Alpha Billionaire Series

GABRIELLA

“Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom,” Robbie came crashing into the kitchen. Everything was intensely urgent, all the time with him.

I held up my hand, fingers splayed.

He settled and didn't say anything as I slowly began lowering one finger at a time. I don't remember who taught me that trick, but it worked beautifully every single time. The rule was if he wasn't bleeding or hurt, or about to throw up that hand meant he had to stop, think and be quiet. I needed a moment to finish what I was doing. And at that moment, it was scrapin the sides of a mixing bowl, transferring out all of the batter into a cupcake pan.

I'set the bow down and wiped my hands on my apron. “Okay, baby, what is it?”

I'squatted down to his level, and he held up a picture from the coloring book he had been working on.

“Oh, wow, that's really good," I said as I took the colored picture from him.

The picture was from a recent cartoon movie with magic cars and their kids. For all the times I had watched it, I had yet to see it all the way through. The little girl had skin that was a mix of different colors, and her hair was green and blue. In the movie she was a kid with brown hair, I think.

“I stayed in the lines. Look." He proudly pointed to the car, which he had colored in the exact colors it was in the movie, and 00d seventy percent of his coloring was in the lines. It was as if he only wanted to color the car but felt obligated to finish the page before moving on to another page.

Itook the picture and crossed the kitchen. “I think this one is good enough for the fridge.”

I pulled a length of tape from the tape dispenser on a nearby table and stuck the picture up with tape to the four corners. One of the nice things about having a commercial refrigerator was its large door space. I had room for lots of pictures, which was a good thing because Robbie loved to draw and color.

“I'm gonna tell Lacey you put it on the fridge,” he beamed, so completely proud of having his picture on the refrigerator.

“Is Lacey back from class already?” I asked as I slid the cupcake trays into the oven and set the timer.

I followed as Robbie pushed through the kitchen door and back into the café area. He had a little set up in the corner where he could color and play with cars during slower times and for when he wasn't at school. He had grown up in the café. My staff and regulars had helped me to keep an eye on him.

No truer words had ever been said than that old saying “it takes a village to raise a child. Without his father in the picture, and without my parents, I needed my village.

I'scanned the seating area. I didn't see Lacey anywhere.

“I thought you said Lacey was here,” I said.

Robbie shook his head and pointed at the big clock on the wall. “She'll be here when the big hand is on the six. She said three-thirty”

My baby was getting so big, and so smart. When had he learned how to tell time? I picked him up and gave him a big sloppy kiss on his temple. He squirmed and giggled. In return, he gave me an equally sloppy, and infinitely stickier kiss back.

“Let me know when Lacey gets here, okay, baby?”

“Uh-huh.” he was already back to coloring another car.This is property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

Based on his genetics he should have been crazy for motorcycles, I guess cars weren't too far removed.

I gave the front case a quick look. I needed to get those cupcakes finished for the evening after-work rush.

“I'm in the kitchen if you need anything I announced as I stepped back into my domain.

I loved baking. After all these years, I still wanted to make cupcakes. When I had inherited Love Buns, I had thought I wanted something else with my life, and I did the work because it was the only way I could hold onto memories of my parents. But now, this was mine. I had not only continued running the coffee shop successfully, but I had also created something with my baking. I had customers from the other side of town travel just to see what I had in the case for the day. People constantly asked me to branch out and make their birthday cakes, and their wedding cakes.

I hadn't ever planned on taking the business in that direction. Then again, I hadn't exactly planned where I was now. The buzzer sounded, and I pulled the pans from the oven and set them out to cool.

I crossed over to the table that served as my desk and picked up the list of supplies I needed to order. I needed to up my cream cheese order, and I was pitifully low on flour. If I hadn't checked in the last order, I would almost think I had been shorted. I looked at my production schedule and looked back at my order. Yeah, cupcake production was up. Way up.

I pushed back into the café.

“Hey Miguel, have cupcake sales almost doubled this month?” I waited as he finished with a customer.

“It seems like it. Did you see my request for more boxes?”

Ishook my head. “I didn't. Four packs?”

“Fours and sixes," he said.

If baking was my happy place, then ordering the proper amount of supplies was on the other side of a barbed wire fence to my comfort zone. I had been more content lately, maybe I had really been baking a lot more and accepted being happier while I clearly had not been paying proper attention to my supply needs.

The phone rang interrupting my thoughts. Yeah, I needed to callin this order.

“Love Buns."

I half paid attention to Miguel as he answered the phone and distracted headed back to my little office space. The phone burped. I pushed the speaker function. “Yeah?”

“Some real estate agent wants to talk to you,” Miguel's voice sounded distorted through the speaker.

“Thanks,” I said. I lifted the handset. “May I help you?"

“Today is your lucky day” the woman on the other end of the call gushed. “We're getting exciting offers on your property.” “Uh, you're getting offers? Interesting, considering my property is not for sale. Buh-bye." I hung up and rolled my eyes. The gall of some people.

I went to pull down the ingredients I needed for frosting. I was insanely low on powdered sugar. I wrote powder on a sticky note and slapped it against the growing stack of sticky notes that made up my shopping list.

The kitchen doors swung open again and Lacey leaned in. She was only a few years younger than I was, but she looked like she was barely fourteen, all fresh faced and full of enthusiasm and exceptions for her future. A senior at Washington University, she rented my top floor, for cheap, because she also watched Robbie for me all the time.

“Hey Gabby," Lacey said with a wave.

Her blonde hair swung like heavy silk thread, smooth and shiny. I was pretty sure that I had flour in my hair. My unruly mop was pulled back and hidden under a bandana. Compared to her, I was the personification of jaded and bitter.

“I've got Robbie. We're headed upstairs. I saw a video of this great recipe, it looked really yummy, mind if I make dinner?” “What is it?" I asked, more out of curiosity than concern.

Lacey's culinary experimentation was mostly hit, with a few instances of miss. If she wanted to cook, she was welcome to the food in my kitchen. The second-floor apartment had a decent sized kitchen. Nothing like the commercial one for the café, but it was huge in comparison to the kitchenette on the third floor.

“Shakshuka," she said. “It's some egg dish with peppers and tomatoes, and it looks really good,” she said.

“Sounds good to me. You know where to find me if you need anything," I said.

I waved as she left. I turned my attention to mixing the frosting I would use on the cooling cupcakes. I set that aside and returned to my order list.

The phone rang. I picked it up.

“Love Buns,” I said.

“This is an inquiry call regarding the property your café is located in. Do you have contact information for the owner?” “How can I help you?" I asked.

“Are you aware of your property's value?”

“Seriously?” I hung up without saying anything else.

My list was almost finished. I hated calling my supplier without a detailed list of my needs. He let me still call in the order when I knew he preferred it to be placed over the internet. I ignored the phone when it rang again, letting Miguel handle it. The phone buzzed again. “I've got it," I said over the speakerphone.

“This property is not for sale” I immediately said, picking up the call.

“Ah, I was calling about cupcakes, do I have the wrong number?”

“Oh, 'm 50 sorry. I've had two weird calls back-to-back about buying this place," I explained. “You wanted cupcakes. How car I help you?”

Itook the special cupcake order, and finally called my supplier and ordered more of everything than I thought I would need. finished frosting the cupcakes, and then I looked at the clock. How was it almost five? Lacey had just been here, and that ha been three-thirty.

I pulled my kitchen apron off and tossed it in the laundry, washed up, and put on a clean apron to help out front. Miguel wa: good, but the evening rush could be crazy.

I carried a tray of cupcakes out and began stocking the case. The flow of customers increased as expected. Nothing out of the usual for us on a weekday.

Except for when the ghost of my past walked through the doors. He had to be a ghost because Nathan Anderson had stopped calling my phone at some point in the past three or four years.