The Magic Cupcake Read online

  The Magic Cupcake

  River Laurent

  Contents

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Cherry Popper (Sample Chapters)

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Also By River

  Come Say Hello!

  Untitled

  The Magic Cupcake

  Untitled

  River Laurent

  The Magic Cupcake

  Copyright © 2018 by River Laurent

  The right of River Laurent to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-911608-26-4

  Chapter One

  Lauren

  “Have you ever had a day when EVERYTHING went wrong?”

  I open my eyes on Friday the 16th thinking it is going to be the best day of my life. Outside, the sun is shining brightly and I just know I’m going to kill it at the big presentation I’ll be making later. It is the most important and biggest milestone of my career, but I am so prepared and ready my body feels like it is vibrating. I spring out of bed so fast I startle Draco, who gives a little yelp of surprise.

  On my way to the kitchen, the doorbell rings.

  There is a big smile on my face as I open the door to the postman. “Good morning, Tom,” I greet brightly.

  “I see someone’s in a good mood this morning,” he remarks handing me a package.

  It’s not for me, it’s for my roomie, Danny. While I’m signing for it, Draco makes a mad dash out of the door.

  “Come back here,” I yell.

  Of course, he doesn’t come back. Ducking through a hole in the hedge fence, he runs up towards my super sexy, emerald-eyed, completely lickable neighbor’s front door. Calmly, he does his morning business on his brown welcome mat.

  No, Draco, no!

  Normally, such behavior from Draco would have annoyed me, but not this morning. This morning, I’m on fire. The poo is a dry, well-formed thing so cleaning it up should be fairly easy. No one needs know, especially not my hot neighbor.

  The man moved in two weeks ago and I guess, I have a bit of crush on him. Who wouldn’t? The man looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch life size poster. He’s the first man I can imagine pouring cream on his abs and licking it all off.

  I rush off to the kitchen, get some cleaning supplies, and hurry out again, only to see Mr. Abercrombie open his front door and step right into Draco’s shit. All my fantasies of putting on a coat of raspberry lipstick and my long black dress before knocking on his door to borrow a cup of sugar evaporate into nothing right before my eyes.

  His gaze moves from the mess under his shoe and starts travelling upwards. Slowly. From my fluffy bear slippers, up my stripy pajamas, to my hands clutching paper towels and cleaning liquid, higher up to my chest, then the tips of my sleep-tangled hair, then on to my neck and unmade face. He stops at my frankly horrified eyes.

  For a second— neither of us moves.

  We just stare at each other. God, the guy has a really sensuous mouth. And that lantern jaw. You could start a war with it.

  “Hi,” I whisper. Surprisingly, my voice comes out sounding all hoarse and sexy. This might work out after all. Draco’s talent might have been matchmaker all along. In fact, this could be the beginning of a totally awesome romance.

  But he doesn’t return the greeting, he exhales emitting a short, disbelieving sound. There is a flicker of something in his eyes. Looks a bit like annoyance or irritation.

  I blink and wake up from my ridiculous fantasy. What the hell are you doing staring at him like a love-struck teenager? Without thinking, I rush forward suddenly and crouching in front of him, start cleaning his shoe with the kitchen towel while apologizing frantically. I can hear myself…I sound like a demented pigeon, but I can’t stop.

  “Leave it. It’s fine,” he says.

  But he has one of those panty-melting voices that confuses me and makes me grab onto the hard muscles of his calves as I double down on my task of getting rid of the poo. Somehow, I manage to lift his shoe off the ground and finish the task. “There you go. All done,” I say lifting my head. I am now eye level with his crotch. Holy Moly! It looks like he’s packing a seriously big lunch box in there.

  At this point, my neighbor abruptly steps away from me.

  Hot blood floods into my face as I stand up. I can’t believe I was staring at his crotch. I can’t even look him in the eye. What an idiot I am.

  “Well, thank you for that,” he says suavely.

  “Don’t worry I’ll—I’ll get the mat cleaned o-off,” I stutter.

  “No need. I’ll get another one.”

  I shake my head. “No, no, I absolutely insist.”

  He frowns, then nods his utterly gorgeous head, and walks off.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I curse myself, as his olive-green Maserati roars off, and I pick his mat up by the edge. What is the matter with me? Why on earth did I not just say that I would replace the mat?

  It takes ages for me to hose down the damn thing. And the smell! Draco can make glass melt with some of his messes and this one is no exception. It puts me right off breakfast. Funny though, how I didn’t even notice it while I was crouched in front of that man’s lovely thighs.

  I put it all behind me while I’m in the shower. I need to focus on looking my best. I get into the clothes I have already laid out last night and carefully do my face and hair. Slipping into my lucky shoes, I take a deep breath and go to stand in front of the full-length mirror in the hallway. Yes, I look the part. My shoulders are straight, and I’m fully determined to put the morning’s incident,
well, all right—humiliating fiasco, behind me and take on the world.

  “Wish me luck, Draco,” I whisper in his ear.

  He tries to turn his head and slobber all over my face, but I’m too quick for him.

  “Nah, you’ve done enough damage this morning, don’t you think?”

  He makes a disapproving noise as I close the front door. I slide behind the wheel of my car, turn on the ignition, and the damn thing won’t start. But it worked fine last night.

  Calm down, Lauren. Calm down. You still have plenty of time.

  Chapter Two

  Lauren

  As Danny is away on holiday, I can’t even get him to drop me off. Not wanting to be late on such an important day, I call a taxi even though it is going to cost the earth. The driver drops me off at the end of the block because he wants to avoid the traffic coming down the road. It’s just a fifty-yard walk, but just outside the entrance of my office building, the right heel of my shoes gets stuck in one of the cracks in the sidewalk.

  Damn!

  I try to pull it out and it breaks off. There is no way I’m leaving the heel in the crack because these are my lucky shoes and I need luck today. Cursing and swearing, I pull the heel out and hobble to my office. Jenny, our receptionist produces a tube of glue which she says is similar to Gorilla glue. I’ve used Gorilla glue before and that stuff is amazing. I look at the label and it’s says strong as nails. While I am holding the two pieces together, Jenny reveals that she bought the glue at the dollar shop. I ignore the twinge of anxiety.

  Of course, half-way through my presentation, and I’m doing brilliantly too, my heel, well…falls off with a quiet thud.

  There’s a whole room of silent people watching me with bated breath so I get the brilliant idea to rise above the situation by making my predicament into a joke.

  “Who needs shoes, anyway?” I quip as I take off my shoes and throw them up into the air. The first one lands on the table making a couple of people jump, and the second one bounces off the wall and strikes the boss of the company we are presenting to right in the face.

  Everyone freezes in horror and I stare at Mr. Montague in disbelief. This cannot be happening to me. No way.

  People stand up and start moving towards him. There are offers to get him ice and generally help him. I don’t know whether he is a sadist, or a masochist, but with a stony expression, he insists I carry on with my presentation.

  Trying to impress someone whose face is slowly swelling up and turning blue-black is not an easy thing to do. It’s not even my fault that I make a complete cock-up of my carefully rehearsed spiel. Avoiding the eyes of the rest of my horrified team, I stumble, stutter, and mumble my way towards the last slide.

  “Well, that’s it. As you can see you can’t possibly go wrong by choosing our company,” I conclude with a bright smile. But it is so fake even a two-month old baby would have seen through it.

  When we leave, our competitors, who are waiting outside, can’t stop smirking. They can tell by the expressions on our faces we have had a disaster. I try to walk with my head held high, but as the elevator doors close behind my team and I, they all turn on me furiously.

  “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “How could you, Lauren?”

  “Christ, do you even realize what you’ve just done?”

  “Are you really that stupid?”

  Hell, I hardly recognize them. They’re like venomous snakes in a pit. Hissing and spitting at me, but I can’t blame them. I’d feel the same if one of them had done this to me. This is a big deal for my company, for all of us. We’ve been working day and night for seven months solid and I guess we all counted our chickens before they had laid. We couldn’t help it that our product and system was just so much better than all our competitors.

  I apologize profusely, but it doesn’t make any difference. I have smashed all their hopes.

  When I get back to the office, I’m called to go face my boss. Haltingly, I explain what happened. I have never seen my boss turn white before and I’m sorry to be the one who did that to him. He’s a nice guy and I really like him. I know he was really counting on this deal to take our company to the next level.

  “I mean, we could still win the contract. Our proposal is solid,” I mumble unconvincingly.

  He drops his face into his palms.

  I sneak out when he starts making strange sobbing noises behind his hands. I figure he needs some privacy.

  As if that is not enough, my mother calls in tears because my sister has agreed to marry her unemployed, good-for–nothing, lay-about boyfriend. Since I’m so toxic around the office, no one even wants to make eye contact, I let my mother persuade me to go around to my sister’s place so I could help persuade her that she’s making a mistake.

  Another bad mistake on my part.

  I get stuck for an hour listening to Christine describe how terribly misunderstood her boyfriend is, and how wonderful he really is. The way she describes him, he is Mother Theresa with a dick. While she’s talking, I keep seeing my shoe bounce of the wall in slow motion, hitting Mr. Montague on the face. In the end, I have no choice, but to force myself to agree with my sister that her boyfriend is indeed awesome, just so I could escape the relentless monologue.

  I get out on the street and feel like shit. The shock is wearing off and I know I have messed up big time. I’ve ruined it for everyone else as well. Everyone is angry with me, but it’s not completely my fault. I’m the victim not the villain. I wanted that proposal as much as anyone else.

  As I’m standing there wanting to burst into tears, Andrea one of my two best friends calls.

  “Hey you. How did it go?” she asks.

  “Don’t ask. I so freaking bombed,” I mutter.

  “Oh, that bad? Does that mean the big office celebration is off?”

  “Maybe they’re all going, but I don’t think I would be welcome. They’ll probably made a voodoo doll of my likeness and are going to take turns stabbing pins into it.”

  “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Right,” she says crisply. “You need to relax, my child. We’re meeting at the Green Man. Six-thirty, okay with you?”

  My chin wobbles slightly. “I don’t think I’m going to be good company.”

  “You can’t be worse than you usually are,” she says cheerfully.

  “It’s not funny, Andrea. I feel really horrible. I totally screwed up the presentation.”

  “No way. You could have recited that in your sleep.”

  “I threw my shoe at Mr. Montfort,” I wail miserably.”

  “What?”

  “See the problem now?”

  For a second there is silence. Then she clears her throat. “Look, let’s get this into perspective. Did you drop a bomb on an innocent population of people?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Did you invent a hazardous bio-weapon capable of killing millions and sold the formula to a couple of bad guys?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Then, chin up. Every cloud has a silver lining.”

  “Not this one,” I mutter.

  “Please don’t be late.”

  “I don’t know, Andrea…”

  “Just remember if you don’t come, we’ll both turn up at your place and we’ll stay the night,” she warns before the line goes dead.

  For a second, I stand on the sidewalk, undecided. I guess I could go and have one drink. It’s been a horrible day, and I richly deserve one drink after the day I’ve had. I call Mira, my dog walker and arrange for her to take Draco out for his evening walk, then I hail a taxi.

  Of course, to top the day off, I get stuck in a terrible traffic jam and end up having to walk half the way. By the time I open the door of the bar, I have determined I’m going to finish the day in a spectacular way. I’m going to get wasted in a way I’ve never ever allowed myself to get.

  Glancing around the crowded bar, it’s not
hard to spot my friends.

  Andrea, with her white-blond bob, tall and elegant, propped up against the bar. She’s rolling her eyes and smirking.

  Nina all curvy and vivacious in her fitting red suit is gesturing wildly with her hands. Model-gorgeous, she’s easily my most beautiful friend, by far. And she has a string of brokenhearted ex-boyfriends to prove it.

  Bless their sweet souls there are three dirty martinis lined up between them. They are all mine. God, I’m so glad I decided not to stay at home on my own and joined these two brilliant girls instead.

  “Lauren!” they both chime and pull me into a hug.

  “We ordered you your usual,” Nina says, handing me a martini glass.

  Oh, yes! We clink, and before they can toast to the weekend the way we normally do, I suck down half the glass in one swig. It goes down so briny, smooth and cold it almost makes me forget Mr. Montfort’s stunned expression. I close my eyes to truly appreciate the blessing.