Her face was flushed and she looked so damned happy talking about microorganisms feeding off flour and creating their own byproducts which were the rising agents in her bread.
“When you stop and think about it, it’s a little disgusting, isn’t it? It’s like the waste products of your starter organism are what’s making the bread rise,” I said.
“I don’t think about it like that.” She had a very serious face and I was pretty sure I’d just insulted her very core.
“Right, sure.” I backpedaled.
She stared at me and I wondered if she might hit me. Then her face slowly cracked and she was grinning. “I’m kidding. Of course that’s what’s happening. I’m glad you get it. But one organism’s waste product is another organism’s va va voom.”
We kept going like that, with Isla giving me what felt like a monthlong bread education in a matter of hours, all the while waiting for our next batch of dough to rise. Once it did, she showed me how to knead it properly and punch the air out. “I don’t want to punch it down. I feel like all that rising time just went down the drain,” I said.
“Don’t worry about that. It’s going to have a second chance to rise. You want to punch the air out and keep working the dough. That’s how we get the gluten to really bind with the water molecules.”
I looked at the blob of dough on the bench in front of me. I couldn’t see any evidence of gluten binding with anything, but she was knocking hers into submission until it started to take on a glossy sheen. “You’re like some kind of bread whisperer,” I said.
She didn’t stop what she was doing, moving from one ball of dough to the next and kneading while directing me at the same time. “You need to seal the edges. And not too much flour. You want the work surface to create tension while you’re kneading. That helps build elasticity.”
Watching her work, I felt the now-familiar tug at my heart that made me want to tell her everything, admit I’d been falling for her for weeks and hope that the feeling was mutual.
If I didn’t push Isla, I’d regret it forever.
I had to know how she felt, and even if I didn’t get the answer I wanted, at least I wouldn’t labor under the delusion that we were something. It didn’t have to be today—I just needed to know she thought we had potential.
Walking around every day with my heart in my throat, cringing every time she called me a friend…I couldn’t take it when she’d yet to give me a sign she felt a fraction of what I’d been feeling for her since the first moment our lips connected.
And even that was a lie because I’d felt things for her long before that.
The kiss just confirmed I was right.
We were so good together, it was hard to imagine a future with anyone but her. If she rejected me, so be it. I just couldn’t dangle in the wind anymore.
“Isla, I need to tell you something.”
“Yes?” Her bright eyes stayed focused on the dough as she multitasked and put the perfect rounds into lined baskets so they could rise for a second time.
I was about to unburden my heart when her phone pinged on the stool where she’d left it next to her purse. I assumed she’d ignore it. We were already at the bakery, so no one was calling with a work emergency.
She glanced at it and I saw the smallest flicker of annoyance cross her face, but she put the phone down without typing a response.
Then she picked it up and read the text again and typed a quick response before nearly slamming it down on the stool. It was a little dramatic, but she’d been under a lot of stress over the assault by Centinela Bread, so I chalked it up to that.
It did have the effect of sidelining my confession, at least for the time being.
I turned back to the bench and we resumed my bread lesson, something I’d apparently earned through good behavior at some point in Calistoga.
I rolled my ball of dough closer to hers, so close that they almost touched, and she jerked hers away. “Hey, no getting handsy with the dough.”
“I still want to know what I did to deserve a bread lesson from San Francisco’s finest bread maker.”
“Not telling,” she said with a smirk.
“Foolhardy woman, if you tell me, there’s a good chance I’ll do it again.”
She seemed to be considering it. “What good would it do if it was something you couldn’t repeat here? Like if I said the spa treatments?” She was baiting me.
“Was it the spa treatments?”
She laughed. “Do you really want me to tell you the spa treatments were better than three orgasms you gave me in the governor’s cottage?”
“Are you kidding? If the spa treatments at my hotel beat what I’m fairly certain was four orgasms before we left for home, I’m putting that on our brochure. The place will be booked for months.”
She kneaded her dough with quick rolling motions that showed off her toned arms as she quickly turned the dough. It was hard to believe kneading dough could be a turn-on.
“You’re funny, Bread Boy. Now focus on your dough. You need to really work it in your hands if you want a good loaf.”
“Why does everything you say about baking suddenly sound sexual?” This bread lesson could go in a very different direction and I’d relinquish bread rights without complaint.
Shaking her head, she took my dough away and held it hostage behind her back. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
I laughed because she was taking it so seriously. “I’m sorry. You know I love and respect your work. I guess I was thinking of all the kneading as foreplay.”
“You’re terrible. There will be no sex in the vicinity of the bread.”
Probably true. Nevertheless, I held out my hand. “Can I have my dough back? I promise not to fondle it beyond what’s necessary to help it rise.”
“Okay, now you’re making everything sound sexual on purpose.” She took a swipe at me, but I caught her hands and held them down, at the same time pulling her closer to me.
“Come on, you’ve never gotten a little naughty with a hot loaf?” I asked.
She struggled to get away but I held her tight. “You may have successfully ruined my baking career forever. I’m never going to be able to look at a hot loaf the same way again.”
“Sorry.” I kissed her. “Not sorry.”
With a little burst of force, she wrenched her hands free and picked up a metal instrument with a rounded handle and a straight edge and held it up with a flourish. “This is a dough scraper. Lesson two will show you what to do with it unless you want to work up your comedy act some more.”
“Oh my God, you’re a bread dictator, do you realize that?” I couldn’t believe what I’d gotten myself into, but I loved every minute of it. I’d also lost all track of time, but I had the sense that we’d been in the bakery for hours. “Maybe it’s just the smell of fermentation, but I’m getting hungry. You?” I asked.
Isla nodded. “Yeah, I could eat. How about we get these last few into the baskets and we can go grab a bite while they’re rising?”
Her phone pinged again and she looked at it . . . and seemed interested. Her expression shifted to frustration as she read the message, but at the end she laughed. She typed a response and waited. It pinged again and she responded again, smiling, before putting it down.
Staring at it as if it was a bomb that might explode, she waited again, but the phone stayed quiet.
I looked at her expectantly, wondering if she was going to fill me in on what was going on. If it was something having to do with Centinela Bread, wouldn’t she tell me?
But she said nothing. Her eyes stayed fixed on the phone.
“Everything okay?” I asked. It was a little strange how she seemed to have forgotten I was standing right there. It was unlike her to be so wrapped up in something else while she was with me.
As soon as she looked at me her expression softened. “Oh, yes. Sorry about that. It’s nothing, just…that was Tom, my ex.”
Of all the aggravations I imagined h
er dealing with, Tom Stone wasn’t one of them. Just hearing his name made my stomach turn. But I hadn’t told Isla I’d had my own dealings with her ex, and I wasn’t sure I felt like getting into that.
“What does he want?” I tried to keep my tone even, but my face felt hot.
She shook her head. “He offered to back me.”
“Back you?”
“You know, give the money to outbid Centinela so I can continue with my plans.” She was emotionless about it.
I about hit the roof. “Are you kidding? You can’t take his money. You’re not thinking about it, are you?” The guy always had an ulterior motive, and I didn’t trust his reasons for wanting to help Isla.
“I mean, I don’t want to have anything to do with him, but it’s an option. I think I should at least consider it.”
“And you think his intentions are purely magnanimous? Come on Isla, he wants you back. You see that, right? He’s using his deep pockets to get back in your good graces.” And her pants. Just thinking about it made me want to smack some dough around. Or his head.
“I didn’t say I was taking it. I said I was thinking about it,” she said.
How did she not see him for what he was? She was brilliant in all areas except for her radar about Tom.
“I can help you. Why didn’t you even think to ask? Why do you still not trust that I have your best interests at heart?” I had plenty of money socked away and I wouldn’t have blinked over giving her all of it.
Because that’s what you do when you love a person.
The more time I spent with her, the harder it was becoming to be the only one who felt that way.
“Of course I trust you. But we’ve already crossed all kinds of lines and I don’t want to mix money with all that. I’d hate myself if I failed and lost your money. If I lost Tom’s money…I could live with that.” She shrugged.
“You’re not going to fail.”
“Okay. You’ve made your point.” Putting a hand on my chest, she leaned in and kissed me. “Thank you.”
I nodded. Some little part of me wondered if she was telling me everything. She didn’t seem as bothered by the texts now as she undid her apron and helped me off with mine.
“Shall we?” she asked, tipping her head toward the door.
Maybe my disdain for the man was making me overreact. I needed to calm down. And all the bread smells were making me hungry and therefore cranky.
I nodded. “We shall. What do you feel like eating?”
“Duh, bread.” Her expression was serious, then a grin spread over her face. “Just kidding. How about poke bowls?”
“Works for me.” I grabbed my jacket and hers and we headed out. I talked myself down and told myself not to get all wound up over a couple of texts. Like everything, it mostly worked. Until it didn’t.
Chapter 26
Isla
I called an emergency meeting at Becca’s house because Centinela Bread had just pulled out all the stops. They’d outbid me at every location I wanted and I’d lost every single one of them.
It meant that after a year of scouting locations, meeting with designers and bakers, and running numbers, I was back to square one.
So we were circling the wagons—getting the brainpower of Blake, Becca, and Sarah all in one room. After the uncomfortable conversation with Owen about Tom’s offer, I decided not to include him in the family meeting. He seemed overly worked up and that wouldn’t help matters.
Sarah had been up all night running numbers to see if there was any possible way for me to come up with higher bids on my own to kick Centinela out of the equation and still have the locations I wanted. She looked exhausted, sitting on the floor with folders spread out around her. She’d always preferred to work on the ground, and it didn’t matter if she was sitting on plush carpet or concrete.
“Who wants coffee?” Becca asked, starting the espresso bean grinder before any of us had answered. We all put up our hands.
Becca nodded and grabbed a tall jar of gray colored liquid from the fridge and handed it to me. “What the hell’s that?” I asked.
“Almond milk from this nut farmer lady at the farmer’s market. I got into a conversation with her about her rescue dogs and I started telling her about the feral cats that live here and by the time we were finished talking, a half hour had gone by and she hadn’t sold a thing to anyone else. I felt guilty. This is fifteen dollars’ worth of guilt milk.”
“That’s a lot of guilt,” Blake said. He’d ditched the afternoon prep for his tasting menu so he could be there to weigh in.
“Sarah, are you sure you have time to keep doing this for me? You have your teaching and your volunteer stuff,” I said, knowing she’d probably worry that I was asking because she wasn’t doing a good enough job.
“Are you not happy with the job I’m doing?”
And, bingo.
“I’m ecstatic but you won’t let me pay you and it’s becoming a lot more work than it was when you started. Once I expand it will be a ridiculous amount of accounting. There are people who do this for a living.”
Over time, I’d been slowly trying to scare Sarah with how much potential work she’d have to do if she didn’t let me offload some of it to a firm who did this every day and could find some economies of scale. But she wouldn’t bite.
She scribbled on a blank sheet to get her ball-point pen to work, then she went from page to page of printed numbers and marked certain ones in specific columns that had no meaning to me. There were about ten pieces of paper spread out around her, some marked in blue pen, others highlighted in yellow.
Sarah straightened the papers into a pile and tapped the edges to pull them together. “Okay, what do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”
That was easy. I never wanted bad news.
“I’ll take the good.”
“The good news is your numbers are solid. You’ve socked away enough cash to put down deposits on the new spaces you want to rent and buy the ovens and startup materials. And you can do it without involving any investors. You’ll be the sole owner,” Sarah said, shooting me a look—she understood.
“That’s exactly what I want.” Sarah knew I’d worked hard to make sure I had enough money saved to expand without having to raise money from outsiders. Including Tom…
“Can I ask why?” Blake wasn’t taking an accusatory tone, but I still felt defensive.
Sarah explained. “Part of why I wanted to have Blake here for our meeting was to talk some sense into you.”
“You think I’m missing sense? Is that the bad news?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head. “Hardly. But in your business, it’s rare to take on the whole financial burden of expansion by yourself.”
Blake accepted the coffee I handed him and nodded his agreement. “One of the benefits of succeeding is that other people want to be involved in your future endeavors. You should have no problem finding investors.”
“I don’t have a problem finding them. It’s by choice. I don’t like having to answer to a board or an investment group for my decisions. I know it increases my risk, but I’m happier with that than increasing the risk of other people.”
“But you need the money,” Becca said. “If not Tom, then why not Owen? You said he offered to help.”
That wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge, but Becca had an agenda—protecting me from financial exposure. “I can’t take his money. It’s…too complicated. At least with Tom, it’s purely financial, and even then, I hate being indebted to investors.”
“I totally respect that,” Blake said, sipping from his cup.
“Thanks. It works for me—I sleep better at night.”
“Yeah, see, I’m the complete opposite. If it was all my money, I wouldn’t sleep at all, worrying I was one bad restaurant menu from closing my doors,” he said.
“Exactly,” Sarah piped in. “This is what I want Blake to convince you of—you shouldn’t carry this all on your shoulders.”
/> “Says the sister who won’t let me hire an accountant so she can cut back at one of her three jobs.”
Becca rolled her eyes. “Oh my God you two, it’s like you’re back in high school, trying to one-up each other on who’s more hardcore, the cross country runner or the varsity tennis player, when both of you were up before all normal humans to work out.”
I ignored her. “Okay Sarah, was that the bad news? You’d rather have me pick up some investors? Because if that’s it, I’m golden. Even though I hate it, I have options.”
Sarah stretched her legs out on the floor and bent over them to stretch. I was beginning to understand why she liked it on the ground—it was easier to avoid looking anyone in the eye, and there was something she wasn’t telling me. “No, that’s not the bad news.”
“So tell me. What?”
“With what Centinela is prepared to offer to keep you from getting these spaces, you’ll only be able to afford to open one new place, not four. And even then, you’ll need to borrow to cover it. That’s the bad news.” She looked at Blake and nudged her chin forward as though it was his turn.
I was shocked. “They’re offering that much?”
Blake seemed equally shocked. “Who are these people? And why do they want these spaces so badly?”
“They’re really good spaces. I worked hard to find them. Everything lines up for them to be stellar businesses.”
Sarah pointed to the pages on the floor. “Isla did her homework.”
I threw up my hands. “That’s it. I’m not going to cave to these people and I’m not paying extra money to compete with them. There are plenty of other great locations where I can do a good business. I’ll just have to start over.”
The thought of it drained me. I’d spent so much time on the plans I had and even though everything Owen and I had discussed made sense, the thought of going back to square one felt unbelievably daunting.
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