Love And Coffee: A Cup Of Grace Romance Series Book 1 (9 page)

              “It will just be a couple more minutes,” I called and got a chocolate chip cookie for my customer.  People were starting to bring in the coupons and we were going through the food and coffee fast.

              I turned back around to look at the coffee pots and they were nearly empty. Again. Oh no.  “Jillian,” I called.  “Can you please help?”

              Jillian came around to the coffee and started filling coffee pots with water.  “Matt, we need another bottle of water,” I said.  We had opted to go with five gallon bottles of water instead of buying a water filter for the sink.  Matt was the only one strong enough to lift the bottles to the dispenser, and I suddenly hoped that he never called in sick.

              He hurried over and I tried not to look at the exasperated faces of our customers, but I caught two of them get out of line and leave from the corner of my eye.  Yikes.

              Then suddenly there was an odd smell wafting throughout the shop.  The heavenly smell of baking cookies was replaced by burning cookies.  “Oh my cookies!” Jillian cried and ran for the kitchen.

              I heard titters coming from the line.             

              “Better call the fire department,” someone from the line said.  Apparently that was hysterical because nearly everyone laughed.  It didn’t seem so funny to me.  My back ached and my feet screamed their distress at me.

              I sighed and looked up just in time to see three more people leave the line and the shop.  “Oh no,” I said under my breath.  I forced myself to smile and faced the crowd again. “What can I help you with?” I asked the elderly man at the front of the line.             

              “Well, I don’t want anything burned,” he began very seriously. 

              “No sir,” I said. 

              “I would like a medium cup of plain black coffee.  Nothing fancy.  None of those weird flavorings,” he said and leaned up against the counter to better observe whether or not I was following his instructions.

              I poured a cup of plain Joe and turned back to him.  “Here you are, sir,” I said, putting a lid on the cup and placing it in front of him.  I rang him up and let out a breath as he turned away with his coffee.  At least that had gone flawlessly.  But then, how could you mess up plain coffee?

              The next person took his place and began giving me her order. 

              “Oh no, I said no weird flavors!”  The elderly gentleman said and came back and stood at the counter, ignoring my current customer.  “I can’t drink this!”  He said and put the cup down on the counter in front of me.

              “But sir, I didn’t put any flavorings in it,” I explained.

              He nudged the woman that I had been waiting on out of the way.  She gave me an exasperated look and stepped back.

              “Well, you most certainly did!” he insisted.  “Here, taste it,” he said shoving the cup towards my face.

              I was not drinking out of the same cup that a stranger had just drunk out of.  “That’s all right, sir, I’ll just get you another cup.  I apologize.”

              I turned back toward the row of coffee pots, each looking just the same, and suddenly had no idea which pots had flavored coffee and which were plain.  I looked over my shoulder at the man.  “I’ll just be a second,” I said way more cheerily that I felt.  I did not need him to have a meltdown right here in front of a whole line of people, and I felt like that was what I was risking if I didn’t choose the correct pot.

              I sidled up to Matt who was making a blended coffee and whispered, “Which one of these pots has plain coffee in it?”

              “What? I can’t hear you,” he said as the blender roared to life. 

              “Regular coffee?” I repeated.

              He shrugged his shoulder.  “I can’t hear you!” he shouted over the blender.

              I sighed and headed back to the coffee pots.  Saying a silent prayer, I reached for one and poured into the cup I held.  I tried to smell it without being obvious.  Was that cherry bomb flavor that I smelled?  No, that was coming from the pot beside it.  I think.  I stuck a lid on it and headed back to the man, still praying.

              “Here you are, sir.  I upgraded it to a large for your trouble,” I said.  “Again, I apologize.”

              “Thank you,” he snapped and took his coffee and left.  I looked around for the woman I had been helping, but she was nowhere to be found.  I hoped someone else had helped her and she hadn’t left.  I called up the next customer and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the elderly man take a sip of his coffee.  He kept going, and I thanked God for His help.  Then I prayed for the end of the day.

***

              I gratefully locked the doors at precisely 8:00 pm and decided to rethink our closing time.  Couldn’t we close at about 10:00?  A.M.?  I sighed and lay down on the sofa.  I didn’t care if the others had a place to sit or not.  I was going to be selfish. 

              Kathryn picked my legs up and sat down, laying my legs across her lap.  Jillian and Matt each took a side chair. We all sighed in unison and then I giggled.

              “I think my feet are so swollen that my shoes will never come off.  I’ll have to shower with them on.  And sleep with them.  When I die, I’ll have to be buried in an outfit that matches yellow shoes,” I said wearily.

              “That goes for me, too,” Kathryn said.

              “Could you massage my calves while you’re down there?” I asked her.

              “No.”

              “Thanks.”

              “This place is a mess,” Matt said, surveying the damage.

              “Yeah.  We better get cleaning,” Jillian said sadly.  “I’m so tired.  Maybe we can just leave it?”

              “Then we’ll just have to come in earlier in the morning,” Matt said. 

Sensible Matt.  Sometimes I wish he were a little more live by the seat of his pants.  But he was right.  If we left this place as it was, we would just cry when we came in to face it in the morning.  I had a sneaking suspicion that we were going to be just as tired in the morning as we were right now.

“We better get to it before we fall asleep where we are,” Kathryn said after several minutes of silence.

I whimpered a little, but I managed to get up and help clean.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Somehow we survived the first day.  We didn’t get home until 10:30 and after barely four hours of sleep, I was chugging coffee like a fiend. None of us had anticipated business going nuts during certain times of the day, and then down to nothing during the rest of the time.  It was something we were going to have to work on a plan to make sure everyone was there to help keep the line moving.

                It was now day two and the morning rush was over.  I sighed louder than I intended to and I went to the sofa and collapsed.  I put my hand down beside me on the sofa cushion and felt something sticky.  I raised my hand to look at it and a mushy, half eaten cookie stuck to it. 

“Ew!” I said, shaking it off.  I recalled seeing a mom and toddler sitting here no more than twenty minutes earlier.  I took a closer look and saw crumbs all over the sofa, and something had spilled.  “Really? On my new sofa?” I said, brushing the crumbs off and then went to get a wet washcloth to see if I could get the spill up.  Thank goodness I had invested in scotch guarding.  A few passes with a wet wash cloth, and the mess came up.

                “I’m beat,” Jillian said and sat on one of the comfy over-stuffed chairs. 

                “Me too.” I sat back down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table.

                Matt and Kathryn came over and sat down on either side of me.  “Did you ever get any advertising?” Matt said after a few minutes.

                “No, do we want more people in here?  Because I feel a little overwhelmed with the ones we’ve got,” I said.

                “Yeah, but I added up what was made yesterday, and to be honest, it will barely cover expenses if that’s all we make on a daily basis.  And when the excitement of a new place to get coffee wears off, we’ll have even fewer customers.”

                “That’s true,” Kathryn said.  “And we want to do more than just break even.”

                I sighed.  I was going to have to part with some money.  I knew it was inevitable, but somehow I had thought it would be after we had actually made some money.  “Okay, I give.  Let’s look into it.”

***

“Hi. Welcome to Cup of Grace,” I said to two thirty-something women as they approached the counter.  I was starting to feel like a natural at this customer service stuff. 

We had sent Jillian down to the local Christian radio station to check out how much it would cost to run an ad.  She had been gone nearly two hours and I was beginning to wonder if she had forgotten that we needed her here at the shop.  I was worried she wouldn’t be here for the afternoon rush of customers. 

Matt came over and helped me make the ladies’ drinks.  “Coffee for two later?” he whispered to me and winked.  Darn he was cute!

They took their drinks and left, and I watched them go.

I sighed. 

“What’s up?” Matt asked, coming over to lean on the counter with me.

“No one is really hanging out.  I had all those dreams of people relaxing and hanging out here,” I said wistfully.  “Doing a Bible study or just sitting around chatting.”

“Well, give it time.  When you advertise, have them say something about that.  This is a nice place.  People should love to hang out here.  I know I would,” he said.

I looked at him.  “You would?”

“Of course.  The view is fantastic,” he said, leaning towards me and looking deeply into my eyes.

“You are too much,” I said and gave him a quick kiss.  I looked around to see if anyone was watching.  The coast was clear.

“I like that,” he said.

“We need to not do much of that,” I said and stood up straight.

“Yeah, I know,” he said seriously.

I glanced at him.  “What’s that mean?  Why so serious all of a sudden?” I asked.  I wanted him to kiss me, but I knew it was a slippery slope. 

“I just feel like I’m stagnant in my walk with the Lord.  That’s all,” he said after a moment.

“Oh.  Yeah.  Maybe it’s all these hours we’ve been putting in?” I said, feeling guilty for taking up all his time.  I knew his faith was important to him and I also knew he hadn’t had much time for Bible studying of his own.

“It doesn’t help, I suppose,” he said thoughtfully.  “But I do enjoy being around you.” He smiled, suddenly shy.

“I have an idea,” I said.

“Yes?”

“During slow times, why don’t we have our own Bible study?  I mean, if no one else wants to have one here, we can,” I said.

He chuckled.  “Well, I guess that shouldn’t have been so hard to figure out, but it sure was for me.  Besides, we can set the example.  Give people the idea.”

“We’ve been so busy,” I said and headed over to the sofa.  “Tomorrow we bring our Bibles and any other study materials and we hold our own Bible study.  Right here.”

He sat down next to me.  “Awesome idea.”

Jillian came bobbing into the shop.  “Hello everyone!” she called.  “You won’t believe it!  That radio station is awesome!”

“We won’t believe what?” Kathryn said, coming over to where we were.

Jillian sat down.  “Well, I met with the sales manger, his name is Scott, and we talked about everything.  He was so concerned and so caring!  And he was so excited about the shop!  I told him all about it and he asked all kinds of questions.  It was just a really great experience!”

“Well, I’m glad it went really well,” I said, sitting up.  “What did he say?”

“Our commercials start in two weeks!” she said, clapping her hands together and bouncing up and down just a little bit in her seat.

“Wait.  What?” I said.  “You were just supposed to go down there and ask how much.  You know, get the details?”

“Oh I did that!  And they were running a promotion, so I signed us up!” she said, barely able to contain herself.  “Scott was just the nicest man!” 

Uh oh.  I smelled a rat.  “Scott was really nice?” I asked her.

“Yes!  He told me all about his childhood in Maine.” She said.  “I can hardly wait until the commercials run!  It will be so much fun to turn the radio on and hear them talking about our little Cup of Grace!”

“Jillian,” Kathryn said slowly, “you didn’t give him any money, did you?”

“Oh sure I did!  I needed to give them the money up front,” she said wide-eyed.  I had seen that look on her face before, back in college at the dorms when she had followed poor Jeremy Arnold around for weeks.  Jeremy had no interest in her.  He was engaged to a girl back home.  But Jillian persisted.  After a couple of months, Jeremy finally had to very firmly tell her that there was no way it was going to happen.  Jillian went on a baking binge and I went on an eating binge and gained ten pounds.  Call it sympathy mourning.

“Jillian, how much money did you give him?” I asked, much more calmly than I felt.

“Well like I said, there was a promotion, so it was only $3500.00. Isn’t that awesome?”

For a good minute, I stopped breathing.  Maybe it was two.  “$3500.00?  Like in dollars?  Real dollars?”

“Yes.  Isn’t that great?  We get thirty spots for that money and all in really good time slots.  Time slots are what radio people call time.  You know, the time they play the commercials.” She smiled really big like she had just done the best, most smartest thing in the whole world.

“Jillian!” I exploded.  Matt reached over and squeezed my hand.

“Jillian, what I think Tara wants to say is that she thought you all were going to discuss this type of thing before you did it,” Matt said, staring at me and begging me with his eyes not to do something I would regret.

I exhaled.  “Yes.  That’s exactly what I was going to say,” I said through clenched teeth.  How could she spend that kind of money without a discussion?

I looked over at Kathryn.  “Don’t you have something to say Kathryn?”

She looked at me.  “I’m still trying to process what I just heard.  Jillian, honey, tell me you really didn’t do that.”

Jillian looked at us, doubt creeping into her eyes.  “I thought I did a good thing.”

“Well, we really didn’t want to spend that kind of money this early in the business, Jillian,” Kathryn said quietly

“I’m so sorry,” she said and began to cry.  “You’re right, I should have asked.”

“Don’t cry. Maybe we can get the money back.  None of the advertising spots have run, so maybe if you call them, they will cancel it and give it back,” I said hopefully.

“I signed a contract,” Jillian said sniffling.   She pulled the contract out of her purse and handed it to Kathryn.

Kathryn took it and looked it over.  “If we cancel, they can take 25% as a cancellation fee.”

“Maybe it’s better than spending all of the money,” I said hopelessly.

“That’s still $3,500 you might be wasting,” Matt said dejectedly.

“Oh, I’m such a dummy!” Jillian said, sobbing now.

“Don’t do that,” I said, putting my arm around her.  “It will be fine.  We will just go ahead with it.  I think we should. I just don’t know if we can handle all the extra customers right now,” I said, looking at Matt and Kathryn,

“Maybe we can hire someone for a little while.  Just during the peak times,” Kathryn said.

“Yeah, maybe that’s what we need to do.  Just hire someone that can help a few hours a day,” Matt agreed.

“That’s more money out of our pockets though,” I said indecisively.  “But we are swamped as it is, so, Okay, then, maybe we should.”  I hated making decisions, especially where a large amount of money was concerned. Kathryn and Jillian nodded.

“But where do we find someone to hire?” Jillian asked.

“I don’t know?  Put out another ad?”  Kathryn asked.

I glanced at Kathryn.  She looked serious.

“How about go to a temp agency?” Matt suggested.  “When I was in college and needed to earn a little extra money, I worked for a temp agency.  They do all the interviewing for you.  You just tell them what you want and they do all the work.”

“Now that is a great idea,” Kathryn said, brightening.  “I don’t think any of us can handle any more responsibilities at this point and letting someone else handle the hiring is what we need.”

“That’s for sure,” I said.  I had switched my shoes to athletic shoes, but even these couldn’t protect my poor aching feet from more pain.  They were throbbing at the moment and making it hard to think. 

“Okay, that one is settled.  See, something easy and it’s already done.   Practically,” Kathryn said and began looking on her phone for a temp agency.  “Let’s get this thing started.  We need to get someone trained before those commercials start up.”

“I’m sorry guys,” Jillian said again, wiping her eyes with a tissue from her purse.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.  “It will all work out.  Maybe we will earn enough extra money from the customers that this brings in to more than pay it off.  And pay for the temp.”

“I think it will,” Matt said optimistically.  “Especially if they cater to the fact that we want to have Bible studies here.  Did you mention that to the sales manager?” Matt asked.

Jillian brightened.  “Yes I did.  I told him we really wanted to emphasize that fact, and he said he was going to make that a really big sales point during the commercial.  He was just so nice you guys,” she said looking at each of us.  “I gave him a coupon to come down and get a free coffee so he could check the place out and come up with some good ideas for the commercial.  And he was cute.  Did I mention the cute part?  Because he was.”

Uh huh.  Bingo.  I knew there was something going on there.  Well, now we were the proud owners of advertising time on KELO radio.