“Let me get this straight. You had to rig the door with a chair so your husband couldn’t sneak into the room?”
Ivy and I were in a booth toward the back of the café. The morning rush was influx and we both kept out of the way while nursing our coffees. She resumed her keto coffee mornings and hadn’t eaten anything.
“Well, yeah.” I pushed the unfinished cappuccino out of the way. My stomach was too sour from all the stress this problem with Matteo was causing.
“How sure are you he won’t respect your privacy?”
“Because he’s done it before.”
“What? When? After the nightclub?”
“No. In Maine.” I told her about that incident before we headed to the cliffs.
Her eyes were narrowed, assessing. “You told me about him taking you to the cliffs. You didn’t tell me about him watching you sleep.”
“I’m telling you now as my witness,” I said dryly.
“So you’ll have a record of your husband’s stalkerish behavior?”
I chewed my bottom lip. “He’s intense, right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Who’s intense?” a voice asked behind us.
I looked over my shoulder at Renz. “Who else? Your brother.”
Sliding my butt around the bench of the booth so I could face him, I asked, “Any advice?”
“How to handle a De Lucci in full obsession?” he chuckled. “Talk to my wife or mom. But later.” He jerked his chin toward the kitchen. “I need a guinea pig.”
My curiosity piqued. Maybe this sour stomach was from hunger and not anxiety. I was trying not to fall into the eating-while-depressed state, but it had been three hours since breakfast. It was okay for second breakfast, right? I stood. “I am hungry. What are you baking?” I looked at Ivy. She didn’t need any prodding even when she was muttering, “I’m on keto.”
Renz barked a laugh. “You’re in the wrong place.” Then looking over our heads, he said, “Babe, the savory brioche is almost ready.”
“I’ll be right there!”
My friend griped in my ear, “I guess I could cheat.”
“I can hear your stomach.” I squinted at her. “Are you starving yourself?”
“Hardly. And it’s called fasting.”
I wanted to explain the concept of fasting to her, but decided it wasn’t worth the argument when we were about to eat carbs. We hooked our elbows together and marched side by side, following Renz.
The aroma of baking bread invoked nostalgia of the French bakery beside the Italian restaurant I visited often as a child. I wondered if that was how my love of croissants came about.
“What are you testing?” I asked.
The kitchen had several aluminum worktables. One of them had a marble top where a baking sheet sat with dough shaped into individual rings.
“I smell bacon.” But I didn’t see bacon. My expression must have fallen because Renz gave an amused shake of his head.
“Well, how long will this take to cook?”
“The natives are hungry,” Ivy agreed.
“I thought you were on keto,” Renz reminded her.
“That was before I crossed the threshold of this kitchen,” she shot back.
“Is it in the oven?” The aroma of bacon and fresh bread was making saliva pool under my tongue.
“Wow, you girls are really hungry.”
Ivy and I crossed our arms and stared at Renz.
He bit his bottom lip and gave a wry smile that showed he was pleased with our excitement yet wary that we were impatient. Obviously, he had experience with hangry women. “Two more minutes.”
I looked around the empty kitchen. “Are you here by yourself? I swore I saw a lady with pink hair earlier.”
“I have two bakers,” he said. “You saw Becca. She and Ramirez come in at three a.m. to start work on the morning pastry.”
“That’s early,” I said in awe. I knew bakeries had early hours, but three a.m. was REM sleep for me.
“Everything is fresh every day,” he said proudly, walking over to the oven to take a peek at whatever he had baking in there.
My business brain kicked in. “Do you have leftovers?”
“We do, but very minimal, and that usually gets sold off after lunchtime or before five. On Fridays we make more to last until five p.m., then we sell it half price.”
“To bring in new customers,” I said. “Those who are unwilling to pay seven dollars for a breakfast bread are given a chance to try it at a lower cost.”
“Exactly. There’s little deterioration in taste except this one I’m trying out.”
A buzzer went off.
He grabbed a towel and brought out a tray from the oven to set it in front of us.
At the sight, my appetite heightened.
In a ring of golden bread sat crisp bacon and a sunny-side up egg that was cooked to the right side of gooey.
“Oh, wow!”
“Your desire for hangover food yesterday gave me this idea.” Renz leaned a hip against the counter. I glanced up at him to see satisfaction and contentment etched on his face. This was in contrast to the Broody Brothers of Matteo and Nico in their high-finance jobs of taking over companies.
I could totally see where Renz got it right. He followed his dreams. One would see him as riding the coattails of the De Lucci name, but from what I had determined, he worked hard for himself and his family.
“So you’re an expert baker and barista?”
“I want to be good at three things,” he said. “Family, bread, and coffee. Anything else is secondary.”
“Oh is it ready?” Liz rushed into the kitchen. “It looks perfect, babe. I knew you would get it right.” She gave her husband a kiss before she sat across from us. “Are we going to just stare at it?”
“Well, twenty minutes to cool down.”
“What?” Ivy and I both shrieked.
“Why did you bring us in here, then?”
“It’s the whole experience of getting it from the oven to the table.”
He was bullshitting, so I called him on it, “That’s not the experience you’re giving your customer unless you’re moving an oven to the front of the house.”
Liz started laughing.
Renz scowled at his wife before turning back to us. “I’m just excited, okay?”
“You want company for staring at this mouthwatering whatever it’s called without offering us a cappuccino?” Ivy asked.
“I thought you only drank keto coffee.” Liz pounced on her statement.
“Woman, I’m ready to eat this sinfully tempting bread. Does keto even figure?” Ivy declared.
“I’ll be right back,” Renz muttered. “Don’t touch the brioche.”
All three of us rolled our eyes.
Then our gazes returned expectantly to the fresh baked goodness before us. To keep our minds off our stomachs, I asked Liz, “Where’s Samantha? School?”
“Mom and Dad got her this morning. There’s an exhibit of old film sets at the MET.” She grinned at me. “If you haven’t picked up on it yet, the McGraths are nuts about cinema.”
“I have,” I said. “Matteo said his grandparents—Cillian and Branna—moved to Hollywood.”
I had met most of the McGraths when they came to visit Matteo at the mansion. For days, there’d been a revolving door of uncles, aunts, and cousins from both sides of his families. I definitely couldn’t match all the names and faces. Matteo had such good genes, not only in looks but in brains.
Renz came back with a tray of our cappuccinos. Ivy and I oohed and aahed over the latte art.
“So…” I shimmied my ass on the kitchen stool. “Can I have a bite?”
He checked his watch. “Five more minutes.”
“You’re like the soup-Nazi of bread.”
“The gluten-Nazi,” Ivy laughed.
“Don’t argue with him,” Liz said. “He’s crazy about his craft. Just give in to it.”
“Does that apply to all De Lucci men?” I quipped. “Just give in.”
“You’ll have to eventually.” Liz winked. “Resistance is futile and all that.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Ivy admonished. “Stay strong.”
“Oh, I am.” I sipped my cappuccino and gave Renz a thumbs up. It was one of the best I’d tasted.
“You need help out there, babe,” Renz addressed Liz. “Have you looked at the applications? It’s the third week of October. The holiday will be in full swing.”
“I know,” Liz sighed. “I’m trying to justify the cost of hiring a full-time employee rather than a seasonal one because it’s so hard to keep on retraining.”
“Plus, you want to keep people you can rely on,” Ivy said.
“So hire one full-time for the front of the house, and the rest as seasonal.”
“We have to think of the leaner months,” she told him.
My mind was churning up ideas, but they weren’t quite making the connection with the bacon and egg brioche in front of me. “So I have an idea, but I really need to take a bite out of this.”
I grabbed one, inhaled the smokiness of the bacon before I took it into my mouth, and immediately went to heaven. Ivy did the same, followed by Liz. All of us started swearing on how good these were.
“No words,” Ivy mumbled around a bite. “This is going to fly off the shelves. This is perfect. You should make hundreds of these to sell a day.”
“It’s good because the egg is still fresh.”
“How long do you think it will have this taste?” I asked.
“An hour or two.”
I shrugged, getting ready to take my third bite. “Don’t compromise on quality. This is New York. People will pay for it.” Luca said there were no bad restaurants in the Big Apple because competition was stiff and New Yorkers were used to the best. Bad ones went out of business in no time because word-out-of-mouth spread quickly given even taxi drivers were food critics.
I glanced at Ivy who was already creating a video to share with her followers.
“Guys,” she said. “I’m off keto and I regret nothing.” She smiled and then took a prim bite out of her savory brioche which was already half eaten. The yolk smeared her lips, and then she licked it and somehow made it look sexy.
“Free publicity,” Liz gushed.
“Yep,” I agreed.
“Okay, we’re not ready to be mobbed.” Renz cautioned. “I haven’t figured this out for mass production.” Apprehension entered his tone, an edginess I was familiar with having worked with artisans in Napa Valley. To them, craft came first before money. My interest in business procedure was to make sure they could have both.
“Baking is a science though, right?” I said. “You can just scale up.”
“Sure can,” he said.
“Oh, regarding my idea.” I circled back to business. “Are you just worried you might not have enough business after the holidays to justify an FTE?”
“That’s about the gist of it,” Liz said. “I’ve talked to Mom, and she said if there were financial issues, we could float between Eamonn’s and the café.”
“Don’t want that, babe,” her husband said.
“They’re family, Renz. Your mom is just trying to help.”
“We’ll figure this out. We have a new product.” He glanced at Ivy and winked. “And a new publicity machine that will help us sell.”
“Do you have social media presence?” Ivy asked.
“We have one, but we don’t update regularly.”
“We’re talking about FTE,” I said. “Do you cater?”
“Sure we do.”
“How about if I could guarantee a certain number of sandwiches twice a week.” I told him the number and what it was for.
Renz laughed. “I heard this story from Nico.” He cleared his throat. “But—”
“It’s not charity to you,” I said.
“Is it part of my brother’s penance to make it up to you?” he asked, his eyes still full of mirth.
“I’m smiling like a she-devil over here,” Ivy said, still looking at her phone but grabbed my head to give me a kiss. “Mwah. I’m so proud of you. Charge it to his black card.”
“Oh, I’m going to have Renz keep it on file.”
“Damn, I can’t wait to see Matteo’s expression when he finds out,” he said.
“Is he even going to notice it though?” Ivy asked still typing on her phone and then at the same time saying, “Five thousand likes, but people from NYC are asking when.”
“Tell them coming soon,” Liz said.
“Oh, he’ll notice it,” Renz said with an evil grin. “I’ll make sure he will.”
