Page 6 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
“It’s not a girl’s name. It’s a French name.” He pronounced his name properly, with a French accent and its more melodic pitches and the raspier r.
An accent that went right to her lady bits.
“You don’t sound French,” she huffed because she was absolutely not going to be seduced by pretty sounds. And he did have that foreign accent adding intrigue to his more predominant southern drawl, but it didn’t sound French.
“I’m not French. My mother is French. I grew up in Manchester.”
“There’s a Manchester in Georgia?”
He canted his head, but his eyes remained glued to his phone. “No? I don’t know. There’s a Manchester in England. You’re very rude, did you know that?”
So much for nativity lamb, Candace thought, wishing someone from the network could just point her in the direction that would make them want to bring her back for another season. “I prefer abrasive. And you’re one to talk. You’re not even looking at me.”
Laurin looked up from his phone to knock her down with that jade gaze. Irritation marked him with a scowl and a tilt in his brow. They were close enough now that Candace caught dark flecks in his pale green eyes, like mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Which she hated.
“You have me for the next two weeks. Do you have to spoil these last two minutes with my family, as well?”
Candace huffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared out at the dull, brown world between the plastic Christmas of the cabins and the pavilion.
Episode 1:
Tree Trimming
Chapter 3
The cabin wassmall and sparse, furnished only with basic furniture, a full range of kitchen supplies, crafting necessities, and a full, unadorned Christmas tree. It was clean, though, and had plenty of kitchen space and a well-maintained hearth. It wouldn’t take much more than an occasional fire and a stack of books to make the little cabin in Jasper the perfect late-November retreat.
But Laurin didn’t know if he’d have many nights here.
He was not a quitter. He had, in fact, subjected himself to many ill-advised surgeries and questionable procedures before he admitted he’d been done in by injury and retired from his football club. He was not about to quit this time, either. The format for the show seemed to be a mix of baking and holiday prep, which wasn’t a bad thing. Pauline Lavigne would have had her son drawn and quartered if the decorations he hung in the café didn’t meet her expectations of both subtle and exquisite. Since Laurin’s bakery strengths lay more in finishing than mixing, the blended format favored him. But could he pull Candace’s weight when he himself was struggling to drum up his old competitive streak? He wasn’t sure.
He refused to let Candace ruin him, though. To that end, he meticulously catalogued the contents of the kitchen and craft supplies. Every pot, every paintbrush, every glue gun. Candace pouted the whole time, keeping herself in whatever room Laurin wasn’t in and never once picking up her notebook.
The woman had a history of sabotaging other contestants. Laurin had watched every episode of Food2Love’s Baking Greats competition series at least three times, first for entertainment as they were aired and then second and third this past month for research. At the beginning of Candace’s five-year run, he’d been intrigued by her. She was intelligent, attractive in a casual, artsy sort of way, and uniquely talented. He’d been amazed by many of her bakes and attempted several in his own bakery, failing spectacularly most times. But her recent losing streak had turned her ugly. Viewers in online forums wrote off many of her antics as accidents, but she’d been caught red-handed on Summer Bakes. Laurin wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but there was a huge difference between scuffing up the corner of a mat and fooling around with the producer as he promised her a better ranking in the competition.
She was sabotaging her own team this time. If Laurin was later told this was a hustle and Candace was getting paid to throw off the odds on the most ridiculous bet in Vegas imaginable — which was an actual thing that he’d discovered in researching the show — he wouldn’t be surprised.
“What’s your plan?” Laurin finally asked after they got the call to meet their golf cart out front.
She grabbed the fair isle-print pashmina scarf she’d been wearing during the first filmed segment and wrapped it loosely around her neck, using the full-length mirror set up next to the door for them to get it just right, even though the wind was going to blow it around anyway. “Decorate a tree that doesn’t suck?” she suggested with a quirk of her pale, perfectly shaped brow.
“Not that. Are you going to let me do my thing in peace, or are you going to mess this up on me?” Despite the warm weather, he had to wrap on a scarf, too — required wear.They’d been told attire appropriate for Christmas dinner plus one winter accessory. His scarf was red and white with a fair isle pattern, as well, but his mother had actually knitted it for him years before. He doubted Candace had any history with hers.
She flung the door open and stormed out of the cabin while Laurin caved and adjusted his scarf in the mirror as well. “It doesn’t matter what I say,” she said to the wilderness ahead of them as Laurin’s longer stride ate up the distance between them. “Let’s just get through this. There are only five cabins. I figure we’ll be on singles rounds soon enough.”
Hopefully she was right, and what a blessing that would be. He could hole up in his room then and hardly ever cross paths with her. Her tone infuriated him, though, so much that he couldn’t think of that boon. “Is it just me, or do you hate all men?” he asked as he plopped down next to her in the back of the golf cart. It was cramped quarters there, enough so that on the last ride, he’d stretched his leg up the narrow ledge running up past the front seat. Now he deliberately turned his knee into Candace’s space to check her reaction.
Incredibly, she twisted her own legs to the side and crossed them at the ankle to give him space she didn’t owe him. “Point of fact, I hate most people. You’re not special.” She stated tartly, staring away from him, her delicate profile illuminated by the angled sun as she turned her nose up at him.
He shook his head to clear away any thoughts of appreciating that profile and thought about how he’d decorate the tree, whether he should go with classic red and gold or flock it heavily to do a more modern white and black. If there was a push for non-traditional decorations, he could do an ocean theme with shells and seafoam green ribbons. It all depended on what they were about to be told.
They were led back to their gaffer’s tape lines and waited while a teleprompter got set up for the hosts and cameras were blocked strategically to keep other cameras and unseasonably warm Georgia autumn out of frame.
“Sorry ‘bout earlier!” Stephanie said. Her cheeks were flushed, her hands shaking with nerves, but she smiled brightly. She may have had the Karen haircut and was probably a nightmare at PTA meetings, but she was sweet, lost, and nervous now. With notoriously clumsy Debbie as a partner, she had every right to be nervous. “My hearing’s terrible. I had no idea they were even shooting! Sorry.”
He waved her apologies away. “Not your fault. I’m surprised everyone else heard it. Even I barely caught it, and I’m a head taller than most of you.”
