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for her, weaving his way through the counter staff as they darted around each other on their quests to get customers through the line and out the door. He looked overwhelmed and rightfully so—it wasn’t easy on the floor, where an employee could see hundreds of customers in the span of an hour on any given day and potentially box ten times the amount of cupcakes, cookies, or bars. She folded her arms and leaned against the marble counter at her station, waiting for his approach.
    The look on his face said he might have still been feeling sunny; she chewed her bottom lip as her body tensed in anticipation of his arrival. He gave her a charming grin, and Violet melted only a little as one corner of his mouth turned up just a bit higher than the other.
    “You’re early,” she said, turning away and reaching for the red bucket beneath her station.
    “I know. I figured we can talk a little bit about whatever it is you’re supposed to be helping me with. Thanks for doing that, by the way.”
    She pulled the scrub brush from the red bucket filled with cleaning solution and began to clean her countertop. “I’m glad to help. How are you doing with memorizing the menu?”
    Ben grabbed a roll of paper towels. “There’s literally twice as many items as there are on a restaurant menu. I can tell you how I’m doing, but I think you already know.”
    Violet’s breath caught in her throat as his long, muscular arm reached around from behind her to offer her the paper towels. There was the scent she hadn’t smelled since she first met him but somehow already knew as “him.” She took the roll, maybe a little more aggressively than she meant to, and stepped around him to stand in front of the cooling rack.
    “Well, that’s exactly what I’m here to help you with,” she said. “The job is a lot more than the office, and there aren’t sets of organized little tables to check on or turn over. It’s a different beast.”
    “I hear you loud and clear. That’s why I came up early. Where should we start?”
    Violet laid a hand on the cooling rack. “I’ve gotta ice some Devil’s food cupcakes with the rest of the cream-cheese icing. Wanna give it a shot?”
    • • •
    Twenty minutes later, Violet had hand-iced sixty Devil’s food cupcakes, each with a Wynne’s signature swirl of cream cheese icing. Ben had destroyed a total of six cupcakes attempting to create a swirl similar to Violet’s work and still hadn’t managed to ice one. He did, however, manage to get tiny globs of icing all over his hands and wrists. With every cupcake he wasted, Violet’s tolerance for his clumsiness wore thin; letting out a small grunt under her breath, she looked away as she boxed her finished cupcakes, telling herself that the swirl wasn’t easy for everybody. So what if it had only taken her three days to perfect?
Patience, girl, patience
.
    When she finally looked up, she noticed he’d gotten a glob of icing on his cheek. “Oh God, Ben—how?”
    With a perplexed expression, he asked, “What?”
    “You have icing on your face.”
    Ben grinned shamefacedly, putting down the icing wand and a maimed cupcake. “Whoops. That’s not cute, is it?”
    “Not after your first birthday,” Violet answered. “You know, you’re pretty bad at this, Ben.”
    He chuckled. “Yeah, this is going to take a while. What’s the point of this, anyway? I’m the general manager; why do I need to know how to ice?”
    “The more available hands we have to ice, the better. That way, if there’s a cupcake emergency, we’ll be able to—”
    “
A cupcake emergency?
You can’t be serious.”
    Violet frowned, taking offense at Ben’s lighthearted laugh. She didn’t enjoy feeling like her passion was being mocked. “I realize it sounds funny, but it’s a legit issue. I mean, what happens if one of your white-linen paradises runs out of an item?”
    Ben continued wiping icing off his hands and wrists. “We eighty-six the item,