Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Isla

I switched Chester’s leash to the same hand as Nala and Henry’s and pulled out my phone with my now free hand. My feet stomped quickly ahead to keep up with the dogs. Chester was particularly full of energy today. “New assignment. I’ll text you the address.” Kelly, the owner of Office Cleaners Inc., had switched my assignments three times in the last month. I hated having to get used to a new office layout and cleaning schedule every week, but I needed the work. I spent the wee hours of the morning baking and the rest of the day walking dogs and driving strangers around town as a driver for a ride-share service. In the evening, I cleaned office buildings. None of it was glamorous work, but all of it inched me toward my goal of opening a bakery.

We’d had several bakeries in Whisper Cove, but none of them survived, mostly because they offered dry brownies, flavorless cookies and cakes that were as heavy as bricks and draped with oversweet fondant. When I was in high school, a woman named Mandy, with jet black hair and bright red heels, spent a fortune renovating the drab town bakery into a shiny new shopfront, complete with coral pink tiling and ornate black bistro tables. She had a gorgeous sign painted that read Mandy’s Delectable Edibles. It took a small crane and sign company an entire day to prop the heavy, neon-lit sign up over the new coral pink awnings. The beautiful, tiered crystal and porcelain plates in the front window hinted at a future filled with sweet treats. My friends and I waited anxiously for the doors to open so we could spend our allowances on an after-school fudge brownie or caramel cupcake. The big day came, and Mandy, still in her shiny red heels, opened the shop. My friends and I chatted excitedly as we swept inside, but the chatter faded quickly when we saw the mostly empty shelves behind the glass door. Mandy had spent so much time and money getting the place ready, but she forgot the most important part—the delicious baked goods. The most tempting thing behind the glass was a sad-looking tray of lemon bars. She did, however, have a large binder of cakes that could be ordered for special occasions. She wasn’t as interested in giving day-to-day customers something delightful to nibble on, as she was in trying to lure people in to order one of her overpriced, extravagant cakes. She’d come to the wrong small town. Whisper Cove locals were more the daily-cheese-Danish types, rather than the fancy-tiered-cake types. Needless to say, Mandy’s Delectable Edibles went out of business before the first cobweb had collected on the shiny new sign. The same shop was now used as a holiday wrapping station and Halloween store. The rest of the year it stood vacant, just waiting for me to launch my bakery and fill it with baked goods.

My phone beeped with the new cleaning address. It seemed I was going straight back to Greyson and Woodley’s Office Complex, where I’d stood just hours before filling coffee cups. I’d burned my fingers numerous times and managed to spill an entire pint of cream, which I slipped around in all morning. I also received amazing feedback on my honey pistachio cakes. Granted, I gave them out for free and people tended to love things that were free, but overall, the reviews were encouraging.

The sun hung low in the sky, and a salty breeze swept up from the cove. I glanced at the time before I put away my phone. I needed to take the dogs home. I had just enough time to shower and eat dinner before heading back to the city to clean a suite of offices.

T he busy square looked entirely different in the evening. The kiosks and carts were locked up for the night. The owner of the coffee cart had pulled a striped tarp down over the cart to protect it from the wind and whatever else might swish through the square. The lions were no longer spewing chlorinated fountain water. They looked far less fearsome at night. Some of the offices still had lights on. Green Wave Technologies, my first stop, was located on the top floor of the office building.

I showed my pass through the glass on the building’s front doors. An elderly man, complete with a limping gait and snow-white hair, approached the door cautiously. It took him a minute to pull out his glasses, wipe them once on the sleeve of his sweater and put them on his nose. He wasn’t exactly exuding high-security detail, but it was nice to know he had a job and a purpose. He smiled pleasantly after reading my pass as if it was a four-page dissertation.

A few minutes later he used the manual override to open the doors. “You’re new,” he said as I carried my unwieldy load, including a bucket of supplies and vacuum, inside.

“I am. Green Wave Technologies?” I asked. “And can you turn off the alarm, please?”

His left leg lagged a few seconds behind the right as he shuffled to his security desk. He sat down with a plunk and clicked a few words on the keyboard. “Their alarm isn’t set yet, so someone must still be in the office.”

I hated it when people stayed late and I had to clean around them. “I see. Thanks, I’ll head up, then.”

The main door to Green Wave Technologies was unlocked. The guard was right. No alarms went off when I opened it. The center office space was mostly steel and wood and … plants. There was an extraordinary number of lush green plants growing from sconce-style containers on the walls, pots on the tops of cubicles and a large, long planter in the middle of the floor with ferns growing straight up to the ceiling. I had no idea what the company did, but the name Green Wave and the flora-filled décor made me think it had something to do with the environment.

The office space was vast and modern, and the tinted windows that surrounded the cubicles and smaller offices had views that stretched all the way to the ocean. A faint light glowed in one of the peripheral offices, but I couldn’t see inside. The office space was so modern, it was hard to find any electrical outlets. I searched the textured walls and pushed aside long vines of ivy and spider plants and finally found a hard-to-reach outlet under a desk. On the wall behind the desk were shiny wooden letters that spelled out the name Rosalie. I hoped she wouldn’t mind me using her outlet. Her desk was stark and organized. The only thing not prim and practical was a massive bowl of M&M’s, my all-time favorite candy. Sometimes Nonna would let the five of us sleep in her small, crowded living room for a slumber party, and she allowed each of us to pick our favorite candy for the event. I always went for the M&M’s. They lasted longer than a single bar, and—with their candy long gone—my sisters would look on with envy as I slowly nibbled my candy throughout the evening.

After a struggle on my hands and knees to get the vacuum plug placed in the wall, I climbed out from under the desk. I sat on my knees for a second and released a much-needed yawn. Covering the coffee cart for Amber had wiped away my one chance for a few hours’ sleep. I was starting to feel it.

I started up the vacuum, and, almost instantly, the power stopped. I crawled back under the desk. As I did, my foot hit the chair. It rolled across the slick floor and crashed into a potted plant. I pushed to my feet and lunged toward the plant, catching it before it fell over. Some of the dirt spilled off the top and one big green leaf ripped off in the process, but I breathed a major sigh of relief that I’d saved it. Kelly was not forgiving, and a disaster like a broken plant would probably cost me the job.

I moved the vacuum to the lower plug. It seemed to hold better. I started the vacuum again and was moving it along absently, dreaming up a sticky caramel bun recipe, when the unwieldy, hammerhead shark-shaped vacuum head hit the large planter box with the tall ferns. A chunk of wood flew off the planter box, and the ferns shook so hard they dropped dozens of small, finger-shaped leaves on my head and the floor. I quickly vacuumed up the fallen leaves, then picked up the chips of wood, crouched down at the planter and carefully tried to press the pieces back into place. They wouldn’t hold. I looked around. The office was still mostly dark and deserted. I quickly pushed the chips of wood into the planter box and looked around again. I hated being so sneaky, but I really didn’t want to lose the job.

Another yawn swept through me. I took earbuds out of my pocket. Hopefully, some music would help me get in the rhythm. It seemed it was going to be a long night.