Page 18 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
Candace’s toes curled. Just a little.
“Great, thanks,” he said after a breath and got back to his baking.
Any fuzzy feelings she might have had in her stomach flopped right to anger. Laurin was flirting with her, trying to knock her off her game. He probably figured after what happened during Summer Bakes, she’d be an easy target.
Candace was a bitch, but she wasn’t a slut, no matter how it looked on national TV. She wasn’t about to fall for Laurin’s charms. She just needed to work harder and ignore him.
She returned to her bake with a new motivation, nailing all three of her cookies to prove not only that she was better than Belle but that no man was ever going to derail her plans again.She knew her recipes were solid, but she scratched her plan to lay the cookies out on a nice platter and let the flavors speak for themselves. Instead of the simple display, she took the bottom of a box and wrapped it in parchment. She used gold leaf on both the turtles and the sandwich cookies to spruce them up before stacking them in the box and made stands out of chocolate for her gingerbread reindeer. Leftover caramel from the turtles was thick enough for ropes to run between them to lead the box, and a liberal dusting of powdered sugar on the light blue platter gave it an adequately wintry ambiance.
The cameras hardly ever visited Candace, which she preferred. The producers were always pushing for the bakers to act rushed when the cameras were on them. Some worked well with that, but Candace tended to make more mistakes. Better for her to shine in other portions of the episodes.
Or to get caught with the director’s hand up her skirt. That had been great for ratings.
When time was finally called, the contestants were corralled to the testimonial rooms, where everyone was privately grilled about their time in the kitchen. Candace had a suitably callous response prepared for any questions about the note she’d written, but it wasn’t brought up.
No one had seen it. Either that, or they didn’t want her story. They didn’t want to show her committing an act of kindness.
The work stations were all clean when they returned, and everyone stood by their creations while the hosts and judges chatted and sampled their cookies. Since Laurin was in front of Candace, she had no choice but to stand there and stress about her reindeer slowly tilting under the hot spotlights while they interviewed him.
“Well, these are just about the oddest chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever seen!” Dorothy laughed as she took one of the eclairs from the serving tray.
The way they stood gave Candace a clear view of Laurin’s strong profile — and his wink at Dorothy. “That’s because they’re French,” he joked.
She and Lacey Evers, owner of the Flowers & Lace High Tea chain, each took a bite and cooed over the filling. “Is that a hazelnut creme pat?” Lacey asked.
Laurin nodded. “With chocolate chips.”
“More of a shaving than a chip,” Dorothy said as she set the eclair on a plate and the brown-flecked filling pooled around it. “And delicious, but more of a pastry than a cookie, isn’t it?”
Laurin dipped his head once, playing it smart by not arguing the assessment.
He didn’t miss a beat as Lacey said, “I take it these are French lemon bars, then?” though.
He flashed a brilliant smile with a waggle of his brows and said, “Oui.”
The women tasted the curd-filled madeleines and repeated their feedback about it being well-executed but ultimately a petite cake, not a cookie. There was some added criticism about cheating on the batter. Laurin took it in stride, hanging his head in mock shame and scratching the back of his head, mussing his hair into a far-too-alluring bedhead as he said, “Yeah,mamanwon’t be too pleased about that.”
He presented his shortbread cookies next. Dorothy and Lacey nodded in approval of the presentation, a stack of a dozen cookies, iced in white buttercream and topped with greenmarzipan. The cookies decreased in size and the buttercream oozed just enough to give off the look of a stylized evergreen laden with snow, and the clever bastard had made some miniature pine cones to scatter around it and perched a tiny squirrel on one of the tiers.
“That is almost too precious to eat,” Lacey said but snatched the top cookie right up and bit into it. Her eyes went every bit as wide as Candace’s must have when she’d tried the batter. She glanced between Laurin and Dorothy, raising the cookie to her nose to identify the notes better.
“Is it good or bad?” Dorothy asked, hesitating on the cookie she’d taken. She smelled her own and tilted her head at what Candace knew to be a confusing scent.
“Oh my goodness, try it!” Lacey said with a little happy dance.
“What a unique flavor!” Dorothy gushed.
Kate and Jannie split a cookie between them. “This flavor is nuts!” Kate said. “Is this French?”
“Italian,” Laurin confessed. “I was introduced to oranges with olive oil and black pepper by a teammate from Venice. We always made fun of him for the lavender cocktail he was crazy about, but it was a good combination.”
“Your teammate, was that from . . . ?” Jannie started.
“World Cup. My second time around.”
Holy cow.
World Cup?
