Читать книгу One Winter's Day: A Diamond in Her Stocking / Christmas Where They Belong / Snowed in at the Ranch - Marion Lennox - Страница 16

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS SEVEN o’clock on the morning of the official opening of Bay Bites and the café doors were due to open in half an hour for their very first breakfast service. Lizzie had been working in the kitchen since five. She was confident she and her team had done all they could to prepare but still she was so nervous she had to keep wiping her hands down the side of her apron.

She’d worked at a start-up before. But not as the person in charge. It was a very different matter taking orders in the kitchen from someone else compared to being the one responsible for the success or failure of the venture. She twirled that piece of her hair that always escaped when she tied back her hair so hard it tugged at her scalp and made her wince. What if no one showed up?

That line of thought was crazy; she knew that—they had confirmed bookings for breakfast, brunch and lunch. Okay, so some of them were Morgan family and friends who had promised to be there to show support. But they would only be there the first few days; after that it would be up to word-of-mouth and reputation for the business to work.

Sandy, whose background was in advertising and marketing, had told her not to worry about all that—it was up to her to promote the new business. It was up to Lizzie to make the food—and the coffee—good enough for people to return again and again. It was all about the food, Sandy had said several times.

Lizzie took a deep steadying breath. She was confident the food was good, that she could hold up her end of the deal. Service had to be good too. Fingers crossed that Nikki, the young barista, could deal with the pressure.

She kept looking up to see if any early customers had arrived yet. The best marketing for a café was a line of people waiting to get in—though the line couldn’t be so long that it put people off.

She was packing one of the big glass jars with freshly baked salted caramel and pecan cookies. She looked up again. And then again. But in the end she had to admit to herself she wasn’t looking for early customers peering through the plate-glass windows. She was looking for Jesse.

Jesse, who had taken off to Sydney on Sunday, telling her he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday evening.

One part of her was upset he would go to Sydney just days before the café was due to open. Another part of her knew she had no right to expect him to be there to help her with all those last-minute things. Especially when she had told him in no uncertain terms she would never want to date him. Both Sandy and Ben had been there after hours to help instead.

Of course the kisses on the beach had changed things between them. How could they not? The kisses at the wedding had been with a hot guy she scarcely knew. But the beach kisses had been with her friend Jesse, a man she’d got to like and in whose company she felt at ease. His kisses had been sensuous, exciting, arousing—but, more than that, it had felt somehow right to be sharing such pleasure with Jesse. In spite of all the strikes against him.

She missed him. She missed him more than she could have imagined. She missed his laugh, she missed his manly way of getting things done, most of all she missed that wonderful feeling of being in his arms. Had she been mistaken about him?

She thought about what she’d said to him on the beach, when she’d tried to be honest, but had succeeded only in wounding him—she’d seen the hurt in his eyes. Was she wrong in filing him under P for Player, with a sub-category of H for Heartbreaker? Had she misjudged him? After all, she still didn’t know him that well. But what she’d got to know she liked. Liked a lot.

Her caution stemmed from his reputation. But surely her own sister wouldn’t have warned her against him if there hadn’t been something to be cautious about?

She’d met Philippe when she was twenty-one and had only had one serious boyfriend before him and none after him. Truth was, she didn’t have a lot of man mileage on the clock and not a lot of experience on which to make judgements.

Delicious smells wafted into the café, reminding her she needed to be back in that kitchen. Tension was mounting. There had been raised voices, tears, the odd thrown utensil but now all was calm efficiency again.

By seven-twenty a.m. there was a line-up outside the door. By seven forty-five she was so run off her feet she didn’t have time to worry about missing Jesse. By eight-thirty young Nikki was in such a fluster managing the constant orders for coffee, Lizzie could see customers tapping impatiently on table tops waiting for their cappuccino, skinny lattes, flat whites and so on. Nightmare!

As she plated an order for French toast with caramelised bananas and blueberries she tried to think what to do. Ask Sandy if she could borrow another waitress from the Hotel Harbourside? Make coffees herself? She’d run through the machine a few times to familiarise herself with it and could probably churn out a halfway acceptable beverage.

Whatever she did, she had to keep calm—if she didn’t the whole place would fall apart. She’d have to expect teething problems, Jesse had said. But paying customers were harsh critics. A café would live or die on the reputation of its coffee—if she didn’t fix the coffee problem Bay Bites would be going backwards on its first day.

Then, at eight thirty-five, Jesse was there. In the kitchen beside her, tying on his blue-striped apron, joking to the staff that he’d be in trouble with the boss for being tardy.

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart started to hammer so fast she felt giddy. Jesse. She ached to throw her arms around him and tell him how glad she was to see him. How she’d felt as though part of her was missing when he wasn’t here. But that couldn’t happen. They were friends. And he was talking to her as if she were the boss and he was the volunteer helper who was late for work. As it should be, of course. She swallowed down hard on a wave of irrational disappointment.

‘I got caught up so couldn’t get here until now,’ he explained with nothing more than courtesy.

She didn’t care where he’d been, just so long as he was with her now. She forced her voice to sound professional and boss-like. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Nikki isn’t coping with the coffee. If I can ask—’

‘I’ll take over the coffee machine.’

‘What do you mean? How can you do that?’

‘I worked a coffee machine when I was a student. Got quite good at it.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Thought I’d be too rusty to be of any use to you. While I was in Sydney I did a barista course to get me up to speed.’

‘You what?’

He pulled out a folded up sheet of paper from one pocket then a glasses case from the other. He put on black-framed glasses and unfolded the paper. ‘It’s a certificate proving I’m officially accredited as a barista. Turns out since I last did this, I first had to do a course in kitchen hygiene so I’ve got that qualification there too.’ He added the last sentence in his mock modest, self-deprecating way she liked so much.

Lizzie didn’t know what shocked her most—the fact Jesse had gone to Sydney to train as a barista or how hot he looked in glasses. It added a whole extra layer of hotness to his appeal—not that he actually needed any extra layers.

She lowered her voice so the chef and the kitchen hand who were working nearby couldn’t overhear her. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘I knew you were worried about Nikki. I wanted to help. But I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be more hindrance than help if I’d forgotten how to froth the milk. Turns out I hadn’t. And I got a good score for my coffee art, too.’

She stared at him. ‘You can do coffee art?’

‘Rosettes, hearts. I need some more practice to do a dolphin but I’ll get there,’ he said, deadpan.

‘I’m seriously impressed,’ she said. He’d done it for her and her heart skipped a beat at the thought.

‘It’s just steamed milk on espresso, not difficult really.’

As a chef, she knew presentation was a big part of customer appreciation. These days, people had very high expectations of their coffee; they wanted it to look good as well as taste good.

‘There’s more than that to it; I didn’t know you were an artist.’ Then she remembered he’d studied art in high school. She was beginning to realise she still had a lot to learn about Jesse. What other surprises were waiting to be discovered?

He shrugged and then winced. ‘Your shoulder? What did the doctor say?’ she asked.

‘It’s healing much better than expected,’ he said. ‘I can probably go back to work soon.’

Her heart plummeted to the level of her clogs.

‘That’s good,’ she said, forcing her voice to be level.

At the back of her mind she’d thought she’d at least have a few more weeks with him around. But there was no time to ask what he intended to do. It would have to wait. Even in the few minutes she’d been speaking to him the orders were piling up.

Jesse got down to business. ‘Give Nikki a break from the coffee machine. I’ll take over. Let her wait tables. Later I’ll spend some time training her and we’ll see if she’s good enough to stay.’

Lizzie was too darn grateful that Jesse was back to ask him if he was only going to be there for the two hours he’d defined as his time with her.

* * *

The last thing Jesse had thought he’d ever be doing again was making coffee for customers. He was a highly regarded engineer, considered an expert in the quick construction of mass pre-fabricated housing, who had a major corporation jockeying for his skills. He’d had a teleconference with the CEO of the company while he was in Sydney and again they had expressed their keenness in having him on board. They were, in fact, pressuring him to make a decision.

But he also wanted to prove to Lizzie he was not the shallow womaniser she seemed to believe he was. The player label she’d been only too ready to tag him with was really beginning to irk him.

The gratitude and relief on Lizzie’s face when he’d told her about the barista course was enough to justify his decision. He’d sensed there’d be trouble with Nikki and had taken the steps that would enable him to help Lizzie achieve her aim of a wrinkle-free launch.

But he’d missed her while he’d been in Sydney. Missed her so much his future—be it in Texas or Asia or wherever he might end up—had seemed somehow bleak without her in it in some way. Never had a hotel room seemed so lonely. The way he’d felt raised questions he wasn’t sure of the answers to. He forced himself not to think about it and focused his attention on making coffee.

Flat white, cappuccino, espresso, soy latte, decaf—the orders kept on coming and he kept on filling them. He knew half the customers and had to put up with a lot of good-natured banter.

His answer to the inevitable, ‘Hey, Jesse, why the new career path?’ was always, ‘To help out Sandy and Ben while I’m on leave.’

No way would he admit to anyone that he was doing it with the aim of proving to Lizzie that he was not the guy she thought he was.

But there were customers he didn’t know too, total strangers who’d found their way to Bay Bites. People with no connection to the family would be the lifeblood of the new business. Those and the tourists who would eat here a few times, recommend it to their friends, come back next time. He’d noticed lots of empty plates and contented faces. He’d also seen customers photographing their meals with their phones. Free Wi-Fi in the café would pretty much guarantee there would be online reviews up by evening.

He looked up to see Evie’s redhead friend he’d met at the taste-test had settled herself at a table and was perusing a menu. She caught his eye and waved. What was her name? Dell, that was right, Dell.

She came up to the counter to say hello. ‘Nothing like a handsome barista to bring in business,’ she said with her easy, friendly manner.

He smiled. ‘I’m also on the front line if they don’t like the coffee. But I haven’t had any thrown back at me yet.’

Dell smiled back. ‘So far, so good, huh? The menu is impressive.’

‘All Lizzie’s work; I’m just the help.’

‘Evie told me Lizzie is a chef who worked in some top restaurants in France and then in Sydney too.’

‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘She’s highly regarded and has won all sorts of awards.’ He felt a swell of unexpected pride in recounting Lizzie’s achievements.

‘So what brings her to Dolphin Bay?’

‘Family,’ he said firmly. He was protective of Lizzie’s personal life when it came to discussing it with strangers. No one needed to know about her broken marriage, her ongoing custody issues. The Morgans looked after their own.

Dell nodded. ‘I hope it all goes well for her.’

Just then Lizzie came out of the kitchen. Immediately Jesse felt her gaze go from him to Dell and back to him. Was that jealousy he saw glinting in her narrowed grey eyes? If so, there wasn’t much he could do about it but reassure her she had nothing to worry about. Women liked him. He liked women. But he was not flirting with this girl. And Dell was certainly not sending off any flirty vibes. How could he let Lizzie know that?

He beckoned Lizzie over and introduced her to Dell. ‘Dell’s been saying some very nice things about the menu.’

‘Yes,’ said Dell with a friendly smile ‘I was at your taste-test party on Saturday. Everything I tried was superb. Kudos to you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Lizzie.

‘And I was saying to your boyfriend that every café needs a handsome barista.’

Lizzie flushed. ‘Jesse’s not my—’

‘We’re friends,’ Jesse was quick to say. ‘Just friends.’

‘My mistake,’ said Dell. ‘I thought... Anyway, I’d better get back to my table and stop holding you guys up. It looks busy.’

‘Nothing the kitchen can’t handle,’ said Lizzie a little stiffly.

Dell rewarded her with a big smile. ‘I’m looking forward to my lunch. Congratulations, the café is awesome. I’ll bring my guy with me next time; I know he’ll love it too.’

Now, at last, Lizzie smiled back. Jesse was puzzled by her sudden change of attitude. Was this some kind of girl talk he wasn’t privy too? Had Dell given her a secret semaphore message to make her thaw?

Whatever, he didn’t have time to worry about it as the lunchtime coffee orders stepped up. He had worked way more than his allocated two hours but who was counting?