Page 17 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
The warmth blooming in his cheeks was all natural. The bitter irony of the two extremes his life had gone through was back in his club days, most of the women he’d wanted a casual relationship with attempted to trap him into marriage. Gold diggers and trophy seekers. Nowadays, he wanted a proper family — a wife and some little siblings for Vivvy — but giving Vivvy all his spare time meant the women in his life were mostly married and, if anything, looking for a cheap escape from their husbands. Yeah, there were a few single moms he’d gone on dates with, but he felt more like a means to an end than an actual man in the supposed prime of his life with them. It should have been far too long since he’d last had sex, but if he was being honest, what sex he’d had since settling down with his mom and Vivvy had left him uninterested in seeking it.
His hand got the job done well enough most of the time.
“Nah,” he said as affably as possible to dispel anyone’s notion he might be looking for something he absolutely wasn’t. “I’vebeen putting all my effort into the family business the last few years. Dating hasn’t been a priority for me.”
The truth — but then the gods frowned upon him. He couldn’t blame Candace for the way her skirt caught his attention as she sashayed past him on her way to the pantry. Because she passed behind him, the camera caught her in the background and then, a moment later, caught him turning his head to watch the infuriatingly hypnotic sight of her skirt teasing at the lace of her stockings.
They were going to air that footage.
His mother was going to see that.
His eyes went right back to Dorothy, not wanting to face the camera and his guilt over checking out the competition’s ass directly after saying that dating wasn’t a priority to him.
In that moment, Candace glanced over her shoulder, barked out, “He has a kid, you know, a daughter,” and then marched off stiffly.
Laurin’s gut sank at those words. He had no idea why she thought to announce that to the world, but he’d wanted to keep that off the TV. Vivvy was American-born, but he wasn’t.
And he wasn’t her biological father, even if he was her dad in every sense that mattered. Laurin raising Vivvy was the best option for everyone involved, but not having official paperwork complicated things, even if he was related closely enough to Vivvy that most people were fine with him as her guardian.
The way Dorothy lit up at that made him think that, despite the risk of scandal Candace had just breathed into his life, she might have been attempting to do him a favor in the mostawkward, abrasive,Candaceway possible. America loved single dads.
Dorothy asked, “Do you think it’s wise to go with such basic recipes?”
This was it, the advice he was waiting on so he could look like he was pivoting at the judges’ request. Candace definitely just saved his butt.
He glanced at the note tucked under his recipe book and wondered again at whose handwriting it was before defending himself for the camera with, “These are my family’s favorite cookies,” which wasn’t even true. His mother was likely to drive herself back up here just to lecture him — on lying and checking out Candace’s backside.
“My granddaughter loves macaroni and cheese,” Dorothy said kindly but meaningfully. “I spent hours at my stove perfecting the perfect bechamel prosciutto mac. All my colleagues at the magazine raved about it. When I served it to my granddaughter, she cried about it not coming out of a blue box and refused to eat it.” She adjusted her rose-framed coke bottle glasses. “It will be magnificent if the chocolate chip cookie you serve is the best chocolate chip I’ve ever had. Modern Baking will buy the recipe from you. But if it’s not, you’re treading dangerous waters with Tollhouse.”
The lashing was sound enough that Laurin wouldn’t have needed the note to know he had to change his recipes, but he was thankful he hadn’t been blindsided — and the writer had given him some good advice.SMALL FRENCH STUFF, the note read.Doesn’t matter if cookie. Single bite. Keep shortbread but flavor it.He’d seen the technique used on the show before. Miss the brief slightly in favor of making a better entry. If it wasn’t too far off the mark, he’d be dinged but not eliminated.
He anchored his hands on the edge of the counter and hung his head in thought as Kate and Dorothy walked away. He used the dramatic pause as a chance to make a revised shopping list, remembering the note’s postscript about the shortbread:Go weird.
Oh, he could do that.
Finally, after a suitable amount of time had passed, he looked up to find a camera still trained on him. He swallowed, sighed heavily, and said, “I’ve got to start over.” He grabbed his basket and sprinted to the tidy, decorative wall of ingredients, the cameraman close on his heels.
It was time to sell it.
Chapter 7
Candace had tohand it to Laurin: he was a showman. He hit every beat of her missive, and he did it with a splash that kept a camera on him the entire duration of filming.
The camera seemed to help him, in fact. The cameraman said nothing critical, but in asking Laurin to explain what he was doing, Laurin seemed to catch several mistakes that could have set him back. As he discussed the pitfalls of choux pastry, Laurin went to say something about proper filling technique and then blurted out, “Hold up, I forgot to make the hazelnut custard filling.” He encouraged the camera to zoom in on the madeleines in the oven and acted surprised that the improvised batter — proper batter needed to rest longer than he had time for — was rising faster than expected.
Maybe he was just that good on camera that he did have the custard already scheduled further down and did know how quickly the madeleines would rise, but Candace didn’t think so. He was frustratingly, charmingly sincere. She told herself she should regret helping him, that if this was his weak area, he was obviously a force to be reckoned with. But then the cameraman voiced some skepticism over his flavor profile of the shortbread, and Laurin responded by digging up a chunk of cookie dough from the mixing bowl and waving it at Candace.
“Do you think this is okay?” he asked.
Candace stared at his finger, not sure how he wanted her to taste it, before swiping her finger up his and licking the batter off that.
Laurin’s eyelids dipped as his attention snapped right to her tongue, but he was smiling at the camera before she could think about that or about how, yeah, she kind of wanted to see what else she could do to get that reaction from him. Then she was distracted by the contrast of a cool orange burst and a snap of black pepper. She was about to comment on the interesting pairing when it mellowed into sweet, floral lavender.
She let it roll on her tongue, analyzing each layer and then the whole of it again. Each flavor was distinct and powerful on its own, but it all blended into a bright, intriguing marriage.
“This is exceptional,” Candace admitted, unable to hold back her compliment. She licked the rest of the dough off her finger.
Laurin watched again.
