“I’m just so glad we caught you as you were coming in,” Christy says, sounding as if she’s just about finished. “So, you’ll talk to Tammy?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mason says. Even though I’m just a casual observer, and I have no idea what they are talking about, I can tell that’s a brush-off answer if I’ve ever heard one.
“Thank you so much, Mason.” Chrissy sets her hand on his arm. She giggles—which is nauseating—and takes a step closer, not caring a bit that she’s flirting with a man half her age. “It’s only fair weallget personal interviews with you.”
Ever polite, Mason doesn’t step away, but he does crane his neck backward, trying to put distance between them.
Finally, the plastic twins pull themselves away from the singer and head up the stairs, toward their rooms.
“That’s funny,” Cole whispers from behind me, leaning down so the others won’t hear. “You and Mason seem to have arrived back at the lodge at the same time, and you’re both wearing wet ski gear. Yetwe didn’t see either of you on the slopes.”
I turn to face him, unsure how to respond. He only winks at me in a knowing way and excuses himself as his group veers toward the dining room.
“Anne, do you need anything?” I ask before she hobbles through the doorway.
The girl looks over her shoulder, flicking her strawberry blond ponytail aside. “No, I’ll be all right. I just need to get off it for a while.”
“And some ice,” Jessica adds, frowning at the swollen ankle.
“At least we don’t have a show tomorrow,” Jerome says. “You’ll have all day to rest.”
We exchange goodbyes, and I head up to my room. Riley and the others are probably in the dining hall, but I want to change out of my wet clothes before I join them.
It’s bad enough Cole made the connection. There’s no reason to give anyone else the chance to come to the same conclusion.
After a long, hot shower, I get ready to go downstairs but end up sitting on the bed, browsing recipes online. Somehow, I find myself stalking baking blogs.
When Riley comes in an hour later, I’m reading a post titled “How to Start a Culinary Blog in Five Easy Steps.” I just finished “Baking to Professional Blogging in Two Weeks or Less.”
“What are you doing?” Riley asks as she plops on the bed beside me. “Everyone’s finished dinner and started on dessert.”
My sister gives me a curious look after she reads a little of the article. “Do you want to start a blog, Harper?”
She sounds so dumbfounded, I almost snap the laptop shut and brush off the idea. But something stops me. Not quite looking at her, I say, “Maybe.”
“What kind of blog?”
And to my surprise, she doesn’t sound as skeptical as I feared. In fact, she doesn’t sound skeptical at all.
I nibble the side of my lip, scrolling through the article. “Baking.”
Growing enthusiastic, she scoots over to me and tries to steal my laptop. “That’s such a great idea! You could write recipes and takes tons of cute cupcake pictures. I saw one on Pinterest the other day that looked amazing!”
Frowning, I let her take my laptop. “What do you think Mom and Dad will say? I mean, it’ll take a while to get it going.”
And that gets her attention. My parents have always had high expectations for the two of us. While they are willing to support us, as they did when I left home to go to Texas, they aren’t always open to suggestions. As a joke, Riley told them she and Lauren were going to move to Los Angeles and major in performing arts. It didn’t go over well. Even once they found out she was joking…yeah. Itstilldidn’t go over well.
I can do whatever I want with my life as long as it’s something they’ll approve of. I could be a doctor, architect, marine biologist, dentist, or graphic designer, but if I told them I was interested in starting a baking blog, they’d panic. If I admitted that what I really want to do is write a cupcake cookbook…
I can’t even imagine.
“Tell them you want to major in business,” Riley says after thinking about it for a few minutes. “You want to do your own thing—be an entrepreneur. Nothing wrong with that.”
Maybe.
She looks up. “Honestly, Harper, it’s not even that surprising. You hate to take orders from people, and no one ever does enough to meet your expectations. You almosthaveto work for yourself, or all of your co-workers or underlings would hate you.”
“Thank you, Riley.” I give her a wry smile as I take back my laptop. “You’re a ray of sunshine as always.”
