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I sat down heavily, bewildered about what could have happened in such a short time. Evie and I made the cookies yesterday—we always did, so they had time to settle—and boxed them. They sat on the counter overnight, and then Evie dropped them off this morning. They’d looked perfect when they left.
Of course, I hadn’t touched them, but I never did that.
“Lena?” Evie called, knocking on the wall before stepping into the doorway. “You okay?”
“Not really. Mrs. Rosenthal canceled her order indefinitely.” I filled her in, and she was just as bewildered as I was. There was no sign we’d done anything different to the cookies.
“I swear they looked fine when I dropped them off.”
I waved a hand. “This isn’t your fault. It’s probably a fluke. Maybe we need to calibrate the oven.”
But I couldn’t shake the niggling worry in the back of my mind. It felt silly, but people talked about my baking a lot. I was known as a good baker around town, and I liked that reputation. If Mrs. Rosenthal decided to speak to anyone else about what happened, it could be a cascading effect, and quickly. That was the way it worked in small towns. Opinions and experiences mattered, and now there was a bad one connected to Deja Brew.
“Well,” Evie called, glancing over her shoulder. “Your day is about to get a little better, at least.”
Jude appeared behind her, stepping into the kitchen. The clouds at the edge of my mind receded, and I smiled. Since we’d gotten together, he no longer stayed in the front of the store, instead coming back—at my insistence—to see me. It let me do things like this. “Take care of the front for a couple of minutes.”
Evelyn looked like she was barely containing her laughter. “Yes, ma’am.”
I pulled Jude into the office and shut the door. He didn’t even wait for me to say a thing, pushing me up against it the second it closed. I was getting to like his habit of doing it.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I breathed.
“So you can use me for my body?” he asked, lips against my neck.
The line of heat drawn by his tongue on my skin nearly made me lose all power of speech. “Not only. I got some bad news, and seeing you makes the day better. That’s all.”
“What happened?”
My laugh was breathless. “At the moment? I don’t really care.”
“Tell me.”
“I’d rather you kissed me until I forgot about it.”
“Lena.” He looked at me. “If you’re avoiding it this much, it’s really bothering you. Please tell me.”
He was right, and I hated that he was. But the way he had me up against the door, I wasn’t going anywhere. So I told him, my body wilting in shame and the same nervous worry trickling down my spine. “I just don’t know what could have happened. Besides the cookies themselves, it’s a big order. That’s a lot of money to lose every week if she decides not to come back.”
“She’ll come back. People react before they consider. When everyone is missing your cookies—which are delicious—she’ll place the order again. Everything is going to be fine.”
“I just don’t like that it happened at all. I don’t want anyone to believe I’m a bad baker.”
He smiled. “One bad batch of cookies isn’t enough to make people think you’re a bad baker after years of them being addicted to the things you make.”
I hoped that was true. I couldn’t fully explain the slow, oozing dread spreading through me at the thought. Or the embarrassment.
Those were thoughts I’d had before. I was the one who made people’s lives better and not worse. By messing up the cookies, I’d failed. What would happen if I wasn’t the person Garnet Bend came to for coffee and a pick-me-up?
A future that was both bleak and horrible.
“What’s going on in your head?”
“A lot of things.”
Jude pressed his forehead to mine. “Do I need to find a penny to give you for your thoughts?”
“There are too many. It would take longer than I have, and you wouldn’t want to hear them anyway.”
