The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2) (5 page)

‘I know you do.’

They chatted some more about the ghastly UK chain system when it came to buying a house, and they talked again about her plans to trace her birth father.

‘It’d mean a lot to me if you said you support me,’ she said.

‘I’ve never known you to back down about much, Molly, so I’ll be there to pick up the pieces if you need me.’ He winked at her.

‘I think I’m old enough to not have my big brother looking after me.’

‘You need a boyfriend to pick up the slack.’ When she giggled, he added a little more seriously, ‘I mean it though. If you decide to go through with it, then I’ll help you in any way I can. And you know Mum and Dad will too.’

After Isaac dropped her home, Molly filled a glass of water in the kitchen and took it into the bedroom. She lay on her stomach on her bed and logged back on to Facebook, but Ben had only said, ‘Catch you later,’ in answer to her hurried goodbye, so she shut off the iPad dejectedly. She turned over onto her back, her arm thrown above her head as she looked at the ceiling.

Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to find her birth father?

The question went round and round in her head for a good ten minutes as she lay there looking at nothing, and then the decision was made.

She rolled onto her tummy and pulled the iPad back across the bed. She clicked on Internet Explorer, and when the Google search field appeared at the top of the page, she typed in her birth father’s name.

And before she could talk herself out of it, she pressed Enter.

Chapter Seven

Andrew

On his lunch break, Andrew drove around the corner to Magnolia House to deliver a chocolate fountain, glad of the job that kept him so busy and focused. It kept his mind off Julia and the messages they’d exchanged since she’d first contacted him. He’d fired more questions her way, but so far her answers had been short and to the point. It was like trying to squeeze out a dishcloth that had spent all day in the Aussie heat and any time she liked, she could completely dry up and he’d struggle to find out more about the daughter he’d never met.

Andrew had no idea where to go from here. The only thing he knew right now was how to do his job, and how to do it well.

Rosie, PR assistant and wedding coordinator, was chatting with a florist, double-checking the order for the wedding that afternoon – cream carnations with green foliage for the groomsmen and deep, velvety pink lilies for the bride and bridesmaids.

‘Sorry.’ Rosie apologised for the wait after she’d directed the florist on where to take the flowers. ‘There’s so much to do on the actual day.’

‘You do look a bit frazzled.’ He smiled warmly at her.

‘I’ll be fine as long as everyone turns up when they should and does everything they’re supposed to.’ She put down a clipboard and tied her chestnut hair up into a ponytail as Andrew opened the rear doors of his van.

It was warm again today, forecast to reach the high thirties by mid-afternoon. People in Magnolia Creek were talking readily about waiting for the cool change, the moment all Melburnians breathed a collective sigh of relief. And from what Andrew understood, residents were still on edge this summer since the bushfires that had swept too close for comfort right after Christmas.

Rosie picked up the clipboard and flipped to the appropriate page as Andrew waited for instruction.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘to confirm … we have one large ultimate chocolate fountain, unlimited milk chocolate and someone to help out for five hours at the function.’

‘Correct,’ he answered.

‘Why are you smiling?’

Andrew laughed, he couldn’t help it. ‘Well, here you are getting ready for a beautiful wedding with – and I can only assume – at least one white dress, and probably umpteen other things in white.’ He glanced around. ‘And here I am installing one of the messiest things you could ever have at a function like this.’

‘You know, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty crazy!’ Rosie laughed as she led the way to the main function room in Magnolia House where the air conditioning was working full pelt to keep the temperature bearable.

‘I wouldn’t mind betting the bride doesn’t come anywhere near this fountain.’ Andrew set the box down on the trestle table at the edge of the room and began to unpack. Unexpectedly, he found himself wondering whether his own daughter was married. Had he missed the chance to walk her down the aisle? Maybe she even had her own children by now.

There was so much he didn’t know.

‘From memory,’ said Rosie, clutching her clipboard, ‘the bride was the one who wanted this.’

Andrew looked doubtful. ‘Maybe after all the photographs are taken and all the champagne is drunk.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Are you staying to help out?’

‘Not me. I’ll set it up for you now and run through what’ll happen later, but it’ll be Emilio who comes along for the five hours. He’ll top up the chocolate and make sure it doesn’t run out, and he’ll keep the fountain clean and flowing.’

‘Fabulous. See, no stress when everyone and everything is as they should be.’ Rosie briefed the kitchen staff about the chocolate fountain and the fruit, marshmallows, wafers and mixed lollies to be arranged on the table around it, ready for the guests.

Andrew liked Rosie. She lived in Rosie Cottage with her boyfriend, Owen, and was fairly new to town after house-sitting for his parents and falling for their son. From what Gemma told Andrew – she’d gleaned the gossip from Bella – the path to true love hadn’t gone smoothly, but they were incredibly happy now. Rosie looked to be in her late twenties, around the same age as his daughter. He wanted to put a name to the end of his train of thought but he couldn’t. Julia had told him the bare facts in her message and nothing more. It was the little details that disturbed him the most: the fact he didn’t even know the name of his own child, how he didn’t know what colour her eyes were, her hair colour, her height.

Since Julia had dropped the bombshell that the baby he’d believed to be aborted had grown up with a new family, Andrew had found himself wondering not only what his daughter was like physically, but how she was emotionally. Had she been happy all these years? Had the parents who’d cared for her all her life loved her as much as they would their own flesh and blood?

When he arrived back at the chocolaterie, Andrew checked his watch. Gemma would be with Louis at the hospital now, getting his dialysis, possibly finding out the test results. He tried not to worry, but ignoring the train of thought lead to thinking about Julia’s revelation again. His mind was messy, like a circuit board experiment with its tangle of wires connected by alligator clips. Whenever one section switched off, another went on, and sometimes you had no idea at all how to turn it off.

He’d only exchanged a couple of messages with Julia, and all she’d offered in her latest reply was to say this was too painful for her to go into detail and he needed to be patient with her.

Andrew was a patient man. You couldn’t do this job if you weren’t. But he also felt like shouting from the rooftops, ‘What about me? Don’t I have a right to talk about it after being kept in the dark for so long?’

Andrew filled the third tempering machine with couverture white chocolate chips. They didn’t use this machine every day – the demand for white chocolate was much less than milk or dark – but it was still a reasonable seller. He switched the machine on when Gemma came through to the back of the shop.

He led her into the store room at the back where they kept the ten-kilo bags of the finest dark, milk and white chocolate, and stacked the now half-empty bag of white chocolate chips next to the others.

‘How’d it go?’ He kissed her on the cheek.

‘The results aren’t good.’ She took his hands in hers. ‘The doctors want Louis on dialysis four times a week from now on.’

‘Oh, God.’ Andrew leant against the wall and breathed deeply.

Gemma was by his side. ‘We suspected this. The swelling in his hands and feet has got worse, he’s so tired all the time and he gets out of breath if he walks too far.’

Andrew nodded. The news shouldn’t have come as a surprise, yet it still shocked him.

‘Andrew. I don’t know how we are going to do this and run a business. Then there’s my job …’

‘Do we know how much he’s moved up the list for a transplant?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s only been on it a few months … it could take years. And he doesn’t have years.’

Andrew put a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her close, kissed the top of her head. She was close to Louis, as close as he was in many ways.

‘I’ll talk to him,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m a match, I’m fit and healthy. There’s no other option. This can’t be it. I’m not ready to lose him.’

A tear rolled down her cheek and he kissed it away.

‘I know there’s no other way,’ she agreed. ‘But both of you enduring operations won’t be easy either. I’m worried about the business too. We’re just getting started—’

‘I’ve got good staff. We’ll manage, I promise. There’s no other choice, nothing else we can do. Where is he now?’

‘He’s sleeping at home. I said I wouldn’t be long.’ She sniffed, took out a tissue to blow her nose. ‘Will you be able to cope with the junior chocolate-making this afternoon?’

He’d forgotten about it entirely. His mind wasn’t on the job enough to do it, and they were short staffed with Emilio manning the chocolate fountain at the wedding, but he’d have to manage. ‘It’s fine, you go and be with Dad and I’ll be home at the usual time.’

‘The class starts at four o’clock. I usually send the parents up to the café or tell them to take a wander, check out the shops. Or—’

‘Relax … I’ll be fine. And Stephanie’s a dab hand at these workshops, she loves it.You go and take good care of Dad, send him my love.’

What he really wanted to do was lock up and go home to his family, shut up shop until all this was sorted out. But he couldn’t. When it was your business, no matter whether you were at death’s door, you showed up and ran the place. Word had already started to spread regarding the workshops, and it was exactly what the business needed. Already they had today’s kids’ workshop plus another two booked tomorrow, a hen party at the weekend and an adult corporate group next week. If he thought too much about the recuperation time following an operation as well as the business needing him, not to mention Gemma, it’d send him into a blind panic. But they were a strong family. They could get through this.

Andrew roped Stephanie in to help with the workshop. She was more than willing; it was a nice break from wrapping and labelling the chocolates. She’d finished packaging up various different chocolates, given them all lot numbers and used the label maker in the office to produce the legally required information for the back of each pack. Now she made labels for all the children in the workshop, allocated aprons for each of them and made sure Andrew had all the props – the poster he liked to show kids that illustrated a brief journey of the cocoa bean until it became the confectionery they knew and loved; the replica of a cocoa bean; the pot of chocolate chips from the packets they bought in bulk.

Andrew fastened his apron. Each child today would be mesmerised by chocolate, keen to learn, ready to get messy and make their own creations to take home. He loved seeing all those little faces light up and their eyes grow as big as the moon. A lightbulb from the circuit board of his mind went on again. Julia had deprived him of the chance to be a dad. He’d never watched his daughter’s first steps or heard her first words. He hadn’t seen his daughter’s face light up when she tasted her first chocolate, he’d missed out on Christmas morning excitement, he’d never hugged her close when she fell and grazed her knee. Julia had taken it all away from him.

Andrew worked hard to battle thoughts of Julia, block out worries of Louis, and thankfully the kids were a great bunch. Sometimes there was one scallywag intent on showing off to his peers, but today they were all calm and eager to learn. When they’d started these classes, Gemma had had to give Andrew a few tips. She was a natural with the kids. Gemma’s smile lit up a room and kids instantly warmed to her. She seemed able to effortlessly suss out the little ones and get on their wavelength, making them laugh and have fun as they learnt. She’d make a good mum. A really good mum.

When the kids were decorating enormous chocolate discs with gold lustre paint, hundreds and thousands and crumbled dried fruits, Andrew went to help out upstairs. Some of the parents liked to wait up there, read a book, generally relax until it was time to take their little monkeys home.

He wiped his hands on his apron and rang an order through on the till as Bella, owner of Finnegan’s café, came to chat with him.

‘You’re busy,’ she said, taking a seat on the stool at the counter, ordering a signature hot chocolate.

He shut the till and handed his customer their change before starting to make Bella’s hot chocolate. ‘Are you missing the café?’ he asked. Finnegan’s had perished in the bushfires and was slowly being rebuilt.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’ She looked around her.

He crossed his arms and smiled. ‘You’re checking out the competition.’

Her red-lipsticked mouth opened to protest, but instead she grinned.

Upstairs in Magnolia Creek Chocolaterie it wasn’t just the modest café that drew people in, but also the floor to ceiling windows allowing a view far into the distance, into the bush, the magnificent Dandenong Ranges. When they’d decided to put in a café up here, Andrew had been well aware of the former Finnegan’s café. He was anxious to be a real part of the community, and the last thing he’d wanted to do was be a direct competitor. He’d even chatted with Bella and Rodney Finnegan before they opened up Magnolia Creek Chocolaterie and had adjusted what his own café supplied in accordance with what would again be available in Magnolia Creek when Finnegan’s café reopened. In doing so, he had commanded Bella’s respect in particular, and she was a key member of the community. She even volunteered with Magnolia Creek Fire Brigade, keeping them all organised, and he’d found in her an ally. They’d devised their menu for the upstairs with Bella and Rodney in the forefront of their minds, and they now sold simple snacks of cookies and various flavours of ice cream.

‘It is a magnificent view of the bush.’ Bella thanked Andrew for the hot chocolate. ‘Last time I was in here, with Jane, we tried the tasters.’

‘Ah, they’re new. What did you think?’

Her eyes rolled heavenward as Andrew took an order from another customer. ‘They’re to die for.’

Their most recent offering, the Trio of Tasters, was a set of three espresso glasses, each one filled with a different type of hot chocolate: white, milk and dark. They hadn’t sold many so far, but come autumn and winter Andrew knew they’d entice people in out of the cold, and already Stephanie had produced some posters advertising the new addition to their collection.