Author's Note: The reviews have been SO amazing, I drove to town to get wi-fi so I could post early. Y'all are just lovely, and truly, the first four chapters are meant to be read in one big gulp, so I feel bad for the posting delay.
Chapter 3: The Devil You Know
Veronica
"You look great," Tyana says, from where she's polishing the front of the now-empty glass cases. "Stop fussing with your hair."
I drop my hands guiltily and pretend I didn't flat-iron. I've already gone upstairs to change into non-floured jeans, heels, and a casually tailored three-quarter-sleeved blazer. I caved at the last moment and clasped on one of the necklaces Logan bought me, just because it's the perfect curve of rose gold to look professional but not ostentatious with this neckline. It's the outfit I wear for my baking-reality-show interviews, and okay maybe it's a little much for just another meeting with a bride, but I need a break. At this point, I'd settle for not even a big break but a mid-level break. Opening a bakery the year before a pandemic hit? Not fantastic for the bottom line.
Sure, we're busy enough to sell out before closing most days now, but I have a lot of catching up to do on my loans. Plus, New Orleans loves a good bakery, but this town has a trillion bakeries. And unfortunately for me, they're all amazing. What I wouldn't give for some mediocre competition.
"This bride's some kind of influencer," I tell Tyana. "Five million followers."
She gives me a patient smile. "You mentioned."
"We need a hook." I pace across the dining area, wondering if I should flip up the chairs to emphasize how fast we sold out of product today, or leave them down so it looks…less industrial and more homey. "If I can't get us on a show, we need some other way to stand out. All the other greats in town have a hook. Angelos has more history—and a better lemon creme cake though you'll have to put me on the rack to get me to admit that in front of witnesses. There's that Nothing Bundt Cake bundt shop, might as well leave beignets to Cafe Du Monde, the Cupcake Connection, the Bakery Bar for cake and cocktails. We're the…what? If we had a hook, we could make it uptown for sure."
"Great everything?" Tyana threw her hands up. "We do the best cakes, killer cookies, our king cakes can hold their heads up and you know how hard it is to crack the top ten on king cake. Our patisserie is every bit as good as that bitchy French place in the CBD. And what about Tout de Sweet? They do everything and they doing fine." She shakes her head. "I don't know if it's worth trying to narrow down, Veronica. We doing good, why not give the people everything they want?"
"Do you think we should make more product? We could clearly sell more." I give a wistful look at the Closed sign.
"Foot traffic is crap between three and five," she says. "We're better off putting up the 'sold out' sign and turning people away so they get that FOMO you're always talking about and come back even earlier the next day. Rather than selling five more danishes and putting three more hours on my tired-ass feet."
I bit my lip, then remembered I put on lipstick today—a professional coral now, not the stoplight red I taunted Logan with earlier. "Why don't you get on out of here? The front looks great and I can finish cleaning the back and doing tomorrow's prep after the meeting. You know I'll be too wired to sit down after that anyway."
"Don't have to tell me twice. My grandbaby got a puppy and I just about run the whole cloud out of data taking their picture, they're so cute together." She grabs her purse from under the register and gives me a level look. "Don't do that nervous talky thing you do. Brides are nervous enough, they want a confident baker. Samples are in the back fridge laid out on the good platter, when you're ready for 'em."
"Thanks, Tyana. You're the best."
"Oh, I know." She tips her chin up. "You're lucky to have me." She lets herself out and I force myself not to look at the clock. I'll just go behind the counter and do what cleanup I can so I look a little busy when my influencer bride shows up. I make it halfway around the case of baked goods before my eyes accidentally stray across the clock in spite of myself. One fifty-six. Ugh, she's not even late yet.
The door rattles under a knock and I spin around so fast, I knock the pen jar off the counter. It hits the floor and explodes like a bomb, Bics with Mardi Gras beads taped to the tops skittering under the toe-kick of the bakery cases. I paste on a placid smile and pretend that didn't happen, tucking my leather meeting notebook under my arm and going to answer the door.
"Hi there, you must be Siella."
The other woman beams, all sparkling green eyes, perfectly drawn cat-eye liner, and light brown skin. "Wow, you said it right on the first try! I can't tell you how many people mispronounce my name."
"Oh? It didn't seem that hard." Especially after I watched three of the bride's Insta reels checking the pronunciation. "Have a seat, anywhere you like." I wave a hand at the gleaming red bistro sets. "As you can see, we sold out early again today, so we have the whole place to ourselves."
"That's perfect, actually. I hope you don't mind, I had another vendor in the area I wanted to use, and I invited them here so I could kill two birds with one stone."
My smile goes fixed, like it was poured into a plastic mold. Another baker? She's seriously going to interview us at the same time like Pastry Hunger Games?
"A florist?" I ask, a little voice inside my head that sounds a lot like Tyana's telling me to give her the benefit of the doubt. Wouldn't kill you to trust a little. It might kill me, actually. Angelo Brocato's is the closest bakery, just down Carrolton a bit, and if I'm up against one of the oldest bakeries in the city, I won't have a chance. Plus they're Italian. Everyone loves Italian everything. Dammit, even I love Italian everything.
"Not exactly." Siella gives me a wicked grin. She has the kind of clothes that would look awful on their own—high wasted camel-colored trousers topped with a geometric floral print blouse with a slashed neckline. But on a hot person, they look the kind of "on purpose" that I've come to associate with designer labels. I remember, from the kind of Mardi Gras balls Logan's family went to. Money so old it still came in coins back when those families first got rich.
A knock rattles the door as Siella starts to drag a third chair over to one of the little tables. I look up and every vein in my body starts running magma-hot. Oh hell no.
"Excuse me," I say through my teeth. "Nosy neighbor. Bless his heart, you know how it is around here. Everybody always wanting a chat. I'll just…deal with him real quick."
I cross the room, heels clicking like a bomb timer, and yank open the glass door. Logan gives me the kind of smile that practically lounges across his too-handsome face.
"Am I late?"
"For your delivery of butt-plugs? Wasn't that coming in this afternoon, neighbor dear?" My smile is plastic poured into polyester, so fake it might as well be a soy substitute. Logan's eyes twinkle a little brighter, and belatedly I realize saying "butt-plugs" might not whet the bride's appetite for bakery samples.
"No, the butt-plugs aren't coming in until Thursday, but if I'd known you were watching the delivery schedule so closely, I'd have set one aside for you." He clucks his tongue, softly, as if he wants me to remember how good he used to be at using it. "As my favorite neighbor, you shouldn't have to go without. I'll even give you the employee discount."
"Oh, are you the famous Logan? Of Sinsations?" Siella bounds up next to me, practically knocking me over in her eagerness to meet him. My heel folds sideways and I reach for edge of the door to catch myself, but Logan's hand closes over my wrist first and he lifts. So strongly I not only come back up onto my heel but hop a little like I've gone weightless.
"You okay?"
I nod, my wrist scorched with the after-image of his heat. Like how when you look at the sun it's all burning black spots for way too long after you look away. He's already released me, I realize. I clear my throat, and by the time I mentally catch up, he's mid-self-introduction to Siella.
"I am the famous Logan, though my lawyer insists that I tell you that at least two out of three of the things I'm famous for are libel and can't be proven in a court of law." He shakes her hand and I wonder if she's about to be seeing sunspots, too. I hope not. Poor girl's about to get married. Last thing she needs is to be dazzled by New Orlean's local lothario.
"Great, great. Sit down, you two," Siella says, as if this weren't my restaurant. "And let me tell you about my plans for the bachelorette party, because it is all about you two. Well, and the ice luge for shots. We're hoping to get it in the shape of Magic Mountain, that log ride from Disneyland. Wouldn't that be cool?"
"So cool," I agree, trying to catch Logan's eyes over her head to stare him into seriousness. Logan has a tendency to take everything too casually, and now is not the time for our usual no-holds-barred bickering. I need to look professional, dammit, and he would need a dictionary and a thesaurus just to grasp the word. He catches my murder eyes and just winks. Fuck, that was the opposite of signaling his understanding that we need to call a truce.
"I hear you're an influencer!" I perch myself on a chair and put on my most interested expression. "Sooo many followers. Wow. Millions." I crank up the murder eyes at Logan, hoping he'll hear me. I can't know for sure if telling him this is a big deal for me will make him behave himself, or exactly the opposite, but I have to try. He'd blow up a business deal in a heartbeat for the chance to mess with me. Of course, he's making money hand over fist-shaped-dildo over there, so what does he care? If he lands this job, he'll probably just buy another speed boat.
"I am, yeah." Siella…blushes?
Who in this day and age hustles hard enough to get five million followers in the free-for-all of social media and is still timid enough to blush about it?
"That's so cool!" I enthuse very non-specifically because I needed a dictionary and a thesaurus to sort out what an influencer actually does, and I was too busy making a second round of Death By Chocolate Souffle cake to go to the trouble.
"I'm really lucky, to be born right now. I mean, I feel like I have some simple, amazing tricks that really make life better and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to share those directly with people without having to deal with the gatekeepers and censors of major media corporations. You know what I mean?" She's so sincere it makes me sit back a little. I've been ravenous for this deal and the exposure but now I actually kind of like this client. Wasn't expecting that.
"That is cool, actually," I agree slowly.
"Sure, but sponsors have their own agenda," Logan says, with a cynicism as bottomless as my own. I used to love that about him. "And then they end up setting your tone."
"Don't I know it?" Siella laughs, a little shadow to her eye. "I lost a couple to the engagement announcement but—" She smiles tightly. "There are lots of sponsors in the world. I've had to turn over a few that didn't fit my values, but in the end, I've always been able to get more." She holds up crossed fingers with a laugh that's not as carefree as she probably thinks it is.
"Why would you lose sponsors over an engagement announcement?" I wrinkle my nose. I really should have at least googled "influencer basics."
"It's a thruple wedding."
I give her my first genuine smile of the day, my voice coming out softer than usual because I saw the quick, bracing breath she took before she said it. "For a thruple wedding I did earlier this year, I did three separate cakes, themed for each spouses' personality. It was really fun, actually, especially choosing the filling flavors to both taste good and get the cakes to come out in a perfect rainbow when cut."
Siella lights up. "That sounds amazing! I hadn't even thought of that, but oh, this is for the bachelorette party, sorry. Hey, maybe if that goes well, you could do the cake for the wedding? We'd picked out this bakery in Baton Rouge that got a spread in Southern Bride magazine last summer, but we haven't put down a deposit yet."
My heart does a weightless little ferris wheel roll in my chest. Getting the wedding would be probably twice the exposure of a bachelorette party, not to mention what I charge for major cakes like that. Plus, I already feel protective over this woman, like I'd take a bite out of any baker who dared make her uncomfortable for marrying two fiancés instead of one.
"It's Caleb from last season's Bachelor, right?" Logan says. Wait, did he research the bride more than I did? "And Alissa with that four-episode arc from Law and Order."
Siella winces, looking a little abashed. "You read about it? We've been getting a lot of flack over Caleb ditching his final pick for us, but honestly, that shit was scripted. He had to pick somebody!"
"Yeah, but the chemistry was sizzling. I don't think anybody wanted to believe that could come out of a script." Logan gives her an admiring look. "I feel like I should high-five you for swiping the bachelor."
"You watch The Bachelor?" It bursts out of me, even though I know Siella will probably be offended. Logan used to be a bloodhound for fakeness, couldn't abide it even on TV shows which are, as I used to remind him, invented to be fake. Even the "reality" ones.
He gives me one of his dry smiles. "My whole staff is obsessed with The Bachelor. They'd all have quit by now if I didn't play along when they forced the highlight reels from YouTube on me. It's an HR thing."
Siella laughs. "Right. So an influencer, an actress, and a reality star. You can see why we need to get every detail of the wedding camera-perfect. Plus, the wedding party is, as you can imagine, massive. Fourteen bridesmaids, between us. Of course, we'll have a professional photographer on site for the bachelorette party as well as the wedding, and we'll tag you in all posted photos. For the discount we talked about on the phone." She gives me a nod.
Now, I can see the business sense ticking away behind all her big-heartedness about getting her message out. My ferris wheel heart has sped into something more like the Gravitron. The stakes on this celebrity bachelorette party have just tripled.
I catch Logan's gaze and swipe a napkin out of the holder in the center of the table, waving the little white flag just beneath the level of the table.
"Oh, are you hot, Veronica?" he asks. "I can turn up the A/C." His eyes are too innocent—Logan's eyes are never innocent. So I know he read that truce message for what it was. What I don't know is if he's going to play along.
"No, I'm um, fine." I clear my throat.
"Veronica doesn't watch The Bachelor," Logan tells Siella. "She can spot all the reality show script twists from the first episode, so she never bothers with the whole show."
"Oh, do you two know each other? I mean, of course you do, your shops are side-by-side, but—" Her gaze darts back and forth between us, like she's weighing if we're the kind of neighbors who watch tv together and talk about butt-plug deliveries, if that means we also do each other on the regular.
"No, no," I begin, not sure what part of our relationship I mean to deny. All of it, if I can get away with it.
"It's a bit more biblical than that," Logan says. "The sense in which we knew each other, I mean."
I'm going to kill him.
"Oh!" Siella's hands fly to her mouth. "Past tense. Crap. You broke up! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to make you sit through an awkward meeting with both of you together."
"Divorced, actually," Logan says, sounding downright cheerful about it. "So yes, very broken up, according to our lawyers."
I do a fast calculation. I can either try to get him fired from this event, or pretend we get along well enough to work together. I've got to go all-in on one, because I can't do both. And a new bride probably isn't going to think happy thoughts about two formerly married people being mean to each other. In her present era of romantic life, it'll make her a lot more squishy-hearted (and squishy-walleted) if we pretend to still love each other in the no-dicks-included Hallmark sense. Gag me with a spoon.
"Won't be a problem for your wedding," I rush to add. "We're very amicably divorced."
"Oh wow." Her eyes bulge over her hands still clapped over her mouth. "Divorced. I can't ask you to work on a wedding party together, can I? I swear, I didn't know, and I would never have been so thoughtless and cruel as to invite you both here together. I just had heard about you both and your shops were side-by-side, so I thought there was no harm in combining the meeting and asking if you might—oh, but never mind all that now." She waves a hand. "I have an ex, I know how raw it can be. We can forget the whole thing."
I'm going to strangle him with my fucking white flag. Logan's a lot of things, but he's never been dumb. He can add millions of followers plus celebrity thruple wedding and come up with exactly how many lease payments I could make off this one gig. That plus me waving the white napkin? That's the closest I've come to asking him for anything since the day my pen hit his divorce papers. And when he outed us, he didn't just turn me down, he all but burned the treaty flag.
This is war.