The Cupcake Diaries Read Free Page A

private notes to each other in the diary we keep here. Make it your own.”
    “Speaking of the cupcake stand,” Rachel said, excitedly squeezing her shoulder. “Do you hear that? I think it’s here.”
    Stacey handed her position at the front counter off to Heather, the teenage employee who doubled as Andi’s babysitter, and followed the others through the door to the street. The noise sounded like the hum of a Volkswagen, quite different from the incessant clanking of the rickety 1933 Cupcake Mobile they used for deliveries. And indeed it was .
    The new cupcake stand wasn’t a stand at all. Not the square white vendor trailer Stacey had imagined, anyway.
    Andi’s wonderful, warm-hearted husband, Jake Hartman, jumped out of the driver’s side, came toward them, and caught Stacey’s eye. “What do you think?”
    Stacey opened her mouth, and the words “It’s pink” fell out.
    “Pink and white,” Rachel amended.
    Kim clapped her hands and laughed. “A hippie van! Where did you find this?”
    “One guess,” Jake offered.
    Andi pointed to the tattoo shop next door. “Guy Armstrong!”
    “The same guy who gave you the Cupcake Mobile?” Stacey asked.
    Jake nodded. “Guy has a whole shed full of antique vehicles. This model is a genuine 1962 Volkswagen bus.”
    She had never seen the pony-tailed tattoo artist behind the wheel of anything other than a bicycle. “Why doesn’t Guy drive any of them?”
    Jake smirked. “He said he’s through dealing with the expense of gas and insurance.”
    How much could it possibly cost to insure this elongated, half-century-old metal contraption in front of them? Stacey wondered. Did they really expect her to drive this “hippie van,” as Kim referred to it, forty minutes back and forth to Cannon Beach every day?
    She stepped closer and surveyed the fold-out shelf running along the side of the vehicle to form a makeshift customer counter, then took a quick peek inside.
    “The windows lift upward,” Jake said, inserting a pole to prop them open and keep them in place. “And there’s plenty of room in the back to transport the umbrella table and stools you’ll be setting out on the sand for customers.”
    “Think of it as your very own cupcake shop on wheels,” Kim said, taking her arm and strolling around the exterior.
    A shop of her very own? She took another look at the vehicle, and her heart softened. Why, this Volkswagen bus wouldn’t be so bad. It had charm, personality, and the pink and white paint was almost . . . pretty. The interior dashboard even had a small vase to place a sprig of daisies. People would point to her and give her big smiles. Who wouldn’t want to work in a fun, happy environment like that?
    “Well,” Jake asked, when she returned to the front. “You never answered my question. Stacey, what do you think?”
    Her eyes welled with tears, and she found it hard to express how much having anything of her very own, even as an employee, meant.
    “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Absolutely beautiful.”
    “Work the cupcake stand on the beach, and you can keep forty percent of the sales,” Andi told her.
    “Like a partner?” she asked, her spirit soaring.
    “Like a commission,” Rachel corrected, then gave her a big, teasing smile. “Sell enough cupcakes this summer so come fall we can afford to keep you.”
    S TACEY COULD HARDLY contain her excitement over the prospect of earning a forty percent commission as she walked back to her aunt Sarah’s place. She’d already paid the $600 holding fee on her new apartment, which would go toward her first month’s rent when she moved in. And with forty percent of the sales as commission, she’d have the other $600 the landlord required for security in no time. She might even be able to start saving for her dream house, one with a mailbox with her name on it, a fenced in yard, flower boxes under the windows, and a two-person swing on the front porch.
    She hummed to herself as she