Promised to My Mate's Best Friend
Chapter One
Zephyr
What a busy morning!
A normal Monday times seventeen because of the new fall menu. The lines would die down over the next week but today, it was wilder than my husband under the full moon.
“A maple pumpkin latte, extra caramel, with salted-honey cold foam.”
I nodded and called out the order, keeping my mental critique to myself. But my employee and friend Samantha did not. Sometimes I questioned my lack of boundaries between me and the staff. Usually it was fine, but one or two took advantage of my leniency.
“Honey, salt, maple, pumpkin, caramel and caramel and caramel and caramel,” she sang to camouflage her taunting of the customer.
It sounded like a solid order to me, nothing unusual. I’d once watched a woman request two quads over ice. She drank one down with a straw at the counter and took the other with her, sipping as she backed out of the parking spot.
I hoped she finished whatever project she was working on and lived to tell the tale.
I wouldn’t have.
“Sam, cool it.” I forced back a giggle and a stronger reprimand as she made the coffee.
Another worker took over the register and orders while I walked to the back to get another batch of baked goods from the oven.
Pumpkin loaves, of course. Praline scones.
Honey almond muffins. They were all on the menu.
Our city had pushed the big-name coffeehouses out years before, and the small ones, like mine, reaped the benefits.
Besides, my coffee and baked goods were far better. Freshly made in house. Organic coffee. All the fun seasonal flavors people lined up for. I sliced the pumpkin bread and filled the case. A few people looked relieved; their selection wouldn’t be gone before they could get to the head of the line.
I sighed, stepping back to watch everything work. Since buying the shop, I’d made this place a success from nothing but my own savings, smarts, and most importantly, tenacity.
Cypress supported everything I did. He always had.
He wouldn’t let me name the place after him. I’d wanted to, but he flat-out refused, and the man refused me almost nothing.
“You’ve got that look,” Sam said after ten when the line died down enough for all of us to take a break together. I filled a platter with goodies, including the ham-and-Swiss croissants we all loved, and we sat around, not drinking coffee.
When I first opened, I regularly buzzed off a three-shot latte then moved down to a two, and now, I tossed back an espresso in the morning and no more.
Sam’s full-blown addiction was her business.
I lifted my bottle of water. “Everyone knows what today is, right? Raise your glasses.”
Some did not. I cleared my throat, cheeks heating. “Today is the one-year anniversary of the opening of Trees.” The name we’d finally settled on, named after my favorite poem by Joyce Kilmer about all the seasons of a tree’s life as well as a sneaky way to name it after my reluctant husband.
There was clapping. Congratulations. We toasted, mostly with water, but Sammy had conjured an iced latte from somewhere.
“Thank you. It feels like yesterday. I—” I intended to say more but the bell above the door rang.
“You did great with the old place. We’re happy to have a job. Pat on the back. Sorry we didn’t bring a cake.” Samantha got up and hugged me and then…a whole carload of office people filed in the door. Back to work. The grind of owning a coffeehouse.
Also one of the puns that made my staff groan.
We closed at six, but a manager came in at three to take over for me. I got up at the crack of dawn and, by then, my slump had started.
I sat on a stool, intending to start the weekly payroll, when Eliza, one of my baristas, came in, eyes wide and nostrils flared.
Had one of the machines broken? Did one of my baked goods not taste right? Almost ready to go home, I didn’t need a fire to put out this late in the day.
And the worst problem…had we run out of cups? No. The shelves were laden with stacks upon stacks of them. “Eliza, what is it?”
“I made a post on social media. I don’t even have many followers. It was just a picture of a drink I made up. An apple-cinnamon-bun iced latte. It was for me. I was…” She shrugged. “It went viral. They’re all coming here. Like immediately. There are freakin’ live streams of—”
Samantha popped her head in. “They are not coming. They are here. The line is worse than this morning.”
“Eliza, you did well. Remind me of this tomorrow when I give you a raise. Let’s go. Teach us all how to make your latte…quick.”
We all lined up behind the counter, and Eliza read off the ingredients. Smart woman wrote them down when she created it, wanting to remake the latte for herself.
She’d created a storm. A good storm.
“I want the apple-cinnamon latte, like on this post.” A man shoved his phone in my face, and I nodded, as if I had a clue. Hell, I didn’t even know how much to charge for it.
“Same as the honey-salted caramel, whatever.” Sam read my mind.
“Yes. The same.” I created a quick item on the register computer named Eliza’s Latte, and all of a sudden, my afternoon slump had disappeared.
It only lasted a few hours, but we sold out of almost everything. I had to place a huge overnight order with our supplier and was happy to do it. Even with the rush fee.
While I was on my phone, confirming the delivery, an ad popped up on my screen. Mail-Order Matings? Some sort of dating app? I did not have time for this nonsense right now.
Ads were so silly, and they had targeted the wrong person. I was happily mated already.