Chapter 7

 

Sam parked in the long driveway beside Zoë’s house. It didn’t appear Beau had arrived yet. She got out of her van and dusted traces of sugar from her black slacks. She’d decided not to take the time to drive all the way home to change clothes. Her friends had seen her in work attire more often than not in recent years. They wouldn’t mind.

Through the brightly lit kitchen window she saw Zoë washing lettuce at the sink. Darryl met her at the back door and enveloped her in one of his customary mountain-man bear hugs.

“Beau should be along shortly,” she said, walking into the warm kitchen that smelled of green chile and fresh bread. “We were both running late with work today, but I talked to him about fifteen minutes ago.”

“I suppose his job never becomes any less hectic, does it?” Darryl took Sam’s jacket and hung it on a hook near the back door.

“Never. And mine is … well, we’re going to talk about that later.”

Zoë dried her hands and pulled Sam into a hug. “Darryl’s got some great ideas for you, but for now we’re just going to relax. There’s green chile stew and salad for supper and I made some of that jalapeño bread you like. So the big question now is—wine or margarita?”

“Your margaritas are fantastic and I’d love one.”

The sound of another vehicle reached them and Darryl went to the door to greet Beau.

Drinks in hand, they stood at the bar-height counter snacking on the chips and salsa Zoë had placed there.

“Thanks so much for this,” Sam said, halfway through her first margarita. “Until now, I hadn’t actually realized how totally preoccupied I’ve been with work—the holiday season that’s screaming up on me at lightning speed and the stress of handling all the normal stuff plus the new chocolate contract.”

“Are you planning to split the two? The retail bakery and the stuff you’re shipping out, I mean.” Zoë scooped a chip into the salsa, her glance sliding toward Darryl.

“I don’t know …” Sam said. “I’d been thinking that it should all stay together so I can keep an eye on everything. But that always puts my stomach in a knot because there’s no way to enlarge our current space since we’re in a strip shopping center, and if we move Sweet’s Sweets we may lose a bunch of customers. We’re just now getting known where we are.”

Darryl spoke up. Evidently, he’d given this some thought already. “I wondered about that. I’ve got some rough sketches for you that would allow you to go either way.”

Zoë spoke up: “Maybe we should eat before you get into all that. I know what happens once the drawings come out—it’ll end up midnight and no one’s had dinner.” She sent a wink toward Sam and Beau.

“Good idea. We want to hear about what you all have been up to, too, you know,” said Beau, offering a hand carrying things to the table.

They spent the next forty minutes, eating and chatting but Sam could feel her attention drifting as her mind flitted toward the possibilities for her shop. When the dessert flan had been eaten and the dishes cleared she was more than happy to see Darryl bring out some rolls of white paper.

“These are only preliminary sketches,” he said, unrolling two pages and anchoring the edges with heavy pottery salt and pepper shakers and a couple of mugs. “Feel free to scribble on them, make notes, anything.”

Sam looked at the precisely inked lines, not immediately making sense of them.

“Okay, so this is a concept for a total move to a new location. You would find a piece of land somewhere and we’d build a facility large enough to incorporate your bakery at street-front and the manufacturing facility and shipping departments in the back. A location with access to a back street would work best, allowing trucks to pull up to your loading dock—” He pointed to what would be the rear of a fairly massive-looking building.

Loading dock? Sam gulped. “We’re not close to that point—”

“Right. Just throwing this out there as a vision for the future … maybe the place you’ll need as the chocolate-manufacturing side of the business grows. Who knows? You might soon be shipping your other baked goods as well. Cakes, cookies, breads …” Darryl looked up, reading her expression.

“Or not. Maybe you’ll choose to stay just as you are now.”

“It’s sort of scary, you know. Thinking of that level of expansion.”

“And you had a very valid point,” Zoë said, “about not wanting to lose your current bakery customers. Your shop being just a block off the plaza brings in a lot of tourists as well as the locals who work and go to school right there in the neighborhood.”

“True,” Beau said, giving Sam’s shoulder a little squeeze.

Darryl rolled the top page away and revealed the second one. “Which is why I came up with an alternate. In this scenario, you would keep Sweet’s Sweets where it is and continue to produce all your regular stuff right there as you’ve always done. This sketch would be for the chocolate factory only and the scale could begin much smaller.”

Sam saw a rectangular building divided into sections.

“An office and small reception area up front,” Darryl said, pointing. “Big kitchen here. We can configure it however you need. I’m guessing more stovetop and worktables than you have now, no ovens?”

She nodded.

“Back here is storage. Over there is shipping.”

She liked that.

“We can still do the loading dock, or we can scale that back and just have an extra wide door that allows products to be carried or wheeled to trucks, or to your van, for delivery.”

“This is more the size I’m thinking,” Sam said, liking the concept. “The big question, naturally, is cost. I don’t have any idea how much I can afford.”

Darryl picked up a small calculator and began punching numbers. “Assuming we stick with fairly standard fixtures, flooring, roofing … and your specialized kitchen equipment, we’d figure out an allowance for that … everything done to city code …” He muttered a lot of alien-sounding phrases and scribbled little notes at the edge of the white paper.

Sam looked up at Beau but he seemed as much at a loss as she was.

“Pretty much turnkey, here’s approximately what it’ll take, per square foot,” Darryl held out the calculator. “We’re talking three thousand feet …” He multiplied it and held the calculator out toward Sam again.

The number made her eyes go wide and she actually choked on the saliva that suddenly washed down her throat.

“Whoa. That’s way, way more money than I have to spend.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Darryl. I know you spent a lot of time …”

He smiled and took her hand. “Only a couple hours last night, sketching out these lines. It’s okay, Sam. Really. You need to think about it. There are small business loans and such, if money is the big consideration. But you also want to think about how much expansion you really need. Maybe this is just too much at once.”

She nodded. She loved his concept. Separate the kitchen from the shipping. An office space to meet with the client—no more stolen minutes in the midst of the busy bakery while cookie-munching kids trailed in and out. A desk where she could work without a sticky bowl of glaze getting dumped on important paperwork. It was a dream setup, for sure, but there was no way she could consider it.

“Beau, we should go. I’m too tired to think clearly right now.” Her morning energy-burst from handling the wooden box had long ago left, and she suddenly felt overwhelmed and weary to the bone.

Darryl rolled up the plans and handed them to her. Zoë seemed a little worried as she handed out their coats and gave each of them a hug. Sam walked out the door, more distressed over the decision than ever.