Page 25 of Broken Heart
“Hi, Mom. It’s busy. I was working in the warehouse with Marco on the conche machine,” I explained.
“Did you guys figure out the problem?” my dad questioned me.
I nodded. “Yeah, Marco is there with Trey and Raul right now, fixing it. Within the next two hours, it should be up and running again.”
“That’s excellent.”
“Yeah, but I still have a laundry list of things I’ve got to get done, so I’m hoping you didn’t request for me to come here just to ask how my day is going. Since Liam and Ivy aren’t here, I can only assume you’ve concocted another project you need me to take on,” I surmised.
Wyatt moved in my direction, clapped a hand on my shoulder, and asked, “Are you ever going to lighten up and enjoy a break for a few minutes?”
My eyes cut harshly to his and narrowed further. “I’ve got things to do.”
“Alright, alright,” Tate interrupted. “Let’s cut to the chase here, so Cooper can get back to drowning himself in endless work.”
“Like you have any room to talk,” I said. “If anyone needs to make time to relax a little, it’s you. There’s nobody in this room that’s as uptight and lost in their work as you.”
“Precisely the reason I’m looking to have this discussion,” he noted. “The sooner we have this, the sooner we can both return to doing what we love.”
When nobody made a move to speak, I took a guess as to what was happening. My gaze settled on Jules. My baby sister, freshly out of high school, nervously bit her lip, an indication I hadn’t been wrong.
“What’s going on, Jules?”
“How do you know it’s about me?” she countered.
I shrugged. “Lucky guess.”
She inhaled deeply and sighed, a rush of air leaving her lungs as she moved out from behind Wyatt’s desk.
“Well, I talked to Mom about this first, and she suggested I go to Tate about it,” Jules began. “He and I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks discussing it, and once we worked out all the details and came up with a plan, we went to Dad and Wyatt. They are both in agreement about it, so we decided it was time to bring you on board with it.”
At least I couldn’t say I didn’t know my family. I wasn’t the least bit surprised they had conducted several meetings about something before choosing to bring it up to me. “Well, I’m here now, so tell me what’s going on.”
Jules moved in my direction and came to a stop a few feet in front of me. “I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do once I finish the accelerated pastry program, and I’ve come up with an idea.”
My brows shot up in surprise. Though Jules had always been very focused, I hadn’t realized she was thinking that far ahead. She still had close to a year of learning ahead of her. To say I was curious to know what she’d come up with would have been an understatement.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I want to have a bakery,” she declared.
“What?”
A smile breaking out on her face, she said, “I want to have my own bakery.”
It was safe to say I’d expected my sister intended to use the knowledge she gained in the pastry program to build a career. But I was still unsure how this impacted me. “That’s excellent. You know how much we all enjoy everything you make. I think you’ll be wildly successful.”
Something warm stole over her expression. “Thanks, Cooper. That means a lot to me. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll be as successful as I’d like to be if I can’t convince you to help me.”
Slowly, everything was coming together. “Considering I don’t know the first thing about baking, I get the feeling I’ve got to build something.”
“Will you?” she asked, hope surging in her features and her voice.
I glanced around the room, noting the anticipation written on the faces of my parents and my two brothers. Whether they believed they all needed to be here or not remained unclear, but it was entirely unnecessary.
Returning my attention to Jules, I asked, “What are you looking to have me do?”
“I was hoping you’d be willing to build a bakery for me,” she revealed.