Advice

"There's some feedback from takeout orders today," Meredith said to Layla.

She passed the patisserie's laptop to her manager. The feedback had been very standard. It had all been mostly complimentary with a few negative points being about the courier they used and people being nitpickety about the condition the order arrived in. However the one at the end of the listing was a standout one for more than one reason.

"Oh!" Layla exclaimed when she got to the bottom of the page to read the final customer feedback message.

She had gained a fan and someone thought she was cute. It was enough to make her beam at the laptop screen. It wasn't often that someone wrote something as positive as that.

"It gets even better," Meredith added. "Because of the unique code on every card we know where their delivery went and what they ordered. This delivery went to Ainsworth Investment."

The implied meaning was clear. Meredith and Gracie loved to tease her about Lucas. When he first started coming to her patisserie they were the ones that identified him as being the president of Ainsworth Investment. She would have never guessed or wanted to track down his job. She wasn't that nosy and she didn't want anything to do with rich people.

She valiantly tried to ignore the blush on her cheeks.

"It doesn't mean it's him ordering it just because it's his company," she protested. "There must be hundreds of employees there."

Their feedback system never included the name or the payment details of the sender because it would be too much of a privacy breach so for all she knew it could have been Lucas himself or someone random in the building like the caretaker.

Meredith pouted in disappointment at her lukewarm response and finally got to work tidying the wrapping paper behind the counter. Gracie was reducing the prices of the leftover sandwiches.

Layla sighed and opened up a spreadsheet to take a look at their takings for the previous week. The accounts were looking healthy. She could pay the bills, her personal bills and her employees. It was just that she wanted to have more money so she could expand a little into other areas and prove to herself that she could run a business successfully. Using the remainder of her inheritance felt like cheating.

From her childhood she had loved the idea of baking. Originally it had just been an idea because her family had people to cook for them and told her she had no place in the kitchen as a rich young heiress. Eventually she had found the courage to get started and hadn't stopped.

The Huntington family business was banking. She hadn't been intended to take over the family business for one very simple and petty reason. She was a girl and the Huntington family values were archaic in every way. Instead she was expected to marry a person that would take it over.

The prospect of having to marry someone that would be chosen for her wasn't attractive to her. She wanted to be able to choose someone because she loved them and not because they would be good at running a banking business.

The teenage romance stories she had always read gave her the idea that she would find someone that loved her and they might not necessarily be someone her parents approved of, but he would train up and they would magically change their minds. Then it would be a happy ever after for her.

Instead she had been sent to an all-girls school where she had been expected to maintain first place in her studies with no prospects of meeting any boys. Sometimes she had fantasied about her school's collaborations with the nearby mixed school or seeing boys in the town when they were allowed out.

Her reality had been dull and colourless. The boys she had managed to see had been rude and crass and most of her focus had been on her studies.

She had gone quite far to obtain a colourful life. Giving up a rich family had been a little hard, but she had done it after seeing the preparations for her arranged marriage when she turned 18.

"We need more money," she said out loud.

Gracie came to look over her shoulder and frowned when she saw the figures.

"They're fine, we aren't in the red. Boss, are you obsessed with making money?"

"No. I just can't afford to lose it," was the simple answer. "I need contingency money."

"Ask Lucas for financial advice, he runs an investment company," Gracie replied with a bright face. "Then you can use it to get close to him."

Layla's face heated up at the thought of getting close to Lucas. It would be nice to see his lovely eyes up close. The mental image of his deep brown eyes staring deeply into hers was too much for her and she felt her whole body heat up.

"Boss, are you all right?" Gracie asked. "I can get you some cold medicine."

The pâtissier shook her head weakly. She knew she looked a mess. Lucas could never like someone like her. She became a blushing mess just by fantasising things.

"I'll be fine," she said and closed the lid of the laptop. "I'll make some macaroons."

Macarons were a popular product and they had the added bonus of being easy to make with little ingredients. All she had to decide was the flavour and the colour. They always sold better if they were a more unnatural colour. Layla assumed they made better instagram photos that way.

Thinking about social media gave her an ideal to attract different customers.

***

Lucas stared at the window display of Sweet Cake Patisserie. The display in question hadn't been there the night before so he was having a look now. The centrepiece of the display was a large cake decorated with fondant roses and was topped with two figurines of a bride and groom that looked out of fondant. The cake was surrounded by smaller frosted cupcakes. He raised an eyebrow, it wasn't Layla's style.

Something must be troubling her to suddenly go all out and make a display like this. He knew her well enough by now to know what she expressed her worries through baking.

A figure came to the window and picked out one of the cupcakes. She lifted her head up and their eyes met. It was Layla herself.

Lucas grinned and waved at her. Layla turned away and he could see her returning to the counter and arranging the cupcake on a plate for the customer. A moment later she opened the door for him and he felt the heat hit his cold body.

"It's getting cold outside," she said. "You should have come in sooner instead of staring through the window."

"I was checking out your window display," he explained and took a look to see what it looked like inside.

Now he was seeing it in better light he saw the unnatural colours used for the frosting on the cakes. There was a deep purple intertwined with an iridescent looking green. Other cupcakes had social media symbols on them shaped with chocolate beans.

"You've changed your style a lot," he observed and Layla flushed red.

Meredith came over and joined them at the window display.

"She wants more money and is trying to appeal to a different market," she informed him with a pout. "She's got it right though, we've had social media obsessed customers buying them to take photos to put on their accounts."

"Are you doing badly?" he asked immediately.

He wouldn't be able to bear the patisserie closing down. The amount of customers was always high and it had consistently good reviews. Surely it wasn't in trouble…

"…No," Layla answered with a hint of hesitation. "We are doing fine and I don't have any personal debts."

That was reassuring for Lucas to hear and he was able to relax a little. He was still wondering why she was suddenly interested in pushing sales.

"…I just want to be able to expand my business."

Now he understood her perfectly.

"Would you like me to help you out with that?" he asked hopefully. "I'm the president of an investment company in case you hadn't noticed."