Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All, #1)

by Alexis Hall

If there was one impulse Rosaline would always understand, it was the impulse to avoid doing things that people in a position of influence might resent and hold over you. In her experience, they usually did.

Rosaline had skipped a lot of chapters in life’s instruction manual. So many that she often felt like she’d dropped her copy in a puddle at the age of nineteen.

Oh God. Oh help. He was doing kindness at her. Rosaline couldn’t cope with people doing kindness at her. It made her feel like she’d shoplifted a lipstick. Except the lipstick was made of time and emotional energy.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be presuming, but I’d rather we didn’t treat each other’s sexualities as topics of interrogation.” “I’m not interrogating. I’m taking an interest.” “No.” Florian sounded like a man who had several distinct flavours of no he reserved for different occasions. “Taking an interest is when you ask somebody how their runner beans are doing. When you persistently ask someone to explain why their life experiences don’t exactly match yours, that’s an interrogation.”

For someone in a floral blouse, Josie could bristle quite impressively. “I was expressing sympathy. You wouldn’t understand because you don’t have children.” Rosaline felt a bit like she’d blundered into quicksand and, when Florian tried to help her, dragged him in afterwards. “Why do you think he wouldn’t have children?” she asked. “Well, because—” “To save you finishing that thought, dear,” said Florian quickly, “I don’t. But that’s because I’m a misanthropist, not because I’m a homosexual.”

And obviously, parenting had been kicking her arse solidly for eight years. But that wasn’t the kind of thing where you got marks out of ten at the end.

The wide, expressive mouth that had kissed her so artfully turned up at the corners. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?” “Well, then you’d only have half a thing.”

have got you a different present. Maybe I’d better take this back?” Amelie’s eyes widened in outrage. “No. I can be interested in more than one thing. I’m polyamorous.” “I don’t think that’s the word you mean,” put in Rosaline quickly. “Yes it is. It means loving lots of things.” Her daughter’s expression of misplaced pride was, at once, adorable and unhelpful. “I worked it out like we were taught to in school with prefixes. Poly means many and amor means love in French and is also from Latin.” Oh God. Now Rosaline was going to have to tell her daughter what polyamory was in front of her parents, who probably also didn’t know what polyamory was. At least not on any level beyond the etymological. “It more sort of means loving lots of people.” “Well I do love lots of people. I love you and Granddad and Grandma and Auntie Lauren.” “Maybe it’s better to say”—Rosaline could feel St. John Palmer’s eyes burning into her—“it means being in love with lots of people.” “Oh.” Amelie considered this. “Then I’m not polyamorous. I’m polylikesthingsareus. Can I have my present now?”

“I’m not liking this already.” “Tough. Here it is. From my vast experience in the realm of perving on hot men I’m not going to go out with, I think Alain is one of those guys that you’d feel really good for having got. But who might not be that much fun to actually have.”

“That’s kids for you, init. Ashley used to torture her jellybabies. Mum was convinced she was going to grow up to be a serial killer. Turned out all right in the end, though. People usually do.” “You’ve got the beginning of a really good parenting book there.” “What? People usually turn out okay?” “It’s what I need to hear most days.”

Amelie thought about this. “But if nobody will give anybody the things they need, then nobody will ever have the things they need, and we’ll have to play the game forever.” “And that, my darling”—Lauren grinned—“is capitalism.” “I don’t like capitalism. Capitalism is stupid.”

“Of course there’s more. But so what? No one can have everything. You’ve just got to figure out what matters. And then not let stuff what don’t matter get in the way of stuff what does.”

It’s not selfish to work on your problems. It’s selfish not to. Even if hearing you’ve got a problem makes you yell at a nice girl what’s trying to help you.”

There was power in it, she was starting to realise. Living in a world where you got to choose what mattered. And with time, and work, and perhaps a tiny bit of therapy, maybe she could have that too.

Being a good parent, or what she hoped passed for a good parent, always seemed on the edge of impossible. Trying to be a good parent ten minutes after you’d had a shouting match with your own parents about the way they’d parented you was over the edge and plummeting. “Lots of reasons. I think it’s hard for people to realise that their children are grown-ups too.”