“There will be at least one other girl eager to be your friend, if you look hard enough,” he predicted.
He was right. Next door to their new house there were two girls, a blonde about her age and the dark-haired sister who was four years younger. Through the years they’d fought and played, but they always stuck together when it mattered most. Who knew they’d end up opening a cupcake shop together?
Harnessing her Irish temper into firm resolve, she pushed her voice past the ache in her throat. “Mom?”
Her mother had walked down the hall, but upon hearing her name, she paused and looked back.
“I’ll help you get the money for Grandpa’s treatment.”
Her mother nodded, gave her a brief smile that didn’t offer much hope, and disappeared into her bedroom.
Rachel didn’t know how she’d get the money, but she and her two best friends didn’t know how to open a cupcake shop either when the crazy idea first sprouted in their heads.
Miracles could happen. All she needed to do was believe.
Chapter Three
* * *
Put “eat chocolate” at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you’ll get one thing done.
—Author unknown
“I KNOW THREE days doesn’t give us much time to prepare,” Rachel said, casting a glance at Andi and Kim as they boxed up several dozen chocolate cupcakes. “But I believe setting up a booth at the Crab, Seafood, and Wine Festival is a good investment. If it weren’t, Gaston Pierre Hollande would never have signed up. Besides, who doesn’t love a good party?”
“Wish I had your faith.” Kim shook her head. “How are we going to bake enough cupcakes for both the shop and the festival before this weekend?”
“We can do it,” Andi said, her face lit with excitement. “We’ll have to bake like crazy and freeze some ahead of time, but Rachel’s right. The profits could be amazing.”
Kim gave them each a wary look. “Or not.”
Leaving Andi’s teenage babysitter, Heather, in charge of the shop, they walked down the street, crossed the railroad tracks, and carried the cardboard trays of cupcakes along the black paved path beneath the bridge.
“Coffee and cupcakes,” Rachel called to the five people waiting for the Astoria Riverfront Trolley.
One man raised his hand. “I’ll take one of each.”
Rachel smiled as she served the order. “Here’s a coupon for a dollar off your next Creative Cupcakes purchase. We’re located straight up the block on Marine Drive.”
A woman rushed toward Kim, her eyes wide. “Are those triple-chocolate caramel fudge?”
“Yes,” Kim replied, “with double dark chocolate whipped buttercream icing—”
“And a cherry on top,” the woman finished and drew in a deep breath. “I knew I smelled chocolate. How dare you scent the air with those fat-inducing treats!” She glanced in each direction up and down the Columbia River walkway, then pulled two twenty-dollar bills out of her purse. “Better give me the whole box so others don’t fall prey to your temptations.”
As the woman hurried away, Kim held up her empty hands. “Now this was a great idea. We should sell cupcakes along the waterfront every morning.”
Andi agreed. “Hopefully, the people like the cupcakes so much they’ll use the coupons to come into the shop.”
“If we’re going to compete against that French baker, we’re going to need to step up our promo,” Rachel said, serving two more tourists cups of coffee to go along with their cupcakes. “Why don’t we start serving fresh brewed coffee and specialty tea in the shop to help wash down the cupcakes?”
“Don’t forget the kids,” Andi said as they moved farther along the waterfront walk. “Mia and Taylor will want milk or juice.”
“Milkshakes,” Kim added. “Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry milkshakes. All we would need is a few more ingredients and a couple blenders.”
“I’ve read that some cupcake shops have started serving ice cream, but we’d need more freezer space.” Andi hesitated. “We’ll have to talk to Jake about that.”
“Done,” Rachel told her. “Look behind you.”
Andi spun around and spotted the man behind her. “Jake! What are you doing here?”
Jake Hartman, wearing a white dress shirt and brown khakis matching the color of his hair, gave them all a welcoming grin.
“What if I told you I had a lead on a story about three obnoxious women wearing pink head scarves and pink bakery aprons who are terrorizing the waterfront with cupcakes?”
“What if I told you,” Andi challenged, “the chief editor of the Astoria Sun said if we see a deranged madman reporter draw near our cupcakes to send him straight back to the office?”
Jake laughed, wrapped his arms around Andi’s waist, and gave her a kiss. “I’m on lunch break.”
Envy stabbed Rachel’s heart, and she glanced at Kim. Andi’s dark-haired younger sister returned the look as if to say, “Yeah, I know.”
Kim hadn’t dated since her steady boyfriend in college took off to Europe without her. She said she was concentrating on her career as an aspiring artist, but instead of painting canvases, most days she was painting the tops of cupcakes.
Not exactly the happily-ever-after Kim had been hoping for. Or Rachel either. While the two-date-only method was great at protecting a broken heart, it didn’t do much mending.
Sometimes, although she’d never admit it, she wished she could find the kind of love Andi seemed to have found. The kind that lasts forever.
BACK AT THE shop, Andi placed sticker labels on the Tupperware bins and wrote the names of the ingredients in each one with a blue marker. “This is so we don’t mix up the flour with the sugar.”
“We sure don’t want that to happen,” Rachel said, a trickle of heat sliding into her cheeks. She’d put cornstarch instead of baking soda in the batter of cherry cupcakes earlier that morning. She thought her slip had gone unnoticed, but Andi caught her dumping the mix in the trash.
Rachel took a new three-ring binder filled with notebook paper out of a shopping bag and placed it on the counter. The cover sparkled with enough glittery images to grace Hollywood.
“What’s that?” Andi asked, catching a glimpse over her shoulder.
“Our new Cupcake Diary. The other one was filled up.”
“It’s so glitzy I’ll be afraid of getting it dirty,” Kim said, coming around the counter to take a look.
Rachel tossed her red curls over her shoulder and opened the new binder to the first page. “We need to be more glitzy to outshine the competition.”
Andi nodded. “You mean improve our public image with advertising?”
“But not false advertising,” Kim warned. “We need to stay true to ourselves.”
Rachel laughed. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Kim said, giving her a direct look, “don’t get carried away.”
Rachel frowned. “Creative Cupcakes must have an effective promotion plan to fight back against our new French rival and stay in business.”
“In addition to birthday parties, we now have three groups using the party room each week,” Andi informed them. “Our children’s cupcake camp program is on Tuesdays.”
“Mia’s kindergarten friends waste more cupcakes than they make,” Rachel complained. “They need constant supervision, and they get flour and sugar everywhere.”
“No wonder their parents are willing to pay to have them come,” Kim added. “Some of them are monsters.”
“The kids have fun learning to bake,” Andi said, lifting her chin. “And the cupcake camp brings in good money. Almost as much as the Romance Writers who come on Thursdays.”
“The Romance Writers are loyal customers,” Rachel agreed. “Those women absolutely devour anything chocolate.”
“I don’t trust them,” Kim said, shaking her head. “They’re always leaning in as if listening to what we have to say and writing in their little notepads. I’
m afraid they might be writing about us, and we’ll end up in one of their books.”
“A story about three women who run a cupcake shop in a small town and find romance?” Rachel smirked. “Doubt it.”
Taking out a pen, she wrote in the new Cupcake Diary:
Kids camp (messy monsters): Tuesdays
Romance Writers (Chocoholics): Thursdays
“Who’s the third group we have coming in?” Kim asked.
“The Saturday Night Cupcake Club,” Andi replied. “More like a Lonely Hearts Club, if you ask me. Whoever in their group doesn’t have a date on Saturday night can come commiserate and eat cupcakes together.”
“Sounds pitiful,” Rachel said. “You wouldn’t catch me at one of their meetings.”
“Me either,” Kim agreed.
“They aren’t any different from us,” Andi said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Isn’t that how Creative Cupcakes started? With the three of us commiserating over the fact we had no jobs, no money, and no men? Sometimes it’s good to open up and talk about your feelings. The year after my divorce, I was alone. If I’d known about such a group, I might have gone, but I had you.”
Rachel thought about their birthday tradition. Their birthdays were exactly four months apart, so they split a cupcake three ways and made goals for themselves from one birthday to the next, much easier than setting goals for a whole year. Their last goal was to open a cupcake shop.
Back at the beginning of March, on the night of Kim’s twenty-sixth birthday, Andi had convinced a guy sitting at a table in the Captain’s Port to give them his cupcake. That’s how Jake and Andi had met, with Jake agreeing to split the cupcake in fourths and sharing with them. Shortly later he became their financial partner for the cupcake shop, and Andi’s Mr. Romance.
Rachel nodded toward the Cupcake Diary. “Okay, so we have three groups for the party room, but what else can we do for promotion?”
“We could hand out a red carpet invitation to everyone at the Crab, Seafood, and Wine Festival to visit our shop and sample Creative Cupcakes’ award-winning flavors,” Andi teased.
“That’s good!” Rachel turned back to the Cupcake Diary and wrote in bold block letters:
Red carpet invites.
A chuckle greeted them from the doorway, and Guy Armstrong, the middle-aged tattoo artist from the next building, walked toward them and leaned over the marble counter. “Maybe offer a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Like ‘get a tattoo, get a cupcake.’ Or ‘order two dozen cupcakes and get five dollars off your next tattoo.’”
Kim waved a hand toward her watercolor paintings adorning the shop’s interior walls. “Buy a painting, get a free cupcake?”
Rachel shook her head. “We need to—”
“Think smarter?” Andi suggested.
“Be more creative?” Kim offered.
“Play dirtier,” Guy said, bobbing his white pony-tailed head and pushing the sleeves of his black shirt up his tattooed forearms. “I love it when you women cook up a scheme. Sometimes I miss having my shop in the back room, but you inspired me to go after my dream and expand the business. And now I have more customers than ever before.”
“That’s it,” Rachel said, pointing her pen at him. “We need to expand. We need to offer catering services for weddings and . . . and . . . get a cupcake truck!”
Andi’s and Kim’s mouths popped open.
“The Cupcake Mobile,” Guy mused. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“Where would we find a delivery truck?” Rachel asked.
Guy grinned wide enough to reveal his missing tooth. “I think I could help you with that.”
RACHEL WIPED CRUMBS off the table by the front window and heard an awful click-clackity commotion outside. Lifting her gaze, she watched in horror as an old blue-and-yellow bread-loaf-shaped truck pulled up to the front curb. It almost looked like a trolley car except there were also three silver trumpet-shaped horns attached to the roof. This couldn’t be the truck Guy had been referring to, could it? She spotted Jake and the tattoo artist sitting in the front seat. Andi arrived a minute later and parked Jake’s blue convertible behind them.
“They’re here,” Rachel called to Kim.
Kim followed her out the door and stood by her side on the sidewalk. “Looks like an antique.”
“I’m surprised it runs,” Andi said, getting out of the car to join them. “Guy says it’s been sitting in his garage for decades.”
“More like a century,” Kim said, her expression doubtful. “What year is it?”
“Nineteen thirty-three.”
Rachel pursed her lips. “Eye-catching.”
“Don’t frown like that,” Guy said, climbing out of the passenger side of the vehicle. “It’s a fully-restored Helm’s bakery truck, and Kim can paint colorful cupcakes all over it.”
“I could,” Kim agreed, and her face brightened.
“She can also paint the name, Creative Cupcakes, in big swirly letters across the back and sides with our phone number to advertise the shop,” Andi suggested.
“With a motto,” Rachel said, walking closer to the vehicle to look inside. “Creative Cupcakes should have a motto.”
Kim laughed. “‘No time to bake? Call Creative Cupcakes!’”
“‘Sweet cakes for every occasion’?” Andi asked.
“‘One bite and you’ll know it’s right’ or ‘Tasty treats for toothless tattoo artists,’” Guy joked. “Like me.”
Rachel gave him a friendly poke in the shoulder. “‘If you like to flirt, try our hip little dessert.’”
“Gaston Pierre Hollande would paint a picture of a sword like the one in the movie Highlander and use the main character’s quote, ‘There can be only one!’” Kim said with a grin.
“We have a sword,” Andi reminded them. “Our golden cupcake cutter. Maybe we can stick it in a giant cupcake and put it on display like King Arthur’s sword in the stone legend.”
“I have a better idea,” Rachel said and pointed to the side of the Cupcake Mobile as if she could already see the image. “We can be like the three musketeers and borrow their motto: ‘All for one, one for all.’ And over that a logo, with three cupcake cutters like crossed swords sticking into a cupcake, dividing it three ways.”
“What about Jake?” Andi asked. “He’s part of Creative Cupcakes, too.”
Rachel nodded. “He can be the fourth musketeer in Alexandre Dumas’ story, who joined them later.”
“Just like our birthday tradition!” Andi exclaimed.
Kim nodded her approval, a big smile on her face. “Just like us.”
ON FRIDAY, RACHEL and Andi loaded the Cupcake Mobile, left Kim in charge of the shop, and headed toward the Clatsop County Fairgrounds for the Crab, Seafood, and Wine Festival. Andi drove the truck, and Rachel followed behind in her own car since they would be leaving at different times.
They’d borrowed some folding tables from Guy for their booth in the main food tent and brought hundreds of cupcakes packed in stackable plastic containers. Andi had also found pink tablecloths to match their pink bandanas and aprons.
Upon arrival they were given their ten-by-ten space between a wine vendor and another food vendor selling crab and melted cheese on thick, crusty bread. The aroma made them salivate until Andi finally broke down and bought them each one.
“Now we’re down $10, and we haven’t sold a single cupcake yet,” Rachel complained.
She called out to the hundreds of people who packed the fairgrounds, and her face hurt from smiling, but despite her efforts, their booth was humiliatingly ignored.
“Maybe people don’t think cupcakes go with crab or wine,” Andi suggested.
Rachel’s gaze drifted over to Gaston’s setup. His booth was located in the corner, diagonal to their left. He looked up, caught her watching him, and smirked. His booth had a line thirty people long. Some of them backed up to the end of their cupcake table, all because he was serving crab chowder in fresh-baked bread bowls.
“Go
t to hand it to him,” Rachel said, her spirits sinking. “Gaston has a smart marketing plan.”
Andi nodded. “His success is in the presentation.”
“He’s slanted his product toward the venue, while we didn’t.” Rachel chewed on her lower lip. “Maybe we should have decorated the cupcakes to look like crabs.”
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for us to come,” Andi said and winced. “How much did this booth cost us?”
Rachel didn’t even want to think about it. Thinking about money made her think about her grandfather. “We’ll get some sales.”
But by six o’clock that evening they’d sold only a few dozen cupcakes, not enough to cover a third of the cost. Rachel wondered what would happen the other two days of the festival. Would it be worth coming back? Since they’d already paid, they had no choice.
Andi glanced at her watch. “Time for me to pick up Mia from the babysitter’s. Are you sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?”
“Go ahead,” Rachel replied. “We’re dead here anyway. And someone has to stay in the booth till the end.”
Her feet were tired from standing all day. The chatter from the crowd droned in her ears, giving her a headache. By the time she could leave and walked out to the parking lot, she was emotionally weary as well. She couldn’t wait to get home and . . . what was going on? Why was her car hooked up to the back of a tow truck? Her heart leaped into overdrive, and despite her aching feet, she ran toward it as fast as she could.
“Wait!” she shouted, waving her hands.
The tow truck driver gave her a quick glance and moved even quicker. Jumping into the cab, he started the engine.
“Where are you taking my car?”
“Ask the bank that gave you the car loan.” He pulled away before she could respond.
Her chest caved in, making it hard to breathe. She’d been two months’ late on her car payment, but she didn’t think she was in danger of having it repossessed. And how did they know she was at the festival? She scowled. Either someone had blabbed, or the tow truck driver just didn’t have many places to look. One of the unfortunate “benefits” of living in a small town.
Recipe for Love Page 3
