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LadySharkey1 rocks my world by being the most amazing, kick-ass beta I could ever imagine.

Chapter 8

Shit was about to go down…big time.

Driving back from Seattle that Sunday morning, I felt better than I had in a long time; the glow of last night's success still made my insides sing as my car sped along the highway.

God, I'd forgotten how fun a regular restaurant service could be!

Fun and completely exhausting.

As much as I loved having my own business and the freedom it gave me to make my own schedule around my kid and to use my own creativity when it came to the cakes I sold, I had to admit that sometimes I missed the rush of evening service. Having interned at some of the swankier Port Angeles eateries throughout my years at Culinary School, those periods of times had been both the toughest and the most rewarding times throughout my professional education. You never learned quite as much as when you were among your peers, slaving away over hot pans and scorching ovens as an awe inspiring chef du patron yelled out directions.

When you were in it, you were completely in the moment; focused on the work in front of you but also never forgetting that you were just one little cog in a huge machinery that churned out one beautiful, tasty dish after another. Your own skills and timing were as important as that of the person standing next to you because chances were your dishes would have to be sent out to the same table and therefore had to be ready at exactly the same time.

If not, disaster would strike and customers would have to wait or get food put in front of them that failed to meet the mark. And if that happened.

Where there was no greater sense of accomplishment than sending out your final, perfect plate for the night, the disappointment when a plate was sent back because the customer was unhappy with it was the greatest slap in the face you could get.

And really, you didn't even have to look at your head chef's angry face to know you'd completely and utterly failed.

The good thing was, though, that last night had passed without even a hint of disappointment. My smile widened as I drove home, my free foot tapping along to the beat of the music blasting from the radio as I glowed in the success of last night's epic challenge.

Like I expected, the dessert Marcus had planned on his menu hadn't been easy; the intricate textures of the mango parfait and its coconut sorbet topping balanced out by the crispy tuille resting on top of it and the sharp bitter swirls of chocolate sauce woven around it on the plate. It was elegant, tasty and a hell of a lot of work to make, especially considering I'd had to deliver eighty completely identical plates of it, but I'd done it.

And apparently, I'd done it so well that Demetri said he'd get in touch whenever he had another big event. Apparently the fact that his usual pastry chef had let him down on such a short notice—even if it was because of a valid excuse like a family emergency—had landed him on the black list and me, little old me, right on top of the A list.

The feeling was indescribable!

Opening my little cake shop in my hometown had felt amazing. But still…after all the praise and accolades I'd gotten at Culinary College, I hadn't been able to stop myself from wondering sometimes about what could have been out there for me had I not been a mom, bound to the stability and reasonable hours my steady job my business gave me.

Could I have made it out there, in the mercilessly tough culinary world, as a pastry chef?

As much as Marcus had always supported me in my choices, there had been times when I saw a little hint of disappointment in his eyes about the fact that his star student was settling for relative obscurity. Not that he would ever have said it. No, it took an asshole like Mike Newton, my obnoxious, arrogant dickwad of a classmate to hold it over me on the evening of our graduation ceremony.

Shaking my head, my hands gripped the wheel a little tighter as I sped up, eager to get home and reassure myself of the fact that I had made the right choice as his vile voice rang in my ear. "Thanks, Swan. Or should I say commiserations? Because you bailed out to be a deadbeat mom in a one-horse town, so I got the job at Denali. I'll be thinking of you and your 'birthday cake hell' while I dish up three star desserts."

I breathed a sigh of relief when I passed the sign announcing I'd now entered the town of Forks, Washington, home of the Spartans. The familiar sight of my two story, white little world soon came into view as I rolled through the main street, the car slowly sliding to a stop behind the shop.

Home.

I breathed in the sweet, floury scent of the bakery. Dropping my bag next to the door, I scanned the room to see what damage had been done while I had been away but, quite surprisingly, found nothing out of the ordinary.

Emmett really was a godsend.

Maybe even too much so, since no boss liked to come back from a trip to find out that everything had gone off without a hitch while they'd been away. It made a person feel expendable.

Wait a minute, Swan. What the hell are you saying? You found a really good assistant and now you don't like him anymore because he's too good at his job? So much so, that you may be able to take a day off every now and then and have…I don't know…a fucking life?

Are. You. Nuts?

I was starting to think that I was, in fact, going crazy. These last few weeks had been hell, with things changing so fast I could barely keep up with them. My whole life was being turned upside down and the mess that made had me running around cranky and doubting pretty much every single damn choice I'd ever made in life.

And now even my thoughts have gone all whiny and obnoxious.

I shook my head, flicking off the lights before trudging my way upstairs with my bulky overnight bag and dumping it in my bedroom. I'll get to that when I get to that. I brushed off my hands. First, time for something more important: baking therapy.

"Okay," I concluded, stripping out of my bulky sweater to grab my apron. Switching on the radio to my favorite station, I started to hum along with the song as I washed my hands and measured out the ingredients. "Time to make some kick-ass pie crust."

Kneading the dough was a therapeutically as it always was; the monotonous movement of one hand folding the dough before the other would take over allowing my mind to fold back into shape and turn back to being rational again. At least, rational enough to love my life and stop moping about shit that might have been and start focusing on how lucky I'd been to end up where I was.

I was successful, both as a mom in bringing up a girl seemed to have happy-juice running through her veins and a vibrant spirit pouring out of every fiber of her being. I was also a businesswoman running a profitable patisserie that drew in clients from all over the Peninsula.

More than could have been said for Michael Newton. Who, in fact, had ended up ruining his own little, insignificant, and far less successful bakery shop in Port Angeles after his stint at Denali had ended in shame and too many failed soufflés.

Served him right!

His double failures to my double successes! Double douche!

See? Baking is therapeutic for me!

The two-faced asshole couldn't even tell a Sacher Torte from an Opera Cake! I'd have liked to see him try to pull off an evening under Demetri's authority. He would have been fired before he'd even had a chance to complete his mise-en-place.

By the time I heard the crunch of the gravel, followed by the tell-tale sounds of small footsteps thundering up the stairs, the whole place smelled amazing; the fragrant spices I'd added to the pie filling zinging amidst the heavy heartiness of the beef.

"Smells good, Mom!" Charlie announced as I leaned down to give her a kiss. "I'm just going to put my bag away."

"Wait a minute…" I tried to stop her, my instincts immediately picking up on the fact that she wasn't her usual self. She was already gone, though, the sound of her bedroom door closing behind her only confirmed what I already knew.

Something had gone wrong.

Before I'd called my baby girl for dinner, I had already made a very angry phone call to her dad, who was apparently as out of the loop as I was about why our Charlie was so unhappy—even if it had happened under his damn watch. I respectfully tried to gain access to her room only to be met with a locked door and an angry growl I couldn't make heads or tails of.

"Please tell me what's going on?" I begged her, after spending half of dinnertime facing a sourly, absent minded mute where my normally so vivacious and talkative little girl used to sit. "And don't tell me it's nothing. I know something happened and I'm not going to give up until you tell me."

"It is nothing," she barked, throwing her cutlery down with a loud clang as it hit the edges of her plate. "It's just…" She sighed her face half hidden behind her hair in a gesture I knew all too well because I'd done it myself countless times. "I don't think I like Angela very much."

What? My head shot up, my surprise meeting with her solemnity as I waited for her to explain herself—which she didn't.

"What happened baby? I mean…last week things were going so well!"

"She was different this time." Charlie shrugged, her fork digging into the pastry crust still lying on her plate. "She's okay when she gets to talk about animals and stuff, which was why I thought this weekend was going to be pretty cool. I even thought she might let me help her with some of the stuff she did as a volunteer at the shelter…but she didn't."

"Then what did she do, sweetheart?" I asked, trying not to press even though I was already starting to get livid with that bitch for making my little girl upset. Any spark of pleasure I might have felt at this sudden turn of events—and Voldemary's subsequent fall from grace—was gone the second I saw Charlie's face.

My girl shrugged, the crust that remained of her dinner slowly dissolving in the little puddle of meaty juices left behind. "It wasn't really bad or anything, it was just…" As she smirked, reluctance was rolling off her in waves as she finally put her fork down and folded her hands, her eyes still anywhere but on me as she spoke. "She tried to make me do all these girly things on Saturday when dad wasn't there."

"Girly things?"

"When we got to dad's place after she picked me up from soccer practice it turned out she'd gone through my things…" Charlie started, the rage that had been steadily building inside me now erupting like a damn volcano.

"What?" I cried, still laboring to keep myself from going postal and scaring the crap out of Charlie. "Why would she do that?"

"She said she'd booked us a 'get-to-know-you' tea party at Mrs. Potts Tearoom and I needed to wear a dress or I was going to look out of place," Charlie answered timidly, her whole posture screaming insecurity.

Being a pastry chef I knew Mrs. Potts very well even if I'd never done business with them because their demands were just ridiculous. It was this snooty tearoom where the rich and famous (or at least those who thought they were) of the Peninsula came with their spoiled little bratty daughters to drink tea, brag about their kids' accomplishments and pay insane amounts of cash for so-so pastry.

Already having a hunch where this was going, I had to fight hard to keep my anger out of my voice. That fucking bitch! I gave her one chance to bond with my girl, and that had been hard enough for me as it was, and she had to go fuck everything up and make my daughter unhappy by pushing her own fucking agenda on her?

That shit so wasn't going to fly.

"Then what?" I asked, sensing from her body language that there was even more to this story, though I wasn't quite sure whether or not I wanted to hear it. "You told her you don't own any dresses because you hate wearing them, didn't you?"

She nodded enthusiastically, her eyes wide and carrying an amount of hurt that broke my heart. "I tried but she wouldn't listen to me." Her bottom lip trembled as she continued. "She told me every girl needs to have some dresses and pretty skirts or she's not really a girl, and that if you wouldn't buy them for me, she would make sure I'd grow into a proper lady."

"A what?" For a moment I lost my cool. How dare that bitch to insinuate that my amazing, perfectly unique girl wouldn't adhere to some archaic standard of what a 'girl' was supposed to look like, was beyond me. Sure, she was a tomboy, and most of her friends were boys instead of girls, but it was not up to Angela to decide whether or not that was okay.

Or to even judge her for that matter.

The bitch was so going down.

"It's how she said it, Mommy." Charlie's voice barely registered above the explosions of fury going off like fireworks inside of me. "And I'm almost certain that if Grandma Esme hadn't shown up, she would have forced me to go shopping with her."

There was no worse punishment to Charlie than to be taken out on a shopping trip. It was something she got from me, actually, and so we always made sure to limit our excursions to a bare minimum—much to our mutual satisfaction. To know that not only had her feelings been hurt by Voldemary's interference, but that she could have also been forced into clothes she didn't want to wear?

The fact that I had an unhappy kid sitting in front of me was the only thing keeping me from going over to that woman's place with a rolling pin and beating her.

"What happened then?" I wanted to know, hoping Esme had put a definite stop to this mess.

"She dropped it," Charlie replied in a small voice. "But…I don't know. All through the weekend—even with Daddy around—I had a feeling she was still trying to change me into a girly girl, even if she didn't say anything."

"And did you tell your dad?" From the answers—or lack thereof—I'd gotten out of Edward earlier that night, I already knew that Charlie hadn't told him but I wanted to hear the words out of her own mouth. And, most of all, I wanted to know why she hadn't told him.

As expected, she shook her head, plucking at the sleeves of her sweater as she answered my question. "He really wanted me and Angela to get along so I didn't want to disappoint him when…"

"When what?" I pressed even though I had a scary feeling I really didn't want to hear it.

"When I wasn't really sure who was wrong?" The words came out shakily and almost like a question, but the underlying doubt was so thick it shattered me. All the confidence and happiness she'd had throughout her life seemed to have vanished because some interloping bitch had put ideas into her head, making her doubt everything she'd always thought of as normal.

"Listen to me, baby girl." I was as serious as a heart attack as I sat up and grabbed both her hands.

"You are the most amazing girl I know—and I'm not saying that because I'm insanely biased, it's a fact." I took a breath, summoning all the strength and motherly skills I'd picked up from years of watching Renee and Esme.

"You've done nothing wrong here. Do you hear me? Not one thing. She can't make you do something you don't want to do and if she does that, or even tries to do that, I want you to call me—immediately, not matter how busy you think I am—or tell your father. I won't have her putting ideas into your mind!"

"So it's okay for me not to like her?" she asked in a tiny voice, the look on her face more relieved than anything.

"If she tries to make you do things you don't want to do, or makes you feel bad about not wanting to do the things she wants to do, then that's perfectly fine by me," I answered, knowing I was probably on a slippery slope but not giving a damn about it all the same. "I'll still talk to her and to your dad, though, to see if we can fix this."

She nodded, a small smile appearing for the first time since she'd walked into the house. "I'd like that, Mommy."

Pulling her onto my lap, even though she was too big for that, I pressed a kiss into her hair. "I'd like that too, baby cakes."

My words couldn't have been further from the truth but in that moment, I sensed it was all she needed to hear. What I did know, though, was that there was going to be one hell of a sit down in the meantime with Edward where some new rules were going to be added to our co-parenting.

Knowing Edward, though, I knew he was going to put up one hell of a fight as soon as he heard what I was demanding.

Not that I gave a shit, though. He was lucky enough I wasn't marching over there to knock some sense into the both of them, even though God only knew how much I wanted to. It wasn't going to do me any good, though. Like the incident in the supermarket when some judgmental bitch had made a remark about teen moms, I'd learned to always count to ten before I acted.

Not that it would make me any less pissed off when I did talk to him tomorrow. He could throw everything at me he had in him but after what had happened that weekend, I would wage war with the devil himself if it meant keeping that woman away from my kid.

No matter how dirty I'd have to fight to make that happen.

Thoughts?