“I need to talk to you about the Artsy Tartsy,” Flick said, sucking on an ice cube.
“It’s going really well. I think Grandma Jean would be proud of what we’ve accomplished,” Pippa said. “Since we inherited we’ve doubled the revenue and the place is pumping! And we love working together.”
Flick flashed her smile. She did love working with Pippa, and they were good together; Flick filled their display cases with yummy baked goods and ran the front of the house, while Pippa, the more studious of the two, did their accounting, orders, and payroll.
“I do love working with you. Mostly. “
Pippa straightened her back and pinned her to her chair with a hard stare. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Jack, Flick’s oldest brother, slapped his hands on the bar and leaned into their space. “My two favorite girls. What’s new?”
Tall, broad-shouldered, and far too good-looking for his own good, Jack was the chief flirt and biggest fox in the bar. The bar made a ton of money and the extended Sturgiss family staunchly believed that it was due to Jack’s bachelor status and his ability to flirt with a tree stump and get a response.
“Go away, Jack,” Pippa growled. Out of the corner of her eye, Flick saw Jack’s eyebrows rise and the lift of his hands. No one ignored Pippa when she employed her seldom-used hard-as-nails voice.
When Jack moved away Pippa sent her a tough look. “Explain.”
Flick wondered where to start. She’d never been completely excited about being the resident baker. She knew how to bake but she was a chef by profession and a good one at that. “Okay, first, the bakery is too small for all our customers. Our customers like to come in, sit down, and enjoy their coffee and pastry at a table. We don’t have enough tables.”
“We don’t have room for more tables,” Pippa pointed out.
Flick waited a few seconds before speaking. “We would if we took over the bookshop’s lease.”
Pippa groaned.
“Pips, just listen, please?” Flick pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ve been thinking about this.” And she’d had to think fast because she had to have a decent excuse to present to Pippa for hiring Moses.
“Ray has had the bookshop next to ours for a hundred years but he wants to retire. In this recession, no one wants to buy his business, especially when so many people have e-readers now. If we took over the lease, we could knock a hole through that wall and expand the seating area of the AT, maybe do breakfast and lunches, even dinners.”
Pippa just looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“I know that I haven’t been doing this for long but I’m already bored with making macaroons and cupcakes and bread; I’m not even that great a baker! I want to cook fish and chicken and risotto again,” Flick said, wrinkling her nose.
“But you’re so good at baking,” Pippa countered.
“It’s not me!” Flick moaned, putting her back to the bar and looking out onto the rapidly filling up bar. And that brought her to the subject of Moses and her way to get out of doing the grunt baking. “I saw Moses yesterday.”
Pippa looked at her. “Gran’s old baker? I thought he left town ages ago.”
“He did, but he’s back.”
If Moses had been in town when they re-opened the bakery, they would’ve offered him a job on the spot. Moses had left their grandmother’s employ a few years before she died and the subsequent bakers she’d employed had been dreadful. As a result, the quality of the bread and baked goods steadily declined, along with the bakery’s revenue. But many residents of Mercy still remembered Mo’s baking, and if she never had to hear ‘your bread is good dear, but it’s not quite as good as Mo’s’ again, she’d die a happy woman.
Pippa crossed her arms, her pixie face scowling. “Did you offer him a job?”
“I did,” Flick saw the annoyed expression on Pip’s face and held up her hand. “Don’t get huffy, we both know that you would’ve said yes if I’d asked.”
Pippa didn’t answer that but Flick knew that she was right. Pippa raised her eyebrows. “So, if Moses is taking over the baking from you, what are you going to do? Because we do not have the money to expand the business. Nor do we have the money to buy out the lease and to renovate.”
“I’m still going to be baking—we’re only taking him on a part-time basis, for now.”
While walking Rufus home from the bakery, she’d pushed the thoughts of Gina’s house and Kai Manning— and his hot body and bad boy vibe and scorching kisses and the fact that he leaving Mercy—out of her head and had focused on her notion of expanding their business. She carried on doing that for most of last night and today. “I’d like us to do some catering.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Parties, functions, weddings. I’d also like to make meals, for singles or for families. Healthy, hearty, lovely meals that people can freeze and heat up when they want them,” Flick tapped her fingers on the counter. “I’d prepare a weekly menu and post it on our website and we have a Tuesday and Friday delivery. The customer orders the meal, they pay for it, and I spend Monday and Thursday cooking my ass off!”
Pippa tapped the bar with her finger. “It sounds—”