Read Online How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal - Free Book Online Page B

whenever people expressed their wonder over the beauty of it. Loved it inevery way. But I did need to go to college, and there wasn’t time for Sofia, college, and a job like that, which was a bit of a drive from home, so I did part-time personnel work for the business. Office stuff, which my mother hated. I had a proficiency for it—not that anyone has ever come out and said that—and I did well enough that I studied business and marketing in school.
    Somehow, I ended up managing most of the internal affairs at the restaurants—office work split between three sites, because by then Ryan had opened The Banshee. I was good at managing all the backstage stuff, and I liked it, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I prefer the creativity of the food or the pleasure of being in contact with the customers.
    But I was good. My title was Assistant to the Operations Manager; in actuality, I was doing it all myself. Then the old operations manager resigned, and, rather than put me in charge, my father hired Dane instead. He claimed I was too young—I was twenty-three or twenty-four, I can’t remember which—but it was really just a way to dis me again.
    Big, hearty Dane, whom my father adored like a son. They’re a lot alike—charming, full of laughter, quick with a story or a joke. The difference is that my father is a one-woman man and Dane is a ladies’ man of the highest measure, a quick-tongued devil.
    I did not like him at all when he came to work for us. I was furious that he’d taken the job I deserved and hurt that my father still didn’t respect me. So I did not exactly make Dane’s life easy. We spoke only in the most civil of terms for well over a year after his arrival, long after he’d charmed everybody in the family and the restaurants. To her credit, my sister Sarah never really liked him, for the same reason I had my doubts: Such a big personality probably didn’t have a lot of substance to it, and, at the very least, he was an egomaniac.
    But we made a decent pair in a business sense, and together reorganized everything and eliminated thousands and thousandsin repetitive costs. Little things like ordering in bulk and big things like eliminating superfluous positions that could be brought under the umbrella of the operations manager. Him. And me.
    The person who adored him from the minute he arrived was Stephanie. He called her Petunia for no reason I ever understood, and she loved it. It’s possible that they might have slept together at some point. Despite the fact that I’m the one with the bad rep, Steph is the one who has slept with a few too many men over the years. It is something she used to confess to me at times, swearing me to secrecy, which I honored. Men love her—not that she realizes it. She’s been seen with a lot of movers and shakers over time, men with good cologne and clean-shaven jaws. Like Dane.
    Not my type. I met a lot of men like that in school and they left me yawning. Which naturally meant Dane worked very hard to capture my admiration.
    Three things happened all at once. Sofia got bronchitis one winter and couldn’t shake it. She was sick for weeks and eventually went to the hospital with pneumonia. My family, of course, rallied as they always do, and work was covered so I could be with her. Both of us were completely worn out by the end of it, and Dane offered us the use of his condo in the mountains. It was heaven-sent, and I liked him so much better for it.
    A little while later, Dane made my father give me Employee of the Year, which I’d never won. He cited all the work I’d done, detail by detail, on the reorg, and two weeks later he said, “Your family does not appreciate you at all, do they?”
    Which was exactly the right thing to say.
    Then he invited Sofia and me to go skiing. I’d never tried it, and Sofia was desperate to give it a shot. He promised that it was strictly friendship, and I’d been to the condo so I knew there was plenty of