Under Pressure (Vancouver Havoc #3)

Chapter 1

The first hour of every morning belongs to me.

It’s my time to sip a piping hot espresso in the comfort of my home without the hiss of a steamer or the beep of an oven timer distracting me.

The scent of my favourite sun-drenched-linen candle that I burn for exactly twenty minutes is soft and dainty compared to the coffee beans and fresh croissants that I breathe in for the rest of my day.

I can walk around fully nude or shake my ass to a cheesy pop song while slathering jam on a piece of toast if I so please.

Living alone has several benefits, but that’s an important one.

Freedom.

I rinse my espresso cup in the sink before drying my hands on a dishtowel and heading for the front door.

Living above my business seemed like a fantastic idea when I was scouring Vancouver for the perfect location to open my dream café.

What could be better than not having to commute to work and brave downtown traffic twice a day?

Only being separated by two doors and a flight of rickety stairs, of course.

Or that’s what my na?ve ass thought.

It turns out that living directly above a very demanding business is the perfect way to lose the ability to have any sort of separation between your work and private life.

Most days, I’m incapable of leaving the place in anyone else’s hands, despite having kept the same employees throughout the five years I’ve been open.

Eli knows the work damn near as well as I do, and my sister, well, she knows even more than he does.

Yet taking a step back and allowing them to prove it is a pain in my ass.

When I’m not working, I’m bored. And when I’m bored, I think of work. So, I put two and two together and forget taking a break at all.

That’s exactly why I’m ignoring the fact that it’s my only day off this week and heading downstairs.

I snag my apron from the hook by the door and slip it over my head before ducking out of my apartment.

Tying the strings at my back is second nature at this point.

I finish in a flash and look down just in time to skip the cracked stair.

With my grip tightening on the railing, I hop the next creaky one and then plant my feet on solid ground.

Yep. Totally meant to call someone to fix those last week.

The entrance to my private stairwell is only accessible through the office at the back of the building. It’s less my private sanctuary and more a space for my sister and Eli. Right now, it’s still empty.

I flick the switch on the wall and watch the space grow illuminated in a bright, cool light.

The small, circular table is still littered with Callie’s school papers, so I scoop them into a pile before turning my focus to the calendar hung on the wall.

There’s no C marked for today, meaning she’s not in today.

My sister’s studying to be a surgeon and only works here every few days, mostly weekends. With it being 5:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, she’s most likely still fast asleep in her dorm.

I check the calendar one last time before exiting the office and heading for the kitchen. There’s plenty of movement in there already. Five might be early for most people, but Ruthie’s in the kitchen at three every morning.

Pushing the door open, I’m greeted with the scent of fresh bread. My stomach grumbles as I move behind Ruthie’s slightly hunched, very short figure and peek over her shoulder at what she’s doing.

“Morning!”

She gasps and whirls on me, her thin, grey brows knotted between her eyes. “You are going to give an old woman a heart attack, Quinn!”

“You should just expect me to pop out of nowhere by now,” I tease while stealing a fresh, steaming blueberry muffin from the cooling counter.

She tsks. “I get busy.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

“You’re down early,” she says, switching gears.

The giant mixer behind her churns a hefty batch of pastel blue dough with giant milk chocolate chips. I retreat a step and take a bite of the top of my muffin. The flavour bursts on my tongue, making my stomach rumble louder this time. I chew it quickly before swallowing.

“Yeah, well. I’ve got to update the board this morning.”

She makes a rough noise in the back of her throat and turns off the mixer. “Ah, yes. That must be the reason.”

“You’re sassy this morning.”

“You have bags beneath your eyes. Sleep is not a bad thing, you know?”

“I sleep,” I argue, my next bite rougher.

“Not enough. Eventually, you will run out of steam and crash.”

I narrow my eyes on her plump figure and thumb away a crumb from my lips.

After I’ve swallowed, I wrestle the muffin out of my tight fingers and abandon it on the small cart beside her.

I’m as stubborn as I am exhausted, which means she isn’t going to win this argument.

Now I’m just wasting a very delicious muffin out of spite.

“I sweated baking that, you know?” she chides, not really caring.

“That doesn’t sound like an actual word.”

“You’re a dictionary now, are you?”

“I feel like this conversation is going in circles.”

“That’s your fault.”

I roll my eyes at her, ignoring it. “I’m always like this. My sleep habits have nothing to do with it.”

She makes a non-believing noise in the back of her throat but lets the topic die. At her age, she knows better than anyone else in my life when and where to pick her battles. This one? Yeah, not worth it.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead. That’s the whole point of living, right? To not waste it sleeping?

Granted, I doubt whoever came up with that saying meant it to excuse someone’s inability to shut their brain off at night.

“I found a new order in the binder. I don’t remember anyone mentioning it,” she says, flicking flour off her fingertips.

“It’s a small one, so I figure I’ll get it done tomorrow morning after popping the croissants in the oven.

Having Callie in would cut some time off.

Or I could get her weighing out the cookies and take it off my list of to-dos. ”

I suck in a staggered breath and reach for the hot pink binder resting beneath my discarded muffin. “Shit, yeah. I meant to mention it yesterday. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no problem. I’m glad we’re getting more of them.”

Yeah, because Blank Page has been here, in this same building, for the last five years, and while business is steady out front, we’ve never been able to bring in a continuous rush of orders in the kitchen.

Custom work isn’t my specialty in the slightest, but with Ruthie at the helm of this coasting ship, I’ve taken to a few things.

It’s a great way to burn through the seemingly endless amount of energy I have when I’m in this place. Or outside of it, even.

I don’t know why or when exactly it started, but in the last three years, I’ve lost the ability to just .

. . be. My entire life revolves around this place now, to the point where I will stay up all night researching the best new equipment, coffee beans, or even seat cushions, as long as it means that I can keep my brain moving.

There are always things to do as a business owner, and I like that. I enjoy being so busy that I don’t feel the need to count the hours as they pass. Instead, they just blur until, suddenly, it’s gone from sunrise to well past sunset.

Another day come and gone.

“I’ll talk to Callie tonight and see if she has the time,” I promise.

“She’s a very busy girl. Don’t pressure her to come around here.”

“When do I ever?”

Ruthie casts me a yeah, right look before flicking the faucet on to scrub her hands for what I know is the millionth time this morning alone. “She has dreams. Big ones.”

And I don’t?

I shake that thought out of my mind, knowing damn well that isn’t what she meant. That tiny squeak of a mental voice is too mouthy for my liking. Not to mention green-eyed and bitchy.

“I’m well aware. She’s doing great.”

Ruthie’s deep brown eyes light up in silent confirmation.

The conversation dulls as she falls back into her tasks and, for lack of a better explanation, tunes me out.

I bite back a laugh and leave her be. She’ll be out of here by the time Eli gets in and I flip the sign on the door from Closed to Open.

Shouldering open the kitchen door, I step through to the café.

The sun casts a warm glow through the space and bounces off the deep wood slats on the wall and the mint-coloured counter.

I sniff the air and ignore the flecks of illuminated dust as the door swings shut behind me.

The scent of coffee grounds has to be imbedded into the walls by now.

It’s done the same to the emerald-green bar stools at the end of the counter and the matching velvet chairs at the tables.

I go upstairs every night with the same scent in my hair and on my skin.

I’m positive coffee has replaced the blood in my veins.

Despite that fact, I still love it. I move behind the counter and make my morning drink with the ease and comfortability of someone who’s done the same routine for years.

My nan taught me how to use an espresso machine when I was ten and would spend nights or sometimes weeks with her.

Her machine was nowhere near as fancy as this one, but I think that taught me more than if she’d had one of these bad boys.

By the time I was thirteen, I was experimenting with different ingredients and making her every type of drink I could think of.

She only spit out a few of them and deemed them too toxic for me to replicate.

In my defense, I wasn’t allowed to drink them myself, so she was my guinea pig.

I still keep the recipe book I began using to track the drinks she liked in the back office.

After she passed five years ago, I finally took the leap to open this place in her memory. All the greens and browns remind me of her and the home I escaped to growing up.

Turning my head while my espresso shot drips out, I smile at the small picture of her I’ve propped on the counter.

The near-booger-green frame around it was Callie’s idea, and one that I nearly vetoed before reluctantly accepting.

I stare at the stilled memory and ignore the familiar clench of my chest.

With a rough clearing of my throat, I slide my cup to the counter and dispose of my ground beans.

“It’s the start of a new day, Quinny,” she’d always say. “Keep your eyes in front of you. Even one glance behind you is enough to trip.”

I’ve never managed to do that. Not the way she could or Callie does.

I steal glances at the past because it motivates me. It encourages me to make tough choices to achieve the goals that would otherwise seem out of reach. I refuse to go back to the way things used to be.

And that’s not something I’m prepared to change. Not then and certainly not now.

Sorry, Nan.