The One Love Collection

by Lauren Blakely

  “Cake is the universal currency.”

  “It’s also the universal motivator. People will do anything for cake.”

  “You’re going to use cake to tell your team you need them to work sixty-hour weeks? You’re a cruel mistress.”

  “Ha. Not quite. But you know what else cake does?”

  “Tell me.”

  “It weeds out the animals in your office. I brought a sheet cake in once, left it in the break room, and when I went to get it ten minutes later, it looked like a family of bear cubs had come through.”

  “Cake transforms people into bear cubs. It’s a proven fact.”

  She returns to the glass, perusing the offerings and stopping at a vanilla cake with confetti frosting. “Ohh, look at the celebration cake.”

  I do, and my eyes pop out. “It’s eight dollars a slice. It better give me celebratory orgasms at that price.”

  The woman behind the counter laughs. “It just might. I’ve been told my cake is quite orgasmic.”

  I laugh, but I can’t bring myself to shell out that much dough for a slice of dough.

  “Too pricey for my pauper budget,” I whisper to my friend.

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. I’m not taking your cake handouts. Besides, I’d rather come to the office and act like a bear cub in your break room without you knowing.”

  My friend places her order for two-dozen cupcakes, and as the woman packs the box, Courtney smacks her forehead. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”

  “Forgot to tell me what?”

  “Your name came up the other day.”

  “Was it for a fabulous job at a tech publication?”

  She laughs, shaking her head. “It was just in passing. I had my regular check-in call with Kermit, and he mentioned you.”

  My spidey-sense tingles with suspicion. “What did he say? It can’t have been good since he told me he thought I was a hack.”

  “I don’t think he thinks you’re a hack. I think he’s jealous of you.”

  I scoff. “For what?”

  “He wanted to know how your story with Flynn was going. He heard through the grapevine that Up Next was doing a feature, and that you were writing it, and he said, ‘That angel investor stole my scoop with Flynn.’”

  I arch a brow. “Stole his scoop?”

  She waves a hand dismissively. “You know how boys are. They’re so territorial. Peeing on everything. Marking it like it’s theirs.”

  “It’s not his scoop. It’s my story.”

  She pokes my shoulder. “You’re like a bear cub with a cake when it comes to that piece.”

  “Damn straight.”

  As she finishes her purchase, my attention wanders to a mini pink cupcake for a dollar fifty.

  “I’ll take that one,” I say, and the woman drops it into a bag for me.

  Later that day, I head to Flynn’s office. Even though we’re doing most of the interviews off-site, I do want to see a demo of Haven in action. As I walk to midtown, I toggle over to my podcast app and cue up one of Kermit’s shows.

  Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

  With my earbuds in, I listen as I march across town. I catch a snippet of Kermit interviewing a CEO at a search giant, then tune in to a piece of another show about the top ten companies to watch. Next, I try a segment on trends in consumer technology.

  I grit my teeth, frustrated.

  Because they’re good.

  All of them.

  They’re compelling, fascinating, and I can’t believe how much I’m learning as I listen to Kermit and his team of reporters.

  How much I’m enjoying their work. It’s irksome.

  And so is the name that flashes on my screen.

  Maureen.

  Tension floods every molecule in my body.

  My mother.

  As I stop at a red light, I briefly weigh whether to look at her text now or later. But it’ll nag at me during my time at Flynn’s office, so I slide my thumb across to view it.

  Maureen: Hey, baby! What’s shaking? I feel like I never talk to you anymore. Call your mom now and then, would you?

  I draw a deep, calming breath, pretending I’m a bird soaring in the sky. My wings are spread, and I’m free of her. Free of hiding, free of lying, free of any hold she might have on me. Hell, I’ve been free for years, ever since she left Kevin and me, barely making time for us when I was in high school, leaving me to be the surrogate parent for her son.

  Sabrina: Hi. Life is good. I’ve been busy with work! I’ll call soon.

  I won’t call soon, but it’s easier to type than telling her the truth. I haven’t called her in years, and if she hasn’t realized that, she’s the foolish one.

  As I cross the street, I kick her far out of my mind. I do the same to Kermit and his podcasts.

  Flynn meets me at reception, then guides me through the offices. As he passes employees in the hall, he peppers them with questions about school plays and book clubs, remembering their kids’ names, their wives’ names, and so on.

  When we reach his office, I say, “You planned that, didn’t you?”

  “Planned what?”

  “To wander through the halls looking like the genial, amazing boss who everybody loves.”

  “Yes, Sabrina, that’s exactly what I did. I’m really a horrible ass, but I want you to think I’m a wonderful guy, so I told my employees in advance to act like they like me. Are you fooled?”

  I wink. “Completely.” I pause then add, “Also, my job is to be skeptical.”

  He shakes his head, and his tone is intensely serious. “Don’t be skeptical about that. I do care deeply for them.”

  When he walks me through the whiz-bang features of the smart home, including a British voice that talks back to me in a sexy-as-sin accent, I have to say, I’m suitably impressed.

  “Want Daniel to make you tea or coffee?” Flynn gestures to the coffee grinder and the tea kettle on the counter of the demo home setup in the offices.

  “Daniel, please make me some green tea,” I say to the white device on the table.

  “Of course. Would you like anything with that? Some music, perhaps, as you wait?”

  Laughing, I answer him, “Yes, please play the Broadway soundtrack to Aladdin.”

  As “Arabian Nights” sounds softly through the speakers, I shrug at Flynn. “Guess I had genies on my mind.”

  “Or genie costumes,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows at the reminder of another private exchange of ours.

  Soon, my green tea is ready, and we head to Flynn’s office where I ask him a few more questions as I drink my tea.

  After we finish, I stand, ready to head for the door, lest I be distracted by another magnificent meandering conversation with him that stimulates my mind and my heart. But before I go, I reach into my purse and take out a white bag with a pink sticker on it. I place it on his desk.

  “Do you like cupcakes?” I ask nervously.

  He blinks. “What kind of question is that? Are you testing to see if I’m secretly an alien?”

  “Are you?”

  “No, I’m not an alien, because I love cupcakes.”

  “I picked this up for you.” I slide the bag closer.

  His smile does funny things to my heart, makes it cartwheel as my skin heats, and I wonder what compelled me to buy him a sweet treat.

  “I have no idea what you like to eat,” I say, explaining myself. “But it looked really good, so I took a guess.”

  He peers into the bag and removes the treat. “Looks amazing. Are you trying to bribe me with cupcakes to give up all my secrets?”

  “Is that all it’ll take?”

  “Depends how good the cupcake is.”

  “Then, please by all means, devour it.”

  He drums his fingers on his desk, his eyes never straying from mine. “That isn’t what I want to devour.”

  “It’s not?” I ask, feigning innocence.
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br />   “Not in the least. But it might be a substitute.”

  “I hope it tastes as good as what you really want,” I say breathily.

  “I doubt anything tastes as good as what I really want.”

  As he brings the cupcake to his lips, he stares at me. His expression is full of rampant lust and desire, and it almost feels like a dirty promise that at some point he’ll have me. He flicks the tip of his tongue over the icing and heat flares low in my belly.

  I want to be that cupcake.

  That cupcake really is orgasmic.

  After I leave, I call Mr. Galloway and update him.

  “Glad to hear it’s going well, and don’t forget, we have that opening coming up soon. If you deliver, we can create a beat. You could be the reporter to make it happen.”

  That’s exactly what I want. “I’ll make it happen, sir.”

  “Excellent. I’m told the advertising team is working overtime on the cause. As long as we get the ad support, we can start regular coverage.”

  Images of watchmakers and cologne purveyors flash before my eyes. If there’s any publication that can drum up the necessary ad money, it’s Up Next. That’s what they do—land big money in sponsors, making it possible to write these deep features and hopefully keep covering technology.

  “It’s going to be an exciting industry to follow,” I say, then I take stock of that comment for a second. Do I think it’s exciting because I care for Flynn? Or is it exciting in and of itself?

  But the memory of the tea brewing and the soundtrack to Aladdin playing flashes before me, calling for attention. They were cool, plain and simple. This is a huge growth area. “I should have the piece done shortly. I’ve finished all the interviews with people who have worked with him and those who compete with him, as well as analysts and experts. I just need two more short interviews with him, and one with his brother. I should be finished shortly after. I’ll turn it in a few days early.”

  “Excellent. I hope you’ll impress me. If you do, that will go a long way.”

  I terribly want to impress him, to win him over.

  The trouble is, every time I see the subject of my article, it’s harder and harder for me to be objective as I write about the man I’m falling for.

  19

  Flynn

  We are officially freaking her out. It’s a trick we’ve employed since we were kids, and we probably will till the end of time. It honestly never gets old.

  Sabrina’s eyes drift from Dylan to me and back as we stand near the bleachers at the softball field in Central Park. We are the spitting image of each other. Being identical twins, it’s not hard to look exactly like my brother.

  But today, since we’re on the same softball team, the doppelgänger effect is operating at full power. We’re in matching outfits—white shirts, blue sleeves, with the Katherine’s jeweler’s logo on the back of our gear. We both wear cargo shorts.

  Sabrina’s hazel eyes are painted with the astonishment I’ve seen so many times when people meet us together.

  Her index finger drifts from me to him and back. “If you didn’t have black glasses, I’m not entirely sure I could tell you apart. But I think I could.”

  Naturally, that’s the cue for our next trick, something we did to our mom and our sister. We turn around, exchange eyeglasses, switch spots, do it again, then pivot once more to face Sabrina, playing our own game of three-card Monte. Two-Card twins.

  She makes a stop sign with her hand. “Stop. It’s too freaky.”

  “We freaked our Mom out all the time too,” Dylan says, laughing.

  Sabrina peers studiously at my twin. Her lips curve up. She points to Dylan’s wedding band. “Another way I can tell you apart is the wedding band. I hope you don’t pull the twin switcheroo trick on your wife?”

  He cracks up. “I would never do that to Evie. Plus, I feel like she could tell us apart because I’m ultimately more strapping and studly than my brother. I have more in certain areas.”

  I scoff at my brother, clapping him on the back. “Oh, that’s a good one.”

  “Wait.” Sabrina lowers her voice to a whisper. “Do identical twins have the same size . . .?”

  I laugh. “Actually, I don’t know because we haven’t compared. Ever.”

  Chuckling, she turns away from us briefly, perhaps to cover up that she’s laughing harder now. She tamps it down, clears her throat and taps her watch. “Love the party tricks, but can we chat now?”

  The game starts in thirty minutes, so we sit with Sabrina on the metal bleachers, and she interviews us about starting and selling our first company, and what we learned. Sometimes, we finish each other’s sentences.

  “What do you think makes Flynn a visionary?” she asks Dylan.

  He tries to suppress a smile. “He has twenty—”

  I jump in, shaking my head. “—eight thousand vision.”

  “Just like—”

  I point at Dylan. “—him.”

  Sabrina’s lips twitch like she’s trying to rein in a grin.

  When we’re done, Dylan says he needs to stretch before the game, so he heads to the field. She watches him then swings her gaze to me. “It’s funny to meet him after knowing you.”

  I arch an eyebrow, curious. “How so?”

  “This might sound weird, but you don’t seem like a twin when it’s just us chatting. But with him, you absolutely are.”

  “Did you expect me to seem like a twin?”

  “I think I did. Because it’s so much a part of your identity, or at least what’s been written about you. You’re always identified online as the Parker twins because of your first company, but when I’m with you, I don’t think of you that way.”

  “How do you think of me?”

  She nibbles on the corner of her lip, considering the question, it seems. “When it’s just you and me, I can see who you are shining through. You’re this fascinating, brilliant, thoughtful, creative man, and it’s hard for me to see how you ever shared credit with anyone.”

  “Keep thinking of me that way. I did everything on my own. It was all me.” I wink.

  “It’s more that you’re so uniquely you, from the pineapple to the poetry to the wordplay to your jokes. That’s you. Flynn Parker. Not Flynn the twin.” She holds her palms like scales, raising then lowering. “Then when I see you with your brother, you have this whole other twin-ness to you. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just different.”

  “Would you be different if I met your brother?”

  “We’re not twins. I’m five years older. He’s twenty-three.”

  “Right, but you’re close, aren’t you?”

  “Very much so. He’s amazing. He’s one of the reasons I wanted this opportunity so badly.”

  “In what way?”

  “I support my brother. I help pay his bills for school.”

  “You do?”

  She nods, a smile spreading instantly. “He’s going to divinity school, getting a master’s.”

  I take a moment to absorb the enormity of what she does for him. It’s hard enough to pay bills on her own, but to help the person she adores? “That’s amazing. I’m floored. What an incredible thing to do.”

  “I kind of raised him,” she says, a note of pride in her voice.

  “You did?”

  “We never knew our dad. He didn’t ever live with us. I suspect he knocked up our mom twice, and that was the extent of his role in her life. As for her, she started to check out when my brother was ten or eleven. I looked out for him after that.”

  “How did she check out?”

  She swallows and looks away. “She . . . well, let’s just say she doesn’t have the best track record with the law.”

  My eyes widen. “What happened, may I ask?”

  She counts off on her fingers. “Petty theft, shoplifting, then grand theft. She started by stealing small items from stores, then from rich neighborhoods—silver, china, expensive objects. Soon, she moved on to jewelry.”

&n
bsp; She says it all so matter-of-factly, but as someone raised by a happily married couple in a crime-free family, it’s hard to imagine this upbringing as normal. But that’s what’s shocking to me—this is Sabrina’s normal. It’s also what she’s strived to separate herself from, I surmise.

  “That must have been incredibly hard.”

  “She’s been in and out of jail most of my adult life. If she’s not in jail, she’s asking me for money. She gambles a lot. She does what she wants, and she blasts into town asking for more. I do everything I can to avoid her, but she usually finds a way to show up when I least want her to.”

  I drag a hand over my jaw. “Damn. That’s tough, but it’s amazing that you help your brother.”

  The mention of her brother brings a radiance to her eyes. They sparkle when she talks about him. “She left for good when he was fifteen. He’s the reason I went to school in New York. I had a bunch of scholarships, but I needed to stay close and look after him. The only thing she left was the tiny condo she’d owned. I lived there with him when I was in college since he was still in high school. He was the most important thing to me—he still is—and he wound up doing a beautiful thing with his life.”

  Her smile is so warm and earnest it reaches someplace far inside me, finding a home. It makes me care even more for her, when I’m already wading into the deep end, so deep that my don’t-get-involved-with-work-associates rule is close to breaking. “Kevin is my hero. He has the biggest heart, and the strongest sense of right and wrong.”

  As she tells me about him, a stone of guilt digs against my ribs. Guilt for thinking she was after me for money. Guilt for wondering about her motives. She’s so genuinely focused on her brother, so giving of herself, and with the short straw she drew with her mom, I can’t see her in the same category as the women in my past.

  “You’re good people,” I say, silently exonerating myself from doubting her a week ago. I don’t doubt her anymore. I know who she is.

  She blushes. “Thanks. Speaking of good people and maybe not-so-good people, what do you think of Kermit La Franchi? He asked my best friend how the story was going. Isn’t that odd?”