Page 43 of Sugar Baby Mine

“Are you obligated to say that, considering it’s probably your whole business model?”

She shrugs, and there’s a twinkle in her eye as she slides the glasses to hang on the front of her shirt. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’ve just got a lot of wisdom in these old bones.”

I roll my eyes. “Wisdom maybe, but good intuition? Remains to be seen.”

“Kids these days,” Angela says under her breath with a shake of her head. “Anyway,” she drawls. “Let’s go over our inventory to see if we need to get anything specific at the market onWednesday.”

I nod, picking up the vase to put in the back and out of the way. But I spend the rest of the day looking at the flowers anyway, even if it’s something I made for myself.

Chapter 12

My phone rings from beneath the covers of my bed where it got lost somewhere in the haze of my afternoon nap.

I search for it bleary-eyed, snatching it up on the fifth ring and just managing to slide right and answer the call before it goes to voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Hello.” Ben’s smooth voice perks me up, and I rise up from the twisted sheets like he just put a spell over me with one word. “How’s your day been?”

“Boring,” I answer, picking a piece of fuzz off the floral duvet.

“Plans for this evening?”

“Nope. Another typical Thursday.”

“Would you like to cook dinner with me?”

I blink. “Like a date? Cooking dinner?”

“I guess you could call it that. Whenever I really cook, it’s always enough for a small army because I can never make anything in small batches. I thought you might want to join me.”

“But you want me to help youcook?”

He laughs. “Why do you keep saying it like that?”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but the only thing I can really make in the kitchen is scrambled eggs.”

“That’s fine, I’ll teach you.”

I bite my lip in order to stop myself from blurting out that I’m bad at following directions. Though, I have been partial to whenever he directs me—whenever I manage to put the brat in me away.

“Okay, I’ll trust that we won’t have to trash everything by the end.”

“Surely, we won’t. If it’s really that bad, then I promise we’ll order your favorite takeout and eat that instead.”

“Mmmm, you sure you don’t want to just do that instead? I love a good chicken tikka masala.”

“We can get that another time, I promise.”

“Fine,” I drawl. “But I’m holding you to it. No takesies-backsies.”

“My word is good for it.”

“Good. When do you want me to head over?”

“Now, if you’re ready.”

I glance down at the oversized shirt and the bike shorts I threw on last night before burrowing into bed like I was planning on hibernating.

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