Yeah, I Hate-Ate Your Cupcake!: A Romantic Comedy, page 36
“Roberta, Liam is not cheating on me. Liam loves me.”
My twin rolled her eyes. “Maybe, but I heard him on the phone in the lobby this morning talking to a woman. He specifically said, and I quote, ‘If my girlfriend finds out, she’ll drown me in cupcake batter.’”
Nervous, I finished stacking the cups for the mid-morning rush.
“Don’t listen to her,” Sophie told me. “Liam loves you; he’s not going to cheat on you. Roberta is mad that her last boyfriend broke up with her.”
“The Richmond brothers are nuts,” Roberta retorted. “I broke up with him.”
“I’m not breaking up with Liam,” I said.
“Of course not,” Roberta said with a sniff, “but you need to get him under control, and more importantly, find whoever he’s with and run her off.”
“Oh my god, I don’t have the energy pennies for this,” I fretted to Sophie as we left Roberta in charge of the counter and headed back to the kitchen.
I did have to hand it to my sister. She was an excellent café manager. The first week, tons of people had come in, ordered a cup of coffee, and sat there on their laptops for the rest of the day. I had been too awkward to confront them, but Roberta wasn’t. She insisted that if you were in the café you needed to purchase one thing per hour.
Now business was better than ever, and we supplied a steady stream of coffee and pastries in the morning and coffee and sandwiches at lunch. Once we received our liquor license, we were going to clean up at night when the space switched to a bar.
“It’s probably just a misunderstanding,” Sophie told me. “Liam has a million siblings. They’re probably plotting to go kite surfing off the top of a building or buy an alpaca farm.”
“Maybe,” I said as I started measuring out the flour for our latest cupcake order. “But what if she’s right? What if he is cheating on me, I mean? I haven’t been the best girlfriend lately.”
“When was the last time you did it?”
“Er, a week ago?”
“Oh my god,” Sophie said, dropping her spatula.
“That’s not that bad, is it?” I asked, starting to panic. “I’ve been busy with the café.”
“That he paid for.”
“Oh no,” I moaned. “I bet he is mad.”
“Still not an excuse to cheat.”
But what if Liam was having regrets? What if he thought I had been using him for the café and was now throwing him away?
“Maybe you could just sit down and talk with him like an adult and figure out how to move forward in your relationship,” Sophie suggested.
“Or maybe I could snoop in his phone.”
Sophie shook her head. “I mean, I guess.”
He is acting cagey.
Liam seemed distracted that evening at dinner, though he still kept up a steady stream of banter.
“I mean, really, my brother is a complete moron. Who buys a fourteen-foot-long preserved shark? Also, what does he mean by ‘preserved’? Like it’s in a huge oversized pickle jar floating in formaldehyde?” Liam mused, cutting off a piece of the lasagna I had made.
“Maybe he’s going to eat it,” Kiki suggested.
I made a face. “That sounds horrifying, and he better not bring that thing anywhere near my kitchen.”
“Maybe she could make a—”
Liam glared at his sister.
The lasagna in my stomach felt like rocks.
She who? Who was Liam seeing?
Just try talking, I chastised myself. No need to make this into a whole weird, awkward thing.
“Who are you guys talking about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Kiki opened her mouth, but Liam shot her another look.
“Nothing,” he assured me. “Just talking about one of our other sisters.”
“Which one?” I asked, picking at my lasagna.
“Enola. Annie,” Kiki and Liam said at the same time.
“Uh-huh.”
“We have a lot of sisters,” Liam added hastily. “Hey, did you see that Netflix has a new season of The Witcher out? I know you have a thing for blonds.”
He grinned at me.
That is so obviously a change of topic.
“Sure,” I said.
But inside I was seething.
I’m going to get to the bottom of this.
2
Liam
“I don’t see why we can’t ask Karlie,” Kiki complained as we walked into the Svensson Investment tower the next morning.
“Because she’s busy with her cake,” I said. Before Kiki could launch into another of her complaints, I added, “You cannot ask Karlie to make you a cake of the Cinderella shoe.”
“But it’s cool,” Kiki insisted, “and it will be fun. It’s my birthday. And that’s the real story of Cinderella—they were chopping off toes!”
“Yeah, your cake drawing was nightmare inducing. Karlie makes nice cakes, beautiful Instagram-worthy wedding cakes. Not cakes with fake blood.”
“She likes fairytales,” Kiki argued.
“She likes Disney movies,” I corrected.
Kiki made a face.
“We’re not going to ask Karlie to do it; it’s creepy. That’s final,” I said.
“But I want a cake.”
“I’ll find a different baker to make you the cake,” I promised her. Then I sent her into her little office to do her homeschooling work.
I felt a little weird asking another baker to make the cake, but I did not want to ask Karlie. She would think it was weird and would probably wonder if Kiki had a complex. She’d be offended that I would even ask her.
I would get the cake and hope Karlie wouldn’t even notice in the chaos of the joint birthday my brothers and I were hosting for several of our sisters.
Mike was in the Svensson Investment tower’s Greyson Hotel Group offices when I burst in.
“Why, thank you for knocking, Liam, and for calling ahead and booking an appointment,” he said sarcastically. “I appreciate it when people value my time.”
“Just wanted to check in with the birthday planning,” I said, scooting all his carefully sorted papers off his desk so I could sit there.
“Such a shame there aren’t any chairs in here,” Mike said dryly then slapped my hand when I tried to grab his stapler.
“Is Kiki set on the theme? Ophelia wanted a World War Z-themed party, and I told her that probably wasn’t going to fly because I’m sure Kiki wants something princess related.”
“Kiki really has her heart set on this Cinderella theme.”
“I could probably convince my girlfriend to wear a Cinderella gown,” Mike said, nodding. “Phoebe loves that movie. And it’s a bit better than me having to dress up in zombie clothes.”
Ophelia burst into Mike’s office, Kiki behind her.
“I changed my mind,” Ophelia announced, hopping up and down. “I do want a Cinderella theme.”
“Good,” Mike said. “That will be a lovely party.”
Ophelia cracked her knuckles.
“We should have a dart game, except instead of a bullseye you have to reenact the part of the story where the birds peck out the stepsisters’ eyes.”
Mike’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
“Kiki wants the Brothers Grimm version,” I explained delicately.
“You don’t want the nice version with the singing mice?” Mike asked helplessly.
“There are body parts flying everywhere!” Kiki exclaimed.
“No one is chopping off anything,” Mike warned.
“That’s fine. It’s going to be on my cake,” Kiki stated.
“And Karlie agreed to this?” Mike asked me.
“No.” I winced. “I’m going to outsource it. Way outsource it.”
“Don’t forget, I want a cake with ice cream and Jell-O in it,” Kiki reminded me.
After our sisters had left, Mike said, “Well, this birthday party is going to be horrifying.”
The city had tons of bakers. I randomly selected one from Yelp and emailed her Kiki’s drawings. She wrote back and asked to meet to discuss in detail so that she made sure the cake was right.
I was doing the right thing, right? I shouldn’t rope Karlie into baking my sister’s cake. Not to mention, then she might feel obligated to bake everyone a cake, and I had a hundred siblings, and that was too much cake, especially since baking was her actual job. She didn’t want to bake cake all day then come home and bake more cake.
Mike: Did you do it?
Liam: Going to meet Karlie’s replacement tomorrow.
Liam: It really feels like I’m about to cheat on her.
I hoped I was making the right decision, because dammit if I didn’t feel guilty.
Read HATE CAKE!
This is a 4500 word short story that takes place after Yeah, I Hate-Ate Your Cupcake! It is given away for free to mailinglist subscribers.
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Family Tree
Author note: These are some of the Svenssons that show up in this story. They are listed under their respective mothers and are from oldest at the top to youngest at the bottom with their associated companies.
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Father - Leif Svensson
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Harrogate Svenssons
Wife #1 – Merla Vee
Remington (Remy) – Founder, The Rural Trust
Hunter – lawyer
Gunnar – Founder, Romance Creative
Mace – CEO, Svensson Pharmatech
Archer – CEO, Greyson Hotel Group
Garrett – CFO, Svensson Pharmatech
Weston – CEO, ThinkX
Blade – COO, ThinkX
Parker– CTO, Svensson Pharmatech
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Manhattan Svenssons
Wife #2 – Athlyn
Greg – CEO, Svensson Investment
Beck – CFO, Greyson Hotel Group
Mike – COO, Greyson Hotel Group
Walker – COO, Quantum Cyber
Liam – COO, Platinum Provisions
Carl – Managing partner, Svensson Investment
* * *
Seattle Svenssons
Wife #3 – Amayra
Salinger
You will meet the rest soon!
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Boston Svenssons
Wife #4 – Mary Beth
Crawford
Josh – Svensson & Svensson law office
Eric – Svensson & Svensson law office
Wilder – Svensson Investment
Ansel – lab-grown meat
Gryff – lab-grown meat
You will meet the rest soon!
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Rhode Island Svenssons
Wife #5 – Sueanne
Tanner – Train company
You will meet the rest soon!
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Younger Svensson brothers
(there are more but are not yet named in the books, so I didn’t include them because it’s a lot!)
* * *
Wife #6 – Brenna
Tristan – college-aged kid
Eli – college-aged kid
Isaac – high school-aged kid
Calvin – high school-aged kid
Ronan – high school-aged kid
Theo – middle-school aged kid
Peyton – middle-school aged kid
Andy – elementary-school aged kid
* * *
Wife #9 – Idonna
Bruno – high school-aged kid
Otis – middle-school aged kid
Ellis – middle-school aged kid
Orlando – elementary-school aged kid
Scout – elementary-school aged kid
Oscar – elementary-school aged kid
Arlo – elementary-school aged kid
* * *
Wife #10 – Payslee
Adrian – college-aged kid
Nate – middle-school aged kid
Billy – middle-school aged kid
Henry – elementary-school aged kid
* * *
Wife #11 – Kimberly
Davy – pre-school aged kid
Acknowledgments
A big thank you to Red Adept Editing for editing and proofreading and Jayne for typo hunting!
And finally a big thank you to all the readers! I had a great time writing this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy!
About the Author
If you like steamy romantic comedy novels with a creative streak, then I'm your girl!
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Architect by day, writer by night, I love matcha green tea, chocolate, and books! So many books…
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Jacobs, Alina, Yeah, I Hate-Ate Your Cupcake!: A Romantic Comedy
