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

28

Beck

My sisters started yelling at me right after Tess had grabbed her purse and headed out the front door, throwing her phone at me as a last parting shot.

“Why did you send her away?”

“What’s going to happen with Grandma?”

“Are we going to have to live with her?”

“I don’t want to eat coasters for dinner!”

“I’m hungry!”

Shit.

“Well…” I looked around at the empty containers. There wasn’t anything left. Also, the wine was all over the floor.

“I’ll order a pizza,” I promised.

Ding-dong!

“Tess!”

They ran to the door.

“Oh, it’s Grandma.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Don’t let her in here!” I yelled then bit back another curse as the stately, elderly woman marched into the open kitchen and living area.

“Good evening, Mr. Svensson,” Ethel said and looked down her nose at the mess. “I have brought you a housewarming plant.”

She handed me a large fiddle-leaf fig in a white pot. “I had assumed you would have moved in by now.”

“We’re still in flux,” I lied, hoping I could guide her away from the large kitchen with its even larger pile of trash.

Ethel pursed her mouth. “Tess told me that you all were nicely settled in, and I should come over for dinner.”

Dammit.

“She’s quite a prolific texter. She practically wrote me a dissertation on the best wine and fried food pairings.” Ethel showed me her phone. There were thirty texts messages from Tess, confirming that Ethel could, quote, “For totally sure could come see the grlzzz!” followed by a long list of emojis.

“Unfortunately, Tess had an emergency,” I lied, “and had to step out.”

“No matter,” Ethel said. “I will take the girls for dinner. I know an excellent French—my god!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I feel faint. Their hair! What have you done to their beautiful hair? I think I’m going to have a stroke.”

I took her arm and helped her to the couch.

Annie fetched Ethel an entire bottle of wine.

“Annie,” I hissed.

“I’ll need something stronger, dear,” Ethel said, closing her eyes.

Annie nodded and disappeared.

“They just wanted to experiment,” I told her.

Ethel pressed a hand to her forehead. “Their hair,” she moaned.

“Goodness gracious! Good thing I brought the big guns!” Vera exclaimed loudly as she bustled into my condo. She took a thermos out of her purse and held it to Ethel’s mouth. “Drink that. It’ll stand you right up,” she assured Ethel, tipping the thermos back.

Ethel took a swig and sat up. “You could burn down a building with that.”

“Made it myself!” Vera bragged. “We had a distilling class a few months ago.”

“Really?” Ethel said, intrigued. “Here?”

“The condo offered it. You should come by to the next one.”

“Oh, I don’t live here.”

“You should think about it,” Vera said. “You’d fit right in.”

I did not want Ethel living anywhere near me.

“I’m not sure if you want to move here,” I told her. “It’s a relatively new building, and the kinks aren’t quite worked out.”

“I would be closer to my granddaughters.”

“Isn’t that swell,” Vera said, bustling around the kitchen, sweeping the trash off the counter. “Beck seems like he could use the help.”

I gritted my teeth.

“You didn’t run Tess off already, did you?” Vera asked. “Though you think with a guy like you stashed in her bedroom, she’d never leave!”

Fuck, I could not think about Tess in my bed.

“Ethel, why don’t you take the girls out for dinner?” I suggested.

“Only if you girls wear hats,” she instructed.

“I have some,” Vera said proudly, rummaging in her bag. She pulled out two rainbow-colored knitted hats.

I wasn’t a knitter, but to my untrained eye, they did look a little scraggly.

“We had a knitting class too. Deceptively hard,” Vera said, slapping the hats on my sisters’ heads.

I slumpedon the couch across from Tess’s ugly painting after everyone left. I needed to convince her to move back. Ethel was going to take my sisters if I didn’t.

I grabbed a broom and swept up the rest of the broken glass and cleaned the kitchen. Then I picked up my phone to call Tess but remembered she didn’t have her phone.

My phone dinged with a message. I hoped it was Tess but no such luck.

Owen:What’s the super-secret thing Tess is working on to get back in Mark Holbrook’s good graces?

Owen:Holly said she was working on a winning idea.

Beck:I’m not sure…

Walker:Can you ask her?

Beck:I accidentally fired Tess.

Walker:Dude…

Walker:We need to put a moratorium on your firing people.

Beck:I’m going to unfire her.

Owen:You better! We need that client.

Owen:I want to start winning those big Department of Defense contracts.

Walker:Grovel. Make a grand gesture. Pull a Say Anything with John Cusack.

Beck:How do you know about that movie?

Walker:I have a girl in my immediate vicinity who is obsessed with romantic comedies.

Walker:I’ve been bribing Luna with movie nights.

Beck:Considering that she blew a hole in the wall of her school, I’d think she would just watch the movie anyway.

Walker:Oh, she’s seen them all, but now she wants me to watch them, which I only do if she’s not acting like a feral possum.

Walker:It’s like a secret weapon.

Beck:I need a secret weapon for Annie and Enola.

Walker:They aren’t that bad once you get to know them.

Beck:Of course not. I love them. They’re extraordinary. I just don’t understand them.

Owen:You need to try harder, man. They need you.

I went down the hall to Tess’s room. It was still a riot of colors and also covered in take-out containers. Her work laptop was open to an Amazon wish list, titled Fun Gifts for Beck.

I need to make some changes.

The girls came backafter I finished cleaning Tess’s room.

“We brought you dinner,” Annie said.

Ethel adjusted her handbag. “And I expect to see you all tomorrow for Friday night’s dinner.”

The girls sat with me at the table while I ate the food they’d brought.

“We brought you lots of options.” Annie pushed all the little dishes of food to me.

“Do you want more?” I asked them, grabbing spoons. “Ethel didn’t give you enough?”

Enola wrinkled her nose. “She kept saying we were eating too fast, that ladies don’t eat that fast.”

“But if you don’t, someone might steal your food,” I said.

“Right,” Enola replied, tearing off a piece of naan bread.

It broke my heart. On the compound, there was never enough to eat, and you had to fight if you wanted enough. I vowed I was never going to let them go hungry.

“Eat more.” I spooned rice and curry into their bowls.

“It’s for you!”

“But you have to share it with me.”

“It’s not fun to eat alone,” Annie chirped. “That’s what Tess always said.”

I handed her the bread.

“Is she coming back?” Enola asked. “We’ll grow our hair out.”

“You can keep your hair at whatever length you want,” I assured her. “You look great with short hair–very high-powered CEO.”

Enola smiled at me and grabbed one of the containers of food.

“And,” I added, still thinking of Tess, “since it is family tradition, maybe we can have CEO classes on Saturday? I’ll show you how to run a major corporation.”

“Really?” Annie’s face lit up. “But you’re not a CEO. You’re a CFO.”

“That’s more important,” I bragged. “I keep the company financially solvent. No money, no company. The CEO is just a glorified manager. Finance is god in the corporate world.”

“I want to trade stocks and cryptocurrency,” Annie said excitedly.

I winced. Cryptocurrency?

“I’ll give you some money, and we can talk about investing,” I promised them. I stood up to grab more water. I ran a hand through Annie’s short hair as I passed by.

It wasn’t all that short—it was just that she and Enola had both had super long hair. My father had always said women needed their hair as long as possible, that it was sign of fertility.

Suddenly, I was viciously glad they had chopped their hair off.

“I’m going to go get Tess,” I said abruptly.

“Can we come with you?”

“Why don’t you stay here?” It might get ugly.

After dinner, my sisters trooped after me to the elevator and up to Mike’s condo.

“You have some nerve,” my brother said when he opened the door. “You better not be here asking for a babysitter.”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Your firing your assistant isn’t an emergency. That is a choice that you made.”

“Are you making cake?” Annie asked him.

He did a double take. “Good god, your hair.”

Annie patted her head self-consciously.

“I love it! It looks amazing,” Mike said with a grin.

She beamed at him.

“We Svenssons really do have great bone structure, don’t we, Beck?” he stated, twirling Annie around.

“You need to get the cupcakes out,” Ophelia yelled from inside the unit.

“You’re making cupcakes?” I asked my brother. “You hate sweets.”

“Yes, but these are savory cupcakes with corn bread instead of batter, and the frosting is cheese wiz.”

“Sounds disgusting.”

“Correction—sounds amazing. I even have a variation that’s stuffed with bacon.”

“We’re putting it on Instagram!” Ophelia said happily.

“So yeah, we’re busy,” Mike said. “Unless you want to exchange babysitting for free babysitting at my choice in the future.”

“Nope.”

Liam wasn’t much help either.

“Ask Greg,” he said, his door barely a crack open.

“No, I’m not going to ask Greg. Are you out of your mind?” I could only make out one of Liam’s eyes through the crack in the door.

“What are you doing in there?” I asked, suspicious.

“None of your business.”

I shoved my shoulder against the door and saw Liam standing there shirtless and covered in makeup.

“In my defense,” he said, waving his arms around, “I needed something to bribe them with. Not all of us have assistants to foist our sisters on.”

“I don’t have one right now,” I admitted. “I need to go find her.”

“You misplaced your assistant?”

“I fired her. Accidentally.”

Liam raised an eyebrow.

“But I’m going to unfire her.”

“Not if I hire her first,” Liam said. “Shoot, maybe I’ll start dating her.”

“Absolutely not,” I snarled, backing him into a corner. “Tess is mine.”

“Crap, dude,” he said, shoving me off. “You fired her. You can’t just lay claim to people that you fired!”

“It was a mistake,” I said, not wanting to acknowledge why I was so mad at even the thought of Liam hiring, let alone dating, Tess.

“So can you watch the girls?”

“No!” Two of my other little sisters came barreling to the front door, carrying huge makeup palettes.

“Only we get to decorate Liam’s face.”

“Their majesties have spoken,” he said wryly.

I checked my watch when we were back in the elevator.

I needed to find Tess.

The elevator pinged.

“Are you all coming to the food art class?” Vera asked excitedly. “We’re learning how to make corgi bento boxes.”

“I have some work I have to do.”

“Is Tess back? Does she want to go?”

“I actually need to meet up with her.” And find her and beg her to come back.

“Ah!” Vera gave me a wink. “I can take the girls so you can have your ‘meeting!’”

But where was Tess?I decided to try her house after digging up her address from the company directory.

I planned my speech for begging her to come back. But as the car pulled up in front of a dilapidated apartment building, I suddenly had a horrifying thought. I technically should not have looked up her address. If she wanted to, she could file a lawsuit for workplace harassment. It was not a good look for a billionaire boss to show up at his fired assistant’s apartment in the middle of the night.

Someone behind us honked.

“Can you just pull into the alley?” I asked the driver.

Maybe I should leave, but I needed to talk to Tess.