The Beast’s Fated Bride

5.

I went about doing that, then pulled out the prepped dough and ingredients from the fridge. I was a stickler for never leaving things to the last minute, so I had a strict schedule for what I needed to make after the shop closed and what needed to be done in the morning before it opened. As I worked, I fell into a familiar rhythm.

Well, a somewhat familiar rhythm. It was the first full month I was back at it since⁠—

Since my mother died.

I swallowed hard as I set up the multiple food scales. It wasn’t like I was trying to forget laying the last family member I had in America to rest, but sometimes, I needed a reprieve from that pain. A tiny moment to breathe easier without the knife buried in my heart. But baking was a double-edged sword that way. While it filled me with warm memories, happiness, and a sort of peace I couldn’t find anywhere else, it also reminded me of the wonderful woman who had always believed in me, supported me, and was with me every step of making my dreams come true.

God, I missed her.

My eyes began to burn like they always did before a sobfest, and I tried to breathe through it. While I knew it wasn’t healthy to bottle up my emotions, this wasn’t really the time or the place for a breakdown. I could do that after the shop closed. I’d spend the evening crying my heart out and drowning my sorrows in ice cream.

Yeah, that sounded like a good plan.

“Come on, Felicia. Chin up.”

I’d developed the habit of talking to myself a lot in the past year, if only because it sometimes got so lonely in the bakery. It hadn’t been that way at first. My mother would often stop by to read a book and munch on a croissant, or simply to rest her feet on her walks. But as she became sicker and those stupid tumors spread to her lymph nodes, then her brain, she eventually grew too weak to leave her house. She’d gone into hospice care not long after that, and then far too soon, she was gone.

And I was alone.

Enough of that!

I would wallow in my ice cream later. Maybe I would even pore over old photo albums of the two of us and let myself reminisce about happier times—not easier, because boy, had they been fraught, but they definitely had been happier.

But I could make my own happiness in time. And although my mother was gone and I missed her so much it physically hurt, she would always be with me. Her very presence was in the walls of the place, her laughter sometimes echoing through the space. She was in the paint she’d picked out, in the songs I hummed to myself while cleaning. She was in the photos on the walls, and she was in my business degree that I’d fought so hard to get. She was still a vital and beloved part of my life.

I just had to remember that whenever the burden got too heavy.

And that was why I couldn’t let the business fail. If I lost it, I would be losing her.

Again.

With newfound determination, I concentrated on finishing all my morning prep. It was a long list of things to do, although not as long as it had been when I first opened and expected larger crowds. Now, my morning display of goods was more modest—some donuts, bagels, croissants, and scones. No breakfast pizza, no fresh baguettes, no pumpernickel or rye. I would have some of those available later, but usually only one or two of each.

Once I got on a roll, it was easy to keep up the momentum, and before I knew it, I could take a break and have my morning coffee right before opening. I definitely took that time. I’d long since learned that I would really regret it later if I didn’t.

“Another day, another dollar,” I murmured to myself as I sipped my coffee, taking the full ten minutes to imbibe it. Once that was done, I opened the store and went about doing small tasks while waiting for my first customer.

Thankfully, my shop wasn’t a complete ghost town. I had five regulars who came in just about every day, and maybe twenty or so that filed in every Sunday. It wasn’t enough to keep my business afloat, but so far it had been enough to keep my head just barely above water. Well, that and the holidays. But the gap after Valentine’s Day had been especially rough for me, with all of my custom cakes, cupcakes, and other dessert orders completely drying up. I was hoping things would increase with Easter approaching, but so far, no dice.

The bell tinkling over the door pulled me from my ruminations.

“Hey there, Felicia!”

“Good morning, Mrs. Hernandez,” I said before signing haltingly to her husband on her arm. “Good morning, Mr. Hernandez!” I wasn’t fluent by a long shot, but ever since the older couple had started coming in, I’d tried to learn as many greeting and bakery terms as I could. Thankfully, they seemed pleased by my efforts and never offended when I flubbed things—which was usually about every other sentence.

“Good morning!” He signed back. “I’d like the…” He moved his hands rapidly.

I stared for a moment, racking my brain for what that last motion meant. I swore I knew it, but for some reason my brain was refusing to access that information.

Of course, Mrs. Hernandez picked up on it right away. She was keen like that despite the fact that she was at least half-deaf and wore coke-bottle glasses that would make a nerd from the fifties think they were a bit much.

“We’d both like our regular, dear.”

“Oh, regular,” I said, repeating the sign so I would remember it next time. The two nodded encouragingly. “Why don’t ya go ahead and have a seat? I’ll be right out with it.”

Many bakeries didn’t have seating areas, but I figured having a place where my customers could sit and enjoy whatever they bought would give my bakery a more welcoming feel, like a sense of community. Besides, it kept me from spending hours upon hours completely alone.

And it wasn’t like it would turn into an actual restaurant. I had two tables and a single bench, then two stools at a little wooden platform by one of the windows. And I’d only had the place completely full once, on a particularly busy Sunday.

It was always a Sunday—such was the life of a baker. I worked seven days a week with only Christmas, New Year’s, and my birthday off. The flip side was that I ended up getting out of work way earlier than most of my peers.

Then again, I also started working at four a.m..

Eh, I wasn’t complaining though. It was not only the life that I had chosen, but also the life that I’d fought tooth and nail for.

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Hernandez said as I brought a ham, egg and cheese croissant for her, and an everything bagel with cream cheese, lox, capers, and sliced red onions for her husband. I had no intention of telling them, but I had taken the lox and capers off the menu because they were too expensive. I kept a jar of the little green balls and a package of the smoked salmon on hand just for them.

Sometimes it was the little things in life, and who was I to begrudge the man the simple pleasure of his favorite bagel every morning?

Bit by bit, my other regulars came and went, and I enjoyed their presence as I went about various tasks. It wasn’t a busy day by any means, but I was pleased as punch that I had three new customers I’d never seen before. Did they order a lot? No. But sometimes all it took was a really good breakfast sandwich to win someone over for life, and if I could do that enough times, then the shop wouldn’t be so far in the red.

I did try to keep myself busy as the hours ticked by, researching SEO and AdSense utilization when I could. However, I didn’t exactly enjoy that, so I was always happy to stop every time the bell over the door chimed.

Ding!

And that was my cue. Closing my laptop, I stepped out from behind the bread retarder to see possibly the most handsome man I’d seen in a while striding into my shop.

Whole-double E Halibut! I had to pause for a moment and train my face into a customer-service appropriate smile. It wasn’t that I was desperate or anything, but most of my customers were the elderly, housewives, or nannies. Certainly not country beefcakes complete with a blue flannel tucked into his jeans.

He wasn’t movie-star pretty by any means—that sort of overly polished, too-good-to-be-true, artificial, grown-in-a-lab beauty. No, instead he was ruggedly handsome, like someone who could exist without ever needing surgical enhancements.

His nose was on the larger side, but it balanced out the square cut of his jaw. His strong brow matched his cheekbones. He was tanned—far more than I was—and to top it all off, he had green eyes that could be described as dazzling, and I didn’t think anyone would object.

“Can I help you?” I asked.