Because he had friends here.Shehad friends here. There were people that cared about Kira, cared enough to show up when she needed help.
“You’re going to use OpMan to help me, aren’t you,” she said. Santi smiled and brushed his thumb against her cheek.
“Well, I do have an MBA.” He shrugged. “I am excellent at Operations Management. Now tell me every step you need to take from harvesting to packing, and we’ll make a process chart and move forward from there.”
Then Santi got to work, resolute. He was going to help Kira with her chocolates, save her shop and the Laneways no matter what the cost. It all seemed hazy and impossible, but he knew how to break things down into steps, find bottlenecks and solve them. He was going to fix this. He was going to fix everything.
Chapter Fourteen
January 27
Cantina Kitchen
The Laneways
At the same time
Today’s horoscope: Dig deep. There’s something under the surface. Mercury is the planet of communication, logic and rationality, and you must use your connection to the stars to help overcome the hurdle. It’s only in retrograde if you let it be.
Three hours later, Gabriel and Kira were pouring the last of the tempered white chocolate into the molds. Tempering white chocolate, with its lack of cocoa solids, was an eleven over ten on the scale of difficulty, but the tempering machine cut those problems in half. Thank god for Ate Tiana Villa’s aircon kitchen, and her even more blessed generator.
“How are we doing?” she asked, sweeping into the space, peeking at Kira and Gabriel’s work.
“Getting there,” Kira said, allowing herself a little sigh. “Did I already thank you for letting us take over your space? I already forgot. I think I’m slightly delirious.”
“You have,” Ate Tiana laughed. “And I told you guys I don’t mind, Thursdays are slow. I especially like that you have my cousin reorganizing my pantry.”
The entire party looked over toward the kitchen pantry, where sure enough, Santi was lifting boxes and putting them back. He seemed a tad on edge, something Kira had noticed since he’d walked into Gemini that afternoon, when she’d asked for his help. Out in the dining area, Sari Tomas and Kira’s staff had taken over one of the long tables and created a whole chocolate-wrapping assembly line. It was really quite impressive. Even Sam, Sari’s sister, had showed up to help.
“You know I never thought I’d get the chance to actually hang out with him.” Tiana chuckled before she turned to Kira. “This is actually nice. If you didn’t have a blackout and a big order to deal with, of course.”
“He seems happy to help.” Kira grinned.
“That’s the way he’s always been.” Tiana shrugged. “I can tell he kind of needs to blow off some steam, though, so I proudly showed him the mess that was my pantry. But I think he’s just about done. I’ll check on him.”
“Have fun!” Kira chirped, watching Ate Tiana saunter toward her cousin. Santi spotted her right away and said something, which Tiana responded by patting his arm and saying something that made him smile warmly. But the smile was off of his face the moment Ate Tiana turned away.
Definitely on edge,Kira thought, biting on her bottom lip. Between that and filling this custom order, she was...exhausted. But a lot less than she would be if she attempted to do this without help. Teaching Gabriel to use the tempering machine while she did it manually was a lot easier than wrangling all the chocolate herself, and she had to admit, Sari made a tighter, crisper fold on the foil than any of them could ever achieve.
“I have to say,” Gabriel said, tapping the mold on the marble countertop to get rid of the air bubbles in the chocolate. “Very sexy of our boy Santi to do this.”
“Itwassexy, wasn’t it?” Kira asked, smiling as she leveled off the chocolate already in her mold with an offset spatula. In the process of them figuring out what to do, he’d asked her to talk through her operations. He didn’t question why she needed the chocolate to set for a few minutes before she started to temper it, didn’t ask why she could only make a kilo in 40 minutes when it should be more.
He just helped. Listened, and gave her a clearer picture of how much time they had.
“He just...he knew what I needed, and I...”
Kira couldn’t seem to find the words, but god, she felt the emotions. She carried it with her everywhere now, that squeeze in the heart whenever she thought about Anton Santillan. She made a sound, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, which somehow encompassed how happy she was that Santi was in her life again, how nice it felt to be understood the way he understood her.
“Wow,” Gabriel commented, after he’d placed his mold in the ref, and pulled the molds he’d used before that to pop out. “You love him, no.”
“I...” Kira was slightly stunned. There was very little about the man that was unlovable, despite his protestations. He never asked questions when someone needed him, and the advice he gave was always practical. He was almost selfless, just as he had been when they were kids, and he would run in front of another kid in Ice Ice Water so Kira could escape. But he could be funny too, with a dry humor and a self-awareness that she found endearing.
But most of all, he looked at her like she mattered, when she spoke. He heard the things she said, from her thoughts about her BTS bias (“He’s worldwide handsome! Who am I to deny his power?”) to how alone she felt sometimes, doing what she did. Anton Santillan had become such an important part of her life that he was essential. But giving the emotion a name gave it power, and there was nothing left for her to do but surrender to it. “Yes. Yes, I love him. But there’s something going on with him. He seems...”
“Angry?” Gabriel asked, and Kira was surprised that he noticed it, too. “Yeah. He’s never going to talk about it.”
“He will,” Kira insisted. “He just needs a little time to process, maybe.”
