Page 84 of Hale Damage
“Of course, dear. I have a roll of bubble wrap around here somewhere. I’ll wrap each one individually to make sure none of them get broken.”
Tears of relief and gratitude well in my eyes and clog my throat. “Thank you so much, Rose. I can meet you any time, night or day, on a Saturday or Sunday.”
“All right. I’ll handle it, but I can’t meet you this weekend because Roger is taking me to San Antonio to the Riverwalk.”
I almost say, “how romantic,” but I bite back the snarky comment. I’ve already said too much about her precious sonny boy, and I need her at least a teeny bit on my side.
“That sounds like fun,” I say with false cheeriness because he’s probably using my fucking money to take mommy dearest on another trip. “Just let me know when we can meet, and I’ll drive down there.”
“Okay, sweet girl. I look forward to seeing you.”
“You too,” I lie.
She makes a little hum of disappointment. “I do wish you’d been willing to work things out with Roger. Then you could be going to SanAntonio with us. I’ve heard it’s a very romantic city. I think you two could have used that.”
I absolutely want to scream right now, but I don’t. Instead, I ignore that remark and say, “Thanks for getting my collection together, Rose. Give me a call when you want to meet up.”
We say our goodbyes, and I disconnect before immediately texting Aubrey and Caroline to fill them in. Then I slide beneath the covers and pray Rose follows through on her promise.
And maybe I pray just a little bit that Roger falls in the river and gets run over by one of those tour boats.
The rest of the week is blissfully easy, mostly because my new boss doesn’t come back into the office. At four on Monday morning, I enter through the back door of Whisk and Whimsy, the bakery I work at before going to my job at the Hale building.
“Morning, Clarissa! Hi, Luke!” I call, setting down my purse and donning an apron.
“There’s my cookie queen,” Clarissa calls back from one of the stainless steel prep tables where she’s kneading dough for some of the bread.
“Just give me my damn tiara,” I tease, washing my hands and putting on a hair net before grabbing a bag of peaches and hauling it to the other prep table. We work together in companionable silence as I cut up peaches and roll out the pastry crust for today’s cookies.
Though the bakery offers a variety of cookies every day, Clarissa offers a “cookie of the day” on Monday through Friday. Those sell like hotcakes, and she’d been unable to keep up with the demand, so she hired me. My job is to prepare whatever cookies are on special that day, while her husband, Luke, makes a couple dozen of each of the rest of the cookies offered.
Less than two hours later, I have twenty-five dozen peach pie cookies cooling on the racks.
“These look fantastic, as usual. I’m amazed at how quickly you canwork,” she says, grabbing a pink bakery box adorned with fluffy clouds. With a gloved hand, she adds two dozen to the box and hands it over to me with a smile. “There you go, sugar. Did you have any peaches left over today?”
I nod. “There were three left.”
“You take those home with you,” she insists before pulling fifty dollars from her apron pocket and tucking it into my hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow. The shipment of lemons should be here this afternoon.”
“I love lemon butter cookie day,” Luke says, scooping chocolate chip treats from his pan with a spatula. “That investment firm across the street placed an order for three dozen of those for tomorrow, so do you think you’d be able to handle twenty-eight dozen? I can work the juicer for you, if that helps.”
“Easy peasy,” I say, removing my apron and hanging it up.
“I’ll pay you a little extra,” Clarissa says, smile lines crinkling at the corners of her brown eyes.
“You don’t have to do that. You already give me two dozen cookies every day for free.”
“Perks of the job,” she sings, giving me a light shove between the shoulder blades. “Now get on out of here.”
I pocket my money, bag up the three leftover peaches, and grab the bakery box before calling a goodbye to Clarissa and Luke.
Then I head home to get ready for job number two. After showering and dressing, I survey my refrigerator, hoping some food magically appeared there overnight. I’ve been saving up every penny for rent, so I haven’t been grocery shopping in a while, and the shipment of chicken and veggies Caroline insisted on sending is long gone.
Finding no offerings from the food fairies, I stick one of the peaches into my purse and put the other two in the fridge. I’ll grab a free scone from the coffee shop and eat it with the peach for lunch.
I’m starting to get worried about my finances and whether I’ll be able to make rent on October first. My first paycheck from Hale should have hit my account over a week ago, but it hasn’t shown up yet. I went to the payroll office last week, but they said to give it a few more days since I was a new employee and it was probably just taking a little extra time.
I wanted to ask, “How much time, Sharon? Because ya girl is getting hangry over here.”
