“I...I don’t want you to feel....you know...bad,” Shari reiterated, fumbling over her words. “What’s done is done. I just hope it doesn’t ruin our friendship.”
“Uh, okay,” Grant conceded. He couldn’t believe Shari was being this coldhearted about the intimacy they’d shared. Could he have been wrong about her all along? Perhaps around campus they had it wrong. Shari was the heartless bitch and Dina was the nice one. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“I do.” Shari offered her hand. “Friends?”
“Friends.” Grant took her hand and shook it reluctantly.
* * *
Shari wished she could say the same about her roommate. Two months later, she caught Dina and Grant in the courtyard holding hands and whispering softly into each other’s ear.
“No, no, no.” She shook her head and ducked behind a column so the duo wouldn’t see her. Shari wiped away the tears rolling down her cheeks at seeing her best friend betray her. Surely Dina wouldn’t steal the man she’d adored. The man with whom she’d shared her first time. It was girlfriend code. You never dated a man your friend had been with or wanted. She’d told Dina how she felt about Grant. Why would Dina do this to her?
The answer came to her like someone had dropped a ton of bricks over her head. Nausea rose up in Shari’s throat and she clutched her mouth. Ohmigod. Dina had wanted Grant all along and was merely humoring Shari’s deluded fantasies. It must have really gotten her goat that Shari had managed to get Grant in her bed. So she’d turned on the charm and made sure Shari would never have a chance with Grant again. How could she have been a fool this entire time? How had she not seen who Dina truly was?
Shari rushed into the bathroom in the Business Administration hall, but that didn’t stop her bout of nausea. Nothing did. Several hours later, she was staring at the nurse in the Health Clinic.
“When was your last period?” the nurse inquired, jotting down some notes.
Dread rushed through Shari. Her period. Her mind raced to the last time she recalled having it. Two weeks before her one-night stand with Grant. She hadn’t had one since, hadn’t even thought about it because she’d been trying to push down her feelings for Grant. Her hand flew to her mouth.
The nurse looked at her. “So we need a pregnancy test, then?”
Chapter 1
“Our cake is a visual masterpiece,” Shari told her cousin, Carter Drayson, the artisan cake maker for Lillian’s Bakery, and the black sheep of the family. They stood in a large studio kitchen with cameras in front of them. “It’s by far the best cake. We are going to win this.”
Shari glanced behind her to look at the four-tier champagne cake before finally setting her eyes on her nemesis Dina English’s cake from Brown Sugar Bakery.
Dina was standing there, looking poised and sophisticated in designer duds, making Shari feel dowdy in her jeans and Lillian’s Bakery T-shirt. But that was okay, because Lillian’s was the better bakery. Not only had Dina stolen Grant Robinson, Shari’s first love, and run off with him to get married, but she’d stolen Lillian’s recipes for her own bakery. And Shari felt responsible.
When Shari and Dina had attended Ledgeman University together, Grandma Lillian had taken a liking to Dina almost immediately and offered her a summer job after freshman year. While in college, Dina had continued to work at Lillian’s during the summers. Shari had hoped that she and Dina would work side by side at the bakery after graduation. They’d been a great team. With Shari’s background in business and Dina’s finesse, they would have been unstoppable. Shari would have finally risen to the top in her family instead of always feeling like a dimly lit planet among her confident, smart cousins, the real stars of the Drayson clan. But life had thrown her a curveball when Dina had left to create her own bakery.
Five years later and Shari had never truly recovered from the betrayal. How could she when Dina had married her son’s father and prevented them from ever being a real family?
“We got this,” Carter said confidently. He had an arrogant swag about him that Shari sometimes envied.
You Take the Cake’s host came over and stood between the two bakeries and said, “And the winner is... Brown Sugar Bakery!” Applause erupted from the live audience, and Shari’s heart deflated.
How can this be? Shari looked over at Brown Sugar’s creation. The cake was at best ordinary.
Dina came over and laughed. “That’s right, Shari. I win again.”
Shari rushed over to the host of the show and grabbed his arm. “There has to be a mistake. She should be disqualified.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” the host asked.
“The whole world should know what kind of person Dina English is.” Shari turned and glared at Dina. “She traded on our nearly four-year friendship, turned her back on my family’s bakery and then stole the man I loved. You can’t let her win!”
Dina smirked and gave Shari a pitiful look as she walked toward her. “You’re so pathetic. Can’t you see? I’ve already won.”
Shari looked down, but not before seeing, to her horror, Dina holding her son, Andre, in her arms and carrying him away. “Noooo!”
Shari woke up with a start and her eyes popped open. She was surprised to find her four-year-old son, Andre, peering down at her. He was wearing his favorite Spiderman pajamas and was holding his stuffed animal, Wiggles. “Mama, are you okay? Were you having a bad dream? You were yelling awfully loud.”
“I must’ve been, baby.” Shari sat upright, throwing the down comforter back off and pulling Andre into a bear hug. “I’m sorry if Mommy scared you.” She glanced at herself in the mirror. The wrap she’d been wearing on her hair had come off, and her hair was a tangled mess. Add the old tank top and pajama bottoms she was wearing and it was no wonder she couldn’t find a man.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Andre’s expressive green eyes looked into her brown ones, eager for reassurance.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Shari scooped him up in her arms, slid on her slippers and padded off into the kitchen to make him some breakfast.
“Can I have Cocoa Puffs?” Andre asked when they reached her large, country-style eat-in kitchen.
It might be modest to some, but her two-bedroom bungalow in Chicago’s Glenville Heights was just perfect for her and Andre. Since she loved to cook, she had added modern white cabinets and appliances, including a flat-top stove, double-sided refrigerator and a dishwasher.
“Are you sure?” Shari inquired. “Because I was going to make chocolate chip pancakes, but if you’d rather cereal...” She shrugged her shoulders and waited for the response she knew was coming.
Andre shook his head. “No, I want pancakes! With lots of syrup.”
Shari smiled. “Sure thing.” She lowered him into a chair at the pedestal table.
She pulled the pancake mix and chocolate chip morsels out of the pantry and the milk and eggs out of the fridge. Usually, she would make them from scratch, but she needed to get to the bakery.
A couple of months ago, her grandmother, Lillian Reynolds-Drayson, had informed her children and grandchildren that she’d signed the bakery up to participate in a reality TV Show called You Take the Cake. On the show, bakeries were asked to perform culinary feats, and at stake was a $100,000 prize. Last year’s winners had become overnight sensations and their bakery had gained national prominence. For two months, the entire Drayson clan had been looking at recipes and cake