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

21

Tess

Of course that asshat talks shit about my mom’s painting.

That painting was my ride or die. When my stepfather had unceremoniously kicked me out, I hadn’t had much with me. In order to survive until I could start college, I had sold or pawned everything I had owned, including the kindergarten graduation necklace my late grandfather had given me. The only thing I hadn’t sold was that painting.

It was also all I had left of my mom. She had loved the painting. She had found it at a thrift store and had impulse bought it because she said it made her feel like she was living an exciting life in New York. It held a place of honor in my various tiny dorm rooms and apartments over the years.

While I had achieved my mom’s dream of living in the city, my life wasn’t quite as glamorous as what the painting portrayed. But I was working on it! Or trying to anyways. I would get a lot further if Beck wouldn’t make snide remarks about the painting or generally make my life miserable.

Just keep it together. You can use his credit card to buy a crapton of baking supplies, maybe import that fancy Belgian baking chocolate and use it to make Milky Way cake! I haven’t made Milky Way cake in a while.

As much as it goaded me, I wasn’t going to stoop to his level. Why had I even thought he would be hookup material? He was clearly an alpha-hole billionaire just like I had originally assumed when I had first met him.

I focused on the food. There was a basket of brown crackers speckled with pepper flakes and a number of different bowls with dips.

The plates were super tiny. After building a tower out of several mini crab cakes, I chose a cracker and put a generous helping of the creamy New England lobster dip on it. The crab cake was amazing, and the flavors helped drown the douchery that was wafting off Beck as he discussed art with Ethel.

I really wanted some of that lobster salad. Picking it up, I took a huge bite of the cracker. It was a little tough, but now that I had put it in my mouth, I didn’t want to spit it out and spray food everywhere. Then Ethel would be like, “OMG, your girlfriend is so low class! I’ll never let you see your sisters again, Beck!”

I forced my jaw closed and, after a moment, was able to tear off a piece of the cracker.

It was chewy—super chewy. The lobster dip was amazing, though.

“Yes, I simply adore the artist Fang Fei,” Ethel was saying as I kept chewing and chewing, breathing through my nose as I worked my jaw.

“You know she’s branched out into home goods,” Ethel continued.

“I had no idea,” Beck said with polite interest.

“Yes. A friend of mine gifted me a set of scotch glasses and those coasters,” Ethel said, pointing to the basket of crackers.

Oh shit.

“They’re handmade,” Ethel told Beck, “and made out of a special type of cork only found on a particular island off the coast of Peru.”

Shit, shit, shit.

Did they know? Had Ethel counted the coasters and seen one was missing? Also, who the fuck leaves a basket of coasters next to the food? I mean, they looked like bread; they weren’t even evenly cut.

I looked down at the cracker, i.e., the coaster, that was on my plate and covered with lobster dip. I had finally chewed the coaster enough to swallow it, and I gulped my drink to make it go down easier.

Fuck my life.

What was I going to do? I couldn’t leave it on the plate. Whoever cleaned up was for sure going to notice a half-eaten coaster.

I picked it up.

Could I eat off all the lobster dip then toss the coaster somewhere?

“Another drink, miss?” the butler asked.

Not knowing what else to do, I nodded then took another bite of the coaster like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Beck looked over at me then to the basket then back at me, horror dawning on his face.

My boss bent down and hissed, “Are you eating a coaster?”

“No,” I whispered back.

“Yes, you are! Stop eating that. Spit it out!”

“I’m committed,” I whispered.

“You can’t eat that. Give that to me.”

“No.”

I stuffed another bite of the coaster in my mouth.

The butler handed me a fresh drink while Beck was apoplectic beside me. At least Ethel was too concerned with her granddaughters to pay me any attention.

I had finished choking down my coaster when the butler announced that dinner was served. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but a formal dinner with white-coated servers behind each place setting wasn’t it.

“I am severely underdressed,” I said to Beck under my breath.

“Yes, you are,” he hissed back and pulled my chair out for me.

Once we were seated, the servers placed bowls of lobster bisque in front of us. It was my favorite soup, but after that coaster, I wasn’t feeling that great.

“Wine, miss?” my personal server asked, motioning to my glass.

“Yes, please!”

I reached for a spoon for my soup and hesitated. There were three different spoons to my right, and none of them looked like the typical wide soup spoon.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…” I picked up one.

“Wrong spoon,” Beck growled at me.

“You grew up in a compound in the desert. You don’t know which spoon is which,” I said out of the side of my mouth.

He kicked me under the table.

“And how did you two meet?” Ethel asked as I took tiny sips of soup from an even tinier spoon, which in hindsight was totally the spoon you were supposed to stir your coffee with and not the soup spoon.

“It’s a fantastic story. Isn’t that right, Beck?” I said, stalling.

I couldn’t very well tell her he was my boss, could I? That didn’t sound like the sort of upstanding family she would want her granddaughters to be a part of.

“We met, uh…” Beck gave me a blank look. “We met in a…”

God! Men.

My time to shine! All my romance-novel reading was about to pay off. I took a sip of my wine.

“It was a dark and stormy fall night,” I began. “I had just been mugged, my ID, my wallet, and my family’s heirloom cast-iron skillet had been stolen! The thief ran off into the night. I was cold, penniless, and alone in the train station.”

Beside me, Beck pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I thought I was ruined! Then out of the shadows, a man on horseback rode up.”

“My word,” Ethel exclaimed, pressing a hand to her chest. “On horseback in the middle of the city?”

“You have a pony?” Annie asked Beck. “Here? Where is he? Can I meet him?”

“It was in Harrogate,” I said, backtracking.

Ethel frowned. “I know several of the Harrogate Girls club members. I met them at the Art Zurich Biennial Expo. They never mentioned anything about a daring horseback rescue. I feel like they would have said something.”

“It didn’t happen like that,” Beck said, his grip on his wineglass so tight I thought it was going to shatter. “Tess wasn’t mugged; she was drunk.”

Now it was my turn to kick Beck under the table. Way to throw a girl under a bus.

“And she had misplaced her things. We got her sorted out and sobered up.”

“And that’s how you hired her?” Annie asked.

Ah, shit.

Ethel’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “He’s your boss?”

“Yes,” I said in a rush, “but that’s not how we met. It’s not one of those weird, sketchy workplace romances.”

“Hm,” Ethel said. “I would hope not.”

The rest of the dinner didn’t go much more smoothly. Any time I tried to talk, Beck would cut me off.

Finally, over dessert, I gave up and just ate my cake then ate seconds of cake along with more than my fair share of champagne so it wouldn’t look like I was just being antisocial but was instead enjoying the excellent food while Beck carefully answered Ethel’s questions.

“Are you out of your mind?” Beck yelled at me when we were back in the car. “What were you thinking? Can I literally not take you anywhere? You made up that insane story, told lie after lie, and then you ate a drink coaster.”

“I’m not good at fancy events!” I shrieked at him. “And you didn’t even have a story straight of how we met.”

“Because I thought you had it under control. God.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I swear, if I lose my sisters because of you, not only am I firing you, but I’ll make sure you’re blacklisted throughout the whole Northeast.”

“Real mature,” I told him, angrily fastening my seat belt. “Threatening people instead of taking some modicum of responsibility for your own actions.”

“You made up the crazy story,” he roared, jabbing a finger at me.

“It was your big lie in the first place,” I railed at him.

He was breathing hard; we both were.

“I am counting down the days until you are out of my life,” he said finally.

“I thought it didn’t go that badly,” Annie said in a small voice behind us.

Beck’s face softened. His little sister reached out to gingerly pet his arm. Enola looked afraid.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” Beck assured them.

The girls still eyed him warily. Enola crossed her arms, hugging herself.

“You sound like Dad.”

Beck jerked his arm away from Annie and turned away to stare out the window.

The car ride home was tense.

When we arrived back at the condo, Beck went to his study. I took the girls into the kitchen.

“You know what I like to do after a stressful day?” I told them. “I like to bake!” I pulled out a bag of Milky Way bars.

“But those are candy.”

“Yes, but by the power of baking, we can make Milky Way bar cupcakes!”

I set them up measuring flour and creaming butter and sugar then headed down the hall to Beck’s study. I stood in front of the door.

“Beck?” I said softly. He didn’t answer.

It’s not any of your concern, I tried to tell myself. If he was just going to be an asshole and was planning on firing me anyways, what did I care?

But I did adore those little girls. I wanted them to be happy.

“Beck?” I said a little louder. “Do you want to come make cupcakes with us?”