Sweet Expectations (A Union Street Bakery Novel)

by Taylor, Mary Ellen

  She straightened, shoving aside feelings of blame, as if this was somehow her fault. “I’m sorry, Jeb. We can’t take the order.”

  “Sorry don’t cut it with me today. This is my last delivery and I’m tired.”

  If she’d had the money to pay for the order she’d have taken it just to end this. But she didn’t have the money. Daisy had made it clear it was expenses-to-the-bone during the renovation.

  She stood silent, hugging the shoes like a child.

  Jeb stared at her. “Well?”

  “I’m sorry, Jeb, for the miscommunication. But I can’t take the delivery.” Shit. Had she just apologized to him?

  He muttered an oath under his breath. “This account has turned into a real pain in my ass. If I had half a mind, I’d drop you.”

  They needed the Holder Brothers and she’d lost too much in the last year to lose a steady supplier. “That’s not really necessary. And it’s just one order.”

  “And before this, it was like pulling teeth to get a payment. You’ve been trouble for a year.”

  Unwanted tears welled and her lip quivered. “I will have Daisy talk to you.”

  He glared at her tears before opening his door. “I don’t need this shit. I don’t need it.”

  She watched him back out of the alley. Anger and resentment bombarded her. Why hadn’t she told him to back off? Why hadn’t she fired him on the spot? He couldn’t be the sole supplier in the region. The guy worked for her, and she’d let him walk all over her.

  She’d apologized.

  She’d f-ing cried!

  Damn it!

  God, how would she make it if Daisy quit the business? Running a bakery was a tough way to make a living without kids and damn near impossible with a baby. At least when the girls had been born she’d had Mike. Daisy didn’t have anyone. When would her sister wise up and figure this job plus an infant equaled insanity?

  As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, panic and fear crowded out the anger. She dumped her keys and purse on the table by the door and moved into her bedroom. The closet waited for her, wide, gaping, and empty. She should have taken time to close the closet before she’d left. Carefully, she set the single pair of sneakers in the center of Mike’s side of the closet and shut the doors.

  Overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness, she thought about the wine bottle in the kitchen. If she drank it all she’d be drunk, numb, and would fall into a heavy dreamless sleep like last night when the house had been far too quiet.

  She moved to the refrigerator, opened the freezer and filled a glass with ice. She picked up the half-full wine bottle from the counter and filled her glass. She raised the glass to her lips and hesitated. The wine would get her through tonight, but what about tomorrow and the next day and the next?

  Rachel poured the wine in the glass and open bottle down the sink and climbed the stairs to Daisy’s door. She pounded on it. “Daisy!”

  After a delay, footsteps sounded in the apartment and the door opened to a bleary-eyed Daisy. “What?”

  Guilt deflated some of her steam. “You sleeping? It’s eight fifteen.”

  “Resting my eyes.” She sniffed. “Was that the Holder Brothers’ truck I heard? Jeb can’t shift gears without grinding them.”

  “Yeah. Jeb wanted to make a delivery.”

  “I sent an e-mail.”

  “He said you didn’t.”

  Irritation widened her tired eyes. “I’ll deal with him.”

  And Rachel knew she would. The problem was she should be able to deal with Jeb. Instead of digging into what she couldn’t do she shifted to what she thought was safe. “I slept a lot when I was pregnant.”

  Daisy winced. “Don’t say the P-word. I’m not there yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you want. It’s all about the . . .” She hesitated and found a smile. “It’s all about the B now.”

  Daisy rubbed her eyes. “Why are you here?”

  “I want to look at the recipe box.”

  Daisy yawned and rubbed her eyes. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’d like to read through it. Maybe bake.” She dealt with nervous energy by baking.

  Daisy yawned again. “You have ten days off and you want to bake?”

  “It’s an addiction. What can I say?” She snapped her fingers. “The box.”

  Daisy raised a brow, surprised by Rachel’s crisp tone. “Right.”

  Daisy vanished and reappeared seconds later. She handed the box to Rachel.

  Rachel thumbed through the yellowed cards. “We should try and find Jenna. Dad’s old bakery records are in his attic.”

  Daisy shook her head and rolled her head around as if working kinks from her neck. “My window of non-nausea doesn’t open until later this evening.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t have much nausea.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Want to bake with me?”

  Daisy’s bloodshot gaze narrowed. “I’ll drink a ginger ale, eat crackers, and talk to you while you do.”

  “Deal.”

  “She wrote lots of notes in the margins.” Daisy nibbled a saltine and followed Rachel down the flight of stairs to her apartment. “You’ve scribbled notes on every cookbook you’ve owned.”

  While Daisy dug a soda from the back of the refrigerator, Rachel thumbed through the cards in the box. “There are times when the recipe comes out right and other times when it won’t and doesn’t gel no matter what. It’s my way of keeping track. And then sometimes I try different flavor combinations.” Rachel squinted as she studied one card. “This is a recipe for simple cake.”

  “Yum.”

  Rachel pulled bowls out of the cabinet and banged them hard on the stainless workspace. She grabbed ingredients, slamming all on the counter.

  “So what’s eating you?” Daisy said.

  “I’m fine.”

  Daisy sipped her ginger ale. “It sounded like you were dragging dead bodies out of your apartment earlier. Thump. Thump. Thump. What was it?”

  For a moment Rachel didn’t answer as she unwrapped a pound square of butter. “I cleaned out Mike’s closet.”

  Daisy sat silent, as if knowing there wasn’t much she could say.

  “I was fine until I saw his shoes.” A half smile quirked the edge of her lips as sadness simmered like a pot of sugar water reaching the hard-ball stage.

  “All those crazy tennis shoes?”

  Doubt amplified her sadness. “I saved one pair.” She frowned. “I chucked all his belongings into garbage bags.”

  Daisy offered no signs of judgment. “I love garbage bags. It’s the suitcase for the girl on the go.”

  Her easy words softened the sadness. “I hauled them all downstairs and into the van. Made it as far as the Goodwill and watched the guy load them all on the truck.”

  Daisy winced. “And then . . .”

  Worry drew her mouth tight. “I kind of freaked out. I made the guy pull all the bags off the truck.”

  Daisy winced. “You didn’t bring all Mike’s stuff back, did you?”

  “No. Not that bad. But I dug through every bag.”

  “Looking for?”

  “The shoes he wore when the girls were born.”

  “The ones stained with chocolate?”

  She dumped the butter into the stainless bowl. “Yeah. I wanted to hold on to one memento.”

  “Reasonable.”

  She pulled a hand mixer from a drawer, popped two beaters into the sockets, plugged it in and switched it on low. The mixer strained against the hard butter, chewing at the edges of the brick. Rachel revved the speed of the beaters, shoving and pushing the butter until it lost its hard angles and dissolved into a creamy mixture. She shut off the mixer. “Mike never would have wished death so young. And he’d never have left us. I know.”


  Daisy glanced toward her can of ginger ale. “But you still feel abandoned.”

  Rachel nodded. “Yeah. In the days and weeks after he died I was so busy running around trying to keep it all together. I didn’t have a lot of time to feel much. I mean I read about the stages of grief and kept thinking, ‘Well, I’m at Acceptance. I must have skipped the Anger stage.”

  Daisy flicked her thumb against the can’s tab. “Anger can be very tricky. It’s good at hiding and lurking. But it always rears its head. In fact, I’ve seen it enough times that I think I can draw a picture of it.”

  Rachel smiled as she shoved a measuring cup into a white canister filled with sugar and scooped out two cups, which she dumped onto the creamed butter. “It was a complete stranger to me until the last couple of months.”

  “About time it arrived. Shows you are alive.”

  Rachel shrugged a shoulder. “When you came in the spring, I thought the cavalry had arrived. For the first time since Mike died the panic in my chest eased and I could breathe.”

  “Panic actually has its plusses. No time for much else when you are a little panicked. Definitely keeps you in the moment.”

  She frowned. “I thought I’d feel better without fear always chasing me, but the extra time gives me a chance to really miss Mike. And then in the last couple of weeks I’ve somehow stumbled from sadness to anger. I’ve been so pissed lately.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  “I never could understand why you were always so angry. I thought, ‘Yeah, her birth mother left, but she has Mom and Dad and we all love her. She should be fine.’ Now I realize all the love in the world doesn’t soften a terrible loss.”

  Daisy swallowed. “It’s also easy to be angry, Rachel. It’s easy to shake your fist and search for the next person to blame. But since I arrived here, I realized I’d gotten a little tired of being angry. It’s kind of like carrying a big heavy rock. You’re so focused on the rock you miss the scenery.”

  Rachel nodded. “It’s all about the rock for me now.”

  “Sooner rather than later you need to put it down.”

  “And you have?”

  “Most days. And then I send an e-mail to Terry and she doesn’t respond right away and I find myself picking it up again. But at least now I know when I’m carrying it.”

  Rachel mixed a splash of vanilla into the batter and blended it in. “Have you talked to Gordon?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “How did it go?”

  Daisy shook her head. “Not well. I did a number on him.”

  “You didn’t ask for this. If you could have chosen a different outcome you would have chosen it.”

  “Terry said the same to me when I asked her about leaving me. Woulda, shoulda, coulda doesn’t really count.” She sighed. “At least this time I was honest with Gordon. I didn’t try to hide my feelings.”

  “He needs time to cool off.”

  “You didn’t see the look in his eyes.”

  Rachel came around the counter and wrapped her arms around Daisy. “For the record, I’m excited about the baby.”

  Daisy’s questioning gaze met Rachel’s. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. And if it’s a girl, she will be dressed to the nines. I’ve all the girls’ clothes, in two sets.”

  She traced her finger around the rim of her soda can. “Given my luck, it’ll be a boy.”

  “Dad will be thrilled with the first male McCrae in the house. I know he loves us, but he’d kill for another guy on the premises.”

  “Mom and Dad.” Daisy groaned. “That’s going to be an interesting conversation.”

  “They’ll be a little surprised, but they’ll adapt.”

  Daisy squeezed Rachel’s arm. “Thanks.”

  Rachel returned to her mixing bowl. “We make a fine pair.”

  “Call us knocked up and hacked off.”

  Rachel laughed. Using the recipe card, Rachel finished mixing the cake. Soon she had the batter arranged in two parchment-lined cake pans. She popped them in the oven. The apartment filled with the sweet smells of vanilla and cinnamon.

  As they inhaled scents of the baking cake, the room chilled, making them both shiver. Rachel rubbed her hands over her arms and moved toward the stove.

  Daisy set her soda down. “I think I finally feel human.”

  Rachel held her chilled fingers toward the oven. “No nausea? Aren’t you a little ahead of schedule today? Shouldn’t it be two or three more hours before the non-nausea time?”

  “I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. The kid is giving me a reprieve, and I’m taking it. When are those cakes going to be ready? I’m starving.”

  At that moment the buzzer dinged. “Ask, and you shall receive.” Slipping a red oven mitt on her hand, she opened the oven door and pulled out the cakes.

  “God, they smell great.” Daisy inhaled deeply. “And they don’t make me sick to my stomach.”

  Smiling, Rachel dumped a cake on a white plate. Steam rose and normally she would have waited for it to cool before she cut it. Tonight, she cut it immediately and plated a piece for Daisy. “Here ya go.”

  Daisy blew on the hot cake and then bit into it. She closed her eyes, chewing slowing. “I have died and gone to heaven.”

  Rachel picked up a hot cake wedge and bit into it. “Not bad.”

  “Looks like Jenna knew how to bake.”

  “I’ll say. And no eggs. No small feat.” She shuddered as a cool blast of air blew. “I think the AC kicked into overdrive.”

  “What do you mean?” Daisy finished the first piece of cake.

  “I’m freezing.”

  “Really? I’m kinda warm. It must be ninety outside.”

  “It’s twelve in here.”

  Daisy bit into the cake. “Maybe you’re getting sick.”

  “I feel fine. But it turned cold in here.”

  Daisy shook her head. “This cake is amazing. It feels like I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

  The chill settled deeper in her bones and suddenly all the loneliness of the last eighteen months rose up. Tears threatened, but she swallowed forcing them back. “Times like this I really miss Mike. He’d have loved discovering a new recipe like this.”

  Daisy reached for a second piece of cake and as if she hadn’t heard Rachel, said, “I really hope I don’t screw this kid up. I don’t have a clue how I’m going to pull motherhood off.”

  Rachel swiped away a tear. “Mike’s birthday is next week. He’d have been thirty-five. It’s not fair he died.”

  “What if I’m like Terry, and I try but I fail?” As she nibbled the cake, her frown deepened. “I don’t want to fail my child.”

  The two sisters, each lost in a web of fear and worry, stood in the kitchen for several minutes. And then outside a car backfired.

  Both sisters blinked at the intrusion and then stared at each other as if they’d forgotten the other was there.

  Rachel shoved a shaking hand through her hair and stepped away from the cake. She cleared her throat and shook her head. “My emotions were amped up one thousand percent.”

  “Me, too. And I do not like it.”

  Rachel glanced at the half-eaten cake and the counter now littered with crumbs. “It’s like the cake cast a spell.”

  Daisy’s gaze trailed hers. “It wasn’t the cake.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It was hormonal.”

  “You maybe, but I went through my cycle last week.”

  Daisy pushed her cake plate away. “It was the cake, Rachel. How could it make us feel so much?”

  “I don’t know. But we were fine until we bit into the first piece.”

  “It wasn’t the cake.” She reached for her ginger ale and sipped slowly. “We are both just on edge.”

  Rachel str
etched her arms over her head. “Do you feel pretty good? Because I feel like a million bucks.”

  Daisy rose. “My feel-good window has passed. I think I might go rest. You okay here?”

  Rachel nodded. “Yeah. I’m good. Real good. Thanks.”

  “Good,” Daisy said. “I still feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

  “What can I do?”

  “This time I don’t think I’ll be able to muscle my way through the problem. I’m not in charge anymore.”

  Chapter Eight

  Tuesday, 7:00 A.M.

  11 days until grand reopening

  Income Lost: $600

  From my attic desk, the sound of Jean Paul’s drill grinding through wood rose up through the floors and snaked right up my spine. Normally noise and chaos didn’t bother me, but lately it drove me mad. At my desk I buried my face in my hands wishing I could call Gordon. “I am going insane.”

  I’d worked with an older woman years ago. She’d been a secretary, and I’d been an analyst on the rise. When life got tough and I thought I’d go crazy, she’d always smile and say, “This too shall pass.”

  I’m not sure what had made me think of her. But I repeated the words, “This too shall pass.”

  I breathed in and out, hoping it passed before I grabbed the hammer from Jean Paul’s toolbox and hit him with it.

  Instead of using a hammer on Jean Paul, I picked up the phone and dialed the Holder Brothers. Three rings and I got their receptionist’s perky, “Holder Brothers.”

  “Sandy, this is Daisy McCrae. How you doing today?” I’d start with nice.

  “Ms. McCrae. How are the renovations going?”

  “Well, thanks. Look, I’ve got a problem. Your man Jeb showed up here yesterday with a delivery. You and I agreed, no deliveries this week.”

  “We sure did.”

  “I don’t mind the mistake as much as Jeb. He was rude to my sister.”

  A heavy silence followed. “I’ll let the boss know. I’d put you through but he’s in the warehouse now.”

  “No worries, Sandy. But if Jeb gives us trouble, especially Rachel, I’m firing Holder Brothers.” The bakery wasn’t a huge client but in this economy every penny counted.