Chapter 6
Tess
I flick on the overhead lights one row at a time. The slow reveal gives me a second to brace myself. This place doesn’t lie to me. It just… is.
I tie my apron, double-knotting it out of habit, and reach for the first bin of flour. Fifty pounds. I hoist it onto the table with a grunt that echoes in the empty space.
“Show off,” Gwen says behind me.
“Look who decided to finally show up,” I reply without turning. She knows I’m joking. From the start, I told her she could come in at 5 a.m. if she wanted, but she always starts earlier.
“It’s 4:14,” she says. “If I were any earlier, I’d legally still be a ghost.”
I glance over my shoulder. She’s tying her apron, hair in a messy bun that will not survive the morning, eyes sharp despite the hour. She’s holding two coffees.
She slides one across the counter to me. I grunt approval and take a sip. It tastes like survival.
“So,” she says lightly, leaning back against the counter. “Did you sleep?”
“I did,” I lie.
She hums. “And did you dream about anything interesting? Perhaps a new colleague?”
I close my eyes. Count to three. “If you say his name before 5 a.m., I will legally be allowed to fire you.”
“You can’t fire me,” she says cheerfully. “I know where you hide the emergency croissant stash.”
I laugh while dumping flour into the mixing bowl, the fine white dust blooming into the air. “We’re not talking about him. It’s too early.”
“You’re the one who told him to come back,” Gwen says mildly.
“I told him I’d think about it.”
“At 4:45 in the morning.”
“Which is when bakers exist.”
“Which is also when serial killers exist.”
I shoot her a look. “He’s not a serial killer.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve seen his hands,” I say. “He’d never survive.”
Gwen snorts and grabs the scale. “So. You haven’t decided.”
I sigh and measure salt. The rhythm of it steadies me. We’ve done this dance a thousand times. Flour. Salt. Water. Starter. Repeat.
“I don’t trust him,” I say finally.
Gwen nods. “Valid.”
“He’s rich.”
“Also, valid.”
“He looks like a walking ‘before’ picture for a bad decision.”
Gwen grins. “Debatable.”
“He doesn’t know what hard work actually feels like.”
“Undeniable.”
I glance at her. “You’re not disagreeing with me enough.”
“I’m not disagreeing at all,” she says. “I’m just saying… he listened.”
I still. Just for a second.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I say.
“It means something,” she counters. “You told him no yesterday. A hard no. Most men with his… resources… would’ve tried to negotiate.”
I snort. “Or sue.”
“Or buy the building,” she says. “He didn’t.”
I start the mixer, the low mechanical hum filling the space. Gwen reaches for the starter like it’s a baby, careful and reverent.
The back door creaks.
We both freeze.
I check the clock on the wall. 4:45 a.m. Exactly.
Of course. He’s punctual.
The door opens fully, and there he is, standing in the threshold like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to exist inside it.
Leo Ashford.
He’s wearing jeans this time. Worn ones. A plain white jacket. No stupidly expensive coat. No performance. His hair is damp, like he washed it and didn’t bother styling it. He looks… awake. Alert. Nervous. Human.
“Morning,” he says, voice quiet, careful. “I… sorry. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Gwen looks at me like Christmas came early.
I turn fully, crossing my arms. “You’re late.”
He nods immediately. “Ok. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure. Did I interrupt you? I can come back later. Or… stand very still.”
I blink.
Gwen bites her lip.
I sigh. “You’re already here.”
His shoulders relax just a fraction.
“Shoes,” I tell him. He looks down at his feet. “Cover them. And wash your hands. Properly. At least thirty seconds.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, already moving.
Ma’am. I scowl, but it’s reflexive.
Gwen leans in, stage whispering, “He’s trained.”
“So are dogs,” I mutter.
He reappears moments later, sleeves rolled up, hands red from scrubbing. He stops at a respectful distance.
“So,” he says. “I know you said you’d think about it.”
“I did.”
He nods. “I’m here,” he says. “If that’s ok. If not, I’ll go.”
I study him. Really look.
No charm offensive. No pitch. No desperation disguised as confidence. Just… presence. Annoyingly decent presence.
I jerk my chin toward the prep table. “Grab a scraper. Don’t touch anything unless Gwen tells you to.”
His mouth curves into a careful smile. “Yes, boss.”
Gwen’s eyes sparkle.
I turn on my heel and stalk to the back room, yanking the door open hard enough that the hinge complains. I grab a spare apron from a hook, not one of the clean fronted ones the baristas wear when they’re smiling at customers and pretending our lives aren’t held together with tape and caffeine.
This apron is stiff. Ugly. Canvas. Dyed a hideous beige that looks like despair, with a permanent mystery stain on the front that could be raspberry jam or motor oil. Possibly both. It has the texture of something that has seen things and will see more.
I shove it into his chest.
His hands fumble. The coarse, stained canvas looks obscene against his pristine white jacket.
“You’re here,” I say, low and controlled, my voice vibrating like a machine trying not to shake apart. “The dare is for a month. My business is not your reality show. My kitchen is not your playground. My life is not a joke.”
His eyes go wide. He nods once, sharply. He looks like he’s actually listening.
“Your shift starts at 4:45 a.m., not 5:00. 4:45.” I hold his gaze.
“Right. 4:45,” he repeats, sober.
His posture changes. Shoulders set. Face serious, as if someone just spoke to him in a language he understands. He nods.
He fumbles with the apron strings, trying to tie them over his stupidly white, tailored jacket. He can’t get the knot. His fingers are manicured, uncalloused. Hands built for screens and signatures, not canvas ties.
I don’t help. I just watch. I don’t have to look at Gwen to know she’s enjoying this as much as I am.
His cheeks flush. After several painful seconds, he manages a lopsided, pathetic bow that immediately starts to come undone.
“Great,” I say, voice dripping acid. “Your first job. You see those?”
I point to the corner of the wash-up area, where a stack of large grey plastic proofing boxes sits like a judgment. Caked in yesterday’s dough residue, dried, gluey, cement-like. The ghost of a hundred loaves.
“They need to be scrubbed,” I tell him. “Fill the three-compartment sink. Hot water and sanitizer in the first bay. Hot, soapy water in the second. Cold rinse in the third. Scrub every single one until it is spotless.” I meet his eyes.
“Supplies are in the janitor’s closet. Green bottle.
Don’t touch the blue one unless you want to poison us. ”
I stare. Hard.
I’m waiting for him to quit. To laugh. To call someone. To make a joke about how this is content. To reveal it’s all performance and he’ll be gone in five minutes.
He just looks at the stack of fossilized dough boxes, then back at me, and nods grimly. From his pocket, he pulls out a device, a tablet of some sort.
“Is that a tablet?” I ask.
“Yes,” Leo says quickly. “Just in case. For notes.”
“Notes?” I repeat, sharp.
“Yeah, you’re explaining a lot of new things, and I didn’t want to miss anything.”
“No.”
The word is quiet. Absolute.
Leo blinks. “No?”
“No tablet,” I say. “No notes. If you write things down, you’ll try to do it right instead of doing it real. And this place doesn’t work that way.”
He looks down at the tablet. Hesitates. Half a second. Then sets it on the shelf by the door. Out of reach.
“Ok,” I say, pointing at the cleaning supplies. “Green bottle. Three compartments. Spotless. Got it.”
I hold his gaze for a beat, searching for cracks.
Then I turn. “Gwen,” I call, because I refuse to let my kitchen pause, “that butter isn’t going to laminate itself.”
The prep room door swings shut behind him, sealing him off with a soft whoosh, like the bakery itself is exhaling in relief.
I go back to my table. Back to my dough. Back to the things that are real. The rhythm resumes: Gwen pounding butter into submission, the bench scraper shushing through sourdough, the oven humming low and steady. The smell of yeast rising. The quiet, unglamorous music of work.
I tell myself he’ll be gone by noon. I tell myself this will be one of those stories you recount later with exhausted laughter: Remember when a billionaire showed up and tried to cosplay as an employee?
I do not give him the satisfaction of checking on him immediately. I wait.
When I finally step back into the wash-up area, because time passes and the air feels… wrong, I find my worst expectations surpassed.
The space is a war zone.
Leo Ashford has treated the industrial soap dispenser like a bubble bath in a luxury hotel. He’s used approximately ten times the required amount. The result is not clean. The result is foam. Suds. A shimmering, expanding disaster.
A mountain of bubbles grows out of the sink like an alien life form, spilling over the steel edges, creeping across the tile floor like a slow, sudsy glacier. It advances toward my prep room with the implacable determination of capitalism itself.
He wrestles the first proofing box, large and unwieldy, into the water, but it’s impossibly slippery. He pushes it down, and a tidal wave of hot suds splashes up, soaking the entire front of his white jacket and plastering the hideous beige apron to his chest.
He scrubs. Hard. Too hard. The dried rye dough clings like concrete. His shoulder muscles strain, because of course he’s built like that, because the universe is cruel and likes symmetry.
The box shoots out of his hands, slick with soap, launching like a bar of soap in a prison movie. It clatters onto the tile and skids to a stop in a puddle of foam.
He’s sweating. Profusely. His expensive dark hair plastered to his forehead. A smudge of grey dough residue on his cheek. He stares at the bubbles like they personally betrayed him. He stares at the still dirty box. He stares at the nineteen boxes still waiting.
And then he sighs. Not dramatic. Not performative. Just defeated.
Gwen walks by with a tray of perfectly laminated dough. She stops. She takes in the bubble catastrophe, the dripping billionaire, the fact that he looks like he might actually cry.
A slow, delighted, merciless smirk spreads across her face. “You missed a spot,” she says, then disappears back into the kitchen, chuckling like she just got the gift of the century.
Leo grins, though I can tell he feels embarrassed at the same time. He reaches for the fallen box again, and then my shadow falls over him.
“Next time, use one-tenth of the soap you just used,” I say, my voice calm enough that it scares me.
Leo smiles and nods. I turn and walk back into the warmth and light of the kitchen. I stand at my table again, hands in dough, the clatter of pans and the heavenly smell of bread rising around me.
For a full minute, I listen to the faint sounds beyond the door: sloshing, the scrape of plastic, the soft agony of a man discovering that reality is not optimized for him.
And for reasons I do not have time to unpack at five in the morning, something twitches in my chest.
Not sympathy. Not yet.
I tell myself it’s just the novelty of watching a billionaire lose a fight to a plastic tub.
I tell myself that’s all.
And I go back to work.