Luxury Cafe Owner - Chapter 40 Returned In Kind

As Alan finished speaking, both Gerald and Natasha’s mouths dropped. In this situation, he dared to demand she finish the cake?

Natasha gave a snort. “You want me to finish the cake? And if I don’t?”

Alan remained calm. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to blacklist you from my cafe. I can’t abide by a person who doesn’t finish their food.”

Natasha eyed him coldly before putting her jacket on and leaving without a word. As she left the system’s voice rang out in Alan’s head.

“Customer Natasha Bianchi did not finish her coffee cake. She is henceforth banned from the cafe. Host is forbidden from serving her any more food or drink.”

Alan sighed. Truth be told he didn’t really care if she finished the cake or not. In his mind a customer was a customer and it was fine if they paid. Unfortunately, the system didn’t give him a choice.

Gerald remained seated where he had been. He watched Alan. “To think he would actually blacklist a customer. I really underestimated his guts. Still, this is exactly how that guy should be. People like him, artists, have to have pride in their work.”

Alan walked back to pick up Natasha’s plate of cake, unaware of the fact that Gerald mistakenly thought he had some sort of pride. If he’d known he’d have said something like, “What are you crazy? Can pride pay my bills?” He took the cake into the kitchen and then came back out.

“Sorry if I caused trouble for you,” Alan told Gerald.

Gerald shook his head. “There was already no hope that she would put her clothing line in my store at that point. I just enjoyed seeing her getting knocked down a peg.” He gave a slight grin. He quickly finished his slice of coffee cake and drank the rest of his espresso.

Alan shook his head. “I’m not one to talk as I’m not some relationship expert, but I don’t think that was the way to go about the date.”

Gerald sighed. “I know. I just got annoyed with the way she was behaving. She already forced me to go on a date with her against my will, and then she complained that I wasn’t the way she imagined? So I have to change my personality just to please her? From the beginning I’m someone who thinks about business first. If she couldn’t handle that then she couldn’t handle dating me.”

Alan understood where Gerald was coming from. Still, if he had been able to fake it better he might have at least been able to convince her to put her clothing line in his store. However, Alan quickly stopped thinking about it. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he thought to himself.

Alan and Gerald said goodbye as Alan cleaned up the cafe. Just like that, he put the events of the morning behind him. He readied the cafe to receive customers, putting the furniture back where it had been.

Then he went and took down the sign on the door. Since the date had ended early he’d go ahead and open early.

He picked up his phone and sent out a tweet saying the cafe was once again open to the public.

The day progressed normally from there. Tom came in and begged for details about the date, but Alan told him he’d have to ask Gerald. Alan ran the cafe just like normal and put the events of this morning out of his mind.

After Natasha Bianchi left the cafe she had her driver take her to the hotel where she was staying. She felt humiliated by the date, and she turned that humiliation into a fury towards Gerald and towards Alan who she felt had humiliated her at the end.

As her car pulled up to the hotel, paparazzi seemed to materialize out of thin air. Ignoring them she started to press towards the hotel, her security personnel making space for her. However, as she was heading inside one reporter managed to slip past.

“Excuse me, Ms. Bianchi, my name is Anaiya Williams. I’m a reporter with City A Daily News. I was wondering if I could talk to you about your meeting this morning.” As she finished saying this, the reporter showed an image of Gerald on her phone.

Natasha eyed her and then nodded her head, waving her security personnel, who had come forward to move Anaiya, aside. Then they went inside together.

Natasha led her to the penthouse suite and sat with her in the foyer area. Then she looked at Anaiya.

“Very well, Ms. Williams. What do you want to ask?” Natasha said cooly.

“Please, Ms. Bianchi, Anaiya would be fine. I’m simply curious about the purpose of your meeting today with Gerald Acadian. Is it business related? Personal?” Anaiya tried to keep her question as broad as possible at first so she could get an idea of whether there was any interesting new to be found here.

Natasha looked at her before asking. “I will tell you if you tell me how you found out about the meeting.”

Anaiya frowned. She was torn on what to do. On the one hand, she suspected there was something interesting going on here. On the other hand, if she gave up her source she’d lose credibility and find it harder to get sources to confide in her in the future. However, as a new and struggling reporter, her hunger for breaking her first big story surpassed her reticence.

“It was one of the assistants on Mr. Acadian’s end. I can’t be any more specific than that.” Anaiya said measuredly.

Natasha frowned. It wasn’t enough that Gerald had just treated her like crap. Now it turned out someone on his side broke the news to a reporter too? “Fine then, let’s see how you like seeing what happened appearing in the news.” She thought to herself.

“Ms. Bianchi?” Anaiya prompted.

“Pardon me, I was thinking about something. Very well, Anaiya, I will tell you what happened today. I had a date with Mr. Acadian.” Natasha began. She continued to speak with Anaiya for a good half an hour, much longer than it would take to simply relay the events that had taken place.

After they finished talking, Anaiya quickly bade Natasha goodbye and ran off in a hurry, calling someone as she went.

Natasha sat in her hotel room and thought to herself, “Let’s see how you enjoy being humiliated.”