Chapter
One
CLARA
It figuresthe first time I get a catering order from the city's most infamous billionaire, I show up in a van that sounds like a demon coughing up its last lung. I kill the ignition. Devereux Manor rises in front of me, all obsidian glass and modern angles, less a house and more a spaceship designed by someone with a clinical aversion to coziness. You could fit my whole bakery in the foyer and still have room left for a skating rink.
The air outside is so cold it's like swallowing knives. I haul myself out of the van, scolding the three-tiered croquembouche balanced on the passenger seat. "Don't you even think about toppling now. You are a work of structural genius and the only thing between me and bankruptcy."
The croquembouche does not answer, which is for the best. If it could, it would probably judge me for my Target leggings and bakery t-shirt, both smudged with flour despite three attempts at lint-rolling. No one ever tells you pastry chefs spend half their lives looking like they lost a brawl with a bag of powdered sugar.
This order means everything for Sweet Haven. My little bakery has been hanging on by a thread since I opened last year. One rave review from Alexander Devereux could bring inthe kind of clients who don't blink at spending fifty dollars on a box of macarons. One bad review and I might as well nail the foreclosure sign to the door myself.
The front gate has more security cameras than a Vegas casino. I step up to the intercom, heart jackhammering. "Um, hi. It's Clara Benson from Sweet Haven Bakery? Here with the Christmas order for…Mr. Devereux?" I tack on the question mark because it seems less presumptuous. Also, because my throat is so dry I could sand drywall with it.
The intercom crackles. A voice—male, British, probably the kind of guy who tucks in his t-shirts—says, "Delivery entrance. Around the side, Miss Benson."
"Of course. Thank you." I scuttle back to the van, trying to look like someone who belongs here and not someone about to commit grand theft truffle.
By the time I maneuver the van around the service road, my hands have gone numb against the steering wheel. I park under a massive overhang designed to keep the help from ever getting wet, I guess. The delivery entrance looks more like an ER for baked goods—clean, white, intimidating. A man in a suit that probably costs more than my monthly rent opens the door. He looks at me, then at the croquembouche, then at me again, like trying to figure out which of us is more likely to explode.
"I'm here with the order for—" I start, but he cuts me off with a clipped, "You're late."
I'm not, but I'm not about to argue with the help at Devereux Manor. "Sorry. Traffic on the parkway."
He opens the door wider. "Kitchen's through here."
As I pass, the temperature drops another ten degrees. Inside, the hallway is silent, the air thick with a chemical lemon scent and not even a whiff of cinnamon or butter or sugar. My own bakery always smells like something in the oven is about toeither change your life or set off the fire alarms. Here, it's like being inside a fancy air purifier.
The kitchen is gigantic—more restaurant than home. Stainless steel everything. Counters so clean you could eat off them, though there's not a single dish in sight. Four women in matching aprons are waiting, arms folded, not a smile among them.
I place the croquembouche on the central island, then go back for the boxes of eclairs and the hand-painted macarons. When I come back, they're all staring at the pastry tower like it might hatch.
"Just…put these wherever?" I offer, trying for cheerful and missing by a mile.
One of the aproned women—mid-forties, bun so tight it looks surgically attached—steps forward and inspects my handiwork. I can feel my cheeks heating as she circles the croquembouche. "It will do," she says. Like I delivered a case of toilet paper and not a sugar sculpture that took five hours and a prayer circle to assemble.
"Did you make all this yourself?" she asks, not quite believing it.
"Yes," I say. "And, um, the cookies are individually wrapped for the kids' party, so you can just hand them out or whatever you?—"
"Mr. Devereux will want to see you."
It comes out of nowhere. My jaw drops so hard I nearly unhinge it. "Sorry?"
She repeats it with zero inflection. "Mr. Devereux requested that you present the desserts personally."
I stare at her, the staff, the gleaming kitchen, like maybe I misheard. "I thought I was just supposed to drop off?—"
"Mr. Devereux," she says, as if that's a trump card, "is a stickler for detail."
A stickler for detail. Right. Also, probably a stickler for firing people who can't hold their own under pressure, which would explain his terrifying reputation. I take a deep breath and tell myself it's just a man, a man who happens to own half the city, but still, just a man.
The women watch me assemble the desserts on a silver tray with all the warmth of medical examiners. They open the kitchen's inner door, and I walk into a corridor lined with black marble. My sneakers squeak against the floor. The walls are hung with huge abstract paintings, the kind you see on auction shows, each one worth more than my entire bakery. I nearly trip over a side table with a vase so fragile it might shatter if I breathe too hard.
There's a set of double doors at the end of the hall. One of the women gives a discreet knock, then opens it without waiting for a reply.
"Miss Benson," she announces.
