the freshly cut edges of her hair or the quality of the honey-blond streaks she’d been adding for the past two years.
“The meeting’s not for another twenty minutes,” Amber said with a half smile. “You know that nobody is going to arrive until five minutes before.”
Belinda sighed. “Punctuality is a virtue.”
“More like an obsession where you’re concerned,” Drake Drayson-Jones said as he entered the bakery.
Before she could turn completely around, he was already leaning forward, placing a quick kiss on her cheek. “Good morning, sunshine,” he said with the grin that had won him the Mr. Congeniality award in his high school superlatives.
“Good morning, Drake,” Belinda said, shaking her head at her brother, who always seemed to be in a good mood. “You’re early. That’s a good look for you.”
“I want to make sure my presentation is on point, so I had to get here early.”
“Presentation? But Grandma called this meeting. I figured that meant she’d do all the talking.”
Drake shrugged, heading behind the counter and taking out a Belgian-chocolate frosted doughnut. Before she could remind him that it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning and he was too old to have doughnuts for breakfast, Drake had bitten through half and chewed it as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
“Grandma’s going to talk and then I have a few things to say. It’ll be short and sweet, I promise.”
“But she never calls a meeting on a weekday, in the bakery for that matter. You know how she is about working when in the workplace. What’s going on?”
Drake finished off the doughnut then headed to the other side of the showroom where scents of different-flavored coffees brewed at the coffee bar. This convenience had been added to the bakery about three years ago. With the rise of coffeehouses and internet cafés across the nation, Drake was finally able to convince their grandparents to ride the wave. So far, based on how many coffee sales eventually turned into big bakery orders, it was a great idea.
Belinda followed him, taking a seat at one of the four café tables that occupied the space. The quaint little corner not only added ambiance but, thanks to the hand-painted mugs on the tabletops, added a touch of art to the bakery that she loved.
Drake followed her lead and took a seat with his cup of coffee in hand.
“This is a special circumstance,” he told her.
“One you are dying to tell me about,” she said, letting her hands fall to her lap.
Drake shook his head. He looked a lot like their father with his caramel complexion and thick black eyebrows that matched the soft ebony curls, which he kept cut short.
“Not this time. Grandma wants to make the announcement herself.”
“That means it’s serious,” she said quietly.
“And so are you,” he told her, reaching forward to tap her on her forehead. He’d done that since she was little. Belinda half hated it and half loved it because it was a warm memory. Things had changed so much since she’d grown up. “Stop overthinking everything. The meeting will go fine and you’ll rise to the occasion like you always do.”
He was right. She would. Because that’s what everyone expected of her.
* * *
Malik Anthony straightened his tie. It was silk and several different shades of blue all swirled into a paisley design. He figured it went well with the dark denim of his jeans and the white dress shirt he’d donned especially for this morning’s meeting. Immediately thereafter he had a North Carolina Tar Heels T-shirt he would change into for work because Malik hated ties.
He figured that was one good thing to come out of his departure from the NBA—he didn’t have to dress in a suit before and after every game. Now, almost eight years later, Malik could joke about the year he’d played professional basketball. He could look back on that time and not feel a deep sense of loss at a dream long gone. Some would say that was attributed to his laid-back demeanor, that he could always brush off things and move on. They weren’t entirely wrong. But he readily admitted that brushing off the NBA was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.
Since then he’d found a new career. Becoming a pastry chef had not been on Malik’s to-do list. In fact, during their years at college while his best friend, Carter Drayson, had planned to join his family’s baking business, Malik had only focused on the fact that Carter always made some banging desserts for their frat parties. Carter would become a businessman, in addition to learning more about the baking craft that had started with him tasting everything that came out of his grandmother’s kitchen. He was going to someday either own his family bakery or create his own that would be top-notch because that’s the way Carter rolled. As for Malik, it had been all basketball, all the time.
And when that time was gone, he’d had to regroup. Because diving into a pity party for one wasn’t his idea of a good time. Instead he’d gone through a year of rigorous rehabilitation, during which time he’d begun taking online courses in, of all things, culinary arts. It was meant as a diversion, to keep his mind off the pain that sometimes threatened his sanity and the loss that could potentially haunt him forever. It wasn’t until his therapy was complete that Carter suggested he spend some time at Lillian’s Bakery.
Malik had wanted to laugh at the idea of becoming a delivery man after four years of college, a year playing professional basketball and another year taking online courses. But he needed to do something with his time, needed to keep moving or else he’d stand still in that same place for the rest of his life. So he went to work at Lillian’s and eight years later he was still there.
No longer delivering the delectable sweets that came out of this world-renowned bakery, today Malik was a senior pastry chef right alongside the Drayson grandchildren. Hence his dressing up today for this very important meeting with Ms. Lillian, a woman Malik had come to love and respect as if she were his own grandmother.
He’d arrived at the bakery early; then again he did that on most days when he had three cakes to go out by noon. The orders were usually split among the chefs unless the customer requested someone in particular—which mostly happened to Carter, who was as smooth and charismatic as he was the absolute best artisan cake designer Malik knew. While each of the senior team were masters at baking and decorating signature cakes, cookies, brownies and fine pastries, they all had somehow managed to find their own niche that was respected throughout the business. As for Malik, his favorite dessert had always been fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies so it was logical that he spent a lot of time developing new cookie recipes. Brownies were a new specialty that he’d been working on, and after a tremendous response from customers to his new flavors, he figured he’d hit on something big in that department.
There was a children’s party later today to celebrate one of the local middle schools’ production of The Wizard of Oz, so in addition to the three cakes on his schedule, Malik had ten dozen cookies and four dozen mint brownies to bake by three o’clock this afternoon.
He looked at his watch as he moved down the hallway that separated the large kitchen and the offices at Lillian’s, and headed toward the showroom. He knew Amber would already be at the front desk since the bakery opened at nine and it was already 8:50 a.m. Now, he would check the display cases to make sure they were full before heading into the meeting—the meeting he hoped didn’t take too long.
As he approached the swinging doors to the showroom, Malik heard voices and figured more of the staff was here early this morning. He was just about to enter when he looked through the circular windows first and stopped dead in his tracks.
There should be a law against being so fine and so uptight at the same time. He shook his head as his eyes stayed fixated on her—a pastime he’d long since developed. His body had a systematically physical reaction to seeing Belinda. The heat always started at the top, with a lick of his lips as he swallowed deeply. His chest heaved, his heart