Holly hugged me and kept me supplied with cake during the rest of the afternoon. While I ate my weight in delicious cake, I watched well-dressed people come through the lobby, either to head up to the hotel, the condos in the building, or to the Quantum Cyber offices.
“You could go after one of the Richmond brothers,” Holly said, jerking her head to the tall man chatting with Mark Holbrook while they waited for the elevator.
“I bake. I don’t date,” I reminded her.
I was eating my bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado sandwich on thick, homemade, toasted bread when Maeve sat next to me.
“God, Cressida is so awful,” she complained, grabbing the other half of the sandwich.
“Hey!”
“Girl, I know Holly has been giving you all the pity snacks. I had to listen to Cressida parading around the office, talking about how if the new temp doesn’t work out, she’s going to have to be Beck’s new assistant since it was such a hard job and how she felt so sorry for him that he didn’t have anyone competent to support him.”
“How long do you think the new assistant is going to last?” Holly asked Maeve. “We’re taking bets.”
“I bet he fires her in a week,” I said. All the food had made me feel better. I was going to find an awesome job. Maybe it would pay better, and I could move out of my crappy apartment. Maybe this was the change I needed! You just had to look on the bright side. And of course, eat more cake.
“I bet she lasts a month,” Holly said. “She was telling us all about how she was going to marry Beck.”
Maeve shook her head. “I bet that’s why Cressida was being extra bitchy. She knows she’s got competition in the office. She’s going to do everything she can to push knockoff Emma Stone out ASAP. I bet she doesn’t even last the day.”
I took another crunchy bite of my sandwich. “I just hope Beck fires Cressida along with her.”
“We can dream!” Maeve said, toasting me with her sandwich half.
When we had moved on to Maeve’s first round of dessert and my fourth or fifth—I had been fired today, and dammit, fired calories don’t count!—the elevator dinged, and the redhead stumbled out, crying, wailing, and clutching her bag.
“I win!” Maeve said happily.
Even though the girl hadn’t been the nicest, I still felt sorry for her.
“Hey,” I called. “We have cake if you want to join us in our misery.”
The girl wiped her eyes, smearing her mascara, then scowled at me.
“I have a date tonight with a finance guy. I’m not going to eat cake,” she said, turning up her nose. “Some of us have standards.”
“Well then,” I said to the redhead’s retreating back, “have a nice life.”
“She could use some cake,” Maeve remarked. “It would make her a more pleasant person.”
When her lunch break was over, Maeve left, and Holly had to go actually work at her café. Quantum Cyber employees usually came down for coffee and snacks around four in the afternoon, and Holly’s famous cheese straws were in high demand.
While she worked, I slumped at the table, head resting on my hand, looking through job listings on my phone, wishing the rain would end so I could go home and bake a cake.
“I’d like my usual.”
A deep voice rocked me out of my joblessness and excessive cake-eating stupor.
Beck.
He was standing at the counter, demanding his usual hot-tea drink. Then he turned around to glare at me when I helpfully recited his order.
Defiant, I stared into his gray eyes and blew him a kiss. That really set him off.
“Why are you still here?” he demanded. “You were supposed to be escorted off the premises.”
“I’m a customer at the Sparrow and Thyme cafe,” I replied. “I’m allowed to be here.”
