Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker (Death by Cupcake Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

her fuzzy outline, although I probably just look
like I’m squinting. 
    “So you can shave the female bits.”
    “I’m not going to let Ben get in my pants!” I shout,
indignant.
    Anna sighs and shakes her head. “Of course not. It only took
you a year to say yes to dinner.”
    “Hey,” I’m shouting again. “I had a boyfriend for the
majority of that year.”
    Anna snorts. “Boyfriend? A real boyfriend wouldn’t have
treated you like he did.” She doesn’t give me a chance to respond. She leaves
the bathroom making sure to shut the door on her way out. I should have shut
and locked the darn thing before getting into the shower.
    What the heck. I go ahead and trim up my ‘female
bits’ as Anna calls them. I don’t go for a completely shaved look because
that’s just eww. I put some extra conditioner in my hair to get it to feel
super soft. My hair may be straight, but it’s really thick, and I usually have
to fight my comb to get it detangled. I take my time rubbing lotion into my
freshly shaved legs when I finally leave the shower. I am usually the
throw-my-hair-in-a-ponytail and put-on-some-lip-gloss kind of girl. Working
part-time at a bakery and trying to get my PhD before I turned thirty didn’t
exactly give me much time for worrying about how I look. And it’s not like I
have any more time to work on my personal style now that I’m running the bakery
full-time and teaching classes on the side.
     I make my way out of the bathroom into my bedroom and
stop dead. Anna has laid an outfit out on my bed, but there’s no way I’m
putting that on. It’s a dress I bought for a formal occasion at the University.
I’d lost a good five pounds as I’d been working all hours of the day and night
on an edit of my dissertation. I felt pretty good about the black dress that
hugged my curves until my boyfriend Greg saw it and shook his head. “You
probably should put some kind of cover on or something, Callie,” he commented.
“You look like a cow.” The night went downhill from there.
    I shake my head at the memory and turn to grab something
from my closet, but Anna’s waiting for me. She’s somehow maneuvered my armchair
in front of the closet and there she sits reading a magazine as if she doesn’t
have a care in the world. “What the begezus are you doing?” I have to work hard
to control the bitterness in my voice. She knows about the Greg-incident with
the dress.
    Anna turns the page of her magazine and shakes her head.
“Either you wear that dress or you go naked.” She shrugs and keeps her eyes
glued to the article she’s pretending to read. “I guess you can wear your
stinky gym clothes.” Another shrug. “Whatever.”
    “Can’t we at least talk about this?” I beg.
    Anna slams her magazine shut and gives me the stink eye.
“Now? You want to talk now? I’ve been talking to you for years, telling you how
sexy and beautiful you are. But do you listen to me? No! You listen to Greg.”
    “He was my boyfriend,” I defend.
    Anna shakes her head sadly. “No, sweetie, he wasn’t. He was
a guy who dated you on and off for two years. A guy who took advantage of you.”
    My hands start to shake. I do not want to hear this.
“Please, Anna, not now.”
    Anna stands and moves to the bed. She grabs the dress and
shoves it towards me. “Wear this and I’ll drop it. For now.”
    Darn . I walked right into that one. I nod and grab
the dress. It’s just a stupid dress, right? I quickly shimmy into the dress.
After that, Anna expertly does my make-up. After I put on the pair of strappy
sandals I bought to go with the dress, I’m ready. And just in time, too. My
alarm clock reads 6:55 p.m. I walk into the living room to the sound of the
doorbell.
    Anna jumps up. “I’ll let Ben in
and then I’ll head home. See you tomorrow.” She doesn’t wait for my response.
She’s already half-way down the stairs. I stand by the open door and wait for
Ben to ascend the stairs. He lumbers up the steps