The Bake-Off (29 page)

Linnie got up from the table. “Cam—”

“I want you.”

“Can we please not do this?” She turned and walked toward the balcony. “You want me only because you can't have me.”

“Try me,” he challenged. “Stay here and try me.”

“I can't.”

“Why not? You think I'll disappoint you?”

No, but I
know
I'll disappoint
you. He'd soon discover that all of her individual attributes—the brains, the body, the infamous “potential”—added up to so much less than anyone hoped for. He stopped arguing with her. Instead, he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. They stayed like that for a long time, Cam offering comfort and Linnie letting herself accept it.

Finally, she turned around to face him. She never broke eye contact as she grazed his lips with her own.

This time, the sex wasn't fun at all. It was slow and sweet and sublime.

 

L
innie opened to her eyes to the faint gray light of early morning. She could hear Cam's slow, steady breathing in her ear and the insistent electric pulse of an alarm clock beeping in the bedroom down the hall.

She was wearing his shirt, and her neck ached from sleeping on the floor. They must have dozed off in the living room after last night's exertions.

The alarm clock kept beeping. Time to get up. Places to go, people to see.

Pies to bake.

She rocketed into a sitting position. “What time is it?”

Cam jolted into consciousness, fumbled on the coffee table for his watch, and squinted at the dial. “Oh shit.” There ensued a frantic game of reverse Twister as they struggled to disentangle their bare limbs and get out the door.

Linnie grabbed her robe and peered under the sofa, searching for her cell phone and room key. She had fifteen minutes to grab her ID from her room and hustle through security downstairs. “I'm borrowing your shirt,” she hollered to Cam as she tucked the hem into the waistband of her flannel pajama pants.

Cam didn't hear her. He was already in the shower, soaping and rinsing with Olympic speed.

By the time she had located her belongings, he had pulled on jeans and a blue rugby shirt. Together, they raced into the elevator and hit the button for Linnie's floor.

Linnie twisted her hair up into a tangled topknot and did a quick breath check into her cupped hand.

Cam kept glancing at his watch and running his hands through his hair. “Talk later?”

“Later,” she agreed.

“I wish I could walk you to your room, but I have to get downstairs. I'm late for a critical work function.”

The chime dinged and the elevator doors slid open. “Big summit with the cooling and heating repair union?” she asked as she stepped out.

“No.” He looked a little sheepish. “I have to go judge.”

“I thought you didn't judge.” She smiled. “Isn't that your mantra?”

“I don't judge
you
.” He leaned out of the elevator, gave her a quick but very thorough kiss, then ducked back in as the door closed. “Aspiring dessert champions are another matter.”

 

T
he next five minutes were a blur. Linnie's brain had left the building and her body had gone on autopilot. She dimly noticed Ty Tottenham waiting by the elevator bank across the hall, but today she did not engage. She strode right by him, her hands trembling and her face numb, and headed straight to her suite to gather the equipment she needed for the competition.

From the piles of clothes discarded on the desk chair and the plates stacked on the room service cart outside the door, she gathered that Amy must have had a big breakfast and changed outfits several times before leaving that morning.

She slung her purse over her shoulder and cast a longing look toward her suitcase in the corner. What if she just packed up her stuff and grabbed a taxi to the airport? She could be halfway to Vegas before the Delicious Duet winner was announced, and she'd never have to face Cam, Amy, or szarlotka again.

Then she noticed a note taped to the mirror above the desk:

“
W
hat the hell happened to you?”
By the time Linnie finally showed up, Amy had deteriorated into an exposed nerve ending in human form. “We're starting in two minutes.”

For the last three hours, Amy's stress had been snowballing while she waited for her sister to show. But now that Linnie had finally scurried in, looking even more frazzled than Amy herself, Amy's anxiety skyrocketed to unprecedented heights.

She hadn't even recognized her sister at first. Between the baggy man's shirt and the shapeless lumberjack pants, Linnie looked like she should be strumming a guitar and begging for change out on a street corner. Her hair was pulled back, her complexion looked sickly, and her brown eyes had gone vacant and dull.

This was not the look of a woman in the Zone.

“Hey.” She grabbed Linnie's shoulder and gave it a little shake. “I can't do this without you!”

“It's okay,” Linnie murmured, obviously trying to convince herself. “Everything's under control.”

“How can you say that?” Amy cried. “Nothing's under control. It's chaos and looting and rioting in the streets! You're late! You're the last person here!”

“Please stop yelling at me. I'm doing the best I can.”

Amy complied, but only because her sister's meek, apologetic demeanor was freaking her out.

“I have two minutes to spare, and I'm not the last contestant to show up.” Linnie nodded over at Ty, who had just arrived at the adjacent prep station. “He is.”

“Those two are so dysfunctional,” Amy said. “And by the way, you look like hot death. Are you wearing pajamas?”

Linnie stroked the fine white fabric of her wrinkled shirt. “This is Gucci, I'll have you know.”

Since the semifinal round had winnowed down the competition, the baking stations now took up less than half of the ballroom. The extra space had been used to accomodate additional rows of folding chairs in front of the platform stage. Media presence had increased at least tenfold, with journalists roving the aisles and a few radio and TV outlets broadcasting live. “And you never answered my question. Why did you go off the grid last night? I tried to call you a hundred times.”

“I had my phone on vibrate.” Linnie folded her hands primly. “We must have slept through it.”

“Were you hibernating like a bear? Were you drugged?”

“What can I say?” Linnie ducked her head, inhaling Cam's scent on her shirt. “We wore ourselves out.”

Snowley Millington made his grand entrance through the double doors at the front of the room. He strode past the rows of prep stations and up to the stage, preening for the cameras all the way. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a booming ringmaster voice. “Welcome to the fiftieth annual Delicious Duet Dessert Championship. Delicious sugar has been bringing friends and family together for over seventy years now, and it is our great pleasure to introduce the contestants who have qualified for the final round this morning. Each year, we select our semifinalists from a pool of thousands of submitted recipes. Our test kitchen in Camarillo, California, reviews these submissions and selects the very best of the best. The finalists hail from all over our great nation, from sea to shining sea, bound together by one common passion.”

“Money,” Linnie whispered.

“Publicity,” Amy threw in.

“Baking. The teams you see here today represent the ne plus ultra of home cooking. Let's give them all a round of applause.” With a flourish, he twisted the dial on a giant green oven timer. A single high-pitched ding sounded throughout the ballroom. “The Delicious Duet Dessert Championship has officially begun!”

“Let's do this.” Amy first gave their runner the signal to go raid the pantry, then dropped to the floor and pulled stacks of bowls out of the storage cupboard so she could assemble the
mise en place
of dry ingredients. “The secret sisterhood is now in effect. Wonder Twin powers activate!”

But her Wonder Twin didn't activate. Linnie peered into the big clear bowl of the food processor, swaying on her feet.

Amy glanced up, but her hands never stopped moving. “What's with you?”

“I think I need to sit down.”

“Are you kidding me? If I'm not allowed to take a bathroom break, you're not allowed to kick back in a recliner.” Amy collected the metal measuring spoons, the measuring cups, and the food scale. “I know you're tired, but the adrenaline's going to kick in any second. Suck it up. Isn't that what you always say?”

The runner returned, carrying a large tray stacked with the necessary ingredients, and Linnie deposited the flour on the counter with a thud. “Something happened this morning. With Cam.”

“Boy trouble? That's what this is all about?” Amy opened the refrigerator to stash the butter and sour cream. “You need to forget Cam McMillan even exists. Focus like a laser, Linnie. Think about your brooch. Think about Grammy Syl. I wasn't kidding about the wake thing. This morning, while you were passed out in the penthouse, I had a twenty-minute phone conversation with Grammy, who wanted to discuss her elaborate plans for her own funeral. She's already got her outfit picked out, you know, and all the readings she wants everyone to do.”

“That's beyond morbid,” Linnie said. “Very meticulous, though. The lady knows what she wants.”

“I'll tell you what she wants: She wants to wear that diamond brooch for the viewing. She went on and on about it. So I don't care what you do or who you do it with after this pie is in the oven, but until then, buckle down. Right now, the only people who matter are you, me, and the judges.”

“I have to tell you something.” Linnie held out her palm. “And I'm going to need to take that rolling pin away from you before I do.”

“Oh boy.” Amy handed it over and folded her arms. “I'm ready. Go.”

“I think Cam is one of the judges.”

Amy blinked. “Why would you think that?”

Linnie looked like she was about to start hyperventilating. “Because this morning he told me he had to go downstairs and judge a dessert competition.”

Amy nodded and started measuring out the sugar. “Okay.”

“No, not okay!” Linnie wrung her hands. “This is a disaster. We're going to be disqualified. The rules clearly state that we're not allowed to contact or influence the judges in any way. That includes naked chess and exchanging bodily fluids.”

“Well, I'm the only person who knows, and I'm not talking,” Amy said. “What did he say when you told him you were a contestant?”

“Nothing, because I didn't get a chance to explain. He kind of sprang it on me at the last possible second.”

“How on earth did this happen, anyway?” Amy finished weighing the sugar and moved on to the flour. “I thought all the judges were staying off-site.”

“They are, but Cam's family owns this hotel,” Linnie pointed out. “He's working fifteen-hour days. He's not going to relocate to the Marriott. That must be why the hotel staff wasn't supposed to let us stay up in the South Tower.”

“Well, they sure dropped the ball on that one.” Amy shook her head. “Why is he judging this? Is he a pastry chef in addition to being a hotel tycoon?”

“No,” Linnie said. “He doesn't even like desserts. But since the McMillan chain is a major corporate sponsor, they get to appoint a guest judge on the panel.”

“Well, if he doesn't know that you're a contestant and nobody knows that you two are getting it on, then what's your problem?”

“We're breaking the rules.” Linnie started strangling the flour sack again.

“We broke the rules when Grammy entered her recipe as our own,” Amy reminded her. “We're low-down, dirty rule breakers. That's just who we are. No point in freaking out about it now.”

“But . . .” Linnie swallowed. “He'll be judging me.”

“Well, yes, that's pretty much what judges do. But since he'll never know which entry is ours—”

“He's going to be criticizing my work and taking points off for every little thing that's not perfect.” Right on cue, the red neck splotches started to materialize. “I cannot do this, Amy. The pressure is—”

Amy reached her capacity for crazy talk. “Zip it.
Cállate la boca. Ferme la bouche
. If I say it in Latin, will you shut up?”

“
Fac taceas
,” Linnie murmured.

“Thank you. Now look at me.” She waited until Linnie complied. “You've prepped this crust hundreds of times. All you have to do is churn out some dough, and I will take it from there. But I need those butter striations. So get cracking.”

At last, Linnie started moving. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a stick of butter. “You're so bossy.”

“One of us has to be.” Amy handed her a knife. “Consider this your engraved invitation to join me in the Zone.”

All around them, teams were already whisking and mixing and dicing. The smells of chocolate and fruit and simple syrup commingled in the air.

“Have you consulted my checklist?” Linnie asked. “We're way behind schedule.”