Chapter 4 - The Man With Two Coffees
Grace left Colin waiting beside a table of people eating hash browns. She finished the breakfast orders, washed the counter, and checked that Mabel could spare her for ten minutes. The old version of Grace would have rushed out, terrified of seeming rude. The woman who now got up at four in the morning to feed other people's children had learned how long ten minutes could last when a hungry person was waiting.
Colin rose when she approached. “You look well.”
“You look like you drove a long way.”
“I did. I heard you were here.” He held out a coffee. “The way you like it.”
Grace declined. She had stopped drinking the heavily sweetened coffee he'd ordered for her years ago, but correcting him would have given him an opening into a conversation she did not want. “Why are you here?”
He placed both cups on the table. “I owe you an apology.”
“Then say it.”
“What happened before the wedding was badly handled.”
“It was a decision, Colin. Not a shipping delay.”
He flinched, then smoothed his face. “I was under pressure. Investors wanted a public-facing couple, and I convinced myself you would be miserable. I should have talked to you sooner.”
“You should have let me decide whether I was miserable. You decided I was unsuitable and told me three days before the ceremony.”
“I know.” He paused. “That's why I also came with a professional opportunity. We're launching a breakfast line. I'd like you to lead the pastry development. Proper salary. Your own team.”
Grace thought about the magazine. “Would it include credit for the recipes I developed?”
“Of course, where appropriate.”
“Where appropriate means someone other than me decides.”
Colin's jaw tightened. “This could put you in stores across the country.”
“I have a job.”
“At that man's house?”
She watched his attempt at concern arrive a beat too late. “I also work here. Which job did you come to discuss?”
“I know who Vincent Marchetti is. You're better than being a rich man's kitchen secret.”
Grace stood. “I'm a paid employee with a contract. You don't get to humiliate me for working in a kitchen after spending four years telling people you were proud of my baking.”
Mabel appeared at the counter, holding a tray. “Grace, the cardamom buns need your verdict.”
“Coming.” Grace looked at Colin one last time. “You can send a written proposal. Don't come to my workplace to talk about our past again.”
That evening Colin's offer arrived, along with a nondisclosure agreement and a clause assigning all recipes developed during employment to Avery Fine Foods. Grace read it twice. She didn't sign. She asked an attorney recommended by Mabel what rights she actually had in her notebooks and what a future employment agreement could cover. The attorney warned against assuming that a list of ingredients was exclusive intellectual property, but said contracts, photographs, branding statements, and the history of their communications were worth reviewing before Grace made any public accusations.
On Monday, a local lifestyle account published a photograph of Grace carrying baking boxes through the Marchetti gate. The caption called her Vincent's “mystery companion.” The picture came from a public road; Grace had no evidence Colin arranged it, although its timing bothered her. By lunchtime strangers had begun speculating online about why a man with Vincent's reputation had hired a woman who'd abandoned a wealthy fiancé. At the diner, an older customer asked if Grace had “traded up.” Mabel set his coffee down with enough force to splash the saucer.
“Her employment isn't breakfast entertainment,” Mabel told him. “Order or leave.”
Grace appreciated the intervention but hated needing it. At the mansion, Vincent had already seen the post. He called her into the library and offered to contact the account through his lawyer. Then he added, “I can make them stop.”
Grace looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means I know people.”
“Then don't send them. A letter asking for factual corrections, if counsel thinks it's appropriate, is fine. Intimidating someone would make their story believable.”
Vincent was silent for so long that she wondered whether she'd been reckless. Finally he said, “You're right.” He pressed the intercom. “Rosa, please ask counsel for an ordinary privacy review. No calls from security.”
The answer surprised her. He looked less comfortable with restraint than with anger, but he had chosen it. “The children haven't seen it,” he said. “I'd like to keep it that way.”
“Ask Rosa to help with the adults who use phones around them,” Grace replied. “Don't tell June not to notice things. She will.”
That night, June came downstairs while Grace put away flour. “A kid at school said you're our new mom.”
Grace turned off the mixer. “What did you say?”
“I said no.” June's chin trembled. “Then he said your picture was on his mom's phone, and people get married after they move into big houses.”
“I don't live here.”
“You're here every morning.”
“That's true. I work here, and I care about you. Your mom is Lucia. Nobody can take her place.”
May you like
June stared at the recipe notebook in Grace's hands. “People say that,” she whispered. “Then they stay until you get used to them. Then they go.” She ran upstairs before Grace could answer.
Grace didn't chase her. She found Rosa, told her what June had said, and asked her to tell Vincent. Later, standing outside the upstairs hall, she heard June crying behind a closed door and Vincent asking whether he could come in. He waited for her answer rather than turning the handle. Grace went back to the kitchen, where the dough was slowly rising without anybody forcing it. She checked the next morning's ingredient list, set June's favorite cereal within reach, and resisted the urge to invent a spectacular breakfast that would make a little girl forgive everybody. There was nothing wrong with June being angry. She had lost her mother, watched adults come and go, and learned about a supposed new parent from a stranger at school. Grace could offer a steady schedule and a truthful answer; she could not offer certainty about an entire lifetime. When she left, she told Rosa exactly when she would be back.
