Silicon Valley.

  When I walked into my office building with the image of Isla still stuck in my mind, I was so out to lunch that I didn’t notice Rafael sitting at the front desk until he waved his hands in front of my face.

  “Hey, man. In the clouds much?”

  I snapped out of my reverie and stared at Raf, my business partner. He handled all the financials and management issues, and I took care of the creative and development side of the business, but we both wore all the hats all the time.

  Still, despite all the hats, he wasn’t usually our receptionist.

  “You’re at the desk. Where’s Julia?” A trained architect, Julia was also our newest hire, and as such, she got some of the scut work, like answering phones.

  “Working on the sketches for the new Sonoma location,” Raf said like it was obvious.

  Right. I was the one who assigned her that project. I needed to get my wits about me and stop thinking about Isla and her problems which most definitely weren’t my own.

  “Yeah. What’s on your plate today?” I asked.

  He quirked an eyebrow at me like I was the idiot I’d already proven I was. “Finding a GM for the Healdsburg property.”

  “Great. Right. Perfect,” I said, looking down at the files spread all over the temporary desk where he sat.

  Our company had grown to the point where we’d run short on offices and even desks. That meant that a lot of people moved from desk to desk when they didn’t need quiet space in an office in order to accommodate the people who were onsite.

  It had worked out well for five years and I saw no reason to change it up. We had a big open-plan office with a communal kitchen, lots of meeting spaces, and the requisite foosball table and pop-a-shot basketball. We had air hockey too at one point, but the slamming noise became a problem, so now it took up residence in my apartment.