Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,129

her mind.” That was both the Palmers at once.

“And I think you’ll find she has.” That was Cordelia.

That was also, at last, enough. “Oh do you,” Rosaline snapped. “I’m so glad you’re here to tell other people when I’ve made my mind up because I’m clearly incapable of doing it myself.”

“Well, if we’re being honest, darling”—Cordelia clasped her hands like she was delivering painful news and not just being shitty—“you’ve always been a little indecisive.”

“I’m not indecisive, Mother, I’m bisexual. There’s a difference.” It was the wrong thing to say, because if there was one thing the Palmers excelled at . . . Well, if there was one thing they excelled at, it was pursuing careers in medicine lucrative enough to pay for large houses in central London and a private education for their daughter to waste. But one of the many other things they excelled at was plausible deniability. “You’re the one who’s making this about your lifestyle choices. I’m simply pointing out that your father and I have met two of your gentlemen friends in as many months—”

“We’re just mates,” Harry offered in a doomed attempt to set the record straight.

All he got for his trouble was a femtosecond of Cordelia’s attention. “Nobody’s talking to you, Harold dear.”

“It ain’t Harold, it’s Harry. And I don’t like to say nothing, but I think you’re being a bit rude now.”

“The fact that you don’t like to say nothing is quite self-evident.” St. John Palmer looked from Harry to Rosaline. “Are you really going to let this man talk to your mother like that?”

And what the fuck kind of question was that to ask her?

“Sorry, Mrs. Palmer.” Harry put his hands in the air almost as if a gun was being pointed at him. As if a gun were being pointed at him. “Didn’t mean no offence.”

“Can’t be helped, I’m sure.”

Okay, maybe that was enough. “Mum, stop being such a condescending—stop being so condescending. Harry, you’ve got nothing to apologise for, you’re right. They are being rude. They’re not just being rude, they’re being . . . ” This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to be having in front of her daughter. “Can you take Amelie to the van, please.”

At the sound of her name, Amelie flicked back into life like one of those fish you get in a certain sort of pub. “I don’t want to go in the van, I want to finish my marbles.”

“Let the girl finish her marbles, Rosaline.” St. John Palmer had the same commanding tone he’d been using whenever Rosaline disagreed with him for as long as she could remember. “They’re educational.”

This . . . this was a deep-breaths situation. “Amelie. Thank Grandma and Granddad for a lovely time. You can finish your marbles when you come back. But for now, I need you to go to the van with Harry.”

“Are you really sending our granddaughter to go and sit in a van with a stranger you met on a reality television program?” Cordelia couldn’t have sounded more aghast if she’d taken lessons.

“No. I’m sending my daughter to go and sit in the van with my friend because she shouldn’t have to be here for this.”

“What shouldn’t I be here for?” asked Amelie. “Why do you always think I can’t understand things? I can understand lots of things. I can understand what makes the marbles go fast and the fish with the big eyes that live under the sea and where the energy comes from in the hydrothermal vents even though there isn’t any sunlight so they can’t do photo . . . photo . . .”

“Photosynthesis.” St. John’s voice shifted from scolding to avuncular so quickly that he almost sounded like he was operating outdated text-to-voice software.

“Amelie. I’ve asked you twice now. Say goodbye to Grandma and Granddad and go to the van with Harry.”

For all that Rosaline spent half her life feeling like the twelfth-worst parent in the world, she very seldom had to tell her daughter to do anything more than three times. Amelie stood up, recited a slightly rote but passably adorable round of thank-you-for-having-mes and went to stand by Harry.

“C’mon, Prime Minister, we can play I Spy while we wait.”

The dozen or so seconds that it took for them to get out of earshot were longer by far than the hours Rosaline had spent on the show waiting for the judges to tell her why her baking sucked this week.

“Well?” St. John had actually folded his arms. “What was this