Chapter One

Matthew opens shop at a quarter to five, turning his key in the lock and wiping off the grime of the streets and the early morning mud from his shoes before pushing the door open. The bell chimes a jaunty tune when he steps inside, and the familiar smell of the cold autumn air follows him in. It’s a simple enough routine, opening the store every morning, taking the chairs down from the tables and rolling up the heavy window shades, watching the sun peek out from between the gaps in the city skyline as he dusts off the counters and sets up the display cabinet. It’s a routine he’s perfected and fallen in love with over the past five years, ever since he bought the little shop in the first place.

Tuesday morning means early customers stopping in for a coffee and a bagel on their way to work, so he sets a pot to brew before slipping through the back into the kitchen, propping the swinging door open in case anyone comes in before Margaret comes in to work the counter. It’s not likely, he knows, since she’s never once been late in the three years she’s worked for him and even the early birds usually don’t start trickling in until about half past five. The bakery is blissfully silent until then, quiet apart from the hum of the mixers and the scrape of jars against the shelves as he pulls down ingredients to measure them out.

He’s got a system for baking that he hardly has to think over after all this time. Bread first, heating up the oven and tossing in the dough that he left to sit overnight, then muffins, since they’re quick and can be reheated for customers, then work on pastries while everything else is baking. It’s multitasking at its finest, and more than once Margaret has come in early and balked at the sight of all the activity in the kitchen so early in the morning. She had offered to help once or twice, but it didn’t take Matt long to figure out she could fix a mean latte but couldn’t bake worth two cents, and she settled for taking orders during the day and sitting in the kitchen for cooking lessons at night, once Matt closed the store and set to work preparing the overnight recipes for the next morning.

The bell chimes while Matt is in the middle of piping out neat macaron circles onto a baking sheet, and he doesn’t bother breaking his concentration when he calls out his hello to Margaret through the kitchen doorway. She’s worked with him long enough, she knows how distracted he can be while he’s baking, and she’s plenty capable of setting up the counter and taking care of customers on her own. She might be young but she’s more responsible than half the adults Matt knows, and every now and then he feels a bit like a proud father when she manages something new on her own.

The click of heels breaks the silence, though, and that gets Matt to pause. Margaret isn’t particularly in the habit of wearing heels to work, even if she is barely tall enough to stand comfortably at the register.

“Am I a bit early?” comes a voice, decidedly feminine and perfectly articulated, and Matt looks up through the doorway to see a woman in a tailored, expensive-looking suit standing in front of the counter, tapping away on a tablet with one hand and holding a thin folder in the other. Matt jerks himself upright, trying to wipe his flour-covered hands on his apron and succeeding only in making himself look like the victim of a particularly powdery attack.

“Sorry,” he says, ducking through the back doorway and stepping up to the counter. The woman looks more intimidating up close, a hard set to her mouth and a posture that screams something between business and mafia boss. Matt feels a bit like a little kid standing in front of her, even though he’s several inches taller than her including the heels. “I thought you were my barista.”

She nods at him, tucking the tablet into her purse and sticking out a hand for him to shake. He takes it, uncomfortably aware of the fact that his hands are still covered in flour. “Karen,” she says, shaking his hand with a grip much stronger than her thin figure would suggest. “Karen Clarke, from Clarke’s Events.”

“The wedding planners?” Matt says, taken aback. Clarke’s was a big name even if you weren’t in the business, they covered weddings for high-profile celebrities and senators, and they were about as lavish and expensive as it gets. The most Matt had ever done was the occasional private wedding, he’s not exactly running a big-name bakery. It’s more of a pit stop for businessmen and a lunch hour go-to; his only regulars are a few students from the university down the way and a handful of retirees that sit in because he keeps newspapers instead of televisions and sets his thermostat to a comfortable seventy-eight degrees.

“Event planners. You’ve heard of us, then?” Karen says, pulling her hand back and setting her folder on the counter between them. “That’s good.”

“It is?”

“We’d like to extend our friendship to you and your business, Matthew,” said Karen, sliding the folder across to Matt with one manicured hand, and he ran through their brief conversation to figure out when he had told her his name before remembering that it was on the sign just outside the door. He took the folder that she had given him, flipping it open to the first page, decorated with a collage of various snapshots of wedding decorations, all in light pink and gold. “You came highly recommended.”

“I did?” Matt couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. He knows his bakery is good, it’s well-liked, but it’s more of a local niche than a big-name shop like the ones that work with Clarke’s. He’s seen the articles covering the big weddings. He knows the types that they work with, and he isn’t it.

Still, he’s smart enough not to question it. Gift horse, mouth, or something along those lines. He flips to the next page, a full-sheet picture of a woman in a wedding dress, cropped above the shoulders to keep the face out of the shot. “You want a cake?” he asks, looking back up at Karen, who is tapping away at her tablet again. He isn’t sure when she had pulled it back out, but he’s a little too blown away to be very perceptive, so he doesn’t question it.

“Four layers, square. Gold trim, the rest of the design is up to you.” Matt blinks down at her, at a loss for words. “One of our people can be in at your earliest convenience to test flavors.”

One of our people. God, it sounds like a cheesy movie line, something out of one of those B-rated action films that his little sister loves to watch ironically. He nods at her dazedly, flipping to the next page in the folder without looking down. He gets a smile in return, sharp and business-like, and Karen sets her tablet down on the counter between them.

“A confidentiality agreement,” she says, gesturing to the line that Matt assumes he’s meant to sign on. “It’s a private wedding, and the senator doesn’t particularly want his daughter’s personal life ending up in the gossip rags.”

How is this his life.

“Oh,” Karen adds, as he’s signing his name. “What day works for you?”

Right, the taste test. That’s something Matt can work with, more familiar than non-disclosure agreements and working for senators and Clarke’s Events. “How’s Thursday?” That should give him enough time to plan out flavors and bake something good, he does not want to mess this up.

“Thursday is perfect. We’ll be in at one. Can I get two poppy seed bagels, please?”

Matt hands them over almost wordlessly, still trying to process exactly what just happened when Karen takes the paper bag and slides him a five dollar bill.

“Thanks,” she says curtly as Matt rings her up, then she is gone in a whirlwind of blonde hair and black heels.  Matt has just enough time to lean over the counter and drop his head into his hands before Margaret walks through the door, stopping short when she sees him.