Heart's Desire. Catherine Lanigan

a small-town, small-time operation. It makes enough to cover your overhead and pay for you to live. Deep down, you’re scared someone will steal your recipes. So, you trademarked them along with your iced-on-the-spot concept, and you don’t let anyone have access to the recipes themselves. That’s good. But not good enough. Once you franchise, all your ‘partners,’ we’ll call them, will sign nondisclosures. The employees they hire will sign iron-clad nondisclosures as well. If they leave and steal a recipe, we sue. We can garnishee their wages, put a lien on their house or car.”

      “You can do that?”

      He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s done all the time, and has been done for a hundred years, especially in R & D departments in big corporations. You own your idea. No one has come up with this one in quite the way you have. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

      “There are others?” She urged him on.

      “Quinton Marsh thinks so, and he runs the company. You saw the excitement from my staff. They love your cupcakes.”

      “So, it’s the cupcakes that are different.”

      “And the way you sell them...made to order. Brilliant.”

      Maddie noticed that he grew more excited with every breath he took and every word he spoke. He gestured when making a point and his face beamed with enthusiasm. Maddie realized that Alex cared for her business as if it were his own.

      “Just remember, Becky Field made chocolate chip cookies,” he continued. “Nothing special about that. Except her megamillions.”

      She smiled back at him. “You flatter me.”

      His smiled dropped. “I’m not conning you,” he said defensively.

      “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s just that where I live, where I come from, no one has talked to me the way you do. No one has ever given me—”

      “Respect?” he interjected.

      “Exactly.” Sadness filled her as she thought about her mother and all the complaining and harping she’d done over the years as Maddie had struggled to make her little café a success. Babs had hounded her to get a “safe” job in the bread factory, just as Babs had done. Babs told Maddie constantly that no one was going to pay four dollars for a fancy coffee and over three dollars for a cupcake. She ridiculed everything that Maddie said or did.

      As Maddie gazed at Alex’s handsome, confident face, she realized that her mother had not wanted her own daughter to succeed. Suddenly, realizations about her own past were flying at her like the myriad of stars that pass by a spaceship as it zooms through space. “Yes. Respect. It’s been a tremendous amount of hard work.”

      “And now you’re getting your payoff.” Alex smiled even more brightly, if that were possible.

      He opened one of the manila folders he’d carried with him from the office. “Your investor is named James Stapleton. Ever hear of him?”

      “No. Should I have?”

      “Probably not. He’s been investing in restaurant chains and buying franchises since the sixties. He buys only a few at a time—two to six locations—and then waits to see how they do. If he doesn’t make any money, he shuts them down, and he may or may not use the location for a new franchise. He’s been moving businesses from the suburbs back into the city since 2000. I think it’s because as he’s gotten older, the suburbs are too boring for him and he and his wife like city life.”

      “City life?” Maddie stopped him by reaching forward but not actually touching Alex’s hand. It was an unconscious move, motivated by years of standing on the shore of Lake Michigan and staring out to the west to see the skyline of Chicago glittering in the sun. She dreamed of living in the city, of leaving Indian Lake and all her heartbreaks behind. If she had this success, if she had respect, she could dare to live another life. A better life. A happy life.

      Alex looked down at Maddie’s hand but didn’t make a move.

      Maddie was dreamy-eyed when she asked, “Do you know what about the city they enjoy?”

      “His wife is a theater buff. Goes all the time. She also likes the ballet, and I think she’s on a couple foundations around town. She’s a busy lady for someone nearly eighty.”

      “Sounds wonderful.” Maddie smiled wistfully. “One of my two best friends will turn eighty-one this summer. She loves the theater. I should bring her with me sometime. We could see a play.”

      “Or I could take you,” Alex said, and before Maddie could retract her hand, he captured it and raised it to his lips, kissing her fingers. “Maddie, I would like very much to show you my Chicago.”

      Maddie squirmed in her seat. “Alex...”

      “Do I make you that nervous, Maddie?” he asked with a chuckle.

      “It’s not you, Alex. It’s just that I’ve put my heart and soul into my business and until it’s a real deal, I’m just not geared to think about anything else. Not plays or escargot, and certainly not champagne.”

      A slow smile crept across Alex’s face. “Then I’m almost in the clear. How does a hundred thousand sound to you?”

      “For what?” she asked.

      “For the first two franchises of your cafés. James wants six, but I declined. After this first purchase, if James or any other investor wants to open a Cupcakes and Cappuccino Café, they’ll be a hundred thousand a pop. Once the first twenty are sold, our price moves to a quarter million for each opening. I didn’t think you would want to go low.”

      “Go low?”

      “You know, ask for just two hundred thousand for the entire franchise and let James open six cafés. It doesn’t work that way. At least not for me,” Alex explained.

      “And they’ll need money for the build out and decor. The appliances and the brass-and-copper cappuccino machine.”

      “James knows that. We’ll supply them with drawings, blueprints, scripts for employees, operation procedures, the standard regulations. You would be required to help train the managers and some staff in the beginning until these first cafes are up and running. And there would be the usual consulting. So, the hundred grand goes straight to you until we sell more sites. And believe me, I’ll make that happen for you.”

      “You think so?”

      “Absolutely. I can give you your dream, Maddie,” Alex replied. There was such earnestness in his eyes, Maddie felt warmth ripple through her body.

      Maddie believed Alex was the right man to could sell her franchises. She couldn’t help wondering how many of her “dreams” he was scripting himself into.