8. Harper
CHAPTER 8
Harper
Saturdays were crazy.
Looking back, maybe I should have asked Garrett to have Owen come after school, rather than on our busiest day of the week. Having a teenage boy underfoot in the kitchen was proving to be a little chaotic.
It wasn’t his fault. He was a nice kid, and, so far, he’d done everything I’d asked. Swept up spilled sugar, taken the trash out to the dumpster, folded to-go boxes, brought out batches of cookies to refill the case.
I peeked out front. Beth had a line that practically went out the door.
“I need to help get through those customers.” I took my gloves off and glanced at the two timers I had going. “When those go off, can you come get me? The peanut butter cookies need to come out of the oven.”
“Got it,” Owen said with a solemn nod.
I grinned at him. He looked so much like his dad, just younger and without facial hair. Same blue eyes, light brown hair, and a jaw that was on its way to being chiseled. The kid was going to be a heartbreaker someday .
Not that I thought Garrett Haven was attractive or anything.
That was a huge lie. He was stupidly attractive.
I tightened my ponytail and went out front. Beth mouthed thank you as she boxed up someone’s order. She was in her forties, with short brown hair and an impressive collection of earrings shaped like baked goods. Today’s were donuts.
Cookies were flying out of the case and we’d run out of cupcakes well before closing. I wasn’t going to have time to make more. I had four more custom cakes to finish and those had to take priority.
Beth and I made progress on the line. Fortunately, everyone was patient. One customer was there to pick up a birthday cake, so I went to the kitchen to get it out of the fridge.
“Can I help with that?” Owen asked.
Such a little gentleman. I slid the cake onto the island counter. “Sure. Can you get me one of the medium boxes?”
He retrieved the still-flat box and I put the cake on it, showing him how to fold up the sides then close the top.
“You want to carry it out for me?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
He carefully picked up the box and followed me out front. I showed the customer the cake to make sure it was exactly what they wanted, then handed it over.
“Have a great day,” I said.
Next in line was a nice-looking guy, probably about my age or maybe a few years older. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him before. He flashed a friendly smile, then seemed to notice Owen.
“Hey, pal. What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Uncle Z.” Owen glanced at me, his eyes pleading, as if to say, please don’t make me tell him.
“He’s my helper today,” I said. “Just, um, learning about working in a bakery. ”
“Sweet. I’m Zachary Haven, one of Owen’s uncles.”
“Oh yeah?” I glanced at Owen. “You have a lot of uncles?”
He sighed. “So many uncles.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Owen’s uncle Zachary. What can we get for you?”
“Good question.” He eyed the pastry case. “O, what do you think Auntie Marigold would like?”
Owen tilted his head and pointed. “What are these?”
“Coconut macaroons.”
“No.” He pointed to the next row. “What about these?”
“Lemon lavender cookies.”
“That sounds like Auntie Mari.”
Zachary grinned. “Yeah, it does. Good call. I’ll take two. No, make it four.”
“Can I do it?” Owen asked.
“Absolutely.” I handed him a set of tongs. “Since he wants four, we’ll box them up.”
Owen gently pulled four lemon lavender cookies out of the case and set them in a pink to-go box. I rang up the order while he folded the top down and added a little Angel Cakes sticker to hold it shut.
“There you go, sir.” He handed the box to his uncle. “Have a nice day.”
“Thank you.” Zachary tipped his chin to him, then smiled at me before taking his box and leaving.
Owen froze, his eyes wide, and sniffed the air. “Harper.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The cookies. I wasn’t listening for the timer.”
Oh, no. Was that smoke?
Gasping, I ran to the kitchen.
Right as the fire alarm went off.
“Sugar cookies,” I mumbled to no one in particular as I scrambled to turn off the oven. “It’s not even that smoky back here.”
The mirror curse was rearing its ugly head again .
“Should I open the back door?” Owen asked over the sound of the blaring alarm.
“Yes, please!” I shoved on a pair of oven mitts and opened the oven. A cloud of smoke rolled out and billowed toward the ceiling. To the surprise of no one, the cookies were ruined. Not as black as you’d think, given the way the smoke alarm was being such a drama queen, but not fit for sale.
“The fire department’s here,” Beth called back.
I put a tray of ruined cookies on the island. “Are you kidding? How did they get here so fast? Is that thing monitored?”
“Mr. Bakerfield called.”
A man’s voice came from the front of the store. “You’re welcome!”
I groaned and took out another tray. Great. Now I had dozens of garbage cookies I couldn’t sell, and the fire department was going to evacuate the bakery.
Beth disappeared into the front of the store, and a moment later I heard voices directing people outside.
The stupid fire alarm didn’t stop.
“We get it, we get it.” I grabbed a clean baking sheet and waved it in the air in front of the fire alarm. “There’s no fire. You can shut up now.”
Owen opened and shut the back door, trying to fan out some of the smoke. Finally, it stopped.
“Hey, Owen. What are you doing here?” A firefighter dressed in full uniform—the yellow pants and everything—came into the kitchen.
“Oh, hey, Uncle Levi.”
“Wow, you really do have a lot of uncles.”
“Told you.”
A carbon copy of the first firefighter appeared in the back door. If it weren’t for the slightly different haircuts, I would have thought I was seeing double.
“What’s going on, bro-wen,” the second firefighter said .
“Another uncle?” I asked.
“Sort of?” Owen said, like he wasn’t sure how, or whether, they were related. “Logan’s my cousins’ uncle, and my uncle’s brother, so…”
I didn’t try to parse that out. I had bigger problems. “I’m so sorry someone called you guys. It was just burnt cookies.”
Logan walked over to the island and glanced down at the overly browned peanut butter cookies. “Yeah, I see that. Are you sure my wife isn’t here somewhere? She tends to burn cookies too.”
I sighed. “We were just busy and I didn’t hear the timers.”
“It’s my fault.” Owen’s voice was glum. “I was supposed to pay attention to the timers but Uncle Z came in and I forgot.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “Sometimes things like this happen when we’re busy.”
Levi jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the front of the store. “I’ll let everyone know it’s safe to come back in.”
“Sounds good, brodentical.” Logan picked up a cookie and took a bite. “A little crispy, but these aren’t bad.”
“You can take some with you, if you want. I can’t do anything with them.”
“Yeah, some of these are salvageable. My boys will eat them.”
“That’s a silver lining, I guess.” I grabbed a box for him. “That was quite the response time. I think the alarm had been going off for all of thirty seconds when you walked in the door.”
“We were driving right by,” Logan said. “Must be your lucky day.”
I laughed weakly. “Yeah. Lucky.”
He picked through the still-hot cookies, holding them with the tips of his fingers, and put half a dozen or so in a box. “Thanks for these. And I’m glad your bakery isn’t on fire.”
“Me too. ”
“See ya, Owen.”
“Bye, Logan.”
He left out the back door and shut it behind him.
“Well, that was an adventure.” I pulled out my hair tie and redid my low ponytail. “Looks like I have more cookies to bake. And four cakes to decorate.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Let’s go help Beth do damage control with the people who were in line. We’ll give them a free cookie. Then we’ll get baking.”
Owen followed me to the front where the line was re-forming as people came back inside. The evacuation hadn’t lasted long, but I knew how quickly customers’ patience could wear thin. I put on my best smile and had Owen pass out free cookies from what we had left in the case to the people who were waiting. That seemed to help.
I also made a mental note to drop off treats at the fire station.
Once we got through the line, the pastry case was pretty decimated. I decided to abandon peanut butter cookies for the day—didn’t want to test my bad luck on those again—and focus on our best sellers. Chocolate chip and sugar cookies.
Owen and I got to work in the kitchen. I had him fetch ingredients—he was amazed by the size of the sacks of flour and sugar—and made sure to sprinkle a pinch of flour on the counter before I got started.
“What did you do that for?” he asked.
“It’s something I picked up from my aunt. I always sprinkle a little flour before I start a new batch of anything. For good luck. And trust me, I need it.”
“Did you forget before you started the peanut butter cookies?”
I paused, trying to remember. “That’s a good question. But I don’t think so.”
“Didn’t work very well, did it? ”
I turned on the large stand mixer. “I guess a pinch of flour isn’t enough to counteract my bad luck. I have a lot of that.”
“It was kind of weird that the fire department was right outside. If there’d been a real fire, that would have been lucky. But there wasn’t, so it was sort of the opposite.”
“Yes,” I said vehemently. I liked this kid. “That’s exactly it. First, we missed the timers. Then, the smoke alarm went off when there wasn’t even that much smoke. Then, the fire department was right outside, so it turned into a whole thing when it was nothing more than some burnt cookies.”
“Definitely sus.”
Nodding, I poured the chocolate chips into the mixer and let them incorporate into the dough. When they were mixed in, I turned it off and dumped the dough onto the island work surface.
“Do you want to do this?” I grabbed a cookie scoop and held it up.
“Sure. What do I do?”
“Use this to make them uniform.” I scooped a glob of dough to show him how. “Then just put it on the tray. Leave room between them, since they spread. Like this.” I put another next to the first one.
“Okay. I can do that.”
He started scooping cookies while I got a batch of sugar cookie dough going. When the trays of chocolate chip went into the oven, I set the two timers, plus the timer on my phone, just to be extra careful.
Then I turned my attention to finishing up the last of the cakes for the day.
I chatted with Owen as I piped frosting, showing him how I used the different tips to make particular shapes. Since he seemed interested, I gave him some to try on a few day-old sugar cookies. He wasn’t half bad.
The afternoon flew by. Before I knew it, we’d finished the cookies and added them to the case—to the delight of the waiting customers—and put the last touches on the custom cakes. I was about to start cleaning up the cake mess when Garrett Haven appeared, startling me.
I gasped and my icing spatula clattered to the floor. He was almost as wide as the doorway, and that uniform made him look so intimidating.
Then again, he was probably intimidating in regular clothes.
“Sorry.” His deep voice sent a tingle down my spine.
“That’s okay.” I tried to ignore the way my heart sped up. “I just didn’t see you there.”
His eyes didn’t leave mine, holding me captive for a moment. They were a stormy blue-gray. So intense. Like he carried the weight of the world on those broad shoulders.
“Dad?” Owen asked. “You’re doing it again.”
Looking away, Garrett cleared his throat. “You ready?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Wait!” They both looked at me like I had a wooden spoon growing out of my head. “You need some cookies to take home.”
I brushed past Garrett and grabbed a to-go box.
“That’s okay,” Garrett said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, but I want to. Besides, he helped make these.”
I put half a dozen chocolate chip cookies in the box and turned around to hand it to Garrett.
He watched me like I didn’t make sense, a furrow in his brow that was so unintentionally sexy.
Didn’t matter. I wasn’t dating anyone. Least of all Garrett Haven.
I held the box out. “They’re still a little warm.”
He hesitated for a second, then took it. “Thanks.”
A girl could really get lost in those turbulent eyes.
“Owen was great, by the way. It was fun having him. Things got a little crazy earlier, but don’t worry, there wasn’t a fire. The fire department happened to be close when the alarm went off and we ruined the cookies, but that wasn’t Owen’s fault or anything.” I was making next to zero sense, but I couldn’t seem to stop talking. “Anyway, he was a big help and he’d make a pretty good cake decorator if he practiced.”
The corners of Garrett’s mouth lifted in a subtle smile and my knees almost buckled. It changed his entire face, warming his expression. I had a feeling that grin didn’t come easy, and seeing a hint of it made me want to do anything to get him to smile at me again.
I laughed, almost cringing at how awkward it sounded. “Well, have a nice afternoon.”
“K, Dad,” Owen said. “I served my time. We can go now.”
He glanced at his son as if he’d forgotten he was there. “Right. Yeah.” He held up the cookies. “Thanks again.”
I watched them leave, still a little awestruck by Garrett’s smile.
“Uh-oh,” Beth said as the door shut behind them.
I jumped. I’d totally forgotten she was there. “What?”
“Nothing.” Her voice was full of mock innocence.
A customer came in before I could press her. I let her handle it and went back to the kitchen to start cleaning up.
A teenage helper. Burnt cookies. A fire alarm. First responders evacuating the bakery. It had been a big day. But were any of those things on my mind as I washed dishes and put things away?
Nope. All I could think about was Garrett Haven’s smile.