Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,89

been involved in. But my parents always told me that a job worth starting was worth seeing through.”

“Yes”—one of Cordelia Palmer’s famous sighs—“St. John and I tried to teach Rosaline the same thing.”

As far as Rosaline was concerned, they had. It was just that what she’d chosen to see through was having a daughter, not attending an eight-hundred-year-old academic institution. But there was no point having that argument again. She toed at the gravel like the unruly teenager her parents would always see her as.

And that, adorably but unfortunately, seemed to make Alain want to come to her defence. “Then you’ve succeeded. She’s still in the competition and she’s planning to go back to university.”

Cordelia’s eyes flashed with sudden interest. “You see. I said she never tells us anything.”

“Oh, it’s quite a new idea,” he said quickly. “We’ve only talked about it a couple of times.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re looking out for her. It’s about time someone did.”

Once again, Rosaline could have mentioned that she had Lauren and, for that matter, herself. But, once again, there were only so many times you could have the exact same conversation.

“Anyway”—Alain took the smallest of steps backwards—“I’ve put my foot in it quite enough for one day. I should let you go.”

Dreading the conversation that would inevitably descend upon her the moment she and her mother were alone, Rosaline fumbled through a polite goodbye and then got into the Tesla with all the enthusiasm of a damned soul being ushered onto Charon’s boat.

“So,” said Cordelia Palmer two seconds after the engine started.

And Rosaline kind of expected the sentence to continue but it didn’t. She sighed, but less famously than her mother. “Nothing’s definite. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s something I’m thinking about and I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“We’d just have liked to know you were considering it.” A slightly different flavour of Cordelia Palmer pause. This was one that said, I don’t want to say the hurtful thing I’m going to say next, but you have driven me to it. “Especially given how steadfastly you’ve ignored the same suggestion when it came from your father and me.”

Even for her parents, taking offence at the fact she was doing something they liked now because it meant she hadn’t done it earlier was a new low. “Amelie was a lot younger then.”

“Amelie’s age has nothing to do with it. You’ll listen to Alain because you’re in a relationship with him, and while I tried to raise you not to rely on men to make all your decisions for you, I apparently failed.”

“Weren’t you on at me to settle down with him a couple of weeks ago?”

“Your father and I want you to do what makes you happy, you know that.”

Rosaline took a breath so deep it made her lungs ache. “And what if I said I was happy right now?”

“Then you’d be lying. To me, your father, and yourself.”

“Why?” asked Rosaline ill-advisedly. “Why is it so unimaginable I could be happy raising my daughter and baking my cakes and living in my tiny house and working my ordinary job in a shop that sells pencils?”

“Because, darling, you’re better than that.”

And, after a moment or two, she turned on Radio 4 in time to catch the start of the shipping forecast.

Week Six

Patisserie

Wednesday

ALAIN HAD ARRANGED for Rosaline to meet him and his friend at a cocktail bar in Shoreditch called Some Kind of Cocktail Bar—which she hoped he’d chosen because it was fairly easy to get to from Liverpool Street station, and not because he thought she might be into it. Which, from the name, she definitely wasn’t. As a teenager, her social life had generally revolved around places that had a relaxed attitude towards ID and charged less than thirteen pounds a drink. And as a plucky single mother, her social life had revolved around not having one. Either way, she’d very much missed the little-black-dress-let’s-do-cocktails stage of adulthood.

Wait. Was this a little black dress occasion? Did she have a little black dress? Was it appropriate to wear a little black dress to meet a woman you weren’t dating? Surely if she turned up in a sexy dress—or as sexy as any of her dresses got—she’d just look desperate and threatened. But if she showed up in jeans and a T-shirt, she’d look like she didn’t give a fuck, and she might not even be allowed in the front door.

Though, now she thought about it, that might actually be an advantage.