Baby on Board

5

"Yeah?" Nate's eye widened with pride as he looked back on his creation. "I mean, I know it's not up to Arnaud standards but it isn't half bad is it?!"

I laughed at the way his face lit up and was about to give him some more words of encouragement but I was interrupted by Aimee, who sauntered through the door with arms full of dishes. She glared at me, muttered something about being a skivvy and then huffed as she returned to the shop front. Behind me, I heard Arnaud grumble, his distinctive French drawl muttering, "Conne." I tutted at him for name-calling Aimee but he didn't seem to care.

"Can you make me a crepe cake, please?" I sweetly ask the two men. I'd recently been craving sweet treats, which would explain the bloated stomach as well as the constant nausea I felt. I wasn't one to overindulge but in the past week or two, I literally cannot walk by the pâtisserie stands without drooling. Naturally, the drooling was followed by the rapid consumption of far too much dessert. "Oh, can you make the rainbow ones? With chocolate sauce? No, wait! Maple syrup. No... chocolate sauce. And maple syrup. Both, I'll have both. I want a big stack of them."

They both stared at me like I'd grown two heads. Realising that I hadn't added any pleasantries, I smiled and said, "Thanks!" before returning to the shop. There were a few empty tables that needed clearing and I quickly set about work- towering the dishes together, taking them into the kitchen and stacking the washer, before wiping the tables down and resetting the chairs neatly.

I was cleaning another table when I heard someone behind me laugh. "Well, I never thought I'd see Charlotte Delaney working up a sweat like this," I heard Clark Reiss say. Turning, I see him shaking his head at me, amusement lighting up his face. "I thought you had staff that did this kind of thing."

Rolling my eyes, I ignored Clark and went back to cleaning more tables. It didn't surprise me that he was here, after all, he was trying to steal my business from under me. Until he'd taken what he'd come to London to get, Clark was staying put and that meant having to see his ugly but oh so gorgeous face at least once a day. He was the only person who spent more time at La Petite Pâtisserie than I did.

Five minutes after Clark's arrival, the morning rush was over and I finally had time to sit and take a break. With the coffee side of the shop quieter, I tasked Aimee and Joanne to share Lauren's responsibilities while I sat with Clark and devoured my chocolate sauce and maple syrup covered crepe cake.

"Whatever that is," Clark frowned as he pointed at my dessert. "It looks disgusting."

"Looks can be deceiving," I stated as I brought the forkful of gooey goodness up to my mouth. When the taste sensation hits my tongue, I couldn't help but moan at how good it tasted. I didn't realise just how pornographic I sounded until I saw Clark's eyebrows quickly rise up to meet his hairline. Unabashed, I pointed at my plate and smiled. "Honestly, there was nothing in this world better than everything Arnaud makes. The man is a genius. I would offer you some of it but I'm too selfish to share right now."

While I ate, Clark set his MacBook on the table and scattered some paperwork. In stark black and white, I could see the figures for my business since its inception and the changes that Clark wanted to make. Some of the plans he had were elaborate- one even included moving the business to another location in London. I couldn't help but baulk at that idea because one of the selling points of La Petite Pâtisserie is that it's not in the most obvious, accessible areas of the city.

Yes, he could up his profits by getting a new building but the exclusivity of LPP would be lost. All those women who come in here to buy their weekly treat after nipping into Harrods wouldn't dare step foot inside if it was bustling with hipster types. All those wealthy mothers-in-name-only wouldn't purchase their bouncing baby's birthday cake from us, either, if all the other glamorous mummies at the school gates were also flaunting their LPP cakes, either. Clark may now how to crunch numbers but I know my customer base and if there's one thing I know about them, it's this- they would pay a hundred times over to get an Arnaud creation what anyone on the street would pay.