Plum Girl (Romance) (44 page)

Billy doubted that was true. She'd make it in New York; she just might not make it on time. "So check this out," Melissa said when they reached the other side and stepped into the airy vestibule of the Copley Mall. "Donna promoted me to assistant manager last night; it's official."

"That's awesome, congratulations!" Billy said brightly, though she wasn't at all surprised. Melissa had been working at the bakery for nearly a year, juggling the job with her hectic class schedule, and it was obvious that their boss, Donna, considered her quite an asset.

The deeper they walked into the mall, the more serenely peaceful it felt. Most stores didn't open for another hour, so there were only a few people milling around as soft piano music played overhead and golden October sunshine poured down through the skylights. Billy had worked at Bella Donna Bakery for only a couple of months, but she could feel herself settling into the routine already, while her life as a well-paid Web designer evaporated into memories.

It was hard to believe it had been only six months since she'd lost her job at Net Circle, a Web marketing and development company in downtown Boston. Six months since her boss had looked pointedly into her eyes and said, "The bad news is, you're fired—the good news is, it's nothing personal." The company had been going under, about to declare bankruptcy, and Billy had been naively shocked to discover it.

She'd been even more naively shocked to learn firsthand how bad the job market was. In fact, if she hadn't run into Melissa last summer, she wouldn't be working at Bella Donna now, which was turning out to be an uplifting transitional place until she found her next "real job." She supposed she should be in more of a rush, but she still had money saved. And it seemed the farther away she got from corporate America, the more she put off returning to it. Plus, ever since Tia had quit, Billy had taken over as Bella Donna's cake decorator, which worked out perfectly. Although she still dealt with customers and cleanup, for the most part she worked in the back, combining two of her great passions in life—art and cake.

"When does your promotion start?" Billy asked now as she and Melissa stepped onto the escalator.

"Today," Melissa replied, leaning against the rail. "So I guess you'd better be nice to me," she added wryly as she lifted her coffee cup to her mouth. "I'm your boss now."

The escalator rolled up, taking them to the second floor.

"I'm gonna grab the paper," Melissa said, veering off toward the newsstand.

"Okay, see you in a second," Billy said, and walked into the bakery, where Katie Spiegal and her grandmother, Mrs. Tailor, were sitting at one of the square wooden tables, helping themselves to the spread of pastries that Georgette had baked for the meeting. Katie was a full-time employee at Bella Donna, while her grandma occasionally filled in and helped out at catered events.

"Hi, guys," Billy said, smiling as she shrugged off her battered, green velvet coat and walked behind the counter.

"Hey, what's up?" Katie said with her usual bubbly friendliness.

"Billy, that coat doesn't look warm enough," Mrs. Tailor said, her voice tinged with nurturing concern.

"Don't worry; I'm fine," Billy assured her, though in truth her coat probably wasn't warm enough. But she didn't wear it for practical reasons or for the look. She supposed she wore it for sentimental reasons, because she still associated it with the time in her life, over four years ago, when she'd first gotten it. Strange as it might seem, the soft, worn jacket felt imbued with the misty, insulating ambiance of those days gone by.

"Please have a cinnamon roll before I eat them all," Katie said, and flipped her head over to pull some wavy blond hair into a bun.

"Um, I think the twelve I had yesterday met my weekly quota," Billy replied as she hung her coat on the brass rack in the corner and punched in. Georgette's cinnamon rolls were one of the bakery's claims to fame. Rather than being big and soft, they were small and crunchy, exploding with brown-sugar crust and maple-syrup glaze.

Just then Georgette emerged from the kitchen. She wiped her hands on her apron, already chewing heartily on something. "Hi, Georgette," Billy said, and grabbed a clean apron off the wall. Still chewing, Georgette nodded a greeting as she crossed the room, then plopped down beside Katie and reached for a powdered cruller.

Meanwhile, Billy paused momentarily to appreciate the homey, inviting warmth of the bakery. It was a cozy, elegant little shop with soft lighting, shiny hardwood floors, and polished oak countertops. There were small square tables around the room, and an antique chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

As Billy approached the table, she tied her apron strings into a bow, careful not to cinch them too tight around her stomach—a.k.a. "the beast"—because the beast needed breathing room.

"When's Donna gettin' started with this meeting already?" Georgette asked, licking powdered sugar from her fingers, then drying them on her apron. "I've gotta lotta baking to get to." With one hand she fluffed up her white pompadour, and with the other she adjusted her clunky, old-fashioned glasses. The large, octagonal lenses were lightly tinted pink, making Georgette's blue eyes appear almost violet.

Billy had some unfinished cakes to get to herself, but she figured today's meeting would be a quick one. Donna would just be going over some last-minute details for the Dessert Jubilee that the bakery was catering that weekend. Apparently the jubilee was an annual event in the small coastal town of Churchill, Massachusetts—which, coincidentally, was the hometown of Billy's ex-boyfriend, Seth Lannigan.

Known in her private mind as:
the one that got away.

She and Seth Lannigan had dated for only a few months, four years ago, but still, whenever Billy thought of Churchill, she thought back to crackling nights on the beach—of Seth hugging her, running his mouth down her neck, and whispering to her about the future.

Billy sat down at the table and reached for the pot of coffee in the center. After she filled a cup, she snagged a pistachio muffin off the pastry platter. "These things are killing my diet," she remarked.

"I didn't know you were on a diet," Katie said.

Billy smirked. "Um, yeah, I have the same problem."

"You don't need a diet, anyway; you look perfect the way you are."

Coming from Katie, Billy almost believed it, because Katie just had that effect. She was one of those sparkling girls people gravitated toward—someone who uplifted everything around her. She had a freckled face, tanned from a recent trip to Cancun, and a skinny little body that looked like a bag of bones, but was somehow adorable. Her grandmother, Mrs. Tailor, was wizened but just as tiny and cute, with watery green eyes and deep wrinkles across her face. Katie had moved in with her a couple of years ago, because she hadn't wanted to leave Boston when her parents had relocated.

Recently Katie had broken up with her boyfriend, but Billy figured her single status wouldn't last long. Unlike herself, who always took forever to find someone new. Then again... she could hardly complain when, after a recent bout of
forever,
she'd found Mark Warner. Cute, charming, and—most important—interested, Mark was a distribution rep who used to come into the bakery on business, and six weeks ago he'd asked Billy out. Although they weren't officially exclusive yet, they seemed to be heading in that direction.

"Hell-
o
," Melissa sang out as she entered the store with a
Boston Globe
folded underneath her arm. Billy, Katie, and Mrs. Tailor said hi, while Georgette grumbled something under her breath and reached for another pastry.

Melissa's designer heels
click-clack
ed
loudly as she walked briskly into the back, and once she was out of earshot, Georgette remarked, "Oh, goody—the
princess
is here."

Billy reserved comment, because the tension between Georgette and Melissa was common knowledge—and pretty hard to miss. Basically Melissa thought little of telling people what to do, and Georgette didn't take well to orders. But Billy suspected it went beyond that. She had the distinct feeling that Georgette, who'd been a high school cafeteria lady for years before becoming a baker, defensively resented Melissa's general air of superiority.

"Hey, did anyone see
The Bachelor
last night?" Katie asked.

"No, I missed it," Billy said, tearing a Sweet 'n Low over her coffee. She neglected to add that she'd missed it on purpose.
The Bachelor
was a reality-TV show in which good-looking women all vied for one man—usually a phony pretty boy with a tediously bland personality.

"I saw it," Georgette said, and snorted. "I'll tell ya, no man would ever lead me around by the nose like that." She tore off a hunk of scone with her teeth, then added bitterly, "No man'll ever treat me like dirt again."

As always, it was an effort to segue to her "asshole ex," Gary. The two had lived together for nearly twenty years. They'd had a son together, though they'd never gotten married, and obviously Georgette still harbored resentment that Gary had left her and married another woman. But on the upside, being dumped had been the impetus for a fresh start. She'd quit cafeteria work to pursue her love of baking, and even without formal training, her skills in the kitchen had dazzled Donna and landed Georgette a job.

And despite how much she hated Gary, Georgette still loved
men.
In fact, they were practically all she talked about. Unlike Billy's sister, Corryn, who'd pretty much shunned the opposite sex since her divorce, Georgette was constantly on the prowl, claiming that fifty-two was her true sexual peak, and describing in detail how much she longed for a young stud to ease the tension.

Just then Des Aggerdeen came trotting in, his shaggy hair flopped over his face and his guitar slung over his shoulder. "Hey," he said, smiling at Billy with sleepy eyes.

"Hi, what's up?"

"Man, I
so
don't feel like being here today." Des groaned as he folded his lanky body into the chair beside her. "The band was practicing late last night, and now I just wanna crash." Another irony about Des: He had a "Kill Your Television" sticker on his guitar case, and a vocal disdain for pop culture in general, even though his grunge-rock band, The Sophists, exemplified exactly that.

"You should come see us play sometime," he said, looking at Billy. "It would be awesome to have someone in the crowd who totally feels the struggle." She suppressed a grin; she had a feeling "crowd" might be stretching it. But it was endearing the way Des took a special liking to her. Convinced they shared some kind of artistic connection, Des often referred to Billy and himself as "creative vessels." Of course, it embarrassed her a little, too, because she wasn't in the habit of elevating herself like that—especially not out loud.

"When is this damn meeting gettin' going already," Georgette groused for the second time, and reached for a chocolate croissant.

"Bureaucratic bullshit," Des remarked, again looking at Billy. "Sometimes I just want to hop in an old 'sixty-nine Chevy—just the shirt on my back—and head for the coast. Just ride the wind, you know?"

"Oh, Des, give it up," Melissa called out as she returned from the back. She carried a fresh coffee in a pink cup with
Bella Donna
scrawled across it in black cursive, and the notebook that Donna always used to conduct the morning meetings. "Okay, this will be a quick one," Melissa said as she set her stuff down.

"What do you mean?" Georgette interrupted. "Where's Donna?"

"Actually, I'm running the morning meetings now," Melissa explained. "I've been promoted to assistant manager." She paused to sip from her cup, ignoring the luscious array of pastries right below her, which she always did. In fact, Billy rarely saw her ingest anything other than black coffee.

There were varied reactions to the news of Melissa's promotion: Katie smiled and said, "Congrats"; Des nodded, his expression blank; and Georgette bugged out her eyes, flared her nostrils, and balled her fists until her knuckles turned white.

While everyone went over last-minute details for the upcoming jubilee, Billy ate the rest of her muffin, not sure why she'd bothered to cut it in half in the first place. Then Melissa asked her how the sheet cakes were coming, and Billy exaggerated, saying that everything was right on schedule. In addition to the extensive dessert menu, Churchill's Jubilee Planning Committee, which had hired Bella Donna for the event, wanted three sixty-inch sheet cakes presented at the end of the night. Billy was decorating each with a waterfront theme, using some Churchill postcards as a guide. Unfortunately she was still behind on her work, because when it came to drawing, crippling perfectionism sometimes slowed her down.

"And, everyone, remember to wash and iron your uniform for this weekend," Melissa added, referring to the catering outfit, which was just a twist on the old penguin suit: white shirt, black pants, and a dorky pink bow tie. "Okay, does that wrap up jubilee business?"

Des raised his hand. "I just want to go on record that even though I'm working at this thing, I totally don't respect these elaborate spectacles of obscene self-indulgence. It's like nobody keeps it
honest
anymore, you know?" He slid his gaze to Billy, and did a fist pump to his chest on the word "honest."

Agreeably, Billy nodded, while Melissa rolled her eyes. "Annnyway... I guess the only things left to go over are some changes to our daily menu." Georgette straightened in her chair, on alert—or maybe on attack—as Melissa explained, "Donna and I were thinking that we should make Bella Donna's menu a little hotter, a little trendier. You know, more like something you'd see in New York."

Curling her powdered-sugared lips, Georgette bared her teeth and asked why.

"Obviously it'll draw in a lot more business," Melissa explained with a shrug. "And we'll attract more of the lunchtime crowd if we add some interesting sandwiches." Georgette sighed and fidgeted loudly in her chair, until finally Melissa said, "Do you have a problem with that, Georgette?"