Love And Coffee: A Cup Of Grace Romance Series Book 1 (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

              I was wiping down some tables when a twenty-something man in a business suit approached me.  “Hello, may I speak with the owner?  Or manager?”

              “I’m one of the owners,” I said, straightening up from my work.

              “I’m Bill Stanton from the county health department,” he said, pulling a card out of his breast pocket and handing it to me.  “We had a complaint and I will need to take a look around.”

              My brain went on the fritz for what seemed an eternity as I stood staring at him.  When it finally kicked into gear, I still couldn’t remember my name.  My heart felt like it would jump out of my chest. I took a deep breath.

              Thankfully Kathryn stepped up and introduced herself.  “Step right this way, Mr. Stanton.”

              I watched in horror as Kathryn led him around the shop.  My mind raced.  Had we emptied the garbage recently?  Was the fridge the correct temperature?  What about the coffee?  Thank goodness we didn’t sell hot food.  Were the counters in the kitchen wiped down?  And, oh my gosh, what if a stray roach worked it’s way out of the hole and decided to wander across the inspector’s path? 

              “Come on,” Matt said, taking me by the hand and leading me to a chair.  “It will be fine.”

                I sat down in the chair.  “What if he finds something?” I whispered.  “What if we forgot to clean something?  What if there’s more roaches wandering around back there?”  I stood up, trying to see into the kitchen from where I was.

              “It’s fine, Tara.  We keep this place clean.  He isn’t going to find anything,” Matt said.

              I glanced over at Janey who was waiting on a customer.   Our eyes met and I could tell she was just as concerned as I was. 

              “Oh Matt, this is bad,” I said, my fear cranking up to full blown panic.

              “Stop it, Tara.  Right now,” he said sternly. 

              “But Matt!  What are we going to do?” I hissed.  I was afraid the inspector would hear me, but I couldn’t keep quiet.  And how on earth does an inspector get to be that young?  He looked like he had just graduated high school.  Well, maybe college.

              “Look me in the eye, Tara.  Do it.”

              I did it.

              “We are going to remain calm. There is no sense in freaking out.  We have done all we can to keep things clean.  Besides, there’s nothing we can do right now anyway.  He’s already here.”

              I took a deep breath and Jillian made a beeline for us. 

              “What are we going to do?” she whispered, panic showing on her face.

              “Nothing,” Matt said.  “You settle down, Jillian.  I’m having a hard enough time keeping Tara calm and I don’t need you to freak out too.”

              Jillian took a seat next to me.  I could hear Kathryn laughing from the kitchen.  “What’s so funny?” I whispered.

              “Who cares, as long as he’s happy,” Matt said.

              Next Kathryn led the inspector to the rest rooms.  Had we cleaned them last night?  Suddenly I couldn’t remember.  Maybe it had been days since we had cleaned them.  I had no idea. 

              “They’re clean,” Matt said, reading my mind.

              Jillian nodded.  “I cleaned them last night.”

              After what felt like an eternity, Kathryn reemerged with the inspector.  He looked around the shop, glancing in my direction.  I averted my eyes like a teenager afraid of getting caught shoplifting.  Yeah, way to be subtle.

              “Please call us if you need anything else,” Kathryn said with a smile in her voice. 

              “I certainly will.  You will receive a copy of my report in the mail,” he said and just like that, he was gone.

              “Oh my gosh, I thought that would never end!” I exclaimed as she approached.

              “He was only here twelve minutes, Tara,” Kathryn said.

              “Well it felt like hours,” I said.

              “Well? What did he say?” Jillian asked

              “That we will get his report.”

              “But, what else did he say?  I heard you laughing.  What was so funny?” I asked.

              “He has a cat,” Kathryn said.

              “What?  How is that funny?”  Cats are funny?”

              “I don’t know. I was trying to charm him.  He seemed to really like the cat,” she answered, brushing her hair back.  “I need a scrunchie.”

              “Darn it, Kathryn, tell us what happened!” I nearly shouted.  People looked over at me.

              “Sshh,” Matt said and placed a hand on my shoulder.

              “Nothing really happened.  He didn’t find anything.  Everything was clean.  We are fine,” she said confidently.

              “Really?” I asked.

              “Really,” she said.

              I started crying.  I couldn’t help it.  I really needed to get a hold of the anxiety.

***

              “You know, this one is a little strong,” the gray haired woman standing in from of me said handing the iced coffee back to me.

              “Oh, well I’ll just add a little more cream to it,” I said turning to pour cream into the drink in my hand.

              “Oh no, I don’t think that will work.  Do you have a medium brew of coffee?”

              I smiled.  “Yes, I sure do.  Let me get that for you.”  I set the drink on the counter, resisting the urge to violently dump it in the sink.  Okay, call me short-tempered, but it had been another long day.  It was 7:45 pm, fifteen minutes until closing, and I was about to make the fourth drink for this woman.  I poured fresh coffee into a new cup.  The woman was gray haired, but appeared to only be in her mid-forties.  That or she just had great skin.

              I made the fresh cup and turned back to her, forcing a smile on my face.  I wanted to be a good hostess.  And it was nearly closing, so she couldn’t make me make her very many more drinks…could she?  I hoped not anyway.

              “How’s that one?” I asked hopefully.  I could see Matt’s grin out of the corner of my eye.  He would get an earful as soon as we locked those doors.

              “Well,” she said after taking a sip and smacking her lips for what seemed like a full minute, “I think there’s just a tad too much sweetener in it this time.”

              Okay, I was about to blow a gasket.  Seriously.  “Well, I don’t see how that’s possible since the syrup is put in with a pump and the pump is going to measure exactly the same each time.  Is the coffee the right strength?”

              “Yes, it is.  But you know, if you don’t depress the pump lever all the way, there could be more or less syrup distributed into the drink,” she said, handing me back the drink.

              I saw Janey, Jillian, and Kathryn join Matt in the corner. Oh, merriment was about to ensue, no doubt.  At least I was entertaining them.

              I turned around to make her fifth, and what I was determined to be the woman’s final drink, and scowled at the four of them.  Yes, merriment definitely ensued after that.

              I made the drink as fast as I could and this time, only depressed the pump lever halfway on the third pump.  If it wasn’t enough, at least I could add more without having to start all over.

              “Here you are,” I said cheerfully.  Okay, it was forced cheer.  But so what?  This woman seemed oblivious to my suffering.

              She took a sip, and I held my breath and said a silent prayer.  Again with the lip smacking.  If I had to listen to that all the time, I could seriously become a mass murderer.

              I made myself smile bigger.  Phooey on those four. I was not going to let them, or this woman win.

              “Why, I think that’s just perfect!”  She said. 

              “Oh good!” I said gratefully and glanced at the clock.  7:52.  Thank you Jesus, this would be over shortly.

              “Now, what do you have in baked goods?”

              I sighed.  Where was that roach scone when you needed it?

              “Sugar cookies?”  It was kind of late so that’s all we had left.  Jillian’s heart shaped sugar cookies were delicious, and according to her, they made you lucky in love.  I gave the woman one.  “On the house,” I said, and I grabbed the last one for me.

              “Oh, thank you!” the woman said and headed out.

              I sighed.  Finally.  I had never been so happy to see a customer leave as I was her.  Okay, maybe the roach lady, who fortunately had yet to make good on her threat to sue.  Yet was they key word.

              Kathryn ran to the door and locked it after the woman exited. 

              “Thank you!” I called and went to sit on the sofa with the rest of our motley crew.  “And you all are not funny.” I said, breaking my cookie in half.

              “Oh, we kinda are,” Janey, said giggling.  “You should have seen your face.”

              “Was it that bad?” I asked, taking a bite of the cookie.

              “Looked like you wanted to dump that drink right over her head,” she answered, still giggling.  “I would have loved to have seen that.”

              “No, it would have been sad.  That lady wasn't a bad lady, just kind of confused as to what she wanted,” Jillian said.   “We need to practice patience.”

              “Confused and annoying,” Kathryn said.  “But still enjoyable to watch as long as it’s Tara that has to wait on her.”

              “Thanks,” I said, sarcasm dripping.

              Matt leaned over toward me. “Is that other half for me?” he said, eyeing my cookie.

              “Nope,” I said and took another bite.

              “What?  Who is it for then?”

              “Someone that doesn’t laugh at my misery,” I said looking him in the face very seriously.

              He made a sad face, and I couldn’t help it.  I gave in and gave him the cookie.

              “Happy?”

              “Oh yes.  Now I will be lucky in love,” he said and took a bite.

              “Is that what those are supposed to do?” Janey asked.  “I thought someone was confused as to when Valentine’s Day was.”

              “Oh, there’s no confusion,” Jillian said.  “Everyone knows that eating one of my heart shaped sugar cookies will bring good luck in the love department.”

              “Well, I could use some of that.  Bake me some!  Please!”

              We all laughed.  Janey was fitting right in.  I was really glad we had hired her, even if it was another added expense.  We were getting some regular customers these days and there were a couple of church groups that had begun having their Bible studies here.  It made me smile.   I finally felt like everything was going the way it should be.

              Kathryn sighed and put her feet across my lap.  “I’m beat.  As usual.”

              We all nodded our heads.  Although this was much harder than anyone had anticipated, it was at least getting better.

              “We need to look at advertising again,” Kathryn said.

              I moaned.  “Again?”

              “Yup.  I think the key is to keep reminding people that we’re here.  Things are really looking up, but we need to keep things moving.”

              “I agree,” Jillian said.  “And besides, I’d like to see that cute sales manger at the radio station again.”

              “Oh please.  We are not going with anything that expensive again,” I insisted.  “We can do some print ads.  Or Facebook ads or something along those lines.”

              “We had a pretty good response with handing out flyers.  A lot of the coupons came back,” Kathryn said.

              “I vote flyers,” I said.  “We need to keep expenses in check.  Speaking of which, I need to put another coffee order in to the supplier.  We’re getting a little low.”

              “That would suck if we ran out of coffee,” Janey said.  “Have you checked grocery store prices?  Maybe it’s comparable.”

              “That’s not a bad idea.  Especially grocery stores that sell the beans in bulk.  We would just need to let them know we are ordering a lot of it before we go in so they would have it on hand and don’t run short for their regular customers. You are one smart cookie, missy,” Kathryn said.

              Janey smiled really big.

              “You know,” Matt started.  Then he stopped.

              “We know what?” I asked.

              “Oh I don’t know.  Never mind.”

              “No, you started something, so finish it.”