Better Than Chocolate (Sweet Somethings Book 1) Read Free

at the end of July.”
    Tess leans her hip against the desk and folds her arms. “Is she, now?”
    “In St. Croix.”
    She raises one eyebrow. “Okay . . .”
    “Not to Ryan.”
    The other eyebrow shoots up. Tess beckons me out of the office so she can monitor her buttercream, but judging by the squint of her left eye, she wants the whole story.
    “Apparently, they broke up three weeks ago,” I explain as I follow her into the kitchen, “and Sadie flew off to the Caribbean, met this rich guy, and decided after, like, a week that he’s the only one for her. And now they’re getting married on a beach in St. Croix. I’m supposed to go down in three weeks to take on the maid of honor duties.”
    “Has the girl gone crazy?” Switching off the mixer, Tess grabs a rubber spatula and scrapes the sides of the bowl. “I never have figured out why you’re friends with her.”
    “I have no idea what happened between her and Ryan.” I take the spatula and start folding in gel food coloring, turning the buttercream a soft shade of violet. “But she’s my best friend. She’s counting on me, Tess. I can’t say no.”
    “Sure you can. It’s easy . . . no .”
    She disappears into the cooler, returning a moment later with the first tray of vanilla bean cupcakes. Her defined biceps remind me to break out the resistance bands when I get home tonight. Good thing her brother helps with deliveries, because I suck at lifting.
    Transferring the icing to a pastry bag, I wait for Tess to decide on a decorative tip. She hands me one intended for large drop flowers, which will create a lacy mound of icing reminiscent of a carnation.
    I fit the decorative tip onto the coupler and pipe icing onto a cupcake. “It’s easy for you to tell me to say no. You don’t like Sadie.”
    Tess lifts the cupcake and examines my work. “This isn’t about my feelings for Miss Georgia Peach. It’s about why you can’t stand up to her.” She signals her approval before filling a pastry bag of her own. “Think about it for a sec, Carmella. Sadie broke up with Ryan, who she’s been with, what, six years now? And she didn’t even call you about it?”
    “Tess . . .”
    “And then when she does call, she up and tells you that you’re coming to her beachfront wedding in three weeks. Tells you, doesn’t ask if you want to or can even make it.” She covers a cupcake with icing. “Some best friend.”
    I take a deep breath. “It’s not that simple. Sadie’s not thinking clearly.”
    “Sounds to me like she’s not thinking at all.” She sets her pastry bag on the counter and faces me, hands on her hips. “If you want to go, that’s one thing. But just because Sadie Miller says jump, doesn’t mean you have to dance a jig for her.”
    “I do want to go, sort of,” I admit. “I’m worried about her. Yeah, she didn’t call me, but neither did Ryan. One of them should have called me about something this big. Sadie completely bypassed the breakup story. And now she’s ready to marry this rich guy she met three weeks ago, and she sounded so happy on the phone and—Ugh! I don’t know what to do.”
    Tess extracts the pastry bag from my hands. “Don’t take it out on the buttercream.” She gently scrapes the icing off my last cupcake with the spatula and checks it for crumbs before plopping it back into the mixing bowl. “I know you want to get to the bottom of this. But why’s it so hard for you to stand up to her?”
    I confront my next cupcake and pipe a neat mound of icing, back in control. “You know me. I don’t like letting people down when they ask me to do something for them. Even when I was a kid, people knew they could get just about anything from me. Didn’t help that my dad was, like, everybody’s dentist. He got me more unpaid afterschool jobs than I had days of the week. Ask my daughter to help you weed your flower bed. She’d be happy to help! ”
    “You’re a people pleaser. Nothing wrong with