Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,26

didn’t think it through?”

“Rosaline.” He looked if not devastated then at least lightly pillaged. “You’ve fucked me about here. You can’t cute your way out of it.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . cute. And I didn’t mean to lie either. I . . . I panicked.” This was awful. This was unbelievably awful. “Because . . . we met the way we did and you were clever and funny and successful and I thought we . . . maybe clicked maybe?”

He blinked, his eyes grey and wounded. “Well, we might have. But how can I tell when I don’t even know who you are?”

“You’re right. I fucked up. I’m sorry. I just liked you and I didn’t want you to . . . oh God . . . think things about me.”

“What do you mean, ‘things’?” he asked impatiently.

“You know”—she stared at her sandwich, which was the only object in a ten-foot radius she could trust not to have strong opinions about her life choices—“that I’m whatever sort of person you think the sort of person who gets pregnant at university is.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“I just . . . ” The words fell pathetically out of her like socks out of a laundry basket. “I just didn’t want you to think less of me.”

He gave her a look that was colder than any look she’d thought he was capable of giving. “I’m not sure that makes it better. Because not only did you lie to me, but you also apparently think I’m the kind of man who’d judge you for a mistake you made when you were still a teenager.”

It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. But there was something about the word “mistake” that always made her feel queasy. I never planned for this to happen was too close to This should

never have happened, and then it stopped being about Rosaline’s past and started being about Amelie’s future. And the thing was, she couldn’t say any of that. Because, right here and right now, Alain wasn’t wrong. By every standard she’d ever been taught, she’d messed up her life. She’d had everything going for her, and she’d thrown it away on a careless night with a guy she wasn’t even that into. Worse, she’d been ashamed of herself for so long that here she was projecting her own mess onto someone who would probably have been fine if she’d had the courage to trust him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

Alain’s mouth, with its generous curve and its tantalising brackets, was particularly expressive when he was upset. “So you keep saying. But what exactly am I supposed to do with that? Or with you?”

She’d ruined it. She’d completely ruined it. “I don’t know. Can we . . . can we start again? I mean, I’m still me. I just haven’t been to Malawi.”

“You sat next to me last night and let me reassure you that being on this show wouldn’t get in the way of your fake medical degree. Are you really so desperate for . . . for I don’t even know what . . . that you have to gaslight people into telling you things are okay?”

Oh God. Had she done that? She hadn’t meant to, but did that make a difference? If this had been the kind of movie where their leads got tangled up in a dog park, then being insecure enough to tell someone she fancied a pack of lies would be quirky and amusing and forgiven with a kiss in the pouring rain. But now she’d accidentally behaved that way, it was . . . it was hurtful.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t know what to say.”

He gave a sharp laugh. “Whatever you said, would it even be true?”

“Alain, I . . .”

“I’m sorry. I’m not doing this.” He turned and walked away into the mellow afternoon sunlight.

And Rosaline had no choice but to follow him because the technical crew were hurrying them back to the ballroom.

Selfish and self-defeating though it seemed, Rosaline wasn’t in a fit state to pay much attention to the judging. It mostly boiled down to people having done a little bit either side of fine. Dave, however, had skewed far enough into not-fine that Rosaline was at least slightly more confident about her chances of surviving week one.

Despite serving up two tiers of what was clearly intended to be a three-tiered cake, he somehow managed to look at once defiant and