I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date! by Alina Jacobs
30
Beck
Tess traipsed behind me into the lobby of the 101 Park Place tower, hair a brown frizzy mess. She was still wearing her pajamas along with the large fuzzy bunny slippers and still not wearing a bra. But at least the giant skillet of apple pie covered everything.
“I don’t know why you couldn’t have put on clothes.”
“I told you,” she said. “All my clothes are dirty.”
“There he is!” several seniors clamored.
I paused.
“Beck, would you like to be a nude model for our art class? You have perfect proportions!”
I opened my mouth then shut it because, really, what could you say to something like that?
“If he’s doing a nude class, I might have to join,” Tess said.
That gave me pause. I knew Tess had been angry at me. I wasn’t under any illusions that she actually liked me. She was clearly coming back for the girls.
But still… the way she had felt in my arms, like she’d belonged there, made me want to hold her again.
It’s the stress and the people here.
“Maybe you can talk to one of my brothers,” I said diplomatically.
“We did, and Greg said you’d love to do it,” they said giddily.
Shit.
Greg was clearly planning on throwing me under the bus to steal this tower. He obviously hadn’t forgotten that I had snuck into his condo. The man knew how to carry a grudge and wield it like a weapon.
I gritted my teeth. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”
“Oh, he’s free,” Tess said with a wink. “I’m his assistant, and I control his schedule!”
Tess was backin the kitchen making breakfast the next morning. I wasn’t exactly sure where we stood. She had been flirty in the lobby last night. Then when we had picked up the girls, she was telling them about the apple pie and the exciting things they were going to do the next day and that she was going to take them to get makeovers.
Now she was cooking breakfast.
“What are those?” I asked as she opened the oven.
“Bagel pizzas,” she replied. “They are the baking goddess’s gift to all humankind.”
She slid the bagels onto a plate.
“That’s not breakfast food,” I argued.
Enola and Annie bounded into the room.
“It’s probably way better for you than pancakes,” Tess said, grabbing one. “They have veggies and protein. Plus, it’s pizza, and your day can’t go wrong if you start it off with pizza.” She looked up at me standing off to the side. “You don’t have any early-morning meetings. Come sit.” She handed me one of the bagel halves.
I took a bite. It was good. Actually, it was fantastic. But I wasn’t going to admit it.
“We have Friday-night dinner with your grandmother tonight,” I reminded the girls.
“That’s why we have a spa day scheduled,” Tess said happily.
“You’re taking them out in public?”
“No,” Tess corrected. “This tower has a spa. They have a hair stylist that you can book, and we’re getting mani-pedis and massages. I told the stylist that we need Enola to have a haircut like Erin from that show Home Town,and since Annie’s hair is a little longer, she’s going to look like Joanna from The Home Edit. Only then are we going out in public and going shopping. Because if you have short hair, you have to dress a little chicer.”
“You should come with us,” Annie said.
I ruffled her short hair. “I have to work. Besides I don’t think you want me to ruin girls’ day.”
“You can meet us for lunch,” Tess offered. “We’re having sushi.”
“I’ll have to see. I might be busy.” I stood. Tess leaned over to type a text message on her phone, and I used the opportunity to swipe another bagel pizza.
The car letme off at the high-end sushi restaurant at lunchtime.
I should have worked through lunch, but I wanted to see my sisters and Tess. I missed having her outside of my office. At least the girls were back in school on Monday.
I saw Tess and the girls through the window. And I saw my brother Mike.
“What the hell?”
He and Tess were laughing when I walked up to the table.
“And then the woman pulls this five-and-half-foot-tall sex doll out of her suitcase and is like, ‘My husband said he found this under the bed, and we want a refund.’ And I had to be like, ‘Ma’am, please look at the security footage. Your husband brought that thing with him.’”
“Oh my gosh!” Tess said with a laugh.
“There’s never a dull moment in the hotel industry,” Mike said, shaking his head. “The fact that she had enough wherewithal to show up at my office but didn’t make the connection that maybe the thing belonged to her husband and he was lying when she showed up at the hotel room to surprise him is beyond me.”
“You can’t come crash our lunch,” I said to my brother.
“Why? Is this a date?” He grinned at me.
“No,” I said quickly, though a part of me wondered what it would have been like if it had been.
“Oh right, I forgot you refuse to date.”
“Beck is a smart man and knows that dating is overrated,” Tess said, taking a sip of her tea.
“If you think dating is overrated, you just haven’t been on a perfect date,” Mike said, reaching for the kettle to pour her more tea. I beat him to it.
“You can’t hit on my assistant.” I scowled at my brother.
“It’s just light flirting!” He smiled at Tess.
“There’s no way I’m dating you!” Tess scoffed.
Mike pretended to be hurt.
My anger levels were skyrocketing.
“A walk along the harbor, a ride in my private plane,” Mike suggested.
“How about you go get our sisters?” I barked at him.
He snorted and stood up to join our little sisters, who were staring at the tanks of exotic fish. I looked at them, really looked at them. Their new haircuts were great, but they also made them appear older. I could already see the flashes of the adult women they’d become.
I sat down across from Tess.
“Here to tell me about your perfect date?” she asked, fiddling with her teacup.
“I came to have lunch with you, Annie, and Enola.”
“Look at you, playing the perfect big brother.”
“I’m not playing,” I snapped, sitting up in my seat. “You seem to think that I don’t actually care about my sisters.”
“I know that you care about them,” Tess said, pushing aside her tea to lean forward over the table.
So apparently, we were going to have it out.
“But I think that you’re like all the other billionaires I’ve worked as an assistant for. You just think of them as little pets. In ten years, you’re going to look at them and wonder, ‘Who are these people, and why have they not met the expectations I have set for them but never told them about and never actively tried to help them achieve?’ Annie and Enola are going to internalize your disappointment and your laissez-faire attitude toward them and develop a complex.”
“I’m not—”
But Tess barreled on. “Eventually, you’re going to meet some high-society girl who thinks that because her dad could afford to send her on a voluntourism trip to pretend to help poor kids in Africa that she has some sort of idea about how real people actually live, and you’re going to be too clueless to actually see through the fact that she’s shallow and self-absorbed, and then you’re going to have another set of kids that you’re going to fuck up, and we’ll be having this same conversation in fifteen years.”
I glared at her and leaned forward. Our faces were inches away. “You don’t know the first thing about me. You think that because you shop at thrift stores and live in a dilapidated apartment that you have some sort of secret insight into the real world. Well guess what? I grew up in a compound in the desert.”
“That doesn’t make you special, that just makes you damaged,” Tess shot back.
“No, that means that I actually know the meaning of family, and I’m not going to let anything happen to my sisters. Everything I do is for my family because my siblings are all that I have.”
“Then why aren’t you paying attention to them?” she asked in frustration.
I sat back and regarded her. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you, because I’m rich.”
“And attractive,” she muttered.
I couldn’t help it, but the corner of my mouth quirked. She thinks I’m attractive. But she also thought I didn’t have my sisters’ best interests at heart.
“And attractive,” I purred.
Tess reddened.
“You think that I’m just going through life privileged and oblivious. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Do you know what it takes to walk away from everything you’ve ever known, to start over new?”
Her jaw set, and she looked almost sad.
“To leave behind everything and venture out in the world alone?” I continued.
“Yes!” she practically yelled. “And that’s why I don’t want you to just write off your sisters. They shouldn’t be alone.”
“They’re not alone,” I reminded her.
“I want them to have everything,” she said softly.
I remembered her assistant comment.
“You mean unlike you?” I prodded.
“This isn’t about me,” Tess said defensively.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I told her, taking her hand. “You’re smart and perceptive. You also have several people with a lot of money and power anxiously awaiting your big idea for salvaging the AstraDrone contract.”
She grimaced. “Don’t put too much stock in it.”
“I will,” I said simply. “I do value your insight and your work. And I have taken into consideration what you’ve said. I’ve already told my sisters that I will be hosting a How to be a CEO class on the weekends. They are going to start with finance.”
“For all your sisters?”
I thought about the toddlers and cringed. “The ones who can read and write.”
“You have to make your brothers participate too,” Tess said excitedly. She took out a notepad. “And we’ll organize it into modules. First one is finance, then we can have Walker give a unit on logistics. Mike can talk about branding and marketing. And Greg can talk about investing.”
I sucked in a breath. “I don’t know if Greg’s going to be on board.”
“Of course he will,” she said. “I’ll organize it. You need to set milestone goals. Maybe he and Belle can do a joint investment session.”
“Only if you clean the blood off the walls after.”
She smirked. “The course should be project-based learning.”
“Maybe an app?” I suggested.
Tess smiled at me—a warm, genuine smile that made my whole body tingle.
“I think the most shocking part of this whole thing is that you do know how to take directions!”
I gave her a small smile. “When the mood strikes me.”
“Guess I better try harder to get you in the mood in the future!”
Was she flirting with me?
