Two Last First Dates Read online

  Maybe I did need Bailey and Marissa’s help?

  “How about you, honey? Did you have a nice time with your friends tonight?”

  I thought about making Cassie swim in the cold sea to “reset” our One Last First Date pact so she could date Will, telling her it was the Goddess of the Beach who had set the terms. I almost laughed. There was no Goddess of the Beach, obviously—I just wanted to make Cassie do something she didn’t want to do. I know it was kind of harsh of me, making one of my best friends dive into the cold, dark, foam-capped waves in the dead of night, fully clothed. In fact, it was probably a solid eight out of ten on the revenge-o-meter. But it had felt good. And it wasn’t like I’d had her pull her own fingernails out or anything.

  “It was fun,” I lied. “Fancy a cup of tea?”

  “I would if you’re offering one of those chocolate chip muffins you made to go with it?” Dad said, looking at me with hope in his eyes.

  I shook my head. “Dad, you know what the doctor said: cut down on your sugar.”

  “I would, honey, only those muffins were so good! Where’d you hide them, anyway?”

  Hi, my name’s Paige and I’m a bake-aholic.

  It’s one of the reasons I love Bailey’s café so much; the cakes and cookies there are out-of-this-world amazing. I’m always asking her for her recipes, but like Colonel Sanders himself, she keeps them a safely guarded secret. I’ve been through all of them: the orange and almond syrup cake (Marissa’s favorite), the raspberry chocolate cake (Cassie’s favorite), settling on my beloved carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Really, you should try it. So. Darn. Good.

  But my baking habit is not quite so darn good for my dad. It’s not just that he’s carrying a few extra pounds—okay, more than a few—but the sugar is a problem for his diabetes. He was only diagnosed six months ago, and it explained a lot: his constant thirst, his tiredness, his blurred vision. I had been living in my own apartment up until then but moved back in with him after his diagnosis. Someone had to keep an eye on him and make sure he stayed on the straight and narrow.

  “‘Occasional treats’ is what she said. Remember? I don’t think that means every day.”

  He shrugged, grinning. “It was worth a shot.”

  I shook my head good-naturedly. “Well, you need to take good care of yourself, Dad. I don’t want to be an orphan, you know.”

  “You wouldn’t be. Your mother—” He stopped himself. “Well, I don’t have any reason to think she’s not still alive.”

  Ah, yes. Celine Miller. Mother of the frigging Year. She walked out on my dad and me when I was seven, and I haven’t heard head nor tail of her since. It had been Dad and me for as long as I could remember. We were a close-knit team. We needed to stick together.

  “Oh! Six!” Dad yelled at the screen, making me jump. “Did you see that?”

  I looked over at the TV. A couple of lanky men, dressed in white, were fist-bumping through their padded gloves, broad grins plastered on their faces.

  “We need a few more of those.”

  “That’s great, Dad.” I stifled a yawn. “I’m going to head to bed. It’s been a long week.” I pushed myself up and kissed him on the forehead once more. “Night.”

  “Night, honey. Have a good sleep.”

  As I climbed the stairs to the childhood bedroom I lived in once more, any energy I had left seeped out of me. Will had made his choice, and it wasn’t me. I needed to move on. Tonight had been a watershed moment for me—if you’d excuse the pun.

  Now, I knew what my future would bring: me and Dad, watching TV in the living room together, not eating chocolate chip muffins, and definitely no husband for me.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, I trudged into work, dumping my things on my desk with a heavy sigh. I had to break out of this funk. It was difficult enough to get through the day in my job without adding being down in the dumps about my nonexistent love life into the mix.

  “Morning, Paige. Or should I say, afternoon?”

  I looked up to see my boss, Portia de Havilland, her eyebrows raised in question, peering at me through her designer glasses. I shifted my weight. Sure, I didn’t exactly race into the office this morning, but it was a good few hours before the afternoon. Two, at least.

  “Good morning, Portia.” I pasted on my biggest fake smile, the one that gets nowhere near my eyes. “Sorry I’m late. I had an important meeting this morning I couldn’t get out of,” I lied. The truth was I did have an important meeting this morning: with my lovely, warm, and comfy bed. And the truth also was I really couldn’t get out of it—well, not until Dad made me, that was. Monday mornings were hard.

  “Is that so?” Portia responded, smoothing her perfectly bobbed hair behind her perfectly-shaped ears, adorned with her perfectly expensive pearl earrings. “Well, you’re here now and that’s what matters. I need the results from the fiber campaign, like yesterday.” She raised her eyebrows at me in expectation.

  “Sure. No problem, Portia. Give me five?” I said, smoothly. I searched my brain. Had I done the analysis?

  She looked at her expensive Longines watch with its diamond trim and solid gold strap. I felt sorry for her; it must be so tiresome to have to drag that heavy thing around on her wrist all day. “You’ll need to be quick. I have a meeting with Juan Felipe this morning.” She gave me a self-important smile, pronouncing his name with the correct guttural Spanish accent.

  Inside, I did a massive eye roll. Juan Felipe Velez was about as far up the ladder as you could get at AGD. He and his business partner started the company ten years ago, and now he was a regular in the media and on the talking circuit in New Zealand and around the globe. He was one of the country’s success stories. He also looked like Antonio Banderas’s better-looking, much younger brother. Life could be cruel, couldn’t it?

  Portia loved to drop his name in wherever she could, like we would all just collapse on the floor in admiration for her or something.

  “Oh, lucky you,” I cooed. Okay, I’m not proud, but I knew how to play the Portia-name-dropping game.

  She beamed at me. See?

  She began to drone on about who she’d seen at a telecommunications industry event on Friday evening and my mind began to wander. You know that expression “all good things must come to an end”? Well, as I sat there, my eyes glazing over, I began to seriously doubt Portia’s soliloquy would ever actually end. Not that it was good, you understand. Well, not for me, at any rate.

  As though answering my silent prayer, her phone rang and she glanced at the screen, pausing mid-sentence. Holding a finger up at me, she turned her back as she answered, her voice ringing out in the large room as she walked away.

  I let out a puff of air as I plunked myself down heavily in my seat. I powered up my computer. I needed to find the info Portia wanted—and hope she was happy with it. But therein lay the problem. Portia was very rarely happy with anything I did. I’m not saying I’m an unappreciated star employee or anything, and I have been known to arrive a little late on a Monday morning on occasion, but I deserved a medal for the amount of crap Portia threw my way every day. Rework this, reorganize that, cut out that, I want it yesterday, covered in purple glitter and pixie dust, and make sure it’s written in ancient Greek with love hearts for the dots on the i’s. Argh!

  It was enough to make me want to quit.

  “What does Princess Portia want now?” Helena, one of my coworkers and fellow member of the We-Can’t-Stand-Portia Club asked, popping her curly-haired head over my cubicle wall.

  I shook my head, pursing my lips at her, and we shared a look.

  “You know we should just kill her and be done with it, right?” Helena joked. Or at least, that’s what I assumed she was doing. Helena had been here even longer than me and had despised Portia with a passion rarely seen in the corporate world ever since she had become our boss.

  Really, if she put as much effort into her job as she did hating our boss, AGD might be doing even better than
it is today.

  Helena nodded grimly. “She must suffer till her last breath.”

  I shot her an uncertain look. “Helena! You cannot be serious!” I let out a nervous giggle.

  “Of course, I’m not,” she replied with a laugh. “It’s a line from Kill Bill. Come on, Paige. You’ve got to know that movie. It’s a classic.”

  Helena was also a major Tarantino movie buff. She loved nothing more than to quote random lines from his movies, often with a bunch of expletives thrown in for good measure.

  I smiled at her, relieved she wasn’t serious. “I’ll have to watch it some time. Hey, I need to get this info together.”

  “Yeah, or watch out.” She shot me a meaningful look before disappearing behind the wall.

  I knew exactly what “or watch out” meant. One of the junior members of the Marketing Team had been fired by Portia only a month ago for “inappropriate behavior.” Whatever that was. She’d been forced to pack up her desk and leave, all eyes on her shame-ridden trudge toward the elevators. Poor girl. She had only been here for a couple of months and she wouldn’t have said boo to a ghost.

  I put my head down so I could concentrate on gathering the information I needed for Portia—and avoid being chewed out by her in her dramatic, look-at-me way. Or, at least, I tried to. As an Email Marketing Assistant, it was my job to help deliver the company’s email marketing campaigns, and then assess how effective they’d been. Only, today I had a problem. With increasing tension across my forehead, I realized I hadn’t actually done any analysis on our most recent campaign. I looked and looked but couldn’t find a single thing. I glanced at the time on my screen. Nine twenty-seven. She’d given me five minutes but that was just an expression people used, right? I could take longer, long enough to run some figures and get some rough numbers, in the very least.

  I opened the marketing information program. I have time. I can do this.

  “Hey, Paige.” I looked up to see Cassie standing by my desk.

  “Hey, Cassie. I’m sorry, this isn’t a good time.” The vice on my head tightened.

  “Oh.” She looked wounded. “Sorry, I’ll . . . see you later.” She turned to leave.

  Things had been weird between us since she’d told me about her and Will. But I was trying, god I was trying. Shooing her away when she’d come to see me sent the wrong message. It said, “I’m still hurt,” and I didn’t want her to think that.

  Even if it was still true.

  “Cassie. Wait.”

  She looked back at me with hope in her eyes.

  “Look, I’ve got something I really need to do right now, but do you want to grab a coffee later?”

  Her face broke into a grin. “That’d be nice. Cozy Cottage at eleven?” she asked, naming Bailey’s café. “My treat.”

  “Sounds great.” I said goodbye and returned to my screen. Just as I had begun to extract some results, my phone rang. Portia. I picked up. “Hi, Portia.”

  “My office, now, please.” Her tone was firm.

  Knowing the data was rawer than a sushi roll, I sent it to print, bounced out of my chair, and grabbed it off the tray on my way into the lioness’s den. I smoothed my skirt and knocked tentatively on the opened door.

  Portia looked up momentarily from her screen and gestured to a seat, returning her attention to whatever she was typing. I sat and waited. And waited. She took a call, speaking for several minutes to whoever it was about dog-sitting over the holidays. Still, I sat there, waiting. I could have used this time to polish up the information. Instead, I was here, holding one sheet of crummy, unrefined data. As Portia advised the caller on her dog’s complicated dietary requirements, I half stood and gestured toward the door. She motioned for me to sit, like I was the dog with the oversensitive belly.

  Eventually, once I knew more than I ever cared to know about Chantelle’s daily routine, Portia hung up and fixed her gaze on me. “Now. Give me the low down on the campaign. I’ve only got thirty seconds before my meeting with Juan Felipe, so make it snappy.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. Not that I wanted to be humiliated by my lack of any real data, but she did keep me waiting an unnecessarily long amount of time, only to tell me I needed to be quick. Do you see what I’ve got to put up with?

  “Well, in a nutshell, the fiber campaign so far has been . . . err”—I glanced down at my sheet—“all in all pretty good.”

  She arced an eyebrow. “Pretty good?”

  “Yes, well, what I mean by that is, we’ve only got some preliminary figures, but they’re looking good. Or, at least, the preliminary ones are. Good, that is. Yes.” I was blabbing like a toddler on too much sugar, and we both knew it.

  Portia furrowed her brow, studying me as though she was working out whether I was some sort of deranged person, recently escaped from the local looney bin, or just an Email Marketing Assistant trying desperately to pull the wool over her eyes. I think she decided I was a combination of the two.

  She reached her hand out and gave a short, sharp nod. I glanced down at the now dog-eared sheet of paper in my hand. Resigned to my fate, I stood and handed it to her.

  She perused it, her eyes narrowing, and looked sharply back up at me. “But this is utter tosh. This isn’t a report. It’s raw data. Where’s your report? I told you, I wanted it now.” Her face turned pink and I had an image of it exploding all over her office, speckling her white linen jacket with bits of brain and gore. I had to suppress a satisfied smirk. It was a very good image.

  I chewed my lip. There was nothing for it but to be honest. I’d been well and truly busted, anyway. “I’m sorry, Portia. I haven’t done it. I promise to have it to you later today, with all the bells and whistles. I just need some more time.”

  I held my breath as she studied me, her jaw clenched. After a beat, she pushed her chair out and stood up, dropping my paper onto her desk. “I have to go. I’ll deal with you later.”

  I scrunched my eyes shut as she brushed past me on the way out of her office door. Good work, Paige. You’ve unleashed the beast now.

  I spent the next hour extracting and analyzing data, putting it into a presentation with my key findings, and making it look professional and—hopefully—good enough for Portia. In short, I did my job, and I did it well. I hoped it would be enough after this morning’s mess up.

  By just after eleven, I arrived at the Cozy Cottage Café, Marissa’s, Cassie’s, and my regular hang out: no men allowed. Well, there are men there, of course, but we don’t bring them along. It’s been our special place for a long time, and I’m pretty sure, given enough time, we could solve the world’s problems over a cup of coffee and a slice of cake here.

  Bailey ran the place and I waved at her as I looked for Cassie. She was sitting at the table Bailey reserved for us every day, over by the window, scrolling through her phone. Unlike most cafés in downtown Auckland city, the Cozy Cottage was like being at home—only no dad sitting on his recliner, watching endless cooking shows and live sports. There was no chrome, no mirrors, no hipper than hip baristas here. No way. The chairs were comfy, there were pictures of cats and flowers and fields on the walls, and in the winter, there was a fireplace with an oversized mantle, inviting you in. And the aroma! The Cozy Cottage smelled of coffee and chocolate and cinnamon and, for want of another word, love. It was our happy place.

  “Hey, Cassie,” I said brightly, taking my seat opposite her. “No Marissa today?”

  Cassie turned her phone facedown on the table and smiled at me. “I wanted it to be just you and me. I’ve ordered your usual.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled back at her. “My usual” was carrot cake with the best cream cheese frosting you’ve ever tasted. The cake was so moist, it almost melted on your tongue with each delicious bite. If I was the queen of baking, Bailey was the divine ruler, showing us all how it was meant to be done.

  I slid my fork into the cake and took a bite. Oh, yes. Sugar. I so needed you today.

  “Hey, so I wanted to say how coo
l I think you’ve been over this whole Will thing and to say thanks.”

  I shrugged. Cassie was launching straight at the oversized elephant in the room. “It’s fine.” I looked down at my cake and took another bite.

  She shot me a quizzical look. I suspected we both knew I was having a hard time with it all.

  “Good. Now, maybe we can talk about something else?” She grinned at me over her coffee cup.

  I smiled back, relieved. “I think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Excellent.”

  We shared a moment, my close friend and me. It felt like we were back on track, before Will-gate, before I humiliated myself by declaring my feelings for a guy who had no interest in me beyond friendship. Conversation moved to our weekends, Cassie’s new job as Regional Sales Manager, and, inevitably, my run-in with Portia this morning.

  “So, what happened?” Cassie asked.

  I pushed some cake crumbs around my plate with my fork. “I don’t know. I guess I just forgot, you know, with everything.”

  I noticed a grimace flash across her face. “I’m sorry, Paige.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. I just dropped the ball, and now Princess Portia’s going to exact her evil revenge on me. Oh, god.” I buried my head in my hands. “She might fire me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she won’t,” Cassie said. “She might not be the most . . . balanced person in the company, but she’s not unreasonable.”

  I scoffed. “Balanced?” Cassie was only being diplomatic now that she was in management. She used to rip into Portia as much as Marissa and I did, not so long ago.

  “Hey, girls.” Bailey arrived at our table. Dressed in her red polka dot apron with a girly frill around the bottom, accentuating her hour-glass figure, she looked like the beautiful Nigella Lawson about to present a cooking show.

  “Hi!” we chorused. I, for one, was happy for the distraction. The thought that I may be about to be fired wasn’t exactly in my top ten topics.

  “What’s happening?” Bailey asked, taking a seat at the table.

  Before I could stop her, Cassie launched into my current Princess Portia woes.