The Broken Hearts Bakery, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by Carla Yvonne Laureano
Published by Laureano Creative Media LLC
P.O. Box 460241
Aurora, CO 80046, U.S.A.
laureanocreativemedia.com
Cover design by Hillary Manton Lodge
Edited by Jocelyn Bailey
Copyedited by Denise Harmer
All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.
This story is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements are products of the author’s imagination.
ISBN 978-1-7327940-8-5 (sc)
ISBN 978-1-7327940-9-2 (e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901942
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
A Note from the Author
You’d think after having written fifteen books, the process would get easier, but the truth is, every book is a new and exciting (terrifying?) adventure. I’m eternally grateful to be surrounded by an amazing group of people who make this job so much easier and more fulfilling.
A huge round of thank yous go to: my amazing and intelligent Haven Ridge Beta Squad (Meaghan Ahlbrand, Jessica Baker, Elisabeth Callahan, Kim Campbell, Leslie Florea, Denise Hershberger, Mindy Houng, Amy Parrish, Brenda Smith, and Susan Snodgrass)—your contributions to this story were unmistakable; my editor, Jocelyn Bailey, who helped make this book the best it could possibly be; my copyeditor, Denise Harmer, whose attention to detail puts me to shame (and I’m pretty darn detail-oriented!); cover designer extraordinaire, Hillary Lodge—this cover is a whole thing of its own and I love it so much; my writer friends Amber Lynn Perry, Jen Turano, Lori Twichell, and Courtney Walsh, who keep me going when all I want to do is sit on the sofa and eat chocolate—love you guys!
And last, to my fabulous readers. This book wouldn’t exist without you, and I’m so grateful for your support, which allows me to do the thing I love most in the world. Thank you!
Welcome to Haven Ridge, Colorado—
a fading town that might just have a little magic left to offer . . .
Get your free prequel novella e-book at CarlaLaureano.com!
If Gemma Van Buren had learned anything in her thirty years on this planet, it was that heartbreak demanded chocolate.
Or, as she preferred, chocolate wrapped in flaky butter pastry and baked to a perfect golden brown. Which was why when she walked into the lobby of the Family Law Offices of Merivale and Mercer on Monday morning, she shoved a pink pastry box across the countertop to the young receptionist.
Alicia looked up in surprise, the rim of red around her eyes giving away her mood despite her flawlessly-applied makeup. “You didn’t.”
Gemma leaned onto the counter with a sympathetic smile. Everyone in her office knew what a pink box meant: consolation treats. It didn’t matter whether the heartbreak was personal or professional; it would be accompanied by baked goods. At first, some of the pricklier attorneys had given her a hard time about letting on that she had a softer side, but that had gone away the minute they saw her in negotiations. Forget the velvet glove—Gemma’s iron fist was sheathed in puff pastry.
Alicia flipped the lid open and sighed in pleasure at the smell of sugar and butter. “Bless you. How did you know chocolate croissants were my favorite?”
“I didn’t. But it’s every woman’s favorite when she’s kicked a no-good boyfriend to the curb.”
“Oh, but I didn’t—”
Gemma held up a hand and gave her a significant look. “You traded up in life. Right?”
Alicia gave her a little sideways smile, the first such expression Gemma had seen since Alicia’s boyfriend of five years gave her the it’s not you, it’s me speech.
“The best part is, we’ve decided that consolation pastries have no calories.”
“In that case . . .” Alicia picked a croissant from the box and took a bite, rolling her eyes in pleasure. Gemma hid her smile and moved past the desk amid the click of her high-heeled pumps before Alicia called out, “Oh, I almost forgot . . . Mr. Mercer was looking for you a few minutes ago.”
Gemma froze in mid-step. “Right now? I’ve got a deposition at eight.”
“He didn’t say specifically, but . . .”
She groaned. “Great. Thanks for the heads up.” Gemma continued walking the hall toward her office as if it were a minefield, ready to explode with the first unwary step. It wasn’t good if one of the partners was looking for her this early, particularly since he should already know her schedule—each associate’s digital calendar was available for viewing by everyone in the office. If she could just slip into the conference room a little early—
“Gemma! Have a minute?”
Too late. She put on a noncommittal smile and turned to face her boss. “Actually, John, I’ve got a deposition in the Clearwater case—”
“This won’t take long.” John smiled what she thought of as his courtroom smile—his likable smile—and gestured with his head toward his glassed-in corner office.
Gemma gathered herself. “Of course. I can take a few minutes. Let me drop off my briefcase first.”
She made a quick trip to her own office before she returned to his, then lingered just inside his door, hoping he wouldn’t insist on her sitting. No such luck. He gestured to the chair in front of his mahogany desk and then settled behind it, unbuttoning the coat of his well-made, very expensive three-piece suit. She seated herself casually, crossed her legs, and folded her hands in her lap while she waited.
He waited, too. It was a common enough negotiation strategy: stretch the silence out until someone cracked. But she was good at Chicken, and frankly, if he was going to waste her time with a meeting that probably could have been an email, she had no problem wasting his.
“So, I understand you met with Cameron Lowe yesterday.”
Inwardly, Gemma did a fist pump at winning the staring contest, and her own amusement at the childish game put more of a smile on her face than she intended. “I did.”
“And you told him you couldn’t help him.”
“I did.”
“Gemma, he’s a return client of the firm.”
“Yes, I realize that.”
“Then why did you tell him you didn’t represent adulterers?”
It was actually better than the words she’d been thinking at the time—she’d doubted her first impulse would be appropriate even given the reason he was a “return client,” and it was never acceptable to use questionable language in her law firm. “John, I was very clear on the kinds of cases I’d take and clients I’d represent—”
“As an associate of this firm—”
“Which you well remember, because it was you who pursued me. After . . .” She pretended to think. “It was the Rollins case, wasn’t it? If I recall, you were opposing counsel.” She smiled calmly at him, her courtroom face. She actually got to use this face more often than her colleagues, because unlike them, she would take a case all the way to court if she felt the other side was being unreasonable. And more often than not, the judge sided with her clients because she didn’t represent creeps, cheaters, or abusers.
A smile crept onto John’s lips. “Yes, I remember.” He should. He’d been so impressed by her performance in the courtroom that he’d handed her his card in the hallway and asked her to call him for an interview the next day.
Gemma rose. “Good talk, John. I have a deposition.”
His smile faded. “Gemma, sit down.”
She froze, her heart stopping for a moment before it resumed double time. Normally John would just roll his eyes and wave her off, the subject tabled until next year when he found the need to remind her of his nominal authority over her. But this? This was new. She sat.
“Eli and I have been talking.”
And now she understood. John Mercer might be the partner who oversaw the everyday workings of the firm, but Eli Merivale was a forty-year career attorney with the fees to match. He took the highest-profile cases, such as celebrity divorces and custody disputes, and he overruled John only when something particularly egregious pinged his radar.
Somehow, Gemma had gotten on his radar.
“I can’t imagine that Eli is upset with my performance. I have the highest satisfaction rating
“It’s not your performance, Gemma. We all agree that you’re a very competent attorney—”
“Competent? I’m more than competent—”
“But the number of clients you turn down doesn’t sit well with Eli. It reflects badly on the firm if prospects can’t engage the attorney that brought them here in the first place.”
“You mean, if I turn them down, they go somewhere else. It sounds like you should be having a talk with the other associates, not me.”
“Gemma, someone in your position can’t be so choosy.”
She frowned. “What does that mean, ‘in my position?’”
John took a deep breath and let it out slowly, a placating expression on his face. “Eli thinks you’re a little high-minded for an associate. He’s been willing to overlook it until now because your work is outstanding and you have the highest referral rate in the firm. But when you alienate long-time clients like Cameron Lowe, who has a great deal of influence in this town . . . he’s starting to believe you could be a liability.”
“That’s ridiculous. I pick cases I believe in, people who need help. Just because I refuse to represent clients who would leave their spouses in the lurch after thirty years of marriage doesn’t make me a liability. Besides, I don’t have room in my caseload to take every client who comes my way, so the point is moot.”
“You spend twenty percent of your time on pro bono work.”
Gemma stopped, stunned, understanding the unspoken message in that statement. “He wouldn’t.”
“He would. He’s serious, Gemma.”
“So unless I take on clients whose cases I don’t believe in, I can’t take the cases that I do?”
“We can’t tell you what cases to take on your own time. But you won’t be able to handle them here, under the firm’s umbrella.”
Gemma closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her temples. This was what she had been afraid of. This was why she had made a very specific agreement as to her autonomy when she was hired. This job was just about money to Eli and his ilk—it truly didn’t matter to them who got the house in Vail, or the original Matisse, or the use of the condo in Hawaii over the Christmas holidays. And if she was truthful, that didn’t matter much to her either.
But those clients let her take on the other cases for free, the ones that did matter. Those clients didn’t argue about material possessions. They just wanted their nightmare to end, for their children to be safe from their spouse’s rages, to not have to start all over from scratch when they were betrayed by the people for whom they’d sacrificed their own dreams. They were the ones who needed a do-over. They were the ones against whom the system was stacked when it favored power and money and education over the truth.
They were the ones who would suffer if she didn’t do what Eli wanted.
And yet that would make her exactly the person she’d promised herself she wouldn’t become when she chose this course for her life.
John’s expression had turned sympathetic now, as if he sensed her internal turmoil. “Take some time to think about it. You don’t have to make a decision right now.”
“What is there to think about? I was very clear about my criteria when I came to the firm. You assured me . . . you promised me . . . that I would be allowed to choose my cases and I didn’t have to compromise that for you or anyone else.”
“Gemma—”
“We both know that an oral contract is legally binding in California. If I wanted to, I could fight this. I could bring a wrongful dismissal suit.”
John looked pained. “You could. But I wish you wouldn’t. Family law is a small world, Gemma, even in Los Angeles. Win or lose, in the long run, you would only be hurting yourself.”
She didn’t let it show on her face, but he was right. Even if she were able to convincingly argue wrongful dismissal in court, she would first have to force Eli to fire her before she even had a case. For good or ill, Gemma never walked into court without knowing her chances of winning, and right now, she didn’t like her odds.
He must have sensed her wavering, because he folded his hands on the desk, his expression softening. “You have some vacation time. Why don’t you take next week off and think about it? I’d hate to lose you, but I’m afraid there’s no room for negotiation in this.”
And there was no room in his expression for argument. She knew John too well to think she was going to talk her way out of this one. Either she came back to work, ready to take on whatever clients he deemed fit, regardless of how it might violate her personal ethics, or she didn’t come back at all.
“Okay. I’ll clear my schedule. It’s fairly light anyway.” She stood and began to smooth her skirt in a nervous habit she thought she’d broken, then clenched her hands by her side. She wanted to give a parting shot, but there was nothing left to say. Not right now.
She gathered herself and headed back down the hallway, feeling like the proverbial ground had just shifted beneath her feet. In five minutes, her world had changed, and she had no idea what she was going to do about it.
Looked like Alicia wasn’t the only one who would be needing the consolation pastries today.
Gemma sleepwalked through the rest of her day, moving with robotic efficiency from deposition to new client consultation—another one she passed off—to lunch with a colleague, all the while her mind spinning through the ultimatum she had been given. The only advantage of her whirling thoughts was that her evening drive through horrific cross-town traffic seemed like a blink; she only knew it had been bad because it was past seven o’clock when she pulled into the driveway of her Santa Monica home. Unfortunately, she was no closer to knowing what she wanted to do.
She scooped her shoes out of the passenger seat without putting them on and walked up the rough concrete and brick driveway in her bare feet to her front door. It was a tiny house, barely thirteen hundred square feet, bought when she’d taken the job at Merivale and Mercer for an exorbitant price that now felt like a steal considering the current real estate market. Built in the 1950s with all of the function and none of the style of the mid-mods down the street, it was nevertheless fully remodeled in soothing shades of white, gray, and cream.
Gemma dropped her purse and keys on the entryway table and paused to preheat the oven before she proceeded to her bedroom to change. Off came the business suit and silk blouse, on went the sweatpants with a paint smudge on the thigh, her well-worn USC Gould Law School T-shirt, and a thick pair of Scandinavian knit socks that were much too warm for the climate. She padded back into the kitchen and was halfway through measuring ingredients for cream puffs before it hit her, the abstract becoming concrete.
It wasn’t just her job she was risking if she stood up for her principles. It was her entire life. She could give up her car without a second thought—the sporty sedan was a splurge she could do without. But her little haven here from the bustle of the city? She wouldn’t be able to afford this lovely little house with its huge kitchen and marble countertops in a quiet neighborhood, her respite from apartment living. Given the fact she’d been putting all her extra money toward paying off her student loans, her savings were far more meager than her lifestyle would suggest. She’d underestimated how expensive it was to live in LA, even with a more-than-decent income.
And yet, even though that idea hit her with a wave of sadness, it wasn’t the money that concerned her most. It was the loss of purpose, routine, the rhythm of a life she loved. Being a lawyer was the only thing she’d wanted since she was sixteen years old. One didn’t just walk away from the top family law firm in the city and expect that future employers wouldn’t ask questions. If she stood up for her principles and lost her job, there was no guarantee that she would find another one. What good would her principles do her then?
Gemma blinked back unexpected tears as she beat the water, milk, and flour in the saucepan with more force than necessary, causing the steel pot to skitter across the grate. From her perspective, there was no good answer.
She’d finished the pâte à choux in her mixer and was halfway through piping the rounds that would become her pastry shells when her phone rang from her purse in the hallway. She froze, torn between the Pavlovian impulse to answer her phone and the desire to get the shells cooked so she’d have time to cool and fill them before it got too late. The pastries won out. She finished the tray of puffs, slid them into the oven, and strode to the hallway to check her message.
