As Clementine Bell has learned, running a successful NYC patisserie is tougher than it looks. Even with training in classical French baking from the best school in the world, getting people to walk through the doors to the Clementhyme Bakery proves...
Her mom had already paid her rent once before. Clementine would have been too proud to ask for help from her mom again had she not been mortified to be relying on Mr. Sopov's charity to keep the doors to Clementhyme open.
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Juniper Bell, still wearing the foam spa sandals from her weekly pedicure, pounded on the locked bakery door within an hour of Clementine's "SOS" text.
Clementine was elbow deep in cake batter for the next day's cupcakes when she heard the frantic rap of knuckles on the glass. Klaus, her sous-chef, rushed to the door to let her in.
"What does the SOS mean?" Juniper yelled from the threshold. "Is everything okay?"
"I'm fine, mom," Clementine called from the kitchen. "Come back here and help me frost cupcakes." That was Bell code for "I need to tell you something important."
Her mom, the daytime cable cooking show host and face that launched a thousand cookbooks entered the kitchen with all the drama Clementine had come to expect from the woman whose critics called her obnoxious and whose fans called her ebullient. Gordon Ramsey once told her mother that listening to her show was like listening to nails in a blender.
Bangles aclatter, she pulled Clementine into a Chanel-scented hug. "Where's a piping bag?" she asked as she released Clem and went to the sink to wash her hands.
Clementine scooped rose buttercream frosting into a pastry bag and passed it to her mom along with a tray of cooled cupcakes. "What is it, baby?" Juniper asked as her hands moved the angled tip of the pastry bag to form perfect rose petals.
"I can't pay my rent."
Her mom didn't look up from the rose before moving on to the next. Clementine wasn't sure what she would say. When she'd first expressed her wish to open a bakery, her mom had begged to help out with the rent for a property in a better location, one with more foot traffic. But Clementine had refused. She wanted to do things on her own, to reach her goals by the work of her own two hands and not by her parents' names. Juniper had always begrudgingly respected that.
"This place is in a terrible location. It seems to me you have a customer problem rather than a rent problem," she said. "Why don't you let me plug the bakery the next time I'm on one of the New York morning shows?"
Klaus came over and pulled up a seat beside Juniper. He spoke mostly German, but he was always enamored with Clementine's mom. She loved it, but Clementine knew Klaus and his culinary school friends had turned her show into a drinking game where they took a drink anytime she said something was "scrumptious."
"No," Clementine said, though the offer was tempting. "I need customers to come, but you know how much it means to me to do this on my own."
Her mother looked up from the buttercream rose with a frown. "You know you don't have to do it on your own, don't you?"
