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

20

Beck

We settled into a routine over the next week. The girls were still suspended, so Tess would take them to the Quantum Cyber office with her. They would sit in the lobby, doing their schoolwork, while Tess worked on her laptop. Or that was what they were supposed to be doing.

“Why are you baking?” I asked when I came down later that week to talk to Tess.

“Because baking is awesome and fun,” Tess said. “It’s creative, involves math and science, and you get a yummy, tasty treat at the end.” She took a big bite of a lemon tart.

“The girls are supposed to be working on their schoolwork,” I argued.

“I already finished my workbook,” Enola said from behind the counter where she was rolling out dough.

“Really.”

Tess handed me a workbook. I flipped through it. All of the math problems had been completed in neat pen.

“She’s better at math than you,” Tess teased.

“I’m a chief financial officer. That means I am very good at math.”

“You had a formula wrong in your spreadsheet,” Enola called out.

“I—” I blinked.

“It’s okay,” Annie said, coming over with a piping hot pretzel and sliding it in front of me. “Sometimes people make mistakes.”

“Mark Holbrook’s not going to give you another chance to be his one true data processing firm if you don’t get your act together!” Tess joked, nudging me with her shoulder.

“I already told Owen that it’s a bad idea to keep trying to go after AstraDrone,” I said, shaking my head. “We just had another argument about it. I said it made us look weak. Owen said there was a ten-million-dollar contract on the line and it didn’t hurt to try again.”

“After that disaster of a presentation that you gave, I’m shocked it’s still on the table at all,” she said tartly. “I looked it over and then almost had a panic attack. I had to order tacos to calm myself down.”

Her computer chirped with a calendar-invite reminder.

“Speaking of things I’m going to need a huge amount of tacos to cope with… time to have our Friday-night dinner.”

“I hope the food is good.”

We stood outside a stately Connecticut home. The yard was perfectly manicured, and large stone lions stood guard at the front door. Two gaslights flickered in the dusk as we stood on the porch.

“I’m starving.” Tess adjusted her skirt. She had been doing that in the car the whole ride over—touching her skirt, adjusting the top part of her dress, crossing and uncrossing her legs. If we didn’t have to pretend to be fake boyfriend and girlfriend, I would have put her in a separate car because it had been extremely distracting.

“You have to be on your best behavior,” I reminded Annie and Enola again. “We need to show Ethel that we’re all normal and put together and that you’re having a perfectly normal upbringing.”

“So we shouldn’t talk about the raccoon Liam’s going to adopt?” Annie asked.

“The what?”

The door opened to reveal a butler in a three-piece suit. “Good evening. The lady of the house is expecting you. Do you have a card?”

Tess looked around in confusion as the butler held out a silver tray.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out one of my business cards and placed it on the tray. The butler looked at it like I’d just handed him a live rat.

“A business card.” His lip curled. “Very well.”

We followed him into the house.

“You’re supposed to have calling cards,” Enola whispered to me.

“What is this, the 1860s?” Tess hissed. “Maybe I should have worn a longer skirt.”

Maybe she should have, but I liked the dress she was wearing. She had changed out of her business casual clothes that she always wore for work and was in a formfitting blue cocktail dress. It had long sleeves, but there was a cutout right at her cleavage, partially hidden with a big bow.

I wanted to unwrap her from the dress, run my hands over her skin, and listen to the sounds she made. I wondered if she sounded like she had at the pool when I’d touched her neck.

It’s the stress, I reminded myself. The stress is getting to you. And the lack of sleep.

“So wonderful to have you this evening,” Ethel greeted us as the butler led us into a formal sitting room. I hoped Tess didn’t feel underdressed. But really, maybe Ethel was overdressed. She was wearing a full-on beaded evening gown for the occasion.

“Thank you for inviting us,” I said.

“We’ll have cocktails and hors d’oeuvres before supper. Please help yourselves. What would you like to drink?” Ethel asked me. “My late husband had an excellent collection of scotch. We have a nice Macallan.”

“Yes, neat, please,” I said.

“Are you girls ready to go back to school?” she asked, bending over to talk to my sisters.

“No,” they chorused.

Ethel raised a thin eyebrow.

“They’ve already completed their workbooks,” I said, starting to grow concerned. Ethel couldn’t think that I had allowed the girls to lounge around during their suspension. “They are caught up on their schoolwork and homework, and they’ve been doing some reading.”

“Oh, what are you reading?”

“Jessica Simpson’s new memoire, Open Book,” Enola said.

For fuck’s sake. What the hell was Tess doing with them?

“Aren’t you also reading some classics?” I prodded.

“Yes,” Enola said happily. “We’re reading Jane Austen.”

“Mr. Darcy is so dreamy,” Annie swooned, clasping her hands together.

I thought Ethel was going to faint. She knocked back her drink and grabbed onto the back of a chair.

“My daughter had an obsession with romance heroes,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons she ran off.”

“They’re just reading for fun,” I assured her hastily. “They don’t actually believe any of the romance nonsense, do you, girls?”

“It’s not nonsense. It’s beautiful; it’s art,” Tess argued.

“You mean like that painting you have hanging up in the living room?” I said more harshly than I intended.

“How about we all go on an outing to the Metropolitan Museum of Art?” Ethel suggested. “They have so much wonderful artwork.”

“We should find some art for the condo,” Enola told me. “Tess found her painting at a thrift store.”

“We are not buying paintings at a thrift store.” I scoffed. “Our brother, Archer, collects art. I’m sure he’d be happy to help you all choose some investment pieces.”

Next to me, Tess’s back was ramrod straight, and she wasn’t saying a word, just stoically chewing on her hors d’oeuvre. I suddenly felt slightly bad. We had been disparaging her choice of art.

I would make it up to her later.

“You can choose some art you like too,” I told Tess. But she just stoically continued to chew, her jaw working furiously. I hoped it was because the food was good, but she was probably angry with me and ignoring me.

I peered at her face.

Wait, what was she eating?