The Cupcake Diaries Read Online Free

of that night at the restaurant, and others like it, and knew Pam didn’t have to pay for her , either. But she had. And she would be forever grateful.
    “Even if they’re bluffing, I can’t stand knowing that Pam thinks I wronged her,” Stacey said softly. “If she says I owe two thousand, then I need to give her the money.”
    “Not many others would,” Bernice commented, “but that’s what I like about you, dear. Good things will come back around to you someday.”
    Stacey wished she could believe that, but all she could think of was the money she needed in order to move into her apartment. With a forty percent commission, could she pay back Pam and still have enough for her security deposit?
    A FTER DINNER S TACEY excused herself and went back up to her room to brainstorm ways to save money. Maybe she could buy less food or give up her cell phone.
    No, she had to have a cell phone. What if the Volkswagen bus broke down on a backcountry road? What if there was another tornado? She gave an involuntary shudder and took a deep breath to block out the image of her childhood teddy bear swirling up into an angry Nebraska sky.
    But there were no tornadoes here in Oregon. At least, she didn’t think there were. And after she moved into her apartment, she wouldn’t have to worry about moving anymore, unlike her parents, who still moved from state to state every other year or so. For the first time since the disaster, she’d have a home again—in a place she could finally feel safe.
    She tucked Pam’s bill next to the framed photo of her family in her backpack and recalled the words Rachel had said to her earlier that afternoon: “Sell enough cupcakes this summer so come fall we can afford to keep you.”
    “I will,” she’d promised.
    And that was exactly what she would do. She’d sell cupcakes like crazy. How hard could it be? The beach was packed with people in the warm weather, and the cupcakes were already made and packaged in boxes. She just had to collect the money and serve customers. With a forty percent commission, she could have the $2,000 she owed Pam and the money she needed for her apartment by the end of the summer.
    She just needed to work harder, step outside her comfort zone, and become “the cupcake girl.” If Andi, Rachel, and Kim could open a cupcake shop and make their dreams come true, then so could she.
    Just watch, she thought to herself, and smiled. Her first day at the beach, she’d break all kinds of sales records.

 
    Chapter Three
----
    Ocean treasures left on the shore, Nature’s gift to adore.
    —Author unknown
    F IVE DAYS LATER, Stacey ground the gears of the Volkswagen bus as she turned the corner leading to the Cannon Beach entrance. She hadn’t driven a stick shift in a long time. Like Guy Armstrong, who sold her employers the vehicle, she preferred other methods of transportation to save money on gas and car insurance.
    A blue signpost with a series of white arcing waves caught her eye, warning her she’d be working in the tsunami hazard zone, and her hand instinctively reached out to touch the emergency backpack on the seat beside her. Inside the front flap she’d tucked a map of the Oregon coast with arrows pointing the way to safety for each side street.
    Her backpack also contained bottled water, matches, a portable radio, a tube tent, a first aid kit, a flashlight, bouillon cubes for broth, and a half million other things she’d collected over the past sixteen years. Disaster had caught her unaware once, and she’d vowed never to be unprepared again. But that didn’t mean she should go looking for trouble.
    She hadn’t realized what danger she’d signed up for when she agreed to run the cupcake stand until early that morning, when she researched the Oregon coast on Kim’s laptop. Cannon Beach sat right on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. According to research, a massive, tsunami-generating earthquake had a thirty-seven percent chance of hitting the coast within