“Because baking is awesome and fun,” Tess said. “It’s creative, involves math and science, and you get a yummy, tasty treat at the end.” She took a big bite of a lemon tart.
“The girls are supposed to be working on their schoolwork,” I argued.
“I already finished my workbook,” Enola said from behind the counter where she was rolling out dough.
“Really.”
Tess handed me a workbook. I flipped through it. All of the math problems had been completed in neat pen.
“She’s better at math than you,” Tess teased.
“I’m a chief financial officer. That means I am very good at math.”
“You had a formula wrong in your spreadsheet,” Enola called out.
“I—” I blinked.
“It’s okay,” Annie said, coming over with a piping hot pretzel and sliding it in front of me. “Sometimes people make mistakes.”
“Mark Holbrook’s not going to give you another chance to be his one true data processing firm if you don’t get your act together!” Tess joked, nudging me with her shoulder.
“I already told Owen that it’s a bad idea to keep trying to go after AstraDrone,” I said, shaking my head. “We just had another argument about it. I said it made us look weak. Owen said there was a ten-million-dollar contract on the line and it didn’t hurt to try again.”
“After that disaster of a presentation that you gave, I’m shocked it’s still on the table at all,” she said tartly. “I looked it over and then almost had a panic attack. I had to order tacos to calm myself down.”
Her computer chirped with a calendar-invite reminder.
“Speaking of things I’m going to need a huge amount of tacos to cope with… time to have our Friday-night dinner.”
“I hope the food is good.”
We stood outside a stately Connecticut home. The yard was perfectly manicured, and large stone lions stood guard at the front door. Two gaslights flickered in the dusk as we stood on the porch.
“I’m starving.” Tess adjusted her skirt. She had been doing that in the car the whole ride over—touching her skirt, adjusting the top part of her dress, crossing and uncrossing her legs. If we didn’t have to pretend to be fake boyfriend and girlfriend, I would have put her in a separate car because it had been extremely distracting.
“You have to be on your best behavior,” I reminded Annie and Enola again. “We need to show Ethel that we’re all normal and put together and that you’re having a perfectly normal upbringing.”
“So we shouldn’t talk about the raccoon Liam’s going to adopt?” Annie asked.
“The what?”
The door opened to reveal a butler in a three-piece suit. “Good evening. The lady of the house is expecting you. Do you have a card?”
Tess looked around in confusion as the butler held out a silver tray.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out one of my business cards and placed it on the tray. The butler looked at it like I’d just handed him a live rat.
“A business card.” His lip curled. “Very well.”
We followed him into the house.
“You’re supposed to have calling cards,” Enola whispered to me.
“What is this, the 1860s?” Tess hissed. “Maybe I should have worn a longer skirt.”
Maybe she should have, but I liked the dress she was wearing. She had changed out of her business casual clothes that she always wore for work and was in a formfitting blue cocktail dress. It had long sleeves, but there was a cutout right at her cleavage, partially hidden with a big bow.
I wanted to unwrap her from the dress, run my hands over her skin, and listen to the sounds she made. I wondered if she sounded like she had at the pool when I’d touched her neck.
