Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,22
mum. Chilly is probably all I can keep up with.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You can have hotties of whatever temperature you want. It’s one of the perks of being a modern independent woman.”
Frankly, Rosaline could have done with feeling a bit more modern and independent. Between child support from Amelie’s father, the insultingly small amount of welfare she was entitled to, and semiregular handouts from her parents, she was painfully reliant on other people. While also, perversely, being completely on her own when it came to the things that mattered. “Well, I mostly want to be a modern independent woman who wins a baking show.”
“Can’t you be a modern independent woman who wins a baking show and also gets together with a delicious mansnack?” asked Anvita.
She gave Anvita a look. “I’m not sure I’d call Alain a delicious mansnack.”
“Maybe not. He’s got a keeper air, which I guess makes him . . . mandinner?”
“How long do you think dinner lasts?”
“In my family? A very long time.”
Rosaline laughed. “Speaking of families, I really need to go ring my kid.”
“No problem. What should I order for you?”
“Uh . . .” It had been way too long since a cute girl had offered to buy Rosaline a drink. This was obviously a platonic drink, but she was still temporarily stumped. “Wine, I guess?”
“Do you want cheap red or cheap white?”
“When you put it like that, it doesn’t matter.”
Anvita vanished through the main doors of the hotel and Rosaline settled herself under a tree with her phone. It was about half an hour after Amelie’s bedtime, which made it the perfect time to ring home and see how she was.
“Roz darling.” Lauren only called her Roz darling when she was taking the piss or trying to cover something up. “How are things? Amelie’s upstairs and sleeping like a baby.”
“Just put her on.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying.”
“Lauren.”
There was a scuffling at the other end of the phone, then Amelie’s voice. “Hello, Mummy.”
“You’re meant to be in bed.”
“Auntie Lauren said I could stay up until you called.”
Reasonable. Also a transparent lie. “Have you had a nice day?” “Yes. We played games and ate cake and watched television and Auntie Lauren tested me on my spelling except she isn’t very good at spelling so it didn’t help very much.”
“Don’t be mean about Auntie Lauren.”
Rosaline could practically hear Amelie’s expression of indignation. “I’m not being mean. I’m telling the truth. We are always meant to tell the truth.”
“Not when it’s mean. Now you know it’s past your bedtime so you should say good night to Auntie Lauren and go to bed right now.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“Well, lie down and close your eyes and you soon will be.”
This was bullshit. Rosaline knew full well that when you weren’t tired lying down and trying to be tired didn’t help. But children needed routines, and so you said what you had to.
“I don’t think that works. I try it every night and it takes ages and sometimes I don’t remember going to sleep at all but I think I probably do because I don’t remember being awake either.”
“It’s past your bedtime, Amelie. Go to bed.”
There was a ten-second window in which it seemed very likely that Amelie was about to protest. “Okay,” she said instead. “Love you to the moon and back.”
“Love you to the moon and back too. Put Auntie Lauren on.” Another scuffling, and Lauren was at the end of the line again. “If I find out she didn’t actually go to bed . . . ,” said Rosaline in her best parental voice.
“She will, she will. I’m not completely hopeless.”
Rosaline stretched out her legs, feeling the grass cool underneath her. “I never said you were hopeless, but you’ve also never met a rule you didn’t want to break.”
“I’m just teaching your daughter a healthy disrespect for authority.”
“You realise you’re going to be the authority until my mother shows up?”
“Fuck. I hadn’t thought of that.” Never one to dwell on a thought she found unpleasant, Lauren swiftly changed the subject. “So what’s it like? Do you feel all showbiz?”
“Not really. There’s a lot of standing around and answering the same question twenty times. And all I’ve succeeded in doing is making a mediocre Dundee cake and digging myself into a massive hole with one of the other contestants.”
Lauren, of course, latched onto this immediately. “That sounds like a tale hangs thereby.”
“Not a very good one.”
“Please. I’ve been watching children’s television all evening and while some of it has a