The Cupcake Diaries Read online

  “Now you’re talking!” Rachel exclaimed. “Where do we sign up?”

  Ms. Slater’s mouth twisted into a tight-lipped smile, as if finally satisfied they appreciated the contest’s importance. “All the information is included in the packet.”

  After the coordinator left, Stacey let out a low whistle, then said, “You’d think she’d be happier to deliver such great news. At first I thought she was here to deliver a court summons.”

  “Maybe she’s having a bad day,” Andi said and withdrew several papers from the envelope Ms. Slater had handed her. “The state cupcake competition is Saturday, September 6, two weeks after Kim’s wedding. Hmm. We could use the same lemon meringue recipe we’re using for Kim and Nathaniel’s wedding cupcakes.”

  Kim peered at the entry forms in Andi’s hands. “It says we will need to prepare five recipes of our own choosing fresh from the kitchen the day of the competition. Then we present them, one by one, to the Finley Fine Flours panel for judging. Each of the five cupcakes will receive a score from one to ten.”

  “The judges come to us?” Rachel asked.

  Kim nodded. “Yes, the panel travels around the state from store to store, and once they’ve judged each shop, they’ll announce the winner.”

  “We can promote the event and draw people into the shop to watch,” Rachel said, her voice rising. “What an excellent opportunity for publicity!”

  Andi pulled out their Cupcake Diary from under the counter and wrote down some of the info. “Win or lose, we could hand out samples of the competition cupcakes to everyone.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Stacey mused. “Do you think I could be a part of it?”

  They turned to look at her, their expressions hesitant, and her face flooded with embarrassment. Had she really said that, aloud? She hadn’t meant to sound so forward. After all, this wasn’t her competition. Who was she to think she could join in without them asking her?

  “You’ll probably be too busy running the cupcake stand at the beach,” Andi said, giving her a big smile.

  Stacey drew in a deep breath, relieved her verbal gaffe hadn’t alienated the trio.

  Andi pulled out a second three-ring binder from beneath the counter. The cover was decorated with a big yellow sun hovering over a pink umbrella stuck in the ocean beach sand. “Mia picked this out,” Andi said, referring to her seven-year-old daughter. “We figured you would need your own Cupcake Diary to record all your upcoming adventures.”

  Stacey thought of the book she still hadn’t read and doubted Kate Jones would call selling cupcakes on the beach an adventure. Not unless explosives and a whole army of bad guys were involved.

  She glanced at Andi to clarify exactly what was expected of her. “Don’t you mean use the diary to keep track of sales and customer comments?”

  Rachel gave her a wink. “You could also write down the phone numbers of any cute guys you meet.”

  “Describe what the sky looks like at sunset,” Kim suggested.

  “Have fun with it,” Andi encouraged. “You know we write down anything from a new recipe idea to private notes to each other in the diary we keep here. Make it your own.”

  “Speaking of the cupcake stand,” Rachel said, excitedly squeezing her shoulder. “Do you hear that? I think it’s here.”

  Stacey handed her position at the front counter off to Heather, the teenage employee who doubled as Andi’s babysitter, and followed the others through the door to the street. The noise sounded like the hum of a Volkswagen, quite different from the incessant clanking of the rickety 1933 Cupcake Mobile they used for deliveries. And indeed it was.

  The new cupcake stand wasn’t a stand at all. Not the square white vendor trailer Stacey had imagined, anyway.

  Andi’s wonderful, warm-hearted husband, Jake Hartman, jumped out of the driver’s side, came toward them, and caught Stacey’s eye. “What do you think?”

  Stacey opened her mouth, and the words “It’s pink” fell out.

  “Pink and white,” Rachel amended.

  Kim clapped her hands and laughed. “A hippie van! Where did you find this?”

  “One guess,” Jake offered.

  Andi pointed to the tattoo shop next door. “Guy Armstrong!”

  “The same guy who gave you the Cupcake Mobile?” Stacey asked.

  Jake nodded. “Guy has a whole shed full of antique vehicles. This model is a genuine 1962 Volkswagen bus.”

  She had never seen the pony-tailed tattoo artist behind the wheel of anything other than a bicycle. “Why doesn’t Guy drive any of them?”

  Jake smirked. “He said he’s through dealing with the expense of gas and insurance.”

  How much could it possibly cost to insure this elongated, half-century-old metal contraption in front of them? Stacey wondered. Did they really expect her to drive this “hippie van,” as Kim referred to it, forty minutes back and forth to Cannon Beach every day?

  She stepped closer and surveyed the fold-out shelf running along the side of the vehicle to form a makeshift customer counter, then took a quick peek inside.

  “The windows lift upward,” Jake said, inserting a pole to prop them open and keep them in place. “And there’s plenty of room in the back to transport the umbrella table and stools you’ll be setting out on the sand for customers.”

  “Think of it as your very own cupcake shop on wheels,” Kim said, taking her arm and strolling around the exterior.

  A shop of her very own? She took another look at the vehicle, and her heart softened. Why, this Volkswagen bus wouldn’t be so bad. It had charm, personality, and the pink and white paint was almost . . . pretty. The interior dashboard even had a small vase to place a sprig of daisies. People would point to her and give her big smiles. Who wouldn’t want to work in a fun, happy environment like that?

  “Well,” Jake asked, when she returned to the front. “You never answered my question. Stacey, what do you think?”

  Her eyes welled with tears, and she found it hard to express how much having anything of her very own, even as an employee, meant.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Absolutely beautiful.”

  “Work the cupcake stand on the beach, and you can keep forty percent of the sales,” Andi told her.

  “Like a partner?” she asked, her spirit soaring.

  “Like a commission,” Rachel corrected, then gave her a big, teasing smile. “Sell enough cupcakes this summer so come fall we can afford to keep you.”

  STACEY COULD HARDLY contain her excitement over the prospect of earning a forty percent commission as she walked back to her aunt Sarah’s place. She’d already paid the $600 holding fee on her new apartment, which would go toward her first month’s rent when she moved in. And with forty percent of the sales as commission, she’d have the other $600 the landlord required for security in no time. She might even be able to start saving for her dream house, one with a mailbox with her name on it, a fenced in yard, flower boxes under the windows, and a two-person swing on the front porch.

  She hummed to herself as she imagined the other details and climbed the stairs to the room she temporarily shared with Kim above the garage.

  The room over the garage, which was separated from the main house by a paved driveway, used to be Rachel’s until she wed Mike Palmer and moved in with him. Kim, too, would be moving out when she married her Swedish hunk, Nathaniel Sjölander, at the end of summer. The space seemed to be a holding facility for future brides.

  But not in her case, of course. She couldn’t hope to find a husband in three months. When she moved out, she’d be happy if she just found someone to date.

  She thought of Dave Wright, the handsome man she’d met the day before at the yard sale. If she’d been more experienced in the art of flirtation, she might have found a way to meet up with him again. But she was a total geek in the romance department. While many women her age were married and having kids, she’d barely held anyone’s hand.

  Later that evening Stacey went into
the main house for dinner. Sarah had made a pot roast, and Grandpa Lewy and his new wife, Bernice, had come over from their senior housing facility to join them.

  During dessert, chocolate caramel cupcakes with chocolate sprinkles, Sarah handed her a letter. “From Idaho.”

  The previous December, Stacey did have a date, one who ran out the door of the restaurant after eating and left her to foot the bill. Unable to pay, she’d had to call her roommate, Pam, to come bail her out of trouble. Again. Then when she’d packed her bags for her trip to Astoria to attend Rachel’s wedding, Pam had told her—in not very flattering terms—not to come back.

  Stacey’s hands shook as she opened the envelope and read the legal letterhead.

  Grandpa Lewy leaned across the table. “What’s it say?”

  She stared at the paper. “It’s—It’s a bill.”

  “A bill for what?” Grandpa Lewy persisted.

  Stacey tried to speak but let out a strangled cry instead. How could Pam do this to her? Her throat closed up, her cheeks heated, and her eyes burned in their sockets.

  Sarah leaned over the corner of the table and placed a hand on her arm. “How can we help?”

  Stacey shook her head. “Pam claims I owe her $2,000.” She waved her hand back and forth over the sheet of paper as if that would make the numbers disappear. “The bill is for half the rent, utilities, and food for the five months I stayed with her before I came here.”

  Sarah frowned. “But that was over half a year ago; why is she contacting you now?”

  “The girl must have got herself into trouble,” Grandpa Lewy growled, “and is looking for a way to collect some money.”

  “Did Pam ever talk about what you owed while you lived with her?” Bernice asked, joining in.

  “No, never,” Stacey said and flipped through the copies of receipts Pam had included with the letter. “She knew I didn’t have a job when she offered me a place to stay.”

  Stacey had tried to get a job, but she’d had trouble with the interviews. Every time she went in she’d fumble over her words, repeat herself, and squirm so badly it was a relief when the prospective employer put them both out of their misery and dismissed her. Like many of her dates.

  “I had thought I did pay her back,” she said, looking around at each of their faces. “I helped with chores, I walked her dogs, cooked dinner, cleaned the apartment.”

  “You cleaned?” Grandpa Lewy teased.

  Stacey rolled her eyes. “Of course I cleaned. You know how I hate living in . . . any kind of mess, and Pam’s place was a disaster. But, obviously, Pam didn’t think my efforts were payment enough. She had her lawyer uncle draft this legal document stating that if I do not pay her the two thousand I owe her by July 15, they’ll take me to small claims court.”

  “If you didn’t sign any contracts agreeing to pay Pam for expenses,” Grandpa Lewy continued, “then her uncle can’t make a case. You don’t have to pay her.”

  Stacey thought of that night at the restaurant, and others like it, and knew Pam didn’t have to pay for her, either. But she had. And she would be forever grateful.

  “Even if they’re bluffing, I can’t stand knowing that Pam thinks I wronged her,” Stacey said softly. “If she says I owe two thousand, then I need to give her the money.”

  “Not many others would,” Bernice commented, “but that’s what I like about you, dear. Good things will come back around to you someday.”

  Stacey wished she could believe that, but all she could think of was the money she needed in order to move into her apartment. With a forty percent commission, could she pay back Pam and still have enough for her security deposit?

  AFTER DINNER STACEY excused herself and went back up to her room to brainstorm ways to save money. Maybe she could buy less food or give up her cell phone.

  No, she had to have a cell phone. What if the Volkswagen bus broke down on a backcountry road? What if there was another tornado? She gave an involuntary shudder and took a deep breath to block out the image of her childhood teddy bear swirling up into an angry Nebraska sky.

  But there were no tornadoes here in Oregon. At least, she didn’t think there were. And after she moved into her apartment, she wouldn’t have to worry about moving anymore, unlike her parents, who still moved from state to state every other year or so. For the first time since the disaster, she’d have a home again—in a place she could finally feel safe.

  She tucked Pam’s bill next to the framed photo of her family in her backpack and recalled the words Rachel had said to her earlier that afternoon: “Sell enough cupcakes this summer so come fall we can afford to keep you.”

  “I will,” she’d promised.

  And that was exactly what she would do. She’d sell cupcakes like crazy. How hard could it be? The beach was packed with people in the warm weather, and the cupcakes were already made and packaged in boxes. She just had to collect the money and serve customers. With a forty percent commission, she could have the $2,000 she owed Pam and the money she needed for her apartment by the end of the summer.

  She just needed to work harder, step outside her comfort zone, and become “the cupcake girl.” If Andi, Rachel, and Kim could open a cupcake shop and make their dreams come true, then so could she.

  Just watch, she thought to herself, and smiled. Her first day at the beach, she’d break all kinds of sales records.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Ocean treasures left on the shore, Nature’s gift to adore.

  —Author unknown

  FIVE DAYS LATER, Stacey ground the gears of the Volkswagen bus as she turned the corner leading to the Cannon Beach entrance. She hadn’t driven a stick shift in a long time. Like Guy Armstrong, who sold her employers the vehicle, she preferred other methods of transportation to save money on gas and car insurance.

  A blue signpost with a series of white arcing waves caught her eye, warning her she’d be working in the tsunami hazard zone, and her hand instinctively reached out to touch the emergency backpack on the seat beside her. Inside the front flap she’d tucked a map of the Oregon coast with arrows pointing the way to safety for each side street.

  Her backpack also contained bottled water, matches, a portable radio, a tube tent, a first aid kit, a flashlight, bouillon cubes for broth, and a half million other things she’d collected over the past sixteen years. Disaster had caught her unaware once, and she’d vowed never to be unprepared again. But that didn’t mean she should go looking for trouble.

  She hadn’t realized what danger she’d signed up for when she agreed to run the cupcake stand until early that morning, when she researched the Oregon coast on Kim’s laptop. Cannon Beach sat right on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. According to research, a massive, tsunami-generating earthquake had a thirty-seven percent chance of hitting the coast within the next fifty years. And there was a ten to fifteen percent chance the entire region would rupture within that same time frame, which could produce waves eighty to one hundred feet high.

  “Ten to fifteen percent is slim,” Kim pointed out. “Besides, Cannon Beach has a siren to alert people to get off the beach in case anything ever did happen.”

  Stacey still wasn’t comforted. What if a giant wave crashed over the beach? Would her cupcake stand float? How long would she have to get away? She wasn’t a strong swimmer. Maybe she’d buy a life preserver or a rubber raft to keep in the back of the Volkswagen bus—just in case.

  She could turn the vehicle around, let one of the shop’s college-aged employees—Heather, Theresa, or Eric—take her place. But in the event of a tsunami, the Astoria shop, located next to the Columbia River, wouldn’t be much safer. She thought of her debt to her Idaho roommate and her dream of owning a home—preferably with a large underground bunker to house all her emergency supplies.

  Kate Jones wouldn’t run. A quiet voice rose unbidden in Stacey’s mind, challenging her fear. In her books the heroine braved shark-infested waters, escaped a collapsed mine filled with snakes
, and survived a harrowing trek through the Yucatán jungle. Oh, how she longed for even just a quarter of Kate’s courage! Kate refused to let fear dictate her life. Maybe, just maybe, she could learn to do the same.

  She could start by keeping her promise to run the cupcake stand on the beach. She might still buy an emergency floatation device, but if a tsunami washed her away, so be it. She had to prove she could do this and not be a coward.

  Stacey pulled the Volkswagen bus to a stop toward the west end of Second Street. The town had given Creative Cupcakes permission to park near the beach entrance, but there was another vendor, a white ice cream truck, in her spot.

  She held her breath as her gaze drifted over the slew of customers lined up on the sidewalk. Could Dave Wright be one of them? The yard sale where they’d met wasn’t far from here. Was it possible she might see him again today?

  A horn honked behind her, making her jump in her seat and grip the steering wheel. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she realized she had a line of her own—a line of cars behind her waiting for her to get out of the way. She couldn’t park in the middle of the street, and the ice cream truck hadn’t left room for her to squeeze in next to the curb. Circling around and driving out the way she’d come, she parked around the corner.

  When she walked back toward the ice cream truck and tried to pass the people waiting to place an order, a stern-faced woman twice her width stuck out an arm and blocked her.

  “Hey,” the lady complained with a toss of her head. “The line is back there. No cutting.”

  Stacey tensed. “I’m not cutting. I—I don’t want ice cream. I just have a question.”

  “You can still wait your turn at the back of the line.”

  Stacey’s set-up time had already been compromised. She couldn’t wait another twenty minutes for the vendor’s customers to be served. She had to speak to the owner of the ice cream truck now.