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

1

Tess

“Ican’t believe it’s happening this Friday!” I said to the girls at breakfast. “Are you all ready?”

“Nothing’s really changing, though,” Enola said as I scooped three mini omelets onto her plate. Now that I didn’t have to be at work at Belle’s office until later in the mornings, I spent them making fantastic Instagram-worthy breakfasts.

“Will we have to call you dad when you adopt us?” Annie asked Beck.

“Of course not.” He looked over the top of his newspaper. “Hunter adopted all our little brothers officially, but no one calls him that.”

“So nothing changes,” Enola said, satisfied.

“We have to have a big party,” I told them. “We can rent out the whole roof deck. We’ll invite all of your siblings.”

“All of them?” Beck asked in concern.

“Why not?”

“I have a lot of brothers,” he said, “and they aren’t the most civilized.”

“We’ll have food and games. It will be fine,” I assured him.

Beck sighed and looked at his sisters.

“You’re going to need a lot of food,” Annie told me. “They eat a lot.”

“Sounds like my kind of family!”

“Didyou have a good start to your morning?” Maeve joked when I walked into our small office. The Artemis Investment offices were not as swanky as Quantum Cyber’s. Belle’s company was located in a cozy historic building.

“I just made breakfast,” I said.

“Oh, did Beck enjoy it?”

“Not that kind of breakfast.”

“I would have thought you two would have been all over each other,” Maeve said, “considering you haven’t seen all that much of him.”

It was true. We had just finished with a big pitch presentation for a potential new client. I had been working late and staying at my condo and not Beck’s so as not to disturb him.

Beck’s condo had fully reverted back to his. I had moved all of my stuff out of my room and several floors down to the condo he had bought me. My new job at Artemis Investment was intense, and I hadn’t had much time to decorate.

Now that I was done with the big project, I wanted to spend time on the interior design and with Beck. But Beck didn’t seem to have that much interest in me. It was like by being absent, he had sort of forgotten about me.

“Is he busy with work, too?” Maeve asked as I sipped the coffee I had bought on the way over. That was one thing I did miss—Holly’s café. The bodega around the corner just wasn’t cutting it. I needed to convince my friend to open a franchise nearby.

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “But he’s always busy.” Then I voiced my fears. “What if he’s tired of me?”

“Highly doubtful,” Maeve said.

“He didn’t seem to want me around the rest of his family,” I said in concern. “He also didn’t protest a lot when I started spending more time in my condo. Maybe he’s trying to keep me at a distance. Or trying to gear up for the big breakup.”

“You sound paranoid.”

“But what if I’m not?”

“You could try talking to him like an adult.”

Yes, I could ask him like an adult, but what if he didn’t give me the answer I wanted to hear?

“You just need to get your mojo back,” Maeve said. “I will strategically be at pottery-making class and yoga this evening. You can put on your sexiest outfit and make him a cake.”

“He’s not a huge cake fan.”

“Then make him a steak and lobster,” Maeve suggested. “Then tell him he can eat after you guys fuck each other’s brains out.”

She pulled up an online lingerie shop. “You just need the perfect outfit.”