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“My name is Mona King. I’m the owner of the New Moon Bakery.”
“Ah." Now suddenly her haughty attitude makes a little more sense. “Nice to meet you.”
She doesn’t answer 'likewise', as would be the polite thing to do. She just continues to stare at me with that gaze that I’m sure is meant to make me shut down. But I’m not the ‘shutdown’ type, so I simply raise an eyebrow and wait with a friendly smile, still plastered on my face. As my mom always used to say. Kill them with kindness.
At the same time, I try to figure out what she's doing here. I assume it's something like what I did weeks ago, when I went to her bakery to scope out the competition. The only difference is that I did it during working hours and I didn’t make my presence known or throw my weight around. I simply observed how they did things and saw what I could improve on. Never would I, in a million years, have thought of eyeballing the owner the ways she's doing to me.
Although we’re rivals, I never considered us enemies.
But from her look, she clearly doesn't like me much.
“This is cute,” she says rolling her finger around the room.
“Thanks,” I reply and her lips tighten as though she didn’t mean it as a compliment. I can see that my ‘niceness’ is starting to frustrate her, much to my satisfaction.
“But it’s not going to last for long,” she says. “I hope you know that.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that if I were you I would quit while I was ahead. We’re opening a new branch right here in Redwood. And it’s going to be hard for you to compete. I just wanted to give you a fair warning so you had time to figure out a plan B. You know, woman-to-woman.”
“Thanks for your consideration.” My smile feels brittle around the corners, now. I really don’t like this woman.
“You’re welcome,” she shrugs. “I can be very nice and considerate. When I want to be.“
The warning is clear in her voice and her eyes.
“Look, I'll even leave my number in case you want to work for me after this place closes down,” she says, reaching into her bag for a notepad and a pen. “Perhaps you can learn something. Maybe about interior decorating and how not to make your bakery look like a relic from the fifties."
I bite my lip to keep from saying something back. After she's done writing, she rips off the paper and places it on the counter.
"See you," she beams and then turns and leaves.
"Bitch," I mutter under my breath when she does.
After that, I figure I might as well close up before anything worse happens. I try not to think about what she said, but I can't deny the worry at the back of my mind. She's opening a new branch in town? Why? Sure, the restaurant is doing fine right now but what about when she moves to town? Will we be able to stand against them? And she looks like the type to play dirty.
Relax.I hear Luke’s voice leaking into my impatient mind.I hate when you’re so down on yourself and worry over nothing. You have the best cupcakes in the fucking city. No way you're losing that to anybody.
I smile at the phrase but then my sadness returns. Luke won't always be around to help. He might not even like me by that point. I sigh.
After I'm done locking up, I get a call from my mom.
“Hey mom.”
“Hey sweeties, “she says. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“We’re in town!"
"What?” My parents have been in Boca Raton for a long time but they're pretty spontaneous and like Liam, they like to show up out of the blue.
“Where are you?" I ask.
"We’re sitting at La Fuente’s, close to your bakery. You want to have dinner with us?”
"Uh, sure.”
