New Beginnings Spring 20 Book Box Set

by Hope Sinclair

  The bakery saw a lot of traffic that afternoon, so Blake spent the rest of the day in the main part of the store, while Hannah continued to bake and clean in the kitchen.

  When the end of the work day came around, the two of them parted ways, and Hannah walked back to the boardinghouse with a very full heart. She was quite pleased with her performance that day—and she was also quite pleased with the strong bond that was developing between her and Blake.

  Once she had arrived at Miss Hayes’s, she finally got to meet her housemates. They were an assorted bunch of varying ages, trades, jobs, and backgrounds, but they were all quite friendly and personable. That evening, Hannah also got to experience Miss Hayes’s cooking for the first time. Sure enough, Blake had hit the nail on the head. Though the portions her landlady served up were more than adequate, the food tasted rather bland. Nonetheless, Hannah and the other girls ate it, and, afterwards, Hannah retired to her room.

  That night, when she went to sleep, she once more drifted off with thoughts of Blake and the bakery in her mind. And, the next morning when she awoke, she again walked to work with a spring in her step and a dreamy expression on her face. The only “sadness” she felt, if she felt any at all, was over the fact that today was Friday, which meant that, since the bakery was closed on the weekend, she wouldn’t get to see Blake again until Monday.

  When Hannah arrived at the bakery, Blake greeted her with the same beaming smile as the day before. For the most part, things went similarly to the previous day. There were many blushing, bashful moments between the two of them, and they had several opportunities to talk and get to know each other better.

  Hannah and Blake did not share an extended lunch, however. This time, they were more mindful of the clock, and Blake was more mindful of the topics he raised. Rather than touching on personal matters, they spent their short break discussing a new recipe that Blake wanted to try.

  “It’s a recipe for a cookie that’s very popular in Italy,” he explained. “A friend of mine found the recipe in one of the books his mother purchased when traveling abroad a couple of years ago. According to her, the cookie is fabulous. But the recipe for it is a bit complicated. Though perhaps, if we work on it together, we can master it… So, what do you say? Are you feeling daring enough to try?”

  Hannah smiled and nodded. “I sure am,” she answered. “I’m always interested in trying new recipes.”

  Blake stood up and went over to the table to retrieve the recipe. He handed it to Hannah, and she reviewed it thoroughly.

  “It does seem complicated,” she said, looking up at him. “But, it’s definitely worth a try.”

  “Wonderful,” he smiled. “We’ll try it out a bit later today, when the after-lunch crowd dies down.” He stood up and went out to the main part of the store, just as a customer approached the door. He went on to serve that customer, followed by several more, as Hannah went about her duties in the kitchen.

  About two hours later, the traffic in the store had died down, and Blake went back to the kitchen and encouraged Hannah to join him in working on the new recipe. After finishing the task she was working on at the moment, she joined him at the table in the center of the room, and the two of them started working together.

  “This recipe seems to be more of a dough than a batter,” Hannah remarked as she measured out some of the ingredients.

  “Indeed it does,” Blake replied, smiling at the keenness of her observation.

  The two of them continued to work on the recipe for a while, speaking casually as they did. Again, Blake was impressed by Hannah. He found it quite special that she was able to work diligently and converse at the same time. Once the dough was complete, they began rolling it into balls and placing it on the baking sheet. A few minutes later, the tray was full, and Blake took it over to the oven.

  “Now, we just wait,” he smiled, turning back to Hannah. “And we keep our fingers crossed that the cookies come out all right.”

  Just then, the front door opened, and the bell atop of it rang.

  “You know what?” Blake suggested. “I think you should go out and man the front of the store. You need to get familiar with the customer service aspects of this job, as well. So, what better time than now? I’ll stay back here and take care of the kitchen, and you take care of the customers… What do you say?”

  “All right,” Hannah replied cheerfully, before scurrying out to the front of the store. She served the customer who’d come in. After that, she served three others. Her interactions with them were quite genial, and she had an easy time of it.

  About an hour passed, with a few customers coming in every now and then. During a slow moment, when the store was otherwise empty and quiet, Hannah heard laughter coming from the kitchen. A few seconds later, Blake appeared in the doorway, holding the tray of cookies he’d put in the oven earlier. “Looks like our little experiment failed,” he chuckled, bringing the tray over to Hannah.

  Hannah gazed down at the tray. The “cookies”—if you could even call them that—had flattened into discs, and they appeared burnt and hard as a rock. “Oh, dear,” she laughed. She picked one up and tapped it against the tray, and she laughed again when it didn’t crumble or break.

  “You know,” she smiled, “back in Baltimore, when something subpar came out of Mrs. Thomas’s oven, we donated it to the church, to be given to the vagabonds and impoverished. But, clearly, we can’t do that with these cookies! The vagabonds and impoverished are already suffering, and we wouldn’t want to add a sick stomach to their list of woes.”

  “Ha!” Blake clucked. He laughed harder than he’d laughed in years. “You’re right about that. Perhaps we can leave them out for the stray dogs?”

  “I don’t know about that, either,” Hannah laughed. “It might kill them.”

  “Then I guess it’s to the garbage with these!” Blake decided. “I’ll also be throwing away any hopes I ever had of visiting Italy. If this is the type of thing they consider cookies, I’d starve while I was there.”

  “However, I’ve heard that the people in Italy drink a great deal of wine,” Hannah replied. “Maybe that’s what it takes—drunkenness—to tolerate their food.”

  “Oh, Hannah,” Blake chuckled. He was impressed by her sense of humor and felt such elation to be joking with her. “You really are a hoot.”

  “Ahem,” someone coughed at that very moment.

  At some point during their discussion over the burnt cookies, someone had walked into the store. But both Blake and Hannah had been so lost in the moment—and in each other—that they hadn’t even heard the bell atop the door ring.

  “How may I help you?” Hannah smiled at the customer.

  The woman looked her up and down, and Hannah took the opportunity to look her over, as well. She was tall, thin, and quite pretty, though she seemed to have a certain arrogance about her.

  “You can’t help me,” the woman answered. “But Blake can.”

  Hannah was a bit offended, and more than a bit confused. She looked over at Blake. He reached his hand up and scratched his head.

  “Uh, Hannah, this is Cara,” he said in a weak voice. “She’s my wife.”

  Hannah’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach. There was so much she wanted to ask, say, and do. But, instead of any of that, she forced a smile across her face, maintained her composure, and acted polite. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cara,” she said with a false smile.

  Cara raised her eyebrows at Hannah, then looked from her to Blake. She didn’t even bother to respond to the nicety she’d just been shown.

  “I told you I was coming into town today,” Cara said to Blake, as if Hannah were not even there. “I left Isabella with our neighbor, Mrs. Becker, and Jacob will be going there after school… In any event, I’ve decided to stay in town a bit longer than I expected. So, I need you to make sure you leave work promptly today, so that you can retrieve the kids from Mrs. Becker by six-thirty or so. I’ll be home after that, once I’m done soci
alizing with my friends.”

  Hannah couldn’t believe all that she’d just heard. Not only was Blake married, but he also had children—and he hadn’t previously mentioned either of these facts to her!

  Blake looked nervously from Cara to Hannah, and Hannah took his nervousness as a cue.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I’m going to go back to the kitchen to work.” Hannah walked slowly to the kitchen, and Cara continued to bark more instructions at Blake.

  Once Hannah was in the kitchen, she wanted more than anything to collapse on the floor and cry. She couldn’t believe that the man she’d started developing feelings for—the man who seemed to have feelings for her, as well—was a taken family man. She was heartbroken, and she felt like a fool.

  She finished out her shift, making sure to clean the kitchen thoroughly, so that Blake could leave on time, as his wife had stipulated. When she left the shop, there was an uncomfortable tension between her and Blake, which they both could feel. But neither of them said anything about it, and they were polite to each other as they parted ways.

  As soon as Hannah was out of the bakery, she rushed back to the boardinghouse as fast as she could without running. Once she was safe inside her room, she buried her head in her pillow and cried. She cried for over an hour that night, and for many more hours over the next two days.

  Indeed, Hannah spent the majority of her weekend in her room, in tears. She went out of her room only to eat meals and interact minimally with the other girls.

  By the time the weekend was over, she was still heartbroken and still felt like a fool. But she’d made her mind up about the situation. She’d decided that she needed to distance herself from Blake a bit. Yes, she would continue to work for him, as her work was in pursuit of her dream. But she’d have no more of the friendly interactions they’d come to share. She wouldn’t joke with him, chit-chat with him on their down time, or grin at every word he said. Instead, she’d act like an employee was meant to act toward her boss. She’d respect the boundaries that had to exist between them, and, any time she felt the urge to cross them, she’d remind herself of whom she was dealing with: Blake, a married man.

  NINE

  The following Monday, as Hannah made her way to work, her feet dragged, and a frown tugged at her face. She was still happy to be working at the bakery, but she was both upset and intimidated by the new “rules” she’d set for herself. She knew she’d dearly miss her pleasant interactions with Blake, as well as the daydreams she’d had about him. But, alas, she knew it was all for the better.

  When Hannah arrived at work, she was met by two unfamiliar faces—and, just then, she remembered about the other bakers she was supposed to train. In all her sulking over Blake, she hadn’t given them a second thought. But, now that they were there, she was grateful.

  After Blake kindly greeted her, he introduced her to the two other bakers. One was a man around Hannah’s age, named Calvin, and the other was a woman named Patricia, who appeared to be a few years older.

  Following the introductions, Blake left Hannah to begin training them and went out to man the front of the store. Hannah did her best to put any thoughts she had of Blake in the back of her mind, which she managed to do successfully for a few hours, as she showed her new coworkers the ropes.

  But, when lunchtime came around, things changed. Blake came into the kitchen to dismiss his crew for their break, then turned to Hannah. “Would you like to eat our lunches together again?” he asked with a smile that, heretofore, she hadn’t been able to resist.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah politely replied. “I can’t today. I have some errands I must run during my break.” She was lying. But she figured it was better to lie than to put herself in a position with Blake in which the delicate boundaries between them might again be crossed.

  After lunch, Hannah returned to training the new bakers and working in the kitchen, while Blake continued to work in the front of the store. A couple of hours later, when Calvin dropped a tray of biscuits on the floor, Blake came rushing into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.

  “Looks like we can’t sell these,” he said, noticing the biscuits on the floor. “Nor can we give them to the homeless… I guess we’ll set them out for the dogs and hope they enjoy.”

  Blake glanced over at Hannah, expecting her to laugh or smirk at his reference to their previous joke. But instead, she wore an expressionless look on her face as she went around collecting the ingredients to make more biscuits to replace the ones that had been destroyed.

  To make a long, painful story somewhat shorter and easier to bear, suffice it to say that, over the next three days, things in the bakery continued to play out just like this. As she’d promised herself, Hannah continued to maintain a safe distance between Blake and herself, and, every time he tried to talk to her one-on-one, she found a way to otherwise occupy herself or take leave.

  But, as “safe” as the distance was between Hannah and Blake, it was infinitely more uncomfortable. Understandably, Hannah was sad that they no longer interacted as they once had—and, sure enough, Blake was sad too. Over the course of the week, he came to “miss” Hannah, even though they were frequently in the very same room.

  So, on Friday afternoon, once Calvin and Patricia seemed established in what they were doing, Blake went into the kitchen and requested to talk to Hannah privately. At first, she scrambled for any reason she could find to avoid the discussion, but, as he persisted, she eventually caved.

  “What’s going on here?” Blake asked after taking her to the far corner of the front room. He’d locked the door, so as not to be disturbed, and he was determined to get to the bottom of things.

  “Whatever do you mean?” Hannah asked nonchalantly, as if she were none the wiser.

  “I mean, what’s going on with you…and me?” Blake answered. “Last week, we got along swimmingly. But, now… Now, things are much different. You avoid me as much as you can, and you barely talk to me anymore. Why?”

  Hannah bowed her head and carefully weighed her words. She realized that there was no way she could sidestep his questions this time—and, what was more, she figured honesty would be best.

  “I was shocked to learn that you were married,” she admitted. “You had never told me that. And…I guess I’d felt some sort of connection developing between us, so I made up my mind to break that connection…for both of our sakes.”

  Blake took a deep breath and sighed. “I thought that might have been what was going on,” he replied, bowing his head, as well. “And I’m sorry for not telling you I was married. But, the fact of the matter is, when I was with you last week, I more or less forgot that I was. I found you very intriguing and full of fun, and I enjoyed talking with you so much. I admired the awe with which you took in my bakery, the mastery with which you approached your work, and the talent you expressed in my kitchen. I was enchanted by everything about you, and I forgot about the disenchanting life I live at home.

  “Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my children dearly, and would never forget about them. But, as far as Cara is concerned, we’ve become quite detached over the years. We simply don’t get along, and quite frankly, we never did.

  “I told you, on your first day here, how I made sacrifices to help my mother and her business succeed. Well, one of the sacrifices I made—the biggest sacrifice I made—was marrying Cara. Her late father was a wealthy man, and she was an unruly child. During a time when my mother was under a great financial strain and stood to lose the bakery, Cara’s father offered her a financial incentive—a dowry, if you will—if I would marry Cara. So, to save my mother and our store, I did.

  “It had been his hope that married life would calm Cara down and teach her priorities, and he’d expected that she would start working here at the shop. But the years passed, and Cara never calmed. Nor did she ever contribute any time or energy to this store. In the end, her father died a very disappointed man—and I went on to live a very disappointed
life, as well.”

  Hannah felt a deep sadness for Blake, but that wasn’t enough to squelch her moral standpoint. She shook her head from side to side and opened her mouth to say something. But, before a single word could come out, Blake went on.

  “But, disappointed as I am—and though I may have forgotten to mention, or think about, my wife in our interactions—I hold fast to the fact that I am married,” he stated firmly. “I respect my vows and would never break them… That said, I do admit that there was—and is—a connection between us, and perhaps that connection bordered on something forbidden.

  “But, it merely bordered on something forbidden. I never would have allowed things to reach a critical point, despite whatever attraction I felt. I never would have compromised my morals…or yours.”

  “I’d like to believe that,” Hannah replied, glancing up at Blake. He had such a solemn, sad expression on his face, and it conjured feelings she did not want to feel.

  “Well, you can believe it,” he retorted. “And you should… Also, you can take my word for it that I will do nothing inappropriate or unfitting, as far as you and my circumstances are concerned. I will not pursue anything we are not meant to pursue. But I would like to pursue a friendship with you. The connection we found is still there, and it cannot be denied. We may never get to be together in certain ways, but at least we can be friends…if you’re willing, that is.”

  Hannah didn’t know what to think or feel at the moment. In the ten days or so she’d been in Silver City, she’d met many people, but she hadn’t felt for them even a shadow of the affinity she felt for Blake. Granted, part of the affinity, at least initially, was of the romantic sort. But not all of it was. There was still a general, platonic affinity that she experienced, a simple attraction to his personality and values.

  Hannah wasn’t exactly sure that she could separate her feelings for Blake, that she could be friends with him without wanting more. But, much like she’d reasoned regarding the Italian cookies the week before, she figured it was worth a try—and she hoped against the odds that the results would be better this time.