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“If there’s anything I can help with, let me know.”
“You want to take some cupcakes off my hands?” The three she’d given Asher hadn’t even made a dent.
“How many batches did you make?”
Mae knew she was prone to going overboard when she was upset. “Just two, but they were double batches. I have almost four dozen here.”
“I could take some for Ian’s class tomorrow.”
“You got ‘em. I’m meeting my mom and Glory for lunch, so I’ll drop them by on the way.”
“Bring them by the office. I’m here until three.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“The perks of being a CEO,” Mae said with a wry laugh. “Ian’s with my parents, so I figured I’d get some work done without feeling bad about taking time away from him.”
“All right then. And I’ve got two boxes, so you’ll have extras for the crew, too.”
“I’ll have hugs ready.”
“Thanks.” Her gaze shifted back to the headline on her laptop screen. “I’m gonna need ‘em.”
After they hung up, she read the blog post one more time, her anger rising at both the author and Roxanna Kent. Lift Your Spirit ended up with quite the nice plug, while Honor Hartman Cake Designs got creamed in the PR department.
The first voicemail she listened to was a cancellation for the end of June, and the second for a wedding in August. The knots in her stomach wound tighter when she clicked over to her email and found another June cancellation had been sent fifteen minutes earlier.
All the jobs had been on the books for more than six months, since many brides scheduled up to a year in advance. Usually she refunded deposits only if she was able to fill the slot with another bride, but she’d never strictly enforced the policy. She wouldn’t have much choice now, though. Two jobs equaled more than half her mortgage payment.
Another email cancellation popped up on her scree
n, from a bride she’d recently agreed to fit in at the end of the summer. She’d been willing to work double hours that week for the extra income. Now, she might be left twiddling her thumbs with no work at all.
“I’m going to be bankrupt in days if this keeps up,” she muttered.
After a few moments of wallowing and increasingly feeling sick to her stomach, she made a conscious decision to stop looking at the situation negatively and instead concentrate on a way to fix it.
Her insistence last night that Roxanna was wrong hadn’t made a difference to the author of the blog post. The article was a load of hocus-pocus nonsense that didn’t even tell both sides of the story. She needed proof that her cakes didn’t jinx her clients. As she’d said, law of averages. Out of hundreds of couples, it was to be expected that some of them wouldn’t last.
She pulled up her master client list and looked up the three Roxanna had named. Carson and Hannah Swanson. Adam and Amy Wilson. Ty and Jules Lambert.
Her stomach knotted as she dialed Jules’ number. She was waffling between hoping for the woman to answer and praying for voicemail when a live, “Hello?” made her pulse skip.
“Jules? Um, it’s Honor Hartman. I designed your wedding cake a couple of years ago?” Two years ago in June.
“Yeah…hi.” Confusion colored her voice. “What can I do for you?”
“I…ah…”
Darn it. Should’ve thought this through better. It wasn’t like she could blurt out something as ludicrous as, “Did my cake ruin your marriage?”
Drawing in a fortifying breath, she went with, “This may sound like a weird question, but are you and Ty still together?”
There was a brief, weighted pause. “No, actually, we’re not.”
“Oh.” Dismay pooled in her belly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So am I.” Sadness softened Jules’ voice as she added, “But it is what it is.”
