Kandy Shepherd - One Winter's Day

Sandy, whose background was in advertising and marketing, had told her not to worry about all that—it was up to her to promote the new business. It was up to Lizzie to make the food—and the coffee—good enough for people to return again and again. It was all about the food, Sandy had said several times.

Lizzie took a deep steadying breath. She was confident the food was good, that she could hold up her end of the deal. Service had to be good too. Fingers crossed that Nikki, the young barista, could deal with the pressure.

She kept looking up to see if any early customers had arrived yet. The best marketing for a café was a line of people waiting to get in—though the line couldn’t be so long that it put people off.

She was packing one of the big glass jars with freshly baked salted caramel and pecan cookies. She looked up again. And then again. But in the end she had to admit to herself she wasn’t looking for early customers peering through the plate-glass windows. She was looking for Jesse.

Jesse, who had taken off to Sydney on Sunday, telling her he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday evening.

One part of her was upset he would go to Sydney just days before the café was due to open. Another part of her knew she had no right to expect him to be there to help her with all those last-minute things. Especially when she had told him in no uncertain terms she would never want to date him. Both Sandy and Ben had been there after hours to help instead.

Of course the kisses on the beach had changed things between them. How could they not? The kisses at the wedding had been with a hot guy she scarcely knew. But the beach kisses had been with her friend Jesse, a man she’d got to like and in whose company she felt at ease. His kisses had been sensuous, exciting, arousing—but, more than that, it had felt somehow right to be sharing such pleasure with Jesse. In spite of all the strikes against him.

She missed him. She missed him more than she could have imagined. She missed his laugh, she missed his manly way of getting things done, most of all she missed that wonderful feeling of being in his arms. Had she been mistaken about him?

She thought about what she’d said to him on the beach, when she’d tried to be honest, but had succeeded only in wounding him—she’d seen the hurt in his eyes. Was she wrong in filing him under P for Player, with a sub-category of H for Heartbreaker? Had she misjudged him? After all, she still didn’t know him that well. But what she’d got to know she liked. Liked a lot.

Her caution stemmed from his reputation. But surely her own sister wouldn’t have warned her against him if there hadn’t been something to be cautious about?

She’d met Philippe when she was twenty-one and had only had one serious boyfriend before him and none after him. Truth was, she didn’t have a lot of man mileage on the clock and not a lot of experience on which to make judgements.

Delicious smells wafted into the café, reminding her she needed to be back in that kitchen. Tension was mounting. There had been raised voices, tears, the odd thrown utensil but now all was calm efficiency again.

By seven-twenty a.m. there was a line-up outside the door. By seven forty-five she was so run off her feet she didn’t have time to worry about missing Jesse. By eight-thirty young Nikki was in such a fluster managing the constant orders for coffee, Lizzie could see customers tapping impatiently on table tops waiting for their cappuccino, skinny lattes, flat whites and so on. Nightmare!

As she plated an order for French toast with caramelised bananas and blueberries she tried to think what to do. Ask Sandy if she could borrow another waitress from the Hotel Harbourside? Make coffees herself? She’d run through the machine a few times to familiarise herself with it and could probably churn out a halfway acceptable beverage.

Whatever she did, she had to keep calm—if she didn’t the whole place would fall apart. She’d have to expect teething problems, Jesse had said. But paying customers were harsh critics. A café would live or die on the reputation of its coffee—if she didn’t fix the coffee problem Bay Bites would be going backwards on its first day.

Then, at eight thirty-five, Jesse was there. In the kitchen beside her, tying on his blue-striped apron, joking to the staff that he’d be in trouble with the boss for being tardy.

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart started to hammer so fast she felt giddy. Jesse. She ached to throw her arms around him and tell him how glad she was to see him. How she’d felt as though part of her was missing when he wasn’t here. But that couldn’t happen. They were friends. And he was talking to her as if she were the boss and he was the volunteer helper who was late for work. As it should be, of course. She swallowed down hard on a wave of irrational disappointment.

‘I got caught up so couldn’t get here until now,’ he explained with nothing more than courtesy.

She didn’t care where he’d been, just so long as he was with her now. She forced her voice to sound professional and boss-like. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Nikki isn’t coping with the coffee. If I can ask—’

‘I’ll take over the coffee machine.’

‘What do you mean? How can you do that?’

‘I worked a coffee machine when I was a student. Got quite good at it.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Thought I’d be too rusty to be of any use to you. While I was in Sydney I did a barista course to get me up to speed.’

‘You what? ’

He pulled out a folded up sheet of paper from one pocket then a glasses case from the other. He put on black-framed glasses and unfolded the paper. ‘It’s a certificate proving I’m officially accredited as a barista. Turns out since I last did this, I first had to do a course in kitchen hygiene so I’ve got that qualification there too.’ He added the last sentence in his mock modest, self-deprecating way she liked so much.

Lizzie didn’t know what shocked her most—the fact Jesse had gone to Sydney to train as a barista or how hot he looked in glasses. It added a whole extra layer of hotness to his appeal—not that he actually needed any extra layers.

She lowered her voice so the chef and the kitchen hand who were working nearby couldn’t overhear her. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘I knew you were worried about Nikki. I wanted to help. But I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be more hindrance than help if I’d forgotten how to froth the milk. Turns out I hadn’t. And I got a good score for my coffee art, too.’

She stared at him. ‘You can do coffee art?’

‘Rosettes, hearts. I need some more practice to do a dolphin but I’ll get there,’ he said, deadpan.

‘I’m seriously impressed,’ she said. He’d done it for her and her heart skipped a beat at the thought.

‘It’s just steamed milk on espresso, not difficult really.’

As a chef, she knew presentation was a big part of customer appreciation. These days, people had very high expectations of their coffee; they wanted it to look good as well as taste good.

‘There’s more than that to it; I didn’t know you were an artist.’ Then she remembered he’d studied art in high school. She was beginning to realise she still had a lot to learn about Jesse. What other surprises were waiting to be discovered?

He shrugged and then winced. ‘Your shoulder? What did the doctor say?’ she asked.

‘It’s healing much better than expected,’ he said. ‘I can probably go back to work soon.’

Her heart plummeted to the level of her clogs.

‘That’s good,’ she said, forcing her voice to be level.

At the back of her mind she’d thought she’d at least have a few more weeks with him around. But there was no time to ask what he intended to do. It would have to wait. Even in the few minutes she’d been speaking to him the orders were piling up.