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

63

Beck

Iwas miserable.

Had Tess been telling the truth?

I supposed it wouldn’t be that difficult to prove. We’d just have to threaten the tabloid with a lawsuit, have them hand over the emails, then run a scan to see where they originated from.

But what if she had written the article?

My sisters were still upset and kept bugging me about my conversation with Tess.

“Yes,” Enola said, “but what did she say?”

“She claimed that she didn’t write the article. But that was her handwriting on the note.”

“Maybe someone stole it,” Annie said.

“Even so, she didn’t say very nice things about us on the note,” I reminded them gently.

“She didn’t say nice things about you,” Annie corrected, “but she didn’t say anything mean about us on the note.”

“What? Yes, she did. She said she hated children, that they’re sticky and gross.”

“They are sticky and gross,” Enola said. “I hate children too.”

“But you are a child…” I said slowly.

“No, I’m not,” Enola retorted. “I’m a CEO of a company.”

“And I’m the chief technology officer,” Annie said proudly. “Children don’t run companies.”

“They can, technically, if it’s a corporation,” I mused.

My sisters blinked at me.

“We need her to help us on our pitch deck for talking to investors,” Annie added.

I ground my teeth. “I told her to stay away from you.”

“That wasn’t very nice.”

I blew out a breath. “She wrote—”

“Tess was talking about children like Davy in Harrogate. He ate Nutella off the carpet.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said, making a face.

“What if she was having a bad day?” Annie said. “People have bad days. And we still need her input. There’s money on the line.”

“I can’t believe you fired her,” Enola scolded.

“I didn’t fire her from our lives,” I said. “That was a choice she made. I tried to get her back.”

“Not all that hard,” Enola said tartly.

Had I tried that hard?

Maybe not.

But did it matter at this point? Tess was gone. She hated me. Now my sisters were mad at me.

I wanted to sit and stew over the article, but I had more pressing business that morning. I needed to fire Cressida.

She was defiant and angry when she arrived in my office.

“All of this could have been avoided,” she said, “if you’d just picked me instead of Tess.”

“Cressida,” I said. “You worked with her stepfather to steal my sisters away.”

“That was a lie!” she shrieked.

People on the office floor looked our way. I guessed no work was getting done this week between all the firings and my family drama.

“I was trying to help you out to make sure that Tess and her awful stepfamily weren’t going to hurt your sisters. I was doing it for you, Beck,” she begged.

“No, you weren’t, Cressida.” I stood up. “Unfortunately, we have to let you go. You’re in human resources. I think you know the drill.”

“And Tess?” she asked slyly.

“What about Tess?” I said, irritated.

“Are you two done after that article she wrote?”

“She insists that she didn’t,” I said.

Cressida pursed her mouth. “Of course she did! It was her handwriting.”

“Who knows,” I said, just needing to move Cressida out. “It doesn’t matter. She’s furious I don’t believe her, so it’s over. Now please pack up your things.” I handed her a nondisclosure agreement. “And sign this if you want your settlement.”

She scrawled her signature with a flourish then gave me a triumphant look. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“So I takeit we need to start looking for a new human resources director?” Owen asked when I entered his office. I couldn’t stay in mine a minute longer. There were too many memories, bad and good.

“Yeah,” I said.

Owen swiveled in his chair toward me. “I was looking into the article that was posted.”

“My family has lawyers working on having it taken down,” I assured him.

“I wanted to find out who sent it,” Owen continued.

“It was probably Tess,” I said, resigned. She had been so adamant, though. But who else could it be?

“The time stamp on the email the tabloid received was after Tess was fired.”

“So?”

“It also came from this building’s Wi-Fi.”

“I think she was here,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

“I looked at the metadata on the file,” Owen continued. “It was sent from someone’s phone—someone’s iPhone.”

I shrugged.

“So Tess has an Android. It wasn’t her,” Owen stated, tossing the paperwork at me.

“Are you sure?” I picked up the printouts. “What about her handwriting?”

“You remember that face and object tracing algorithm I was working on?”

“The one that keeps flagging trash cans as penguins?”

“Well I fixed that, mostly. But it did pick up something interesting when I searched for napkins and Tess.” Owen showed me the video on his screen. There was Tess, writing what looked to be a note.

“Looks incriminating.”

“Just wait.”

Then there was Cressida. And she grabbed a handful of napkins off the table.

“Shit.” I leaned forward and replayed the video. “Where were you yesterday when Tess was chewing me out on the phone?”

“You can’t rush the algorithm,” my friend said sagely.

“I need to apologize,” I said, in shock.

“I think you need to grovel,” Owen corrected.

I tried to call Tess when I left his office, but it went to voicemail.

I needed to think. Tess hadn’t sounded all that impressed with the fact that I had partially recovered the painting. What else could I use to show I was sorry?

I needed my tea to think.

In the elevator ride down, I ran through ideas. A pony? Flowers? A pony with flowers? Chocolate? Maybe a chocolate fountain?

What did Tess like?

I thought back to what she had bought.

She did like nineties nostalgia. Though buying her a whole box of ‘90s toys didn’t seem appropriate.

And even though she had said she didn’t care about the painting, I knew that she did. None of my groveling mattered if I didn’t get her painting back from Belle. To do that, Tess needed to be the HOA president and to do that…

“She needs to be a resident.”

Belle picked up on the second ring.

“You better not be backing out of the deal,” she warned.

“No,” I said, “I’m trying to secure it. How much for one of the condo units?”

“Starts at ten million, though, oops, it looks like we actually just had someone put a hold on the last small unit. The next size up available is a three bedroom at twenty million.”

“Damn,” I said. “And Greg bought several of those?”

“He is like a small terrier that sees a squeaky toy,” she said. “When he decides he wants something, it makes him easy to manipulate. Will you be paying for this unit with cash or a loan?”

“I guess cash,” I said.

“I’ll be at the tower tomorrow showing another unit to a prospective buyer,” Belle said. “I’ll give you the keys then. Pleasure doing business with you.”

Fucking Greg.

So I had Tess’s painting, and I had a place for Tess to live.

I probably shouldn’t just hand her the keys, I decided. A big presentation would be more appropriate.

Holly glared at me when I approached the café counter.

“Can I have my usual?”

“No,” she said and crossed her arms.

“But I’m a paying customer.”

“And I’m refusing service,” she shot back.

“I need my tea,” I said incredulously. “I’ve had a hard week.”

“And Tess has had a worse one,” she retorted. “You screwed her over, fired her, lied to her, and—”

“I’m going to make it up to her,” I interjected.

“How?” Holly asked

“Look,” I said, frustrated, “can you please just call her and tell her I want to meet and talk?”

“Tess is busy,” Holly said stubbornly. “She’s applying for other jobs, better jobs, with other better and hotter bosses.”

“I don’t see how they’re going to be hotter than me,” I said after a moment.

“You are so full of yourself.”

“I’m just stating a fact.”

“Get away from my counter; you’re scaring away my customers.”

“Can I at least order a cake?”

“No.”

“Not for me, for Tess,” I explained. “An apology cake. A big one.”

“What kind?” Holly asked.

“I don’t know. Just pick something.”

The café owner raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to apologize with a cake but can’t even take the time to specify the cake.”

“Specify it?” I asked in confusion. “You can’t just do chocolate or vanilla?”

Holly pulled out a sheet of paper with tiny print and check boxes, double-sided.

“These are the custom cake options. You also need to give me a design.”

“Round?” I said helplessly.

“You need to make a design,” Holly said, pointing. “There are crayons in that bucket next to the high chair.”

I sat down at one of the tables and looked through the cake worksheet.

“Why are there so many flavors of cake?” I muttered. Banana, coconut, every single type of fruit, and five kinds of chocolate cakes because, apparently, they were all different. Then there were the cheesecakes and ice cream cakes.

What would Tess like? Maybe an ice cream cake? She liked ice cream, and she liked cake. Both in one cake might be nice. But then I had to pick a shape. You could have a heart or a star or a circle or a square or ones shaped like various animals.

I chose the cat since Tess liked Hello Kitty. I picked chocolate cake because I knew she liked that, and for the ice cream, we would go with strawberry because it was pink and then white frosting for the Hello Kitty design.

After making my selections, I inspected the worksheet that I was supposed to use for my design.

I drew what I decided mostly resembled a cat’s head and tried to draw a little sign. Maybe the cat could hold it.

I wrote, “Youwereright.I’m sorry.”

I took the paperwork up to Holly, who peered at it.

“You want this on the cake?” She made a face.

“It gets the point across,” I said defensively.

“I’ll start working on it tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Since I was paying in cash, there shouldn’t be any issues closing on the condo. Once I had the cake and flowers, I would just need to convince Tess to come over.

“Can I have my tea now?”

“No,” Holly said. “You’re still on my shit list.”

“I’m a paying customer.”

“Go away.”

I wasn’t sure if Tess was going to forgive me. She may not. I had treated her pretty poorly after all. But at least she would have somewhere to live that wasn’t a soggy apartment where the door didn’t shut properly. And the girls could see her.

It would be torture though to be that close to her and not be able to hold her.

But what else could I do?