Chapter 4Rose
Chapter 4
Rose
I was all about chocolate brown coupled with hot pink.
Dad used to say the pink was too “feckin’ girly” for our café—but that’d been the Irish in him kidding me. My ex, Brent, had labeled the pink as too “unsophisticated” for Portland—but that’d been the lawyer in him judging me. Mom had just smiled as she uncapped the paint can.
So when we walked into the Chocolate Lab, I turned to catch the moment when Rafe spied the walls in all their hot pink glory.
Is he going to throw shade on my choices? Rafe halted and raised his eyebrows, head on a swivel. After shooting me a look, he moved past the pink-painted tables toward the pink-and-brown-striped front counter. His right hand came up to rub the back of his neck when he clocked the pink boards slanting overhead with all our food and drink offerings written boldly in chocolate-brown chalk.
“Did you paint the roastery—” he started to say, but was interrupted by Emma and Noah rushing over.
I assured them Goldie was okay—a few scrapes and cuts after being chased by the scary, mean dog—and turned back just as Mateo walked out from the kitchen prep area.
“Hey, Rafe, meet Mateo Flores, the Chocolate Lab’s manager. Mateo, meet Rafe Amato, our new temp roaster and Goldie girl rescuer.”
Rafe and Mateo both did the chin lift thing.
Since we’d all be working together, I’d shared Rafe’s info with Mateo to get his take. With someone new coming from outside the area, even for a short time while Mike recovered, it was important to have a good fit.
Rafe could get acquainted with the kids on the café crew later. Anyone in their teens or twenties was a “kid” to me. He’d meet my “real” kid too when Finn came home from college for his grandma’s party this weekend.
“Everything under control, Mateo?” If it was worth checking once, it was worth checking forty-seven times.
“Yes, Rosita. No worries.” He so knew I’d be asking again before the day was out.
I motioned for Rafe to precede me. “Let’s head back to the roastery and get started on orientation.”
Wait. Oh, shih tzu.
Rafe had those bloody smears from Goldie’s scraped paw pads all down the front of his plaid shirt. Plus on the no-longer-white T-shirt where it showed through his unbuttoned shirt.
“I am so, so sorry,” I blurted out. “I’ll take your shirts home and get the blood out. If I can’t, we’ll replace them, of course.”
I asked Mateo for a garbage can liner and whirled around to the shelves holding our branded gear right by the front counter. Diving into the pile of Chocolate Lab T-shirts, I snatched the largest unisex size we had—XXL, for the soccer team we sponsored. Hot pink with our logo and lettering in chocolate brown, of course.
By this time, Mateo and Rafe were both looking at me like I was crazy. Didn’t matter. I was on a roll, places to go, things to do.
I tossed Rafe the new T-shirt and shook out the liner to accept the bloody clothes. He looked around for a moment, rumbled something like “thank you, Rose,” and shrugged off his plaid shirt.
He loosened his belt and did that thing that guys do—grabbed his T-shirt behind his neck and pulled it off over his head in one swift motion.
So here’s the thing. I tried not to stare, and I succeeded. For the most part.
But in the short moment Rafe tugged on the Chocolate Lab T-shirt, I took in a lot.
His broad chest lightly furred with black—and silver—hair. His sculpted pecs narrowing to a defined six-pack tapering further into his jeans. His shoulders and biceps bulky enough to put the stretch into the XXL T-shirt.
And his entire right arm, from shoulder to muscled biceps through corded forearm to thick wrist, fitted out with a sleeve of tats.
One or two other customers were there for the show, but I had a front-row seat.
It’d been too long.
Rafe turned his back, unzipped his jeans partway, tucked the T-shirt in using quick jabbing motions, zipped and re-belted. All done. He stuffed his bloody clothes in the plastic liner and held it out to me. After a beat, I took it—time to get on with the orientation.
“Thank fuck,” Rafe muttered under his breath when we walked into the roastery space at the end of the hall.
“I’m pretty sure I have some pink paint left over from the café if you…” I trailed off when he shook his head.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Well, if you change your mind,” I teased, seeing if I could get a rise out of him.
No-go. He ignored me and slapped his big paw on our spanking new Diedrich commercial coffee roaster—an upgrade from our first roaster in terms of size, output, noise, everything.
“What’s this monster doing in the back of a café?” He quirked an eyebrow my way.
And by a café , he meant your little old dog-friendly hot-pink-painted neighborhood hangout spot.
Nope. Not me. Not defensive at all.
It raised my hackles when people—especially newbies to my life—questioned my ability to make decisions, run my business.
Yes, I’d upgraded to the big-girl roaster because I planned to grow my coffee-roasting business beyond the pink walls. I’d also just made a breathtaking investment in green coffee inventory, now stacked in burlap bags in the corner of the space.
To put coffee cupping on the same fancy level of wine tasting, I’d even found a vintage oak table that spun on its pedestal. Potential retail clients could sit around the table sipping our different signature blends—and clearing their palates with elegant water crackers—before making their choices.
Did I share any of this with Rafe? Uh, again, a big nope. No need for me to get all offended—he was just a short-timer.
Instead, I quipped, “We tried putting her out front, but she was so loud she started all the dogs barking.”
Rafe snorted and left it at that.
Last surprise on the roastery tour was the industrial sink or, really, the mirror above it. Jam-packed up and down, side to side, with my Post-it Notes—not one sliver of mirror showing through.
Those notes were my to-do list, my organization out of chaos, my security that I wouldn’t forget anything. If I kept busy, I’d be okay.
I’d been drowning, and my girl Jen had thrown me the Post-it Notes life preserver. She used them all the time in her business of organizing, downsizing and moving.
Each Post-it featured one “to-do” item—yellow for an errand, orange for a phone call, blue for an email, green for an action, purple for paperwork, and so on. I arranged them in columns, each headed by a topic, all written in black marker.
Like the “Temp Roaster” Post-it that Rafe was staring at right now.
I hadn’t planned for Rafe to see the crazy that was my business life here at the Chocolate Lab…quite yet. Of course, no need for him to catch a glimpse of my crazy at home, where mirrors in the bathrooms, front hall and utility room were crammed with Post-its of my personal “to-dos.”
“Sorry. Here, let me get those out of your way,” I said, pushing past Rafe to reach up and start peeling off the notes. A large, warm hand immediately engulfed—and stilled—my fingers.
“Whoa, Rose, slow down. I don’t need a mirror to powder my nose. Are those things we need to do to get me going and get the roastery running again?”
Wow, three complete sentences in a row. I nodded, momentarily speechless.
Rafe released my hand, and I pulled it back down. Luckily, he stepped back, too, since we were a little too close for my comfort, boss-employee-wise.
We spent twenty-five minutes going over each Post-it Note under “Temp Roaster,” starting with me explaining my color coding. Points to Rafe for being patient with my system, although he did grunt a time or two when I lingered over “to-dos” he likely already knew how to do.
Some we did right away and trashed the notes. Rafe signed his contract and filled out a 1099 tax form as an independent contractor. I walked him through my three-ring binder with recipes for blending different coffee beans for our signature coffees. I showed him how to log into our laptop and find the spreadsheet with the current coffee bean orders for our daily café needs, online sales and any catering jobs.
He cut me off when I tried to show him how to update the spreadsheet. “Already know Excel, Rose—thanks.” We were back to short and sweet.
Other Post-its we left on the mirror for later, at Rafe’s insistence . My biggest need—I’d been too busy to do it—was to set up formulas for calculating how many pounds per coffee bean origin to roast per day to fulfill our orders. Origin being where the beans came from, like Brazil, Ethiopia, Kenya and so on.
Then we could project when it was time to buy more green coffee so we’d always have enough on hand. Enough inventory would be super important when, not if, we snagged the grocery store and hospital accounts.
When I started my deep dive into details, Rafe waved me off. “Got this, Rose—no worries.”
Pretty soon, we’d cleared a smidgen of space on the left side of the mirror.
“Hey, you may have to duck,” I declared, “but now you have room enough to see when you comb your hair.”
He lifted his arm, biceps flexing under the T-shirt sleeve, and rubbed his hand over his tight cut, bending over to peer in the mirror. “Works for me,” he said and shot me a small smirk.
If I’d had a tail, it would have gone thump, thump, thump . Down, girl.
Instead, I said, “That about does it for today. Any more questions for now?”
Rafe shook his head.
“Let’s meet here tomorrow morning at six so I can let you in and you can get started. Oh, fido, I need to get you a set of keys.” I grabbed the pad of green Post-its, wrote Retrieve keys for R on the top one, peeled it off, and stuck it on the mirror under “Temp Roaster.”
“Did you call me ‘Fido’?” Rafe sounded…horrified? Puzzled? Entertained?
Argh. Got to remember I had new guy here, not someone familiar with my…quirks.
“Yes, yes, I came up with all sorts of creative swear words when my son was young,” I shared. “Kept using them with so many little ones in and out of the Chocolate Lab. They just stuck, I guess.”
With that, I turned out the roastery lights, made sure I had my phone still tucked in my back jeans pocket, and snared the sack of Rafe’s clothes. Since Mateo was closing this week, I didn’t need to worry about locking up and setting the alarm.
We went through the outside door to the sidewalk, where a few people sitting on our covered deck glanced up curiously. There was a wave here and there, and even a hopeful bark from Tessa, a poodle always on the lookout for a treat.
We said our goodbyes and headed in opposite directions—me toward my house and Rafe, I assume, toward his pickup.
At the last moment, I remembered and turned around to shout, “Looking forward to meeting Princess tomorrow morning!”
I got no words, just my very own chin lift in response.