Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
EMMA
“What the hell is this?”
Emma Clark cringed as something solid landed on the stainless steel countertop behind her. There was no mistaking that voice, even over the Christmas music crooning in her earbuds.
She pulled her hands out of the dough and took a deep, cleansing breath before swiveling to face the intruder.
Maya, her boss and a canker sore of a human being, tapped an impatient foot on the tile floor. Her astonishingly long ponytail brushed over a rolled-up mat slung over her back. Must have been on her way to Pilates.
She didn’t have time for whatever this was. It was six a.m., they were opening in less than an hour, she’d had only had two sips of coffee, and her mother had fallen while trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Emma’s gaze slid from Maya’s monogrammed chef’s coat—that had never seen a teaspoon of flour—to the muffin on the countertop. Shit.
“Looks like a muffin to me.”
Maya’s manicured finger pointed in Emma’s face. “Don’t play coy with me. This was found at the farmer’s market in Williamsburg.”
Emma pressed her lips together. Who had ratted her out?
She had gone through great pains to cover her steps.
She had given the muffins to a trusted friend to sell at her alpaca scarf booth.
She’d done everything short of leaving them in a shipping container at a dock in the middle of the night.
But what Maya lacked in baking ability and common decency, she made up for in snooping prowess.
“You think I can’t spot your crumble topping from a mile away?” Maya grabbed a pinch off the top and ground it between her fingers. Great, now the floor was going to be crunchy.
“I know it’s yours,” Maya continued. “And you know this is a violation of the noncompete. You can’t sell anything outside of these four walls. Not. A. Single. Macaron.” She stabbed the counter with each word.
Emma turned back to her dough and rolled her eyes.
Maya could never prove it. Besides, now that the insurance was dropping coverage on one of her mother’s medications in the new year, she didn’t have a choice.
She couldn’t maintain her savings percentage and afford the medication without supplemental income, and the freelance social media work she did on the side wasn’t cutting it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but there was a tremor in her voice. “Do you mind? I have a lot of work to do.”
Two more years and she would be free of this overhyped hellhole. She would be her own boss, and no nepo baby with a skull full of termites and glitter would ever take credit for her hard work again.
The timer on the oven dinged, and Emma hurriedly washed her hands.
Maya’s expression instantly changed from one of suspicion to delight. “Let me.” She tossed her phone to Emma and shrugged off her yoga mat. “Tooth check?”
Stress coursed through every vein in Emma’s body.
Would there be no end to the interruptions today?
The Fulton Foundation had placed an order for five hundred assorted croissants to serve at their fundraising brunch the next day, and she had only made two hundred of them.
Gaby had called out sick and Isaiah was working the counter, so she was making everything herself.
And that didn’t even address the mountain of administrative tasks that waited.
The sooner she got Maya out of the kitchen, the better.
She turned to her boss and barely kept herself from reaching over to strangle her. She pulled up the camera app and lifted the phone. “You’re good.”
She would have given the all clear even if Maya had a California redwood between her front teeth.
Maya smoothed a hair back and slid her hands into hot mitts.
Emma took three different videos of Maya removing croissants from the oven. After Maya approved one, she stood there watching until Emma edited it, added some festive music, and posted it to the bakery’s Instagram.
“Thanks. Anyway, don’t let the muffin thing happen again. I’m not—”
“Maya?” Isaiah’s head popped through the double doors. His hairnet barely contained his black ringlets, and he looked flustered. A candy cane pin on his apron flashed red and white.
“What is it?” Maya asked.
He jerked his head toward the counter. “There’s some European lady knocking on the front door claiming to be representing the kingdom of Longoria? Something like that.”
The kingdom of what?
“She wants to talk to you about a job. Said she couldn’t get through on the email.”
An alarm bell went off in Emma’s head. She had definitely deleted a couple scammy-sounding messages from someone claiming to be a royal publicist last night.
People were in their DMs all the time pretending to be celebrities to jump the waitlist for personalized creations.
But she’d never had a scammer visit in person.
“Can you deal with her? I’m still loading the case,” he added.
Maya smoothed her ponytail and disappeared through the double doors.
If Emma remembered correctly, the messages had mentioned something about procuring their services for the country’s 500th anniversary celebration.
She straightened. In the incredibly unlikely event that this was legitimate, would Maya go there and leave the country for two weeks? There would be no greater gift on earth.
Even better, Maya had zero baking knowledge.
None. Her father owned the business and had placed the day-to-day operations in her hands, which of course meant that everything fell on Emma and the other staff members.
If this country was planning to hire her, she’d be turning in nothing.
Unless she somehow ordered the bakery staff to FedEx cupcakes across an ocean.
Cheered by the thought of a Maya-less holiday season, Emma cranked up the Christmas music and returned to the croissant problem.
“Mom? I’m home,” Emma called.
The front door swung shut behind her, and it didn’t feel much warmer inside than it did outside. The apartment seemed extra dingy today in the gray New York winter. One of the light bulbs in the entryway had burnt out, and paint was starting to peel off the wall.
A maelstrom of stress swirled inside her, but there was nothing she could do about the derelict apartment.
It was a great location—in Greenpoint, close to the G train, on the first floor, and it even had a tiny garden in the back to let the dogs out.
But even if it had been on the fortieth floor of a mega apartment building next to the airport, they could never leave.
It was one of the last rent-controlled apartments left in the city, a gift from her great-aunt, whom they had cared for in her last years.
They couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
All the damage was cosmetic, and her mom had told her time and again that her savings and future business were the only priorities.
But her heart ached at the thought of her mom trapped between these shabby walls all day.
Someday, she would fix everything. Better physical and occupational therapy, fresh vegetables, name-brand peanut butter.
Come hell or high water, she would make life easier for the woman who raised her.
Thunderous footsteps came from down the hall, and Cooper, the Bernese mountain dog, happy-stepped toward her.
“Hi, baby,” Emma crooned. She buried her face in Cooper’s mound of hair. He was unbothered by the cold.
“Back here, sweetheart,” her mom called.
As Emma hung her purse on a peg in her room, the collage on the wall caught her eye.
Images of the Eiffel Tower, tulip fields in Amsterdam, and pigs swimming in the Bahamas stared back at her.
She really needed to take the collage down.
She’d never see any of those places. In fact, she’d probably never see anything outside the tri-state area.
She pushed those thoughts to the side and stepped back into the hallway, determined to put on a cheery face for her mom.
A bag of rejected croissants crinkled in Emma’s hand.
Their Thanksgiving leftovers had finally run out, but at least they still had a dented can of green beans left in the pantry.
It wouldn’t be a hearty dinner, but it was better than nothing.
Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out. Ugh, Maya. She was off duty.
She let it go to voicemail and wandered down the hall. Maya had left without a word shortly after the alleged representative of the kingdom had showed up. With any luck, she was already on a plane.
“You have to turn the heat up. You’re going to freeze,” Emma said as she walked into the living room.
It was like walking into a terrarium. Plants covered the far wall, crammed into every space touched by sunlight. Her mother had once been a master florist for New York’s most elite weddings and fundraisers. Now she tended a tiny garden in their backyard during the warmer months.
The TV was on, set to an episode of Blue Planet. Her mom had an unquenchable thirst for both knowledge and mundane real-life drama.
“Heat’s expensive, love.” Lisa sat in her wheelchair under a pile of blankets. Arizona, her service dog, sat on the floor next to her. “I can manage.”
Emma shook her head and cranked the heat up to sixty-five. She would dip into her savings if she had to. “How’s your hip?”
“I told you this morning, it’s fine.”
“You know you need to ring the bell if you need me in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not going to wake you up every time I have to pee,” her mother said sternly. “I can get to the bathroom myself with the walker.”
A retort was on Emma’s lips, but she swallowed it.
Things hadn’t been easy for her mom these past two years.
Watching her transform from a 5k runner with a zest for life to a wheelchair-bound homebody had been heartbreaking in more ways than she could count.
Lisa was a proud woman who had never asked for help, and she wasn’t about to start now.