Better Than Chocolate (Sweet Somethings Book 1) Read Free Page A

that.”
    “Everybody I went to school with knew I could be pretty-pleased into just about anything. Carmella, I need you to cover my shift this weekend . Or, There’s no way I’m going to finish my half of the history project by Wednesday. Can you pick up the slack? ” I set down the pastry bag before I commit baked-goods homicide. “By the time I graduated high school, please and thank you had become optional.”
    Tess shakes her head. “So you’re a pushover.” She pipes icing onto five cupcakes in quick succession. “You don’t like saying no to people because you don’t want them to feel bad. Fine. But how often do you call in those favors?”
    “I don’t.” My own cupcakes look pretty good. I have a rhythm going now. “I think of it more as a pay it forward kind of thing. I do something to help you, you do something to help the next person.” An air bubble splurts through my decorative tip, so I scrape the cupcake clean and start again. “And I can say no to people.”
    “Just not to Sadie. Or the rest of the planet, for that matter.”
    I don’t reply, mostly because she’s right. I start the next batch of buttercream, while Tess transfers the iced cupcakes to a delivery box and gets the tray of chocolate cupcakes.
    “Yellow.” I hand over the bottle of gel food coloring. “It’ll pop against the chocolate cake.”
    We work in silence for a while, filling pastry bags and piping buttercream.
    “So why don’t you want to go to the wedding?” Tess asks.
    “For one thing, Sadie plans on setting me up with the best man. And for another, I can’t take the time off. Can’t afford it.”
    “That your sneaky Yankee way of asking for a raise?” She swats my arm, but grins. “Don’t give me that bullshit about the time off. You know we don’t have anything booked the week you’d be gone.”
    “Yeah, why is that?”
    “Maybe I need a vacation, too.” Tess wipes a smear of powdered sugar off the counter. “Family thing out on Tybee Island. Grandma’s turning ninety.”
    “The same grandma who made these God-awful pink aprons?”
    One icing-coated fingertip pokes my cheek, leaving a glob of yellow buttercream behind. “Don’t you sass me about my grandma’s aprons. At least I only make you wear one on our decorating day, and not during business hours.”
    “Thankfully.” The yellow frosting improves the stiff linen of my apron when I use it to wipe my face. “Okay, so I can afford to take this trip, but it’ll make an awfully big dent in my wallet. You’re my friend, but you’re also my boss, and a day I don’t work is a day you don’t pay me. And I need to eat and pay my rent.”
    She reaches over the counter, tapping her finger on the order tacked to the bulletin board as she checks the cupcake flavors. “Maybe you should be a park ranger out at Fort Pulaski instead of just a tour guide. I bet they pay the park rangers.” She starts moving cupcakes into another box. “And volunteering to give tours at the Davenport House hasn’t made your bank account any fatter either.”
    Bringing the two dirty mixing bowls and beaters to the sink, I plug the drains and start the hot water. “I’ll never get to be a curator at any of the historic homes without putting in my time as a docent. And there haven’t been any ranger openings at Fort Pulaski for a few years now, so it’s just for fun.”
    “Girl, you need to get out more. You named your cat after Moxley Sorrel.”
    “Savannah’s Civil War hometown hero. Naming him Bobby Lee seemed a bit overdone.”
    “You are such a geek.”
    I shake my head over the steaming water, dumping in a measuring cup of detergent, and Tess gets the last tray of cupcakes—strawberry cream—from the cooler. She mixes the whipped icing by hand in a huge copper bowl while I wash the stainless steel giants.
    “You said Sadie’s new fiancé is paying for airfare and hotel reservations, right?”
    “That’s the gist of it.” Rinsing the bowls and