I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date!, page 1
I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date!
Alina Jacobs
Contents
Other books by Alina Jacobs
Synopsis
1. Tess
2. Beck
3. Tess
4. Beck
5. Beck
6. Tess
7. Beck
8. Tess
9. Tess
10. Tess
11. Beck
12. Tess
13. Beck
14. Tess
15. Beck
16. Beck
17. Tess
18. Beck
19. Tess
20. Beck
21. Tess
22. Beck
23. Tess
24. Beck
25. Tess
26. Beck
27. Tess
28. Beck
29. Tess
30. Beck
31. Tess
32. Beck
33. Tess
34. Beck
35. Tess
36. Beck
37. Tess
38. Beck
39. Tess
40. Beck
41. Tess
42. Tess
43. Beck
44. Tess
45. Beck
46. Tess
47. Beck
48. Tess
49. Beck
50. Tess
51. Beck
52. Tess
53. Beck
54. Tess
55. Beck
56. Tess
57. Beck
58. Tess
59. Beck
60. Tess
61. Beck
62. Tess
63. Beck
64. Tess
65. Beck
66. Tess
67. Beck
68. Tess
69. Beck
70. Tess
Sneak Peak
Synopsis
1. Tess
2. Beck
Read HATE TREATS
Family Tree
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2021 by Adair Lakes, LLC.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Created with Vellum
Other books by Alina Jacobs
Check out other books about characters mentioned in this one on my website:
http://alinajacobs.com/books.html
To the candle I forgot in my car that one time and it exploded everywhere.
Synopsis
I hate, I bake, and I don’t date!
Yeah, my billionaire boss did it to me in his office twice in one day.
I even screamed when it happened. The whole office heard me.
No, not that.
He fired me.
Yep.
Beck Svensson fired me right before rent was due and in the middle of a rainstorm.
That’s why he’s at the top of my hate list, along with pickles, people who steal other people’s lunches out of the office fridge, and trying to fold a fitted sheet.
But you know what? It’s fine—totally fine. It’s freedom! I could do anything! I could start a bakery or farm the mushrooms growing in my soggy apartment carpet.
Or I could just show up at the temp office at hate o’clock in the morning for a new assistant job.
I hope my new boss will be less of a buzzkill than the last.
Except guess who is waiting for me when I show up in the lobby of a swanky office building.
That’s right, Mr. Grumpy Boss himself.
Beck is appalled that I’m back in his life. Again.
I can tell he wants to fire me. Again.
Except now he has two little surprise sisters bouncing around him and no one to watch them except yours truly.
While I strongly dislike kids and actively hate my boss, I’m willing to abandon my principles for a big paycheck and a hefty expense account.
But when Beck needs me to pretend to be the love of his life to keep from losing his sisters, I’m not sure a big windfall is going to cut it.
After all, I bake, and I don’t date. Ever.
Besides, I hate Beck. No way am I pretending to be his girlfriend.
…but I love the little girls.
I also love the huge kitchen in Beck’s swanky penthouse that I claim as mine when I move in.
And I really love running my hands over his washboard abs and that thing he does with his tongue.
Wait! No! I hate it, totally absolutely hate it, right? Right?
* * *
This is a full-length, enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy, complete with hot, snarly guys with hearts of gold, a heroine who you’ll want to be besties with, and a happily ever after better than a giant slice of chocolate cake! Though this is intended to be a stand-alone book, it does take place after the recently completed Svensson Brothers series.
1
Tess
“You’re fired!”
My boss’s deep voice rang out over the floor. It was 8:57 in the morning, and the firings had begun.
I scrunched down at my desk.
“Glad it wasn’t me,” I whispered. “I literally cannot afford it.”
Maeve snorted. “Holly and I both told you that your emergency fund is for financial emergencies only, such as getting fired, not drunk online shopping.”
“But they were the most adorable cake pans!”
“No one needs ten different cake pans shaped like bunnies,” Maeve hissed as Beck, dirty-blond hair perfectly parted to the left, strode by.
Tall, like really tall, with broad shoulders and a chest that tapered down to narrow hips and an ass that was chef’s kiss in that bespoke suit, my boss was hot—way hotter than my last boss, who would literally wear a corset to contain his beer gut.
“I need those changes made for the AstraDrone presentation,” he ordered me. “Don’t disappoint me. This meeting is important.”
“And I, as a lowly assistant, am not,” I quipped.
Beck’s mouth turned down, but he didn’t respond. He prowled into his office, the glass door shutting behind him with a soft, metallic click. The office floor let out a collective sigh now that he was gone. Only the quiet sobs of the girl who had just been fired cut through the silence.
“He’s like a wild animal,” I whispered to Maeve. “If I didn’t hate him so much, I would totally let him play Tarzan to my Jane. But the Disney version.”
Maeve raised an eyebrow. “If you had him half naked, then why would you want to do anything G-rated with him?”
“I just meant I didn’t want him unwashed with a sunburn and matted hair.”
Goose bumps rose on the back of my neck. I turned around slowly.
Steel-gray eyes caught mine through the glass wall.
Oops.
Beck’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed to his watch.
I saluted.
“You keep poking the bear in the suit you’re going to get bit,” Maeve told me as I opened the email from Beck that had just appeared in my inbox.
“He hasn’t fired me yet!” I said breezily. Then I groaned when I saw all the changes Beck wanted. I looked back at his office, but he was pacing while on the phone.
“The man is a lunatic,” I said to Maeve, standing up. “Also, I need sustenance if I’m going to finalize everything before the meeting at two this afternoon.”
My lunch from yesterday was still in the fridge. I had baked a quiche Lorraine earlier in the week. I would have eaten in yesterday, but Beck had yelled at Maeve for not catching a typo in a memo, and she had needed a cocktail over lunch to keep it together.
The quiche would be a perfect second breakfast.
Except it wasn’t there.
My Hello Kitty lunch box was still in the fridge, along with the matching thermos, but someone had taken my food.
“The hell?” I grumbled, grabbing the lunch box and stomping back to my desk. There were a number of things I hated—children, Cressida the HR skank, the guy who lived above me and blasted his music to cover up the sound of his dog barking, my stepdad, dating, pickles, my boss, folding fitted sheets—but right there, at the top of the list, were people who stole other people’s food.
“The nerve!” Maeve exclaimed when I showed her the empty lunch box.
“What’s worse is I have to make all these changes on an empty stomach,” I grumped, opening the InDesign presentation file.
Designer stilettos clicked on the polished concrete floor of the Quantum Cyber office. When I had originally accepted the job, I had thought I was going to work in a swanky high-end tech office, ogling my hot boss, and getting paid enough to make rent while supporting my baking habit. I didn’t realize the job also meant dealing with the HR lady from hell.
Cressida, with her SoulCycle toned legs and her perfect blowout, dropped a large cardboard box on my desk. She pursed her mouth.
“Now that Ashley has been fired, you are going to take over all her work,” Cressida said haughtily.
“I’m actually really busy with my actual job being an assistant to the CFO, you know,” I said in a mock-friendly tone.
Cressida gl
“Oh?” I said, voice sweet as syrup. “Are we splitting them up?”
She gave me a sour look. “You need to do it. It’s your job now. I’m the director of human resources, and that’s how I’ve decided the workload will be divided.”
“You mean dictated,” I said snidely.
“Are you giving me lip?” she asked. “Maybe Beck needs to fire you too. Should I get him involved?”
We looked into his office.
Beck was cursing someone out on the phone.
“Nope.”
Cressida gave me a triumphant look. “Don’t leave today until all of Ashley’s work emails have been cleared out.”
“The lion, the witch, and the audacity of that bitch,” Maeve said, shaking her head as I scrolled through the emails that had begun to pour into my inbox.
I had to finish Beck’s presentation before tackling my newly increased workload, but first, I needed to know if there were any ticking time bombs in my email and diffuse those before I returned to the presentation.
There were a number of them. I fired off messages, feeling very corporate girl-boss.
One email came back with an almost immediate response.
I idly opened it while in the middle of photoshopping an image of a little girl coding while wearing a shirt with the Quantum Cyber logo.
“The hell?” I muttered, glaring as I read the email. It started off with the phrase, ‘Listen, princess,’ and went downhill from there.
The client, Chad—because of course he was named Chad—had not liked my ruling that it was not, in fact, Quantum Cyber policy to hack into a mistress’s account and delete the horny messages they had exchanged.
I typed back an angry response. I was a grown woman! He might have gotten away with calling Ashley ‘princess’, but he wasn’t going to address emails to me like that anymore.
“And you’re lucky I don’t report this to your wife myself,” I finished and sent it off.
I was working my way through the changes on the next image when Beck banged on the glass behind me.
I smoothed my skirt and opened the office door.
Beck was furious. But he was always furious, and I wasn’t too concerned.
“Are you out of your mind?” he raged.
I spread my hands in a WTF gesture. “Your notes said you didn’t like the guy in the pink pants, even though it is a very trendy look, so I’m changing them to black. The color was a little off in the crotch area. That’s why it’s so big on my computer screen.”
Beck growled, exposing his teeth.
Definitely wild.
“This email,” he said, turning around his monitor and making a knife hand to the screen, “is inappropriate. You’re threatening to tell the wife of one of our clients that he’s cheating!”
I bristled. “He wanted us to break the law! I was just explaining company policy.” I crossed my arms. “Besides, he was a sexist asshole!”
“So?” Beck roared. “He is a client. You have to use more tact. Not to mention, that client isn’t any of your business. Why are you even answering that email? No one gave you authority to answer those emails.”
“Actually, Cressida did.”
“You should have come to me,” Beck snarled. “Honestly, all you’ve done today is fuck up. You’re slouching at your desk with a bad attitude, you’re still not done with the presentation, you’re slurping your tea, and now you’re costing us clients. Get it together, Tess. I don’t want dead weight at my company.”
I was shaking as he railed at me. It was like when my stepfather used to relish using every opportunity to put me down. I had sworn when I’d left I wasn’t letting anyone treat me like that ever again, least of all some asshole named Beck.
“All the things I’ve done wrong today?” I countered, my voice sounding screechy to my ears.
Beck’s nostrils flared, and he rounded on me, but I didn’t back down. I was hangry and done with his shit.
“How about all the things you have done today—the terrible attitude, the fostering of a hostile workplace, the yelling at your employees, the fact that you have a thing against the color pink, and to top it off, you fired Ashley. Sure, she wasn’t the most competent, but now I have to pick up the slack because you think being a good boss is keeping people in fear and randomly firing people for no reason instead of helping them improve.”
I stepped into his personal space. I could smell the faint masculine scent of his aftershave. Not that I cared that he smelled amazing. I was on a roll.
“You think you’re tired from dragging my dead weight around?” I stabbed a finger into his very firm chest. “Guess what, I have news for you buddy. I’m tired of covering for you and your terrible decisions. You need to shape up!”
And that was the story of how I taught Beck the true meaning of corporate Christmas, and we all lived happily ever after, singing team-building songs.
Lol, not!
The corner of Beck’s mouth curled down. I could practically hear his teeth grinding, then his perfect lips parted, and he hissed, “You’re fired.”
2
Beck
“Good riddance!” Tess yelled and stormed out of the office. I heard her shrill voice outside, talking with the other office assistant who sat next to her as she gathered her things and stomped to the elevator.
I sat on the edge of my desk and pinched the bridge of my nose. It had not been a good morning.
Ashley had sent a very explicit message to my younger brother, who was interning at the company, and I had to fire her. Then the presentation Tess had sent me needed changes. Usually, her presentations were fine, but I wanted to win this contract and needed perfection.
Then Tess had riled up one of our worst clients, and now, instead of concentrating on the important meeting with AstraDrone, I had to stroke that cheating asshole’s ego to keep him from suing us.
“Dude, what the hell?” my brother, Walker, said, coming into my office. “You fired two girls on the same day? That’s a lot, even for you.”
“They are grown women who were failing to fulfill their job descriptions,” I said curtly.
“I guess I should have expected it. Tess has been here three months. That’s a record for your personal assistant.”
“Because, for some reason, we only seem to hire incompetent people,” I retorted, giving him a pointed look.
“I’m not incompetent! I’m a great COO.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, “or you would have been taking care of the Ashley situation instead of me. Instead, you were where, exactly? Did you just arrive?”
“Yes, but I had an early morning meeting at Platinum Provisions,” he said, waving me away. “I’ll tell HR to find you another assistant.” Walker smirked. “Hunter said he wants to have more of our little brothers intern here. Maybe you could take one of them as an assistant and show him the ropes.”
“Not going to happen.” I adjusted my cuff links. “I already have to work with you.”
