38. Harriet the Spies
38
HARRIET THE SPIES
Elodie
Fuck him.
Seriously. Just fuck him.
Last night, I was shocked. A little depressed. But in the morning, as Margo takes the girls out for breakfast, I’m mad as hell.
I’m pacing in the state-of-the-art kitchen with Gage. “I’m not going to take this. That man has been nothing but a thorn in my side since the day I met him. And his chocolates suck,” I tell Gage. “The gloves are coming off.”
Gage smiles as he thrusts a latte at me. “You’re hot when you’re mad.”
I take it and down a swallow of the drink that’s almost too hot. But the burn fuels me. “I’m not going to let him get away with this.”
“So, what are we going to do? I’ve got some ideas.”
But I can’t keep turning to Gage to save me. I need to save Elodie’s myself. “I’m going to make an offer on the location,” I say.
He blinks over his cup of coffee. “You. Are?”
I’ve shocked him. Well, I’ve shocked me too. “It’s a little crazy, isn’t it?”
“You just paid off the loan,” he says, then pauses before he says, “Let me help?—”
I cut him off. “I have to fight this battle on my own. I can take out a line of credit and use it to lease the perfume shop. It’s a tiny space, but I can use it for the website orders maybe? My web business is way up thanks to Special Edition.”
“It’ll probably pay for itself pretty quickly then. You won’t need to go into debt after just getting out of it,” he says, and he sounds enthused for me. Like he’s always been.
“I think you’re right. I can manage things. I can do this,” I say, resolutely. I’ve spent the morning checking my books. Special Edition has made a lot of things possible. But it also gave me the confidence I needed. “I’m a damn good businesswoman and chocolatier, and I want a chance to lease that property.” I check the time. “Samira’s usually in on Sundays. I can catch her when she opens and before we do the cookies and cocoa.”
He sets down his coffee. “Let’s go.”
I pause my pacing. “You’re going with me?”
“Of course I am.”
We leave together, determined. When we arrive at the corner where my chocolate shop is—Elodie’s opens in an hour—Gage gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Go get ’em.”
I hand him the keys so he can wait inside.
I cover the twenty feet to Scents & Sensibility alone, brightening when I spot Samira inside. But she’s taking down the For Rent sign.
All my adrenaline burns off. Turns to ash.
I’m too late.
My heart sinks like an anvil dropped from a cartoon skyscraper. But I knock anyway.
She glances at the sound then smiles warmly. She’s practically floating as she heads to the door, then swings it open. “Elodie! Want a trade?”
“I want to make an offer,” I blurt out.
Her brow knits. “On your regular perfume? I told you trades are the only thing I’ll accept. Though I should give you a lifetime supply of La Cerise since I’m retiring now. I got such a great deal.”
But maybe she hasn’t signed the paperwork yet. Maybe I can make a better offer. “I didn’t know it was an option, though, to rent this space. I’d love to have the chance to?—”
“It’s not an option,” she says, and she’s smiling. So bright. So broad.
I should be happy for her. She deserves to retire. To live the good life. Still, so should I. “I have a plan for?—”
I’m cut off by the ringing of her phone. She glances at it, smiling again. “Oh! I need to take this. Don’t want to leave the new tenant waiting. But come back.”
Hopes dashed, I leave, trudging to Elodie’s. I’ll just have to deal with Sebastian.
I make better chocolate.
I have a classier shop.
I’m nicer.
If he drives me out of this neighborhood, I’ll start over again with a new location. That man won’t put me out of business. I won’t give him the power.
When I pull on the door to Elodie’s, the comforting scent of chocolate greets me.
But so do Amanda, Eliza, Ally, Kenji, Margo, and Gage. They’re all bursting with smiles.
“We have some good news,” Kenji chirps.
Amanda grabs my wrist and tugs me to the café section.
“What’s going on?” I ask, every single molecule confused.
Once I’m sitting, Amanda clears her throat. “Confession: Eliza, Ally, and I haven’t been going to get boba after school.”
Worry prickles along my spine. “What have you been up to?” I ask carefully.
“It seems…they’re detectives,” Gage puts in, clearly amused.
Okay, not drugs.
“And so am I,” Margo says, then shifts her head back and forth, hedging. “Okay, more like the getaway driver.”
“Ooh, can I be the hacker then in our heist crew?” Kenji asks, enthused.
“You didn’t really hack,” Ally points out.
My head spins. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Amanda picks up her phone to check the screen, and I’m about to lose my mind. I’m not typically an impatient person, but right now that’s all I am.
“It’s Silver. She’ll be here in a few minutes,” Amanda explains.
“That’s me,” Kenji says, tapping his chest. “I’m the Silver connection.”
“Exactly, not the hacker,” Ally adds emphatically.
“Guys!” I shout.
“Tell her,” Gage instructs.
Amanda meets my gaze with some nerves, but mostly…glee. “Okay, you know how we kept saying The Chocolate Connoisseur’s chocolate sucks?”
“I remember that fondly,” I say.
“We decided to have a taste test to see if we could figure out why,” Eliza jumps in, clearly eager to take a turn in the tale. “Because my dad brought some of it home that day.”
Amanda grins. “And the funny thing is it tasted really, really familiar.”
“Like a certain store-bought chocolate,” Ally adds, then names a very popular brand.
Like household-name levels.
I sit up straighter. “It does?”
Eliza nods, big and long. “Yes. So much.”
Amanda sets a hand on my arm, a subtle sign I might not like what she’s about to say. “And we really wanted to find out if it was this store-bought brand he was using, so we went to his little factory. It’s in a warehouse over in the Mission District. So we were going there instead of going to boba,” Amanda says, adding a please forgive me grin.
“How did you get to the Mission District?” My voice is on helium.
“We took a bus,” Amanda says.
A bus? Alone? Oh god. I’m freaking out and I don’t even know why. Except, she’s mine and have we gone over the rules for buses? I hope so. I really hope so. The Mission District isn’t too far away. But it’s not their stomping grounds.
“My sister takes them a lot,” Ally explains. “She helped us figure out the routes.”
It’s fine. A bus is fine. I’m fine. “Okaaaay.”
“And we really wanted to go because when I was looking up salad recipes last month I read an article about a restaurant in Los Angeles that claimed to be vegan,” Amanda says, sounding just like a detective indeed. “But it turned out they were lying and using real butter and a food writer busted them by looking through their garbage.”
“You looked through his garbage?” Helium times ten.
“We used gloves,” Eliza explains matter-of-factly. “It was just like the beach cleanup.”
I blow out a breath. She has a point. “So, you took it upon yourselves to be investigative chocolate reporters,” I say, making sure I’ve got ahold of the facts.
A warm, reassuring hand slides up my back. “Just let them tell the story.”
Amanda bounces. “Anyway, so when we were there, we found out that…”
In unison, all three girls say, “We were right.”
That’s the real too-good-to-be-true. “You were right?” I repeat slowly because I can’t quite believe it. Except I want to believe it so badly.
Kenji hoots. “He doesn’t make his own chocolate like he claims. He’s not only not bean to bar, he’s not even chocolate to confection.”
The day I met him at the chocolate show, he went on and on about his bean-to-bar creations, with his subtle implication that his small-batch style made him better than my approach as a chocolatier, who sources chocolate to use for her confections.
When he’s neither.
He’s not a chocolate-maker, nor a chocolatier. He’s simply a copycat.
Margo grins sagely. “Apparently, he’s the grocery-store-to-Chocolate Connoisseur.”
“For real?” I whisper, tingles spreading across my skin. This is too delicious. Too wonderful. I’m holding my breath.
Amanda swipes her thumb across the screen, showing me damning photo after damning photo. Wrappers from bulk-size store-bought brands fill the dumpsters at the factory where The Chocolate Connoisseur produces its cheap chocolate knockoffs that it claims it makes from Ecuadorian cocoa.
More like candy-aisle cocoa.
But…what’s next? “So, now what?”
Kenji preens, blowing on his nails. “This is where the hacker comes in. I maybe, possibly hooked them up with Silver. I thought she might want to know about how Mister I Make My Own Chocolate From The Very Best Beans is actually not making his own chocolate.”
“And I brought them to meet with Silver this morning,” Margo puts in. “Hence, the getaway driver.”
“And what’s Silver doing?” I ask.
“Making another video,” Eliza says with utter glee in her voice.
As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s Silver, dressed in black with her signature silver eye shadow bright on her glowy skin. She waltzes into the store. “Hey, besties. I posted it,” she says, waving her phone as she comes over to join us at the table. She sits down with a certain charismatic panache. “If you’re gonna imitate me, I’m gonna call you out.”
Take that.
“Already, the video’s at more than five thousand views and I posted it a few minutes ago. Pretty soon, word will get out that he’s using the cheap chocolate we all use at home.”
Kenji parks his hands behind his head. “And that, my friends, is what you call karma.”
I sit back, still amazed at this turn of events. But not entirely surprised. A man who’d threaten me the way he did is exactly the type of person who’d lie to all his customers in forty shops across the country.
Then, a dark cloud passes over me. I can’t revel in his hoodwinkery.
We lied too.
But lying to customers and the world about the product you sell them is entirely different than lying about who you go home with at night.
I glance at Gage. He looks relaxed, content, and happy. He’s running a hand along my back, and enjoying the company of all of us—this ragtag crew. I think about our secret dates. The roses, the lattes, the ferry ride, the art museum. The beautiful care this not almost romantic man—this most romantic man—took in recreating our fictional dates and turning them so very real. I think, too, about Friday’s snow day for my sister. Our girls . The joy they found in it. The joy he put into making it happen for them.
My heart stutters then speeds up. It’s racing inside me, beating in overtime as it rushes headlong toward this man.
Nothing between us is a lie. And I suppose our romance has never truly been a lie either.
There’s just one little issue. “But Sebastian might still be working next door to me,” I say.
“He won’t last,” Gage reassures me, then snaps his gaze to the door. Samira is rapping on it while checking her watch, then glancing back down the street, urging me to come closer.
“Give me a second,” I say, then hurry over and step outside.
“I’m sorry to go cliffhanger on you,” she begins. “Like I was saying, that was my new tenant, and I didn’t want to leave her hanging.”
“About that. I’d really like the chance to match…” My brain replays the last pronoun. “Wait, did you say her ?”
“I did.”
“It’s not Sebastian Roberts and The Chocolate Connoisseur who’s leasing the space?”
She pffts. “Of course not.”
“Why of course not?”
“You run a chocolate shop and the store to the right of me is a lingerie boutique. I’m a smart businesswoman. I’m not going to lease the space to another chocolate shop. I want all of you to drive business to each other, not take away.”
Oh. Well. That does make perfect sense. “Who’s leasing it then?”
“Risqué Business is opening another shop,” she says, her eyebrows wiggling. “I’m a devotee.”
A smile takes me hostage and I don’t ever want to be freed. “Me too.”
“Doesn’t that sound simpatico? Chocolate, lingerie, and sex toys,” she says.
It sure does.
It sounds a lot like karma too.
* * *
An hour later, Kenji and some part-timers are handling Elodie’s while the rest of us take cocoa ingredients and cookies over to the Sunday pop-up.
As I set up a display tray of mouth-watering chocolate chip cookies at Special Edition, a throat clears.
It’s Amanda. Eliza’s next to her. For a few seconds, I worry it’s bad news. Maybe I always will. But Amanda just crosses her arms. Then rolls her eyes. “So, listen. We know you two tried to trick us.”
I steal a glance at Gage, asking what now with my eyes.
He just shrugs.
“Yeah, but we’re pretty smart. We know you two like each other,” Eliza says.
“We knew it was real all along. And we think you should go on a real date. So we booked Grams to hang out with us on Tuesday night so you can go to dinner.”
“Before my dad and I go to Darling Springs.”
I feel like we just got parent-trapped, and I don’t mind it one bit. I look to both of these young women. So strong already. So passionate. So damn determined. “You two are pretty smart. And you’re right.” I turn to Gage. Meet his eyes. Answer them as I look at him. “It’s all real.”