Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,127
just the nice girl with the sad life story for the eighteento thirty-five demographic?”
Jennifer Hallet threw back her head and unleashed a grating laugh. “Think very carefully about this, sunshine. Do you really want to hear the answer to that question?”
As it turned out, Rosaline did not need to think very carefully. “No. No I don’t.”
“Fabulous. Now fuck off. Because I’ve got to make this completely avoidable shitfire look charming and relatable.”
In the car park, she found Harry waiting for her.
“Ready to go?” he asked. Followed by, “What’s wrong, mate?”
Rosaline was struggling with tears—she hadn’t expected yelling at Jennifer Hallet to help, but now she’d done it she’d run out of actions and was stuck with nothing but emotions. “I got you kicked off the show.”
“I got kicked off ’cos it’d be unfair for Nora to go out from one bad week and ’cos I lamped Alain one.”
“But you only hit him because of me.”
“I didn’t. I hit him because where I come from, bloke puts his hands on you and you tell him nice to take ’em off and he don’t, you hit him.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I didn’t like the way he was treating you, mind, but I reckoned you was already dealing with that on account of you leaving. What happened between him and me was between him and me.”
That made Rosaline feel slightly better, but only slightly. “I still don’t think you should have gone out.”
“Yeah, but I did. Just TV, init? So we heading off or what?”
“I guess. We’ll need to get Amelie from my parents, though. To add insult to injury, I had to pass my child between two different sets of babysitters this week so I could be pressured into a threesome I didn’t want.”
“Not a problem, mate. Where do they live?”
“Kensingon.”
He chuckled. “Course they do.”
Truthfully—after everything that had happened in the last couple of days—Rosaline was not quite ready to face Cordelia and St. John. But it was the only way she could get Amelie back. So she had to.
“Blimey,” observed Harry as they pulled up outside Rosaline’s parents’ house. “Is your dad the bloke from Mary Poppins?”
Rosaline gazed somewhat sheepishly at the extremely desirable Earl’s Court residence in which she’d grown up. “What? Dick Van Dyke?”
“No, the one with the bowler and the moustache. Did Bedknobs and Broomsticks and all.”
“Yeah. My parents are kind of . . . actually incredibly rich now I think about it.”
“See.” He grinned triumphantly at her. “I said you was posh.”
“We’re not posh. They’ve just . . . both been very successful in their fields.”
“You know the two poshest things in the world?”
“Um, the Queen and Victoria Beckham?”
“Saying you ain’t posh,” he told her. “And saying the words ‘very successful in their fields.’ My dad’s successful in his field. But because his field’s electrics they say, ‘That’s Ringo Dobson. He’s an electrician.’”
There was a pause. “Sorry. Your dad’s called Ringo?”
“Yeah, my nan’s a big Beatles fan.”
“And you think my name is weird.”
“To be fair, mate, Ringo Starr is still alive, was actually in the thing he’s famous for being in, and ain’t a nun. Also, I reckon you’re stalling. You know, I can wait in the van if you want.”
She was stalling. But not because of Harry. “You don’t need to do that. Unless you want. Which you might. Because my parents can be . . . a lot?”
“Nah, you’re all right. Be good to stretch my legs.”
They stretched their legs—Rosaline’s quite reluctantly—up to the front door. Where she knocked and waited.
“Ain’t you got a key?” asked Harry in the brief silence that followed.
“If I had one to their house, they’d want one to my house, and that would be a whole big thing.” Rosaline hoped he wouldn’t ask for any more explanation, and as the mixed luck of the moment would have it, he never got the chance.
The door opened to reveal Cordelia Palmer in her at-home wear, which honestly wasn’t that different from her picking-her-daughter-up-from-a-baking-show wear, which wasn’t that different from her giving-a-speech-at-a-conference wear. “Rosaline,” she said, “who’s this?”
As greetings went, it could have been worse. And occasionally had been. “This is Harry. He’s from the show.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Palmer.” Harry offered his hand and Cordelia started at it, like it was literally covered in faeces.
“What happened to Alain?” asked Cordelia.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know. You just don’t want to tell me.”
Rosaline curled her nails into her palms. “You’re right. I don’t want to