My Husband Called My Bakery a “Hobby” in Front of His Family. The Next Morning, His Boss Walked Through My…
“Laura? I’m Grant. Hudson works for me.”
My stomach tightened. “Of course. Hi!”
He glanced around the bakery. “I was hoping we could speak privately.”
We weren’t open for another fifteen minutes, so I gestured toward a table, but Grant didn’t sit. He set a folder on the counter instead. “I’d like to discuss a standing order. Two hundred pastries every Monday morning for six months to start.”
I blinked. “Two hundred?”
“If that volume is workable for you.”
I opened the folder. Proposed quantities, delivery times, and a preliminary figure that made me read it twice. “We’ve been trying to improve what we offer employees in the office pantry,” he explained. “Your pastries have been very popular.”
“My pastries?”
“We’ve been buying them for months.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Then why haven’t I met you before?”
“I haven’t been the one coming in.”
I thought of Hudson at once, and despite everything he’d said the night before, a ridiculous little spark of hope flared. Maybe this was what he’d meant. Maybe he’d been obnoxious about it, but he’d actually been doing something kind.
“Did Hudson arrange this?”
Grant’s expression changed. “No.”
The hope vanished. “Then how did you find me?”
“That requires a longer explanation.”
The bell rang again, and Maya walked in. She’d been coming to the bakery almost every week for months, always buying more than one person could reasonably eat, until I started teasing her about feeding an army. We’d become friendly. I knew she worked in an office downtown. I didn’t know which office.
Maya stopped when she saw Grant. Then she looked at me.
“So it was you,” I said slowly. “You’re Grant’s assistant.”
“Guilty,” she said with a sheepish smile.
I laughed before I could help it. “You could’ve told me.”
“Grant asked me to try the bakery because Hudson kept talking about it. After that, I kept coming because I wanted to.”
“She brought a box to the office,” Grant said, nodding toward the display case. “I tried one. Then everyone started asking where they came from.”
Something warm spread through me. My work had been sitting in executive meetings, and I’d never known.
“So why was Hudson talking about my bakery?”
Grant and Maya exchanged a glance. “Your husband has mentioned having a side business several times.”
I frowned. “What side business?”
“This bakery.”
For illustrative purposes only
For a second, I thought I’d misunderstood. “Hudson doesn’t own this bakery. He has nothing to do with it. It’s mine.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why would you say…”
“Because Hudson says he owns it.”
The bakery suddenly felt very quiet.
Grant explained that Hudson had told people at work he ran a small business on the side, that his wife managed the daily operation while he focused on his corporate career. “More than once,” he said. “What made me curious was that Hudson also has very strong opinions about small businesses. He regularly says they rarely generate meaningful income. So I wondered why he was supposedly running one.”
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