I noticed that Ryan hadn't been looking at me for the last minute or so and finally followed his eyes to the window. There was a tall figure standing there, but I couldn't make out the details through the morning condensation that had gathered on the glass.
“Is that?” Candace started.
“That’s the guy who has a million better things to be doing than thinking about Hailey,” Ryan said smiling. “Yep.”
He must’ve seen us looking his way, because he tapped on the glass and motioned to the door.
I made a quick, tight face toward Ryan and Candace. “Nothing weird. Please. Just act normal and don’t make this awkward, okay?”
They held up their hands like I was aiming a gun at them. “We’ll be good.”
“Scout’s honor,” Ryan agreed.
“You were never a scout.”
He shrugged. “Am I not allowed to say ‘Oh my God’ if I’m not religious, too?”
I ignored him and went to unlock the door for the man I could pretty safely assume was William. After all, I didn’t run into many people his height and size. Most people as tall as him looked somehow gangly, like they were all legs or their arms were too long for their body.
When I pulled the door open, he flashed me a smile and let himself in. He casually put his hand on my hip as he passed, like he was politely letting himself by, but the gesture still made a shockwave of heat wash over me.
He looked good, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. He wore a black jacket that probably would have paid the rent on my shop for a few months, a white shirt with his trademark number of buttons undone, and dress pants. His hair was messy, as usual. He raked a hand through it, which put it in place for exactly half a second before it flopped back to look exactly how it had before.
“Having a strategy meeting in here?” he asked, gesturing to where Candace and Ryan were still sitting with almost comically tense expressions. They looked like they were waiting for a bomb to go off.
“Y-yes,” I said, realizing it wasn’t actually a lie.
He nodded. “That’s good. We rolled out the first wave of your marketing plan last night, and I wanted to come by and let you know to expect a little extra work today.”
“What? Already?”
“Yep. Galleon doesn’t fuck around, Cherry. You become our client, and we go to war for you. I’d suggest hiring some new employees to help out with the extra business. As fast as you can.”
“Ryan and I can handle more people than we usually get. Adding another employee is an expense I don’t have room in the budget for, right now.”
“Trust me. By the time Anderson Cooper talks about your amazing cherry pie on Good Morning America in about…” he checked his watch. “Thirty minutes. You’re going to wish you had three or four times as many employees. Hell, we might even need to get you a bouncer.”
“He’s kidding, right?” Candace looked as shell-shocked as I felt.
I studied William's face. Cocky, amused, but not dishonest. "I don't think he is." My stomach flipped a few times, did a barrel roll, and then felt like it crash-landed straight into my butt. I wanted to faint.
“You okay?” he asked. He took a step forward and put a hand around me, clutching the small of my back and steadying me.
I heard a small clapping sound from Ryan and Candace’s direction. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the sound of a high-five.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I doubt it’s going to be that busy, anyway. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
William winced a little. “I gotta be honest. The Anderson Cooper thing was a favor I’d been holding onto for a special client. The last time he talked about a shop in New York on air, he turned a relatively unknown chef and shop into a national phenomenon. I basically dropped the marketing equivalent of a nuclear bomb on day one. Maybe I got a little carried away?”
I felt like falling over again. My head was spinning, but his arm on my back felt so, so good that part of me didn’t want to recover if it meant he’d keep holding me like this. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and stood up. If he was right, I needed to start busting my ass as soon as possible to prep for a big crowd.
He let his hand fall away from my back and looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was steady on my feet. “Hey, tell you what. I’ll pitch in today. Bruce can live without me at the office, and if I go in, I’ll just end up dropping more marketing bombs for you, anyway. Maybe it’d be best if I have the team hold off on anything else for a little, until we see how this goes.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But it might take too long to show you the ropes for you to really be much help.”
“Shit, come on. Don’t you know who you’re talking to? I’ve tried a lot of things, and I’ve pretty much been amazing at every last one of them.”
I rolled my eyes. “What about modesty?”
“Yep. Nailed that when I tried it once.”
Candace grinned. “I can help, too. We can all chip in.”
“What about your boss?” I asked.
“I’ll text him and say I’m on my period. It’s like a no-fly-zone for guys. What’s he going to say, tough it up, buttercup?”
“I’ll set Candace to work.” Ryan stood and started strapping on his apron. “You can work with William, Hailey.”
William smiled at me. “Do I get an apron?”
“Yes,” I said. I was too focused on the fear that I’d run out of food if too much business came to feel amused. “Hold on. I have some extra shirts in the back. I have one for you, too, Candace.”
“Great.” William stripped off his jacket and went straight for his buttons.
“Hey!” I reached up and clutched his hands to stop him from stripping down in the middle of the store. “What is it with you and public exposure?”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “I almost forgot that the whipped cream thing didn’t go over too well.”
I glared, then leaned closer as I lowered my voice. “And even if I did enjoy the whole striptease thing, I’d rather you not give my sister a peep show.”
He put his lips beside my ear and lowered his voice to a whisper. “You just got yourself an appointment for a private striptease, Cherry. How does tonight sound?”
I blushed. “It sounds like we should focus on surviving the craziness you so kindly got us into before we think about tonight.”
"Hey," he said, leaning back and raising his voice again. "You said you wanted the business. Can't fault me for being too good at what I do."
“Let’s see how good you are at following directions.”
He winced. "Okay. I forgot about that one. Not a specialty."
William roared what must’ve been his eighth F-bomb in as many minutes when a puff of flour exploded out of the mixer and covered his face. It had only been about ten minutes since he strapped his apron on, and he had already jammed one dough mixer, ruined a batch of cookies, melted a pot holder on a stovetop, and eaten several spoonfuls of frosting. I’d never seen him so out of his element or so frustrated, and even though I was practically counting down the minutes until the supposed mob of hungry people flooded in after Anderson Cooper’s moment on live TV, I was enjoying watching him too much to send him away.
Candace clapped her hands excitedly when Ryan nodded his approval. She had already nailed the piping tool for spreading the decorative frosting on my trademark bubble bites—they were thin, hollow balls of sweet dough that I deep fried and then painted with white, blue, and pink frosting to make them look like reflective bubbles. Get it? The Bubbly Baker, because—yeah. Each was small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and filled with either chocolate, fudge, raspberry compote, or cream.
And William… William was self-destructing, but in the kind of way I couldn’t seem to stop watching. He’d bump his head against overhead cabinets, mis-measure, and generally sow chaos wherever he moved. In the oddest way, despite all the stress I felt from the impending rush of customers, I
liked it. I liked his sort of bumbling, well-intentioned chaos beside me in the kitchen. It humanized him. After just a few minutes of him destroying my shop, I felt like I’d learned more about him than I had with any of our previous encounters.
He came up to me with confectioners sugar all over his face and raspberry jam on his neck. The large collared t-shirt I gave him with the bakery logo fit very snug on him, I noticed.
“The muffins are done. And you’re right. I can see why a muffin wrapping machine was a stupid suggestion now. The little bastards wrap themselves.”
I grinned. “I don’t know if that’s exactly how I’d phrase it, but thank you. Maybe you could just… hang back for a few minutes while we get the hot stuff out of the ovens?”
He pulled his head back and frowned. “What? You think I can’t handle a little heat? Cherry, Cherry, Cherry what am I going to do with you?” He planted his big hand on my shoulder and shook his head. “Nobody learns as fast as me. I’m probably two minutes away from having this whole deal down. Trust me.”
I scanned my eyes across the mess he’d left in his wake and then looked back up at him, letting the skepticism I felt show through in my expression. “Well, if you’re that confident. I just need the bread pulled out and set in the back.”
He held up his hand like he didn’t want to be insulted with any more instructions. “Yep. Pretty sure I can figure out how to take bread out of an oven.”
He reached for a wet towel that was hanging over the edge of the sink and yanked the oven open with his other hand.
“William!” I said quickly. “You can’t use a wet towel to grab a hot pan.”
He laughed. “Right. It’s called science, Cherry. Water cools down hot things. A wet towel works even better than a—Fuck!” He yanked his hand back and shook it, gripping his wrist with his other hand.
I had to spend a few minutes I couldn’t spare nursing his already blistering burn. I sat him on the chair in my office and stepped back once I had a bandage on it. “That should be good. But you’ll probably want to let it air out every half hour or so. Maybe? I’m not really good with medical advice.” I gave him a wry grin. “But let me guess, you’re amazing at it?”
He smirked. “Apologizing is one of my many talents, believe it or not. And I apologize for being an ass. You were right. I suck at baking. And, well, general survival skills in a kitchen, I guess.”
I laughed. “I never said you sucked at it. You just, well, you’re about as far from a natural as I’ve ever seen at it. I’m sure with some practice—”
“If you’re the teacher, sign me up. Can we do the move from Ghost? You can be Patrick Swayze and stand behind me while I straddle a mixing bowl. You could teach me how to get my hands dirty in the kitchen, and then I could teach you how to get yours dirty when the lights are off.”
“Why would I want to cook with the lights off?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Because—Shit, seriously?”
I laughed. “I’m kidding.” I caught myself biting my lip, a sure sign I was enjoying this way too much, especially when I had a mob of customers that was probably about to come breaking down the door if William’s advertising ploy worked. “I just have one question.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Why do I have to be Swayze? I want to be Demi Moore.”
“We’ll take turns. A Chamberson always pays his debts, after all.”
“Do Chambersons also push little boys out of windows and sleep with their sisters?”
“Depends if the little boy has it coming, and the only sibling I have is my brother. So no, my similarities with Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones stop at the whole debt thing.”
“That’s too bad. The sword fighting stuff is pretty hot.”
“I could learn.”
I laughed. “If you picked it up as quickly as you’ve picked up cooking, you’d end up chopping yourself to bits before you figured it out.”
“Totally different. Baking is harder than it looks. Remind me why you choose to do this?”
“Because... well, baking makes me feel safe?”
“Yeah, for sure,” he said, holding up his burned hand.
I grinned. "There are rules and they don't change with baking. If you are careful, and if you take your time, you get rewarded. In real life, it feels like the opposite. Take your time and life passes right on by. Be too careful, and you'll watch all the opportunities of your life slip away."
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You take risks. Look at you sitting in here with me.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Are you saying I should think of you as a risk factor?”
“Oh, definitely. I’m dangerous. I’ve even been called a criminal. A deviant.”
“My own personal rogue,” I said with a wicked smile.
The bell above the front door to the shop chimed. I realized how close I had been standing to him and straightened immediately. I cleared my throat, and it felt like the pink, lovesick mist that had been settling around me evaporated in an instant. “If you’re right about this marketing scheme, I think it’s starting.”
“I’ll come help,” he said.
I put my fingertips on his shoulder, urging him to stay where he was. "As much as I enjoyed watching you flop around the kitchen like a blind fish out of the water, it might be better if you stayed back here."
“Ah,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “Of course. I’ll wait right here.”
I had expected a little more resistance, but I wasn’t about to complain if he wanted to go easily. “You know, there’s no reason you have to hang around. I’m sure there’s something important for you to do at work, right?”
“I’m good.” He pulled out his phone and gave it a pat. “If Brucie needs me, he’ll call. Besides, I can’t let my little Cherry deal with this all on her own.”
I felt my lips twitch up at the corner, amusement trickling through me. “Your little Cherry? I can’t tell if that’s an upgrade or a downgrade in offensiveness.”
"It's a term of endearment. The more cringe-worthy it gets for somebody else to hear, the more meaning it has. That's the way it works."
"I see. So I can call you a thief or klepto and it'll be considered a term of endearment?"
“No. That’s just offensive. I’ve only stolen one thing this morning, anyway, so it’s an exaggeration at best.”
“You stole something?”
“Borrowed, technically. It only becomes stealing when I die. As long as there’s a possibility that I’ll give it back at some point, how can you tell me the difference?”
“Do you ever plan to give the things you take back?”
He thought about that. “No. Not really.”
“Then it’s stealing. And what did you borrow today, anyway?”
He held up a little plush oven mitt keychain. “Saw this on your keys and I liked it.”
I tried to grab it but he pulled his hand back, keeping it from my reach.
“Did it occur to you that I liked it too? Maybe I don’t want you to borrow it?”
He held it out for me. “You can have it back if you really want, but I should warn you. I never give anyone anything back. The moment you take this, you graduate from the ‘everybody else’ category.”
I plucked the keychain from his hands. “Call me crazy, but I’ll take that risk.”
He grinned. “Yeah. You’re the craziest person I’ve ever met. A natural risk-taker.”
“Shut up.” I couldn’t say it without a smile, but I turned before he could see it. Little by little—okay, more like a lot by a lot—I was starting to wonder how much I’d miss William if it didn’t work out between us. He was the injection of life I’d been moping over, and since he showed up, I had hardly even thought about Nathan. For once, it seemed like things were going well, like maybe Nathan had even taken the hint for the first time in his life.
I rushed out front and saw there were already a dozen people lined up while Ryan was ringing them up and sli
nging out bagels and Bubble Bites. For her part, Candace was actually doing a good job finding everything Ryan was barking out for her to get.
They both eyed me up and down when I returned.
“Blushing, but still a virgin, I think,” said Candace.
“Yep. I agree.”
“Would you two please focus on the customers?” I asked between my teeth, even though our customers could clearly hear every word.
“Hey.”Candace looked offended. “We’re the ones who have been out here working while you were playing doctor with the hottie in the back.”
I glared, but couldn’t argue with her, which was endlessly frustrating. I jumped into work and quickly lost myself in the rhythm of it. Prepping and baking in the spare moments between restocking and bagging up orders. I tried not to look at the growing crowd, and I definitely tried to ignore the impatient faces as we dealt with what was clearly a bigger rush than we were equipped for.
I just had to hope they liked the food enough to come back. Even if a tenth of these customers started coming regularly, I’d have more than enough money to start investing back in the shop and in expansion, if my landlord didn’t make me leave, that was. I hadn’t earned a spot as his favorite tenant by constantly falling behind on my rent for the shop. It was a dizzying thought, and it was one I had to sideline if I was going to focus and survive this.
I wasn’t sure how long had passed since I told William to stay put, but I knew it hadn’t been long. He came waltzing out of the back with a confident smile. “Ready to admit you could use my help yet?” he asked.
I slammed an oven door shut with my hip, spinning a hot tray of cookies around and setting it on the table. “Help would be staying out of the way.”
He blew that off with a puff of breath. “It’s okay. I won’t make you beg. Believe it or not, I worked a cash register for a few years during high school. Let Ryan help out back here and I’ll take care of the front.”
I waited to see if he was going to smile or say he was kidding, but to his credit, he looked serious. “Okay… But watch what Ryan’s doing for a few orders so you get a feel for how the system works. It’s pretty intuitive. If they order cookies, you press the cookies tab and find which one they want under there. That sort of thing.”
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