Single Life

Layla consulted her chocolate chip cookie recipe for the fourth time in two minutes. She was itching to get back to the kitchen, but she couldn't leave the counter. Meredith was on a smoke break and Gracie was having a toilet break which left her to greet the customers.

The bell above the door tingled so she looked up to greet the customer and paused when she realised who the customer was.

"Lucas?"

It was only 10 o'clock in the morning. He never came until very late afternoon at the earliest. He was never dressed in casual clothes either. Instead of a suit, he was wearing jeans and a well-worn black leather jacket. Layla stared at him for a moment before recovering, the tightness of his jeans and jacket had caused her brain to short circuit. He was well built to say the least.

"Do you have the day off work?" she asked as soon as her mind had recovered from the shock.

From previous conversations she had learnt that he only had one day off work which was Sunday and he spent that one sleeping. He was undeniably a hard worker.

"I'm having a holiday," he explained. "It's my 25th birthday next week."

Layla raised an eyebrow. He never took a holiday and he was now dropping the bombshell that he had an important birthday coming up. There was something odd going on.

"You should have told me earlier," she complained. "I need more time to plan a proper cake for you."

Lucas smiled so widely that his eyes turned up into cute crescent moons. Layla nearly swooned at the sight. He was a force to behold.

"Really? I can't wait."

Then a dark expression spread across his face.

"You're mean. You make to want my birthday to come faster, but I don't want it to," his voice broke and Layla frowned.

She had a gut feeling of what was waiting for him. Gracie barged past Layla and announced she was back from her toilet break which broke the tension. The pâtissier followed her instincts and took action.

"Come with me," she ordered Lucas and led him to the kitchen.

She found a stool for him and he sat down on it with a confused expression.

"Layla?"

"I'll give you a special event the day before your birthday," she said. "Let's plan it now."

The happiness on Lucas's face could power Earth for a year. Layla smiled back; it was hard not to.

"Can I come here every day until my birthday?" he requested. "I always feel happy and relaxed when I'm here."

Layla considered it. Whilst she loved seeing Lucas, having him hanging around all day might be difficult because he was a little distracting.

Lucas intercepted her facial expressions differently.

"I will work on your investment plan when I get back to work. I can do some work towards it now," he offered.

Layla waved her hands. "It's not that. I was just thinking of how to put you to work."

It would be useful to have a man around the place. Especially one with long legs like Lucas. She had wanted to hang streamers from the ceiling and clean it properly, but she wasn't tall enough and neither were her other employees.

"Can you teach me how to make delicious cake?" he requested. "I'll pay you for it."

She didn't need his money; his presence was enough. Not that she was going to word it that way.

"Just another person around the place is help enough," she explained. "I need to get back to my cookies. I have a spare apron you can wear and I'll make you a name tag."

She rifled through a storage box under the cake counter on the shopfloor and pulled out the spare apron and sticky labels. Gracie stared at her curiously.

"Are you going to spill the beans yet, boss?"

"Nope," Layla said cheerfully and returned to the kitchen.

Lucas was the sink squinting at the poster depicting how to wash hands hygienically.

"I think I've washed my hands well enough," he said and scratched the back of his neck nervously.

Layla thought his shyness was adorable, but as the owner she had a fault with it. She wasn't going to let poor food hygiene slip just because she liked him.

"Wash your hands again, you can't touch your skin freely. Take off your rings as well and your watch."

"So strict," he commented and followed her instructions. "What next?"

"How much baking have you done before?"

Lucas itched his neck again and Layla raised an eyebrow threateningly.

"Wash your hands."

The company president found the strict side of Layla intriguing. She seemed more like a sharp business owner than the blushing giggly woman he usually saw. Then again, he was being an idiot by touching his skin when he knew he had to be hygienic.

He washed his hands again and turned to face her again.

"I can't say I've done much baking. To be more precise, I haven't made anything edible."

The last time he had attempted to make a cake, the baking paper had caught fire in the oven, the previous attempt had ended in charcoal and the one before had been raw. Needless to say, he now relied on Layla to provide the cake.

"I'll treat you as a beginner then," Layla said. "Baking isn't technically difficult. You need to know your recipes well and how to fix issues."

As she spoke she began pulling out the ingredients for a basic cake and bowls for weighing. She fished around in the fridge for some eggs. Lucas was a rich boy, he probably didn't know how to crack an egg properly. Normally she used liquid egg, but she always kept some normal eggs on hand for anything involving egg yolks and whites.

"Crack three of these eggs into this bowl and tell me how much it weighs all together."

Lucas's slim fingers picked out an egg from the box and a crease appeared between his eyes. Layla breathed a sigh of relief when he cracked the egg on the table and dropped the egg into the bowl. Lucas wasn't a sheltered rich boy like she had assumed.

"I've used eggs before," he assured her. "I do try to cook for myself. It just never works out."

Layla realised her thoughts had been written on her face. She had been too quick to judge. It was just that without a teacher at school showing her, she would have never learnt what to do in the kitchen.

The next few steps proceeded smoothly. Lucas responded well to her instructions. By now they had a cake mix poured into a lined tin. The company CEO picked up the tray to place in the oven and Layla held out her hand to stop him and ended up touching his hand in the process.

"You need to level it off first," she said after withdrawing her hand quickly. "It's harder to decorate if the top isn't straight."

She smoothed it over skilfully and placed it in the oven herself.

"How long will it take?" Lucas asked.

***

The next twenty minutes were spent in the office together. The office was a small room next to the customer toilets and doubled as a place for cleaning supplies. Layla was very aware of how cramped it was because she could smell Lucas's aftershave very clearly.

It was Dior if she wasn't mistaken. She had a keen sense of smell that came in useful for baking and Gracie liked to test her regularly.

Currently they were doing research together on how to draw in more customers by checking what was trending on social media. After five minutes of going through websites Layla was done with the idea of following a social media viral trend. A lot of them were stupid and pointless and a few were plain dangerous.

"Nothing viral lasts," she sighed. "They get dated so quickly. Going after viral fame won't last."

Lucas nodded approvingly.

"Your idea of making things that appeal to people that upload food on social media was the better idea. That trend has survived for years now and probably will."

Layla glowed at the compliment. It wasn't everyday that she got complimented for her business decisions by the CEO of an investment company.

"I just need some other ideas to get more trade."

Then she realised that they had agreed not to talk business until after his holiday was over and she flushed. It was just that she didn't want to sit around doing nothing

"You have a business mind," was all he commented. "That's good. Some businesses like yours fail because the owners didn't have long term plans for the future."

Layla smiled and closed down her internet browser. If only her parents could see her now. She could run a business without being married.

"Is that your family?"

Layla blinked and realised that he could see her desktop background. It was a photo from on her very few happy childhood memories.

They had gone to the seaside. Her parents had actually gone there to attend a business meeting at a hotel nearby in the evening. However during the day, the three of them had gone to the beach together. Her father tried his best to teach her how to swim whilst her mother taught her how to make sand castles. She had been ten and it was one of the rare times her parents had acted like normal parents.

They had even taken a family photo and she had taken it with her when she left home. The only problem with Lucas seeing it was that he might recognise her parents because they ran in similar circles and those circles of people were close knit. Her employees had seen the photos, Gracie declared her father as a good looking man whilst Meredith thought she looked cute in her frilly spotty swimming costume.

Layla gently closed her laptop.

"They were my family a long time ago," she said softly and the timer started beeping. "Let's check on the cake."

The cake turned out to be impeccably baked. Layla was pleased with how it turned out. It was how it always turned out despite the involvement of someone less competent.

"We have to wait for it to cool before decorating it," Lucas asked. "I learnt that from reading those web posts with cake failures. Then I realise that I would do the same thing myself and it's not fun."

"Those internet posts pain me," Layla groaned.

Lucas burst out laughing. He was learning so much about Layla today. He was determined to make his final week of being single the best of his life.