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Chapter 7
There was big news at the bakery the next week. Martha had greased enough palms in town to manage to get a loan and find a space for the commercial kitchen.
“You know that place outside of town that was like a weird lab, and then an eye doctor’s office?” Linley told me as she mixed cake batter in the industrial mixer.
“Yeah, what is the deal with that place?” I asked. It just had the vibe that it might have been used for illegal activities.
“Nobody really knew, but apparently it’s for sale and Mom was able to get a good deal. It’s trashed inside, so we’ll have to completely gut it, but Mom has already been looking for contractors, so if all the paperwork goes through, it’s going to be ours.”
This was huge.
“Hey, that means we’ll be able to hire some more people,” I said.
“I know,” Linley said with a grin. “I may have told Mom that she should hire more people so I can work less and give her some grandchildren,” Linley said with a gleam in her eye.
“Does she know that you’re not planning on having kids for at least a few years and you want to get a house first?” I asked.
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she said, laughing as she dumped vanilla extract into the massive metal mixing bowl. She didn’t even have to measure. She just instinctively knew them all by heart.
“How are you doing?” Martha asked, making us both jump. It was as if she’d known we were talking about her.
“Great,” I said, trying to cover for both of us. “I have the marketing schedule done, if you want to take a look.”
“Sounds good,” Martha said, casting a suspicious glance at Linley, who was currently humming to herself and staring into the mixing bowl.
I led Martha back to my office, babbling about marketing the whole way.
“Oh, and congrats on the new kitchen,” I said.
“Thanks, it’s still in the early stages and everything could go wrong, but we’re on our way. If you want, we can make a better office out there for you. I hate that you’re back here like this,” she said, looking around at the cramped office.
“This is fine,” I said. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, because the fact that they’d hired me was a gift that I could never repay.
“It’s not fine and you know it,” she said, giving me a hug. “But we’re so blessed to have you here with us. I don’t know what we did before you.”
Linley had told me that they’d tried to hire local teens to do social media with disastrous results, but I didn’t want to rub that in Martha’s face. It wasn’t her fault that social media wasn’t in her wheelhouse. That was why she had me now.
We went over the posting schedule, the campaigns, and I gave her the rundown of comments and reviews.
“Everything’s running well,” I said.
“Thanks to you.” She gave me another hug and I squeezed her back.
“Now that we’ve got work out of the way, I need to do my duty as your aunt to pry into your personal life.” She sat herself down in the other chair and looked at me with expectant eyes.
“Uhhh,” I said trailing off. “There’s not much going on.”
That she knew about.
“You haven’t seen anybody here that you might want to go out with? No one?”
Great. Time for more lies.
“Nope, not really,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed and she gave me one of those looks that made me feel like she knew every single one of my secrets.
“Well, sometimes the right one for you is where you least expect to find them. Keep your eyes open.”
