I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date! by Alina Jacobs

1

Tess

“You’re fired!”

My boss’s deep voice rang out over the floor. It was 8:57 in the morning, and the firings had begun.

I scrunched down at my desk.

“Glad it wasn’t me,” I whispered. “I literally cannot afford it.”

Maeve snorted. “Holly and I both told you that your emergency fund is for financial emergencies only, such as getting fired, not drunk online shopping.”

“But they were the most adorable cake pans!”

“No one needs ten different cake pans shaped like bunnies,” Maeve hissed as Beck, dirty-blond hair perfectly parted to the left, strode by.

Tall, like really tall, with broad shoulders and a chest that tapered down to narrow hips and an ass that was chef’s kiss in that bespoke suit, my boss was hot—way hotter than my last boss, who would literally wear a corset to contain his beer gut.

“I need those changes made for the AstraDrone presentation,” he ordered me. “Don’t disappoint me. This meeting is important.”

“And I, as a lowly assistant, am not,” I quipped.

Beck’s mouth turned down, but he didn’t respond. He prowled into his office, the glass door shutting behind him with a soft, metallic click. The office floor let out a collective sigh now that he was gone. Only the quiet sobs of the girl who had just been fired cut through the silence.

“He’s like a wild animal,” I whispered to Maeve. “If I didn’t hate him so much, I would totally let him play Tarzan to my Jane. But the Disney version.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow. “If you had him half naked, then why would you want to do anything G-rated with him?”

“I just meant I didn’t want him unwashed with a sunburn and matted hair.”

Goose bumps rose on the back of my neck. I turned around slowly.

Steel-gray eyes caught mine through the glass wall.

Oops.

Beck’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed to his watch.

I saluted.

“You keep poking the bear in the suit you’re going to get bit,” Maeve told me as I opened the email from Beck that had just appeared in my inbox.

“He hasn’t fired me yet!” I said breezily. Then I groaned when I saw all the changes Beck wanted. I looked back at his office, but he was pacing while on the phone.

“The man is a lunatic,” I said to Maeve, standing up. “Also, I need sustenance if I’m going to finalize everything before the meeting at two this afternoon.”

My lunch from yesterday was still in the fridge. I had baked a quiche Lorraine earlier in the week. I would have eaten in yesterday, but Beck had yelled at Maeve for not catching a typo in a memo, and she had needed a cocktail over lunch to keep it together.

The quiche would be a perfect second breakfast.

Except it wasn’t there.

My Hello Kitty lunch box was still in the fridge, along with the matching thermos, but someone had taken my food.

“The hell?” I grumbled, grabbing the lunch box and stomping back to my desk. There were a number of things I hated—children, Cressida the HR skank, the guy who lived above me and blasted his music to cover up the sound of his dog barking, my stepdad, dating, pickles, my boss, folding fitted sheets—but right there, at the top of the list, were people who stole other people’s food.

“The nerve!” Maeve exclaimed when I showed her the empty lunch box.

“What’s worse is I have to make all these changes on an empty stomach,” I grumped, opening the InDesign presentation file.

Designer stilettos clicked on the polished concrete floor of the Quantum Cyber office. When I had originally accepted the job, I had thought I was going to work in a swanky high-end tech office, ogling my hot boss, and getting paid enough to make rent while supporting my baking habit. I didn’t realize the job also meant dealing with the HR lady from hell.

Cressida, with her SoulCycle toned legs and her perfect blowout, dropped a large cardboard box on my desk. She pursed her mouth.

“Now that Ashley has been fired, you are going to take over all her work,” Cressida said haughtily.

“I’m actually really busy with my actual job being an assistant to the CFO, you know,” I said in a mock-friendly tone.

Cressida glared at me. “We’re all a family here at Quantum Cyber, and you need to step up. I just told IT to forward you all of Ashley’s emails. There are several critical items that need to be done this morning.”

“Oh?” I said, voice sweet as syrup. “Are we splitting them up?”

She gave me a sour look. “You need to do it. It’s your job now. I’m the director of human resources, and that’s how I’ve decided the workload will be divided.”

“You mean dictated,” I said snidely.

“Are you giving me lip?” she asked. “Maybe Beck needs to fire you too. Should I get him involved?”

We looked into his office.

Beck was cursing someone out on the phone.

“Nope.”

Cressida gave me a triumphant look. “Don’t leave today until all of Ashley’s work emails have been cleared out.”

“The lion, the witch, and the audacity of that bitch,” Maeve said, shaking her head as I scrolled through the emails that had begun to pour into my inbox.

I had to finish Beck’s presentation before tackling my newly increased workload, but first, I needed to know if there were any ticking time bombs in my email and diffuse those before I returned to the presentation.

There were a number of them. I fired off messages, feeling very corporate girl-boss.

One email came back with an almost immediate response.

I idly opened it while in the middle of photoshopping an image of a little girl coding while wearing a shirt with the Quantum Cyber logo.

“The hell?” I muttered, glaring as I read the email. It started off with the phrase, ‘Listen, princess,’ and went downhill from there.

The client, Chad—because of course he was named Chad—had not liked my ruling that it was not, in fact, Quantum Cyber policy to hack into a mistress’s account and delete the horny messages they had exchanged.

I typed back an angry response. I was a grown woman! He might have gotten away with calling Ashley ‘princess’, but he wasn’t going to address emails to me like that anymore.

“And you’re lucky I don’t report this to your wife myself,” I finished and sent it off.

I was working my way through the changes on the next image when Beck banged on the glass behind me.

I smoothed my skirt and opened the office door.

Beck was furious. But he was always furious, and I wasn’t too concerned.

“Are you out of your mind?” he raged.

I spread my hands in a WTF gesture. “Your notes said you didn’t like the guy in the pink pants, even though it is a very trendy look, so I’m changing them to black. The color was a little off in the crotch area. That’s why it’s so big on my computer screen.”

Beck growled, exposing his teeth.

Definitely wild.

“This email,” he said, turning around his monitor and making a knife hand to the screen, “is inappropriate. You’re threatening to tell the wife of one of our clients that he’s cheating!”

I bristled. “He wanted us to break the law! I was just explaining company policy.” I crossed my arms. “Besides, he was a sexist asshole!”

“So?” Beck roared. “He is a client. You have to use more tact. Not to mention, that client isn’t any of your business. Why are you even answering that email? No one gave you authority to answer those emails.”

“Actually, Cressida did.”

“You should have come to me,” Beck snarled. “Honestly, all you’ve done today is fuck up. You’re slouching at your desk with a bad attitude, you’re still not done with the presentation, you’re slurping your tea, and now you’re costing us clients. Get it together, Tess. I don’t want dead weight at my company.”

I was shaking as he railed at me. It was like when my stepfather used to relish using every opportunity to put me down. I had sworn when I’d left I wasn’t letting anyone treat me like that ever again, least of all some asshole named Beck.

“All the things I’ve done wrong today?” I countered, my voice sounding screechy to my ears.

Beck’s nostrils flared, and he rounded on me, but I didn’t back down. I was hangry and done with his shit.

“How about all the things you have done today—the terrible attitude, the fostering of a hostile workplace, the yelling at your employees, the fact that you have a thing against the color pink, and to top it off, you fired Ashley. Sure, she wasn’t the most competent, but now I have to pick up the slack because you think being a good boss is keeping people in fear and randomly firing people for no reason instead of helping them improve.”

I stepped into his personal space. I could smell the faint masculine scent of his aftershave. Not that I cared that he smelled amazing. I was on a roll.

“You think you’re tired from dragging my dead weight around?” I stabbed a finger into his very firm chest. “Guess what, I have news for you buddy. I’m tired of covering for you and your terrible decisions. You need to shape up!”

And that was the story of how I taught Beck the true meaning of corporate Christmas, and we all lived happily ever after, singing team-building songs.

Lol, not!

The corner of Beck’s mouth curled down. I could practically hear his teeth grinding, then his perfect lips parted, and he hissed, “You’re fired.”