Baked Alaska Read Online Free PDF

won the qualifying round and therefore didn’t have a spot in the final tournament that would take place on Friday. She and Shawn both commiserated with him over the loss, but he shrugged and said he’d had fun anyway. Sadie asked Shawn what he’d done all day, but the only answer she got was “stuff.”
    “Where’s Bre?” Sadie asked after her third bite. The sweet dressing was starting to grow on her.
    “She was all stressed out about something when we stopped in to get her,” Shawn said before taking a massive bite of his antipasto.
    Sadie’s fork paused midway to her mouth, and she straightened in her chair as her mama-alarm went off. “Stressed out? About what?”
    “I don’t know. Something to do with the wedding.”
    Had Sadie just started coming to terms with Shawn’s secret-keeping only to have things with Breanna get topsy-turvy? She tried not to worry too much through dinner, but as soon as they finished, she told Pete and Shawn she’d meet them in the theater for the Broadway review— after she checked on Breanna.
    “Bre?” Sadie asked as she entered the cabin a few minutes later.
    Breanna looked up from her laptop set on the small desk at the foot of her bed and tried to smile. She had an open bag of chocolate-covered pretzels next to her computer.
    “What’s wrong?” Sadie asked, frowning. Breanna had never been an emotional eater.
    Breanna let out a heavy sigh and looked back at the screen in front of her. “I’m instant messaging with Liam. Hang on, I’m almost out of words anyway.”
    Sadie sat at the end of her bed. “How long have you been instant messaging with him?”
    “About a hundred dollars-worth of minutes,” Bre said, typing, pausing, and then typing again.
    Oh, dear . Breanna wasn’t an emotional eater or a spender. There was no cell coverage on the ship, including Internet services for smart phones, and the on-ship Internet was atrociously expensive, even at the computer center. From the beginning, Breanna had said she was mostly bringing her laptop for when they were in port; she’d hoped to find some Wi-Fi hot spots that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. That she was paying top dollar to IM Liam meant that this was serious.
    “Is everything okay between you two?”
    “Everything’s fine with us ,” Breanna said. “Hang on.”
    After another minute, Breanna typed one last message and then shut her computer, dropping her head on top of it dramatically. Sadie moved to the end of Breanna’s bed and brushed her daughter’s hair away from the back of her neck. “What’s going on, sweetie?”
    Breanna let out a heavy breath and sat up. She looked exhausted. “Liam’s mother has ordered carriages for the wedding party.”
    Sadie raised her eyebrows. “Carriages?”
    Breanna nodded. “She’s also ordered $8,000 worth of flowers. Eight thousand dollars! I know Liam is her only child, an heir and all that, but his mom is turning our wedding into a circus.” Tears came to her eyes, and she quickly blinked them away. “I hate it so much, Mom.”
    Sadie pulled her into a hug. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
    There was more. Liam’s mother had reserved an ornate church for the ceremony and had e-mailed pictures of an eight-tiered cake, even though Breanna had already found a cake she liked at a quaint little shop not far from her London apartment. Seeing the cake had overwhelmed Breanna, so she sent an instant message to Liam about it, but he was having a hard time understanding why it was such a big deal. He’d promised to talk to his mom, but Breanna didn’t feel like he really understood where she was coming from.
    “He thinks it’s about the cake and the venue and the stupid carriages, but it’s about so much more than that,” she said. “It’s my wedding—don’t I get to have some input?”
    “Has she planned everything?” Sadie said, trying to keep her emotion in check. Breanna was Sadie’s only daughter, and she had looked forward to helping