Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,98

brilliant, though. You could be the male Nigella Lawson.”

Without her telling it to, Rosaline’s brain put together a quick mock-up of what a male Nigella Lawson would be like. And to give it credit, it did get to Harry pretty quickly.

“You could be all,” Anvita went on, “What you need to do is knead it firmly, but tenderly, caressing the dough with your thumbs and fingertips.”

“Mate, that’d make rubbish dough.” Harry paused. “Also, if that’s what women find sexy, I’ve been doing it very wrong.”

Rosaline grinned. “If it helps, so have I.”

To Harry’s visible relief, their mains arrived a moment later. True to form, he’d gone for the pie, she’d gone for the cheapest thing on the menu, and Anvita had taken the dish with the coolest name, which in this case had been a pan-fried skate wing.

“I was expecting it to be wingier,” admitted Anvita. “But it just looks like a fish triangle.” She stuck a fork in it. “It’s all right, though. Fishy. How’s the tagliatelle?”

Currently, it was dangling from Rosaline’s mouth in a thoroughly indecorous manner. “Mmmestly mmwishing—” She managed to partially de-pasta herself. “I’m wishing I’d chosen something less messy.”

“Don’t worry about it, mate.” Harry glanced up from his two-bird pie. “I know there’s a bunch of long words in the menu, but at the end of day, it’s just a pub, init? Anyway. It’s your turn. What you doing tomorrow?”

“How can it be my turn?” protested Rosaline, half convinced she had mascarpone on her chin, but not sure how to wipe away something that might only exist in her imagination. “When you totally wouldn’t tell us what you were doing?”

“I did tell you. It’s blue and sparkly and a cake. And it’s got macaroons on it.”

“Is it Elsa from Frozen?” asked Rosaline. “I promise, we’ll let it go if it’s Elsa from Frozen.”

“I did think about doing Elsa, but—oh right. Yeah. I get it. Very funny, mate.”

“Is it,” Anvita suggested, “unicorn poo?”

Harry’s brow crinkled. “Why would unicorn poo be blue?”

“Because they’re magical.”

“And magical things have blue poo?”

“Or”—something bubbled up from the lake of Rosaline’s “was going to be a doctor” factoids—“they’ve all got porphyria.”

“You what?”

“I see that ‘you what’ and raise you an ‘I beg your pardon?’”

“Porphyria,” Rosaline explained. “It’s the thing George III might have had. It turns your poo blue.”

Harry gave a heavy sigh. “Mate, I have to tell my nieces not to talk about poo at the table, but they’re all under ten.”

Something clicked in Rosaline’s brain. “You have nieces. They are under ten. And they’re girls. And you’re not doing Frozen. It’s a mermaid, isn’t it?”

“Bloody hell.” Harry went pink to his ears. “Yeah, all right. I’m doing a mermaid. I thought it’d be nice. I’m doing it diving into the cake so you just see the tail bit. ’Cos that way I don’t have to do boobs on telly.”

Anvita nodded sagely. “Good call. Because otherwise the judges would come round and say, What are you doing, and you’d have to say, I’m moulding a pair of fondant whammers.”

“I mean”—Harry had yet to return to his original shade—“I wouldn’t have said it exactly like that.”

Unable to resist, Rosaline asked, “So how would you have said it?”

“I think I’d have gone with . . . ‘This is my mermaid. Right now finishing off her bra area.’”

“That’s my favourite name for them.” Anvita was noticeably giggling. “I love it when my boyfriend tells me, ‘Anvita, your bra area looks great in that dress.’”

“I’m not trying to pull the mermaid,” muttered Harry. “I’m trying to talk about the mermaid on telly without saying ‘tits.’”

To be honest, Rosaline could have carried on teasing Harry about his hypothetical fondant boobies for quite a lot longer. But he had fixed her electricity for free. “I’m doing space,” she announced.

Harry slanted her a mischievous look. “Ah, so blue and sparkly as well then?”

“Maybe more purple and sparkly? And with macaron planets.”

“Well,” said Anvita loftily, “these are nice ideas. But I—I should warn you—am going to smash it. I’m making a three-tiered vanilla-bean sponge with Swiss meringue buttercream icing and macarons cascading luxuriously from top to bottom.”

“But what’s its theme?” Harry’s imitation of Anvita’s tone was not especially accurate. “I thought you had to have a theme.”

“The theme is Marie Antoinette.”

There was a pause. “How is a bunch of macarons like Marie Antoinette?”

“Because”—Anvita tossed her head proudly—“they’re fabulous.”

In the end, Harry had picked up the bill. Not, as he insisted, because he was the only bloke but because Rosaline