Love And Coffee: A Cup Of Grace Romance Series Book 1 (11 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

              “Hello, my name is Janey Monroe,” a tall young woman said as she extended her hand.  “Gilson Temps sent me.”  She smiled, revealing super white teeth.  And a tongue stud.  When she spoke, it poked out. 

              I smiled.  “My name is Tara, and I’m one of the owners.  And this is my boyfriend, Matt, chief bottle washer extraordinaire; Jillian, owner and baker extraordinaire; and Kathryn, also an owner and just a regular extraordinaire like myself,” I said, introducing her to everyone else.

              “So, everyone’s extraordinary here?” she asked innocently.

              I laughed.  “Of course we are!  That’s what we do here at Cup of Grace,”

              “Oh.  Well, I hope I can prove to be extraordinary as well,” she said and her smile beamed.

              I have to admit, at first I was a little taken aback by her appearance.  She had what I think was blonde hair, only it was dyed green and shaved on the sides, and two eyebrow rings on her left eyebrow.  I hate to judge, but I guess I was.  I mean, she couldn’t be a day over nineteen and it’s not like I’m old or anything, but, wow.  I wasn’t expecting this.  And then suddenly I thought she would be a great addition to the staff.  She was different and something about her made me like her. 

              “So, maybe Kathryn can show you around. Have you worked in a coffee shop before?” I asked.

              “Oh, yes. I worked at a coffee shop down on Fifth Street called Cups Ahoy.  It closed down though.”

              “Oh that’s great, then you have experience.  That is really appreciated,” I said sincerely.  And it was.  Maybe she could teach us a thing or two.  Things had been going fairly well, but to be honest, it was still hard.  It felt like we didn’t quite have a handle on how this thing should be done.  And the mass of coffee pots on the back counter didn’t help much.  It was just confusing.

              “Wow, look at all the coffee pots,” she said as Kathryn began the tour.  “I’ve never seen a coffee shop with that many pots.”

              “Well, it’s to give our customers a variety of choices,” I defended.  “Of course you haven’t seen it anywhere else.  That’s part of what makes us different,” I added.

              “Oh.  Usually we just made regular coffee, plus decaf and espresso and then added flavorings.  Kind of makes it simple that way.” She said, nodding her head.  “But I guess I can see where this might give you more variety.”

              I smiled.  At least she wasn’t telling us we were idiots.  She might have been thinking it, but she wasn’t saying it.  Because I felt like an idiot just then.  Kathryn continued with her tour, taking her back to the kitchen.

              I pulled Matt aside, as far from the kitchen as I could get.  I didn’t want her to hear us talking.  “What do you think?”

              “She seems nice.  It will be interesting to see what she can teach us about the business,” he said.

              “I’m thinking she might know a lot more about it than we do.  It’s kind of depressing.”

              “Don’t be depressed.  We’re learning more every day.”

              We headed back over to where Kathryn was finishing up her tour.  Janey was looking at the wall scriptures.

              “So, you guys are like, a religious business?” she asked.

              “Yes, actually. Christian.  We really want other Christians to feel comfortable here,” I said.

              “What about other people?” she asked.

              My face fell.  I hadn’t meant for her to take what I had said that way.  “Of course!  We want all of our customers to feel comfortable here,” I said

              “We aren’t going to judge anyone,” Kathryn said.  “We just want to express our faith.”

              “Okay, well, it’s opening time,” I said after a moment.  “We have aprons behind the counter there. Oh, and there’s a t-shirt back there for you, too.”  We had all worn our new shirts and I absolutely loved them.

              “Got it,” she said, grabbing a shirt and heading back to the bathroom to change.

              Kathryn shrugged her shoulders. 

              “I think it will be okay,” I said.

              It turned out that we had nothing to worry about.  Janey was a natural.  She somehow had some sort of talent at getting things done, doing what seemed like a dozen things all at once.  And for once the coffee pots weren’t running out.  She was also very good at selling baked goods along with the coffee drinks.

              When things finally slowed down, I told her to take a break.  She made herself a strong cup of black coffee and sat down on the sofa.

              “It looks like our advertising is paying off,” I said as I sat down on a side chair.  “I think we had a few more customers this morning.”

              “Tell me about it,” Kathryn said, putting her feet up on the coffee table.

              Matt picked up his Bible.  “So shall we start our Bible study?” he asked. 

              “Yep, let’s do it,” I said and ran to get mine from the back room.  I was back in a minute and noticed that Janey looked uncomfortable.

              “You know, I’m not a Christian,” she said.

              “That’s okay,” I said.  “You don’t have to participate in anything you aren’t comfortable with.  We just decided yesterday that we needed to spend more time with God and the down times here are perfect for that.” I smiled at her to let her know that if really was perfectly okay for her to not participate.

              “Oh, I see,” she said.  “Well, I need to make a phone call,” she said and headed out the front of the shop.

              “Well, I hope everything’s okay,” I said. “I don’t want to scare her off.”

              “We definitely don’t want to do that,” Kathryn said.  “She knows what she’s doing.”

              “I like her,” Jillian said. 

              “Me too,” I agreed.  She really seemed to be what Cup of Grace needed.

              “Hello,” an older woman said as she walked through the door.  “How are you all?  Oh my goodness, it smells so good in here! Oh and I love the décor,” she said walking towards us.

              I smiled.  She was an enthusiastic customer.  “Hello,” we all said.

              “What can I get you?” I said, jumping to me feet.  I didn’t want the customers thinking we were a bunch of lazy louts, just sitting around doing nothing.

              “Oh are you having a Bible study?” she asked.  “That is so neat!  I love the atmosphere here!”

              “We were just about to get started,” Matt said. “Would you like to join us?”

              “Oh I would love to, but I have an appointment in about fifteen minutes.  I just wanted to get something to eat and rest my feet a few minutes and then head over to the next shopping center.  I have a massage appointment!”

              “Well, maybe you can come back and join us for a Bible study another day?” I said, putting my apron back on. 

              “I will do just that,” she said as she looked over the menu board.  “How are the pumpkin scones?”

              “Scrumptious!” I said.  I really liked something about this lady and I hoped she would come back to join our Bible study.  She was so bubbly.

              “Well, then get me one of those,” she said.  “Oh, and an iced latte.  Vanilla.  It’s so hot out there.  I need a refresher.”

              I made her drink and put one of the scones in a bag for her.  “Here you are,” I said and rang her up.

              She took her purchases over to a table at the front of the store and sat down.  Matt began praying and I rejoined them all on the sofa and opened my Bible.

              The book of James was one of my favorites and I loved to hear Matt read.  When he came to the end of the passage, we all stopped and began discussing what we’d just read.  Wisdom.  Oh, didn’t we all need some of that?  God’s wisdom was so important in our lives and we could never get enough.

              “Oh. Oh no,” the lady at the table said.  “Oh.  No!” she suddenly shrieked.

              We all jumped to our feet. 

              “What is it?” Matt asked rushing over.  We followed him over to see what was going on.

              The woman had a napkin over her mouth and a look of horror in her eyes.  “This!  This!  What is this?” she shrieked

              I leaned over to look at her scone and my stomach turned.  A roach.  It was in the bag with the scone.  How had I not seen it?

              “Oh dear,” Jillian said.

              “Oh dear is right,” Kathryn said.

              I wish I could say that someone had something brilliant to say that would make the situation better, but we were all speechless, we just stood there, stunned.

              “Is that what I think it is?” the woman asked, staring at us.

              “No, I don’t think it is,” I said.  I reached for the scone, but she snatched it out of my grasp. 

              “It is!  It’s a roach!” she cried.  “Oh my heavens!  I have never, ever, had this sort of experience before in my life!  Never! How can you serve something like this to your customers?  This is a filthy place of business!”

              “No, it’s not,” I said, trying to convince not just her, but myself as well.  I couldn’t believe this was happening.

              “Ma’am, I am so sorry,” Matt said.  “Let me get your money back for you.  I am so sorry,” he kept saying as he hurried to the cash register and took the money out of it.  “Please forgive us,” he said.  I thought there were tears in his eyes.

              “I—I am going to speak to my husband about this!” she said.  “And the health inspector.  This place should be closed down!  Cup of Grace my eye!  Cup of filth!”

              Janey stood in the doorway and the woman pushed past her.

              “Wow,” she said, watching her go.

              Jillian broke down in sobs.  “It’s my fault.  I gave that woman a roach scone,” she said.

              “It’s not your fault,” I said still in shock that the entire thing had just happened.  What were we going to do now?  The health department would come and shut us down.  We would lose everything.

              “Oh my,” Kathryn said and went back to sit on the sofa.  “I can’t believe this just happened.”

              “You know, this kind of thing just happens sometimes,” Janey said.  “I mean, if you knew what all goes on in the kitchens of restaurants and fast food places all the time, you probably wouldn’t eat out.”

              “It’s not okay.  We served a woman a roach scone.  A roach scone.  Who does that?  We will be forever known as cup of roaches instead of Cup of Grace.  We are doomed,” I said.

              “We need to keep our heads,” Matt said.  “And get rid of the scones.  We don’t want to give anyone else a roach scone.”

              My stomach turned at the thought of it.  How had we managed to do that?  I felt sick.  We were doomed and I knew it.

              What would we tell the health inspector when he came?  What would we tell customers when they got wind of it?  No, no problem there because when they got wind of it, we wouldn’t have any more customers.

              “Well, you all did manage to do something incredible.  Did she like, bite it in half?”  Janey asked.

              “No, I don’t think so,” I said sullenly.

              “You can recover from this.  It happens all the time in fast food.  Half the time when you think you’re getting onion rings, you’re also getting roach rings,” she said I guess she was trying to reassure us, but it wasn’t working.

              A gentleman walked through the door.  “Hello,” he said brightly.

              “Hello,” I said without looking at him.

              “I’d like a hot mocha and, let’s see, one of those pumpkin scones,” he said.

              My stomach flip-flopped.

              “Uh, I’m sorry, but we’re all out of pumpkin scones,” I said.

              He looked at me, puzzled.  “There are two of them left, right there,” he said pointing to the glass case.

              “Um, no, those are stale.  They've been in there since three this morning,” I said.

              He looked at them.  “That’s okay.  How stale can they get in a few hours?”

              I sighed.  The others were shaking their heads.  But what could I do?  What could I say?  They were sitting right there in front of the man.

              So I did it.  I gave him one.  I rang him up and sent him on his merry way, hoping for the best.

              “How could you do that?” Kathryn exclaimed, coming over to stare at me, because I guess staring at me from a distance wasn’t scary enough.

              I reached into the glass case and took the remaining scone out and tossed it in the trash.  “We have no proof the one I gave him came out of the same batch as the one that woman got.  Besides, what was I going to say?  I’m sorry sir, you can’t have that scone because it might actually be a roach scone and not a pumpkin spice scone?”