Falling for You

by Travis, Stacy

  Yes, I knew her morning routine. Because I was a complete and total Isla junkie.

  I had the pies in the oven by four and was out the door by five. I wouldn’t have time to double back to my house to grab my work stuff, so I shoved everything in the car. The drive took five minutes, but parking took an extra ten. Then I walked six blocks to the bakery in pure blackness and fog, carrying a small portfolio in case Isla was busy and I needed to occupy myself at a table. I also brought the pie.

  When I peeked through the leaded windows of the cafe, I decided it was all worth it. Isla stood on a stool with her back to me, her long, lean runner’s legs flexed as she stood on her toes to load baguettes into the baskets on the back shelves.

  Before knocking, I waited until Isla had finished so I didn’t startle her into falling off the ladder. As it was, I was pretty sure I scared the shit out of her when I tapped on the glass.

  When she realized it was me, she looked relieved and came to unlock the door.

  “Hey, I thought you were out of town.” Her hair was twisted up and pinned on top of her head with a clip. I’d seen her hair like that so many times, but this time I had a deep urge to pull the clip out and run my fingers through the strands.

  “I was. I mean, I am. I’m going. But I was up super early and realized I had time to swing by, so I figured, why mess with a compulsive habit?” I needed her to work with me here. Suddenly, all the days in the past when I’d come uninvited felt different from this day when it seemed like I needed her permission to show up.

  She smiled. “Well, it’s nice to see your face. Thanks again for the other night. It was good to get out. If you hadn’t shown up, I’d be nursing a two-day hangover right about now.”

  “Ah, well I’m glad I saved you from yourself.”

  Then it got awkward. I looked at her and she looked at me and her smile shifted to a half-smile as she looked away. I watched her eyes go to the floor, then to the window next to me. I knew she couldn’t see through the glass because it was light in the cafe and dark outside, yet she stared out as though there was something fascinating beyond the window.

  “Um, so . . . thanks for letting me in early. I know it’s not my usual time.”

  She nodded and bit her lip. “It’s just . . . I just put the bread in the ovens. Nothing will be ready for an hour.”

  “No worries. I’m only here for a sec.” I held up the portfolio as if to provide proof that I had pressing activities elsewhere.

  Isla nodded but she wasn’t making eye contact. She backed away a couple feet. “Anyway . . . I should really get back. But you’re welcome to sit for a bit if you want. I have coffee made.” She turned back toward the kitchen and started to walk away.

  “Wait.” I wasn’t sure what to follow up with, but at least it got her to stop. She turned around and looked at me expectantly. “Um, is everything okay? I mean, is it still cool that I stop in early or did me kissing you make it awkward?” Might as well own it. If she was going to be weird with me or kick me out of the place, I’d just as soon know about it.

  She smiled. “I thought I kissed you.”

  “Oh . . . you kissed me good.” But her smile faded, so I went to where she was standing in the middle of the café floor amid the bistro tables that had yet to have their salt and pepper grinders set up. “Isla, talk to me. Is it about that? Because we can just chalk it up to beer-fueled, post-breakup madness and never speak of it again.”

  She inhaled and her shoulders lifted with the weight she seemed to be carrying. When she exhaled, I saw a partial smile creep over her face. “It’s not that . . .” Her eyes searched my face as if she was deciding whether to tell me more. “Okay, lest you think I’m a train wreck who not only gets publicly cheated on but also is losing a grip on my business . . .”

  Using hand gestures that made me want to wrap her in my arms for a moment of stillness, Isla went on to explain that some of her exclusive restaurant contracts were in jeopardy and an unknown competitor was trying to swoop in and cut deals on the locations she’d chosen for future bakery cafés.

  “And you have no idea who it is?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Some outfit named Flour Artisan. Not a bad name. Cute, actually, except that they’re trying to put me under.” She was getting worked up, gesturing wildly in that way I was starting to love.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. I haven’t dug too deeply, but I intend to find out who they are. This is not going to be the end of my business or even the end of my relationships with restaurants. Whoever this is just lit a fire under me and I’m going to prevail regardless. I won’t stop for some small-fry baker who thinks I can be undercut with crappy bread.”

  “Hear, hear. Good attitude,” I said, suddenly remembering that I was holding a brown paper bag containing my apple turnovers, which had started to coat the bag with butter stains. “Oh, I brought these for you.” I handed over the bag. She unrolled the top and peeked inside, then pushed her nose in and took a deep inhale.

  “Did you bake these? They’re still warm.” Her expression told me she was impressed, so I nodded.

  “I couldn’t sleep so I made apple mini-pie turnover bites. Not sure that’s even a thing but it worked for my skill set. Really there should be ice cream . . .”

  She put a hand to her chest and looked so touched that again I wanted to wrap her in my arms, pull her into my chest, and lay my cheek against her hair. I only resisted because I still wasn’t entirely sure where we stood.

  “Are you kidding? Owen, that is so sweet.” She swept behind the cafe counter and grabbed plates and utensils. “I’m eating this before it cools down, and I hope you’re planning to join me.”

  We sat at one of the bistro tables—not the one where I usually hung out—and she grabbed her cup of coffee and plated the turnovers. When she dug in and took her first bite, her eyes closed and I felt like I’d earned a James Beard award.

  “This is really good, Owen. If you learn to bake sourdough, you may put me out of business.”

  She ate the other half of the mini-pie. “You’re not going out of business,” I said.

  Isla swallowed and her face fell. I could see how much the issue with her competitor was weighing on her mind.

  I forked the last bit of my pie and offered it to her. “Is this a sympathy bite? Do you think I’m Don Quixote trying to fight a battle without knowing what I’ve gotten myself into?” She was looking off to the side as if she was afraid to see the truth in my eyes.

  I put the forkful down and guided her face back to look at me. “Why would you say that? I think you’re amazing. From what I’ve seen, you can face down anyone, but no one can do it alone. You need some people in your camp, is all.” I was about three seconds from offering myself up to aid in whatever she needed when she nodded.

  “I do have some help. My sister Sarah helps me with all the financials and she’s brilliant, so I can put her on the case. If I need to make a counteroffer on rent at the locations I’ve scouted, I will. I just need her to run the numbers and figure out what I can afford.”

  “Is she an accountant? Business manager? It’s nice that you can keep it in the family.”

  “Actually, she’s a physicist. She teaches at Berkeley.” She described her with pride.

  “You have a physicist doing your taxes?” I probably didn’t do a great job of hiding my surprise. It was honorable that she wanted to work with her sister, and I briefly wondered what it would have been like to grow up with five siblings with different talents. I felt a bit envious of the bond that was obvious every time she mentioned one of them.

  “When you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous, but she’s crazy smart. She knows numbers.”

  She moved to where the coffee urn sat on a counter just inside the kitchen door and poured me a cup. Then she went to the mini-fridge under the cafe counter and took out a carton of soy milk.

  She was distracted. I never drank soy before, and she knew it, but I wasn�
�t going to quibble.

  By the time she came back, she seemed to notice the soy milk for the first time and looked at me apologetically. I grabbed it out of her hand before she could turn back to get me something else.

  “It’s fine. Thank you for the coffee. Listen, I’m sure your physicist sister will use slow positrons to direct the gravitational force away from your business and nuke your competitors, but will you allow me to help you please?”

  “How do you know about slow positrons?” I loved how she could get distracted by a tangent like it was more important than the conversation.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” That earned me a smile. “Listen, I know you don’t need a hundred opinions on how to beat your competitor, but maybe I can help. I’ve been in the hotel business for a while now and I know a thing or two about ruthless competition for prime locations. All I’m saying is that if you’d like to talk the business stuff through sometime, I’m here. As a friend who likes you and who’s a good listener.”

  I was doing my best to stay in my lane and not make suggestive comments about how I was also prepared to help her get over her ex starting immediately on her office couch. Didn’t seem appropriate.

  Checking the time, I realized I needed to hustle to make the one-hour drive north to get to my meeting on time, so I took a last gulp of coffee and stood up.

  Leaning over to kiss her on the cheek, I also extended my hand. “I’ll see you on Sunday and I’ll come with all my business smarts,” I said, tapping my temple.

  “Deal.” She reached out and we shook. “So what’s in Healdsburg anyway?” she asked.

  “I have a hotel there and we just hired new management and acquired a small winery next door, so I need to make sure everything looks as good in real life as it did in my head.”

  I felt grateful to earn a smile. “I hope it does. Okay, well, drink some wine for me while you’re there.”

  “Aw, I don’t drink alone. Next time I go, you’ll have to come with me.” The words were out of my mouth before I could reel them back in. I didn’t wait for a response. Better not to give her an opportunity to shoot me down.

  I hightailed it out of there, resisting the draw of her lips—I was pretty sure they had their own gravity.

  I wanted her to believe I understood that she needed time to sort out her life without feeling pressure from me.

  Besides, I had a legitimate reason to spend more time with her and that made me happy. As happy as a friend could be.

  Chapter 12

  Isla

  If I hadn’t been mired in worry about my business being under attack, I might have missed seeing Owen while he was out of town.

  That’s a lie. I still missed seeing him.

  I told myself it didn’t mean anything when I didn’t hear from him all day, especially since he’d gone out of his way to stop by before he left.

  But I felt the void.

  He’d said he had meetings and I didn’t expect him to stop what he was doing to send me cute emojis, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about him constantly. It was a good thing, I decided, because for the moment, seeing his smile in my mind was the only thing preventing me from going into a full depression over the assault by the mysterious Flour Artisan.

  A rebound relationship wasn’t a good idea. My emotional state was in flux, and it had potential to derail my work—like right now when I was thinking about him.

  Stop it. Focus.

  There was still time to nip this competitor assault in the bud, even if I didn’t know who was gunning for my restaurant contracts. I needed to make the rounds and be sure that my goodwill with all the chefs and owners I’d worked with for years was still the thing that drove our relationships. There was more to business than money.

  I started setting up quick meetings with my restaurant friends and occasionally dipped into distracted territory by checking for texts.

  My team was fully capable of baking the hundreds of loaves we’d need to get into the hands of eight restaurant chefs for their evening menus, so I left the bakery and brought two dozen rounds of sourdough boule to James Brinkley in person.

  He was owner of Bastille, a French gastronomy mecca in North Berkeley, and the first chef to invite me to make bread for his five-star restaurant. We’d been friends for over ten years. If anyone could help me come up with a plan for convincing the other restaurants not to jump ship, it was him.

  “I need you to level with me, Jamie.” I waited in the kitchen while he hauled a box of produce from the walk-in fridge.

  He wore his gray checked chef pants and a white T-shirt over his broad chest and thick tattooed arms. A red bandana covered his head, but his auburn close-clipped beard revealed his hair color. He was an oak tree of a man with a huge heart and an instinct for food, which made him a legend in foodie circles.

  We stood in the kitchen while he prepped for the dinner service. “Sorry I have to multitask while we talk,” he said.

  “Are you kidding? Multitasking is my love language.” I was fascinated by how quickly he could dice a bell pepper, which he planned to turn into some kind of salsa. “So, how many times have they come knocking?” I still couldn’t believe someone was trying to get James to dump me.

  “Twice. Once about a month ago and again yesterday. The first time, it was more exploratory. Yesterday was pretty aggressive. The way they talked about it, it was like they were telling me instead of asking me.” He started chopping leeks and scooping the tiny circles into a metal bin.

  “And they didn’t say anything about Flour Artisan that would give you an idea who they are or where they’re from?”

  “No, the guy who called yesterday was cagy about that, but he all but told me the company had a big corporate backer, as in they’ve got money to burn trying to take over your contracts, even if they’re working at a loss. And I pushed ‘em on that, told them there was no way to deliver what they were proposing at those prices. They don’t seem to care. They just want the business. Have you pissed anyone off in the bread community lately?”

  I almost laughed but I was too worried. “We bakers are a happy bunch generally. Besides, this doesn’t sound like some small artisanal baker, despite the charming name they’ve given themselves.”

  My phone pinged with a text but I ignored it.

  “I wish I had better news for you. I’m not gonna lie, this concerns me, Isla. Most of us put farm to table and local provenance above price, but if someone’s coming after you like this, you need to watch your back. And from what I gleaned from their sales pitch, it’s someone who knows a lot about your specific operation and is trying to replicate it on the cheap.”

  “How much do they know?”

  He grabbed another bunch of leeks from the walk-in and started washing them in the big metal sink. “Details about your specific breads, the flours, the way your recipes have changed over time. Did you have an employee leave to start a new shop, something like that?”

  “No, no one.” A niggling little thought pushed its way to the surface and I tried to shove it away before it could take root, but the bugger was stubborn. There was one person I could think of who’d always taken a great interest in all the details of my bread and who’d asked me a lot of questions. I’d answered them all.

  I had to steady myself against the dishwashing station behind me because I suddenly felt nauseous. I couldn’t breathe. “Jamie, can I grab a glass of water?”

  He looked up from the leeks. “Sure. Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

  No, I wasn’t okay. Not if I’d been wrong about Owen and his reasons for hanging out in the shop. “Did you get a name from the person who called you? By any chance was it Owen Miller?”

  I hated saying the words but I knew I’d hate myself even more if I didn’t ask and later found out that he’d been playing me.

  Jamie didn’t look up from his prep, but he was shaking his head. “Naw, not him. I know Owen. I was in the running to open a restaurant at one of his hotels. Didn’t get the
gig, and I still liked him afterward, which is saying something. Owen is a good guy.”

  “You’re sure. It wasn’t him or anyone who works with him?” I had to know, even it was something I didn’t want to know. And I really wanted it not to be true.

  Jamie ground some pepper onto the leeks and pushed them aside. “I couldn’t say if it was his people, but why’s a hotel guy gonna try to sell me bread? It doesn’t make sense. And that’s not how he goes about doing business. I’m telling you, you wanna bark up a different tree.”

  He was right. Owen trying to sabotage me didn’t make sense. But I was losing my mind and grasping at anything, not trusting myself to make good judgments about people.

  Jamie dismissed the idea as crazy. “It’s big and corporate, that was the gist I got, which was why I said no. Twice.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  We’d been working together since he opened his modern French restaurant, and when he opened two more restaurants in Oakland and Menlo Park, he insisted I bake for those restaurants too. “It’s a prestige thing, Isla,” he’d said at the time. “My customers expect me to have the best food and that includes your bread. I wouldn’t presume to bake it myself or buy it from anyone who doesn’t have your standards.”

  “Thanks for being loyal.” He moved to a different prep area where he started pulling oils and spices from a shelf and taking out mixing bowls in several sizes.

  My phone pinged again and I felt a little surge of hope that it was Owen, but I didn’t check it. My social life could wait.

  Jamie shook his head. “It’s not loyalty—I mean, it is—but it’s about quality, Isla, and you’re the best in the business. I hope you find these sons of bitches and put them in their place. They’ve got nothing on you and I’m not the only one who thinks it.”

  I reached around his thick frame and hugged him while he held the olive oil at arm’s length so it wouldn’t get on my clothes. “Thank you.”