Sweet on You--A Filipino Romance by Carla de Guzman

Author:Carla de Guzman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2020-07-23T19:36:43+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

“M’am, Sir Gabriel just left,” her manager informed Sari five minutes later. She was back behind her coffee machine after cleaning herself up and willing her cheeks to stop being so hot. Eh ano ga? she thought, shaking off the feeling. In her estimation, she was doing a fantastic job of acting like absolutely nothing had happened, even if every cell of her skin was still tingling, her cheeks still warm and her lips still tingly, even after re-application of her lipstick and gloss.

“He seemed to be in a real hurry.”

Sari was doing her best to hide a grin, but the look on her manager’s face made her think she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“He should be,” she chuckled.

“M’am, sure ka, you’re not dating Sir Gab?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, because technically it wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t gone on a date with him yet, so they weren’t dating per se. But her staff didn’t need to know that.

“Sure na sure? And your sister just arrived.”

“Has she?” Sari singsonged, smiling and thoroughly rubbing hand sanitizer from the bathroom into her hands, when she saw Selene sitting in the café.

Selene Tomas was all business in high gloss, the kind of woman who put on eyeshadow and mascara on a daily basis and walked in four-inch heels even in the heart of Lipa City. She was two years older than Sari, and was actually the shortest among them, but the way she carried herself just screamed “responsibility” and “no time for bullshit.”

“Is it just me, or are there more people in the Laneways now than there were last year?” she asked one of Sari’s staff as Sari took a backward step up the stairs to hide from view.

“The bakery and the café are a huge draw,” Sari’s store manager explained with a smile. “They’ve been having a lot of...theatrics lately.”

Sari thanked God very silently that her store manager wasn’t a gossip, and that her sister seemed to have no idea what she and Gab had been up to in the last one and a half weeks. Selene looked like she was casually surveying the café, and Sari could just tell that she was assessing it, scanning for anything substandard, but Sari felt ready for anything.

“Long black, please.” Selene smiled sweetly to Sari’s cashier, and immediately Sari knew it was a test. She didn’t have long black coffee on her menu, mostly because her customers were more familiar with Americanos and lattes.

Her barista shot Sari a panicked look, as if expecting Sari to come in and make the order for her. Sari made a little shooing gesture at her as if to tell her she could do this, because she’d been trained well, and knew the difference between an Americano and a long black. It was all down to the preparation—a long black would mean pouring the espresso into a cup of hot water, instead of the other way around. The key was in preserving the crema of the espresso.

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