Blind-Date Baby by Fiona Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

date. Caz had even made their wedding cake.
    Daisy had slept in her pram near the back door on many occasions as a baby. The customers had spent many an hour when she was a toddler admiring her drawings and sneaking her bits of cake. Later, when she’d been older, she’d done her homework on the little table in the corner every night. The regulars all loved her and had insisted on trying to help her, even if they’d always come up with different answers for her questions and spent more time arguing with each other than actually being any use with equations or the dates of famous battles.
    Too many happy memories. And now Daisy and Rob were gone and The Coffee Bean and her memories were all she had left. She wasn’t going to let them be hoovered up by a big corporation without a fight.
    ‘We’ll find a way. I’ll create a new cake—one so spectacular it’ll stop people in the street and force them to dive in and buy some.’
    Caz patted her on the arm and pulled away. ‘Amazing as your creations are, my flower, I don’t think they’re a match for Java Express’s “buy one get one free”s on just about everything.’ She shook her head. ‘Trouble is, nobody wants to pay for quality any more. They want everything for half the price it was last year.’
    ‘I’ve got my savings. Only a few thousand, but still…’
    Caz folded her arms and shook her head. ‘No way. You’vebeen saving for long enough to open your own shop. I can’t take that away from you.’
    ‘But I could be a partner in this shop, couldn’t I? You offered that to me once.’
    Caz’s eyes became glassy. ‘Bless you, Grace, but no. We both know the chance of saving The Coffee Bean is slim, and you might need that money for university fees for Daisy. I can’t let you plug a hole in a sinking ship and lose your nest egg in the process.’
    ‘I want to, Caz. You know how much this place means to me.’
    ‘Sorry, Grace. Can’t let you do it.’
    Grace gave Caz a rueful smile and rubbed her arm. ‘I’ll try to find a way to make you, you know.’
    Caz chuckled. ‘I know you will. But I’ve had a good twenty years longer at perfecting my stubbornness.’
    Grace opened her mouth to argue, but at that moment the old-fashioned bell on the café door jingled and both women turned to look at who had just walked in.
    ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Grace put her hands over her mouth.
    She couldn’t even see the delivery boy behind the largest bunch of flowers in the history of the universe.
    His voice came out muffled from behind all the greenery. ‘Grace Marlowe?’
    Grace let out a squeak.
    ‘Over there,’ Caz said, gesticulating first towards Grace and then to one of the free tables. The boy carefully lowered the bouquet and stumbled free of the foliage.
    Grace couldn’t take her eyes off the huge bunch of flowers as she squiggled her name on the boy’s clipboard. Nothing as unimaginative and predictable as lilies or roses. These were large architectural flowers—some of which she couldn’t even put a name to—framed with angular leaves and rapier-sharp grasses. And the smell…
    ‘Someone really did have a good night last night, didn’tthey?’ Caz was standing back behind the counter, her arms folded across her ample chest. ‘Go on, then. Look at the card.’
    Grace didn’t need to look at the card. No one had sent her flowers in a long time. Even Rob had only managed a bunch of petrol station roses on the night he’d proposed. One of the heads had fallen off, but he’d been nineteen and she’d been eighteen and, at the time, they’d been the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. Of course, they paled in comparison to Noah’s bouquet. Somehow, she wished he had sent her lilies. It would have been easier to dismiss them, easier to put Rob’s eleven roses and one sad stalk in first place.
    She scowled as she searched for the card amongst the tissue paper and sharp grasses.
    To Grace,
    Thank you for an unforgettable