Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Fletch
I knock on the door to Cam’s Café for a second time. Cam had confirmed that I should meet her here at nine fifteen sharp. It’s now nine seventeen.
The door to the back of the café opens and Cam appears. She’s backlit by the light in the kitchen. Her red hair looks ethereal.
She slowly walks to the door and for a long moment we stare at each other through the glass. Finally, she unlocks the door and pushes it open.
I step inside and smell something wonderful. Raising my face into the air, I sniff. “What is that?”
She grins. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Sounds ominous,” I retort.
She shrugs and I follow her into the kitchen.
She places her hands on her hips and motions to three plates.
“Cranberry cupcakes with orange frosting.” She points to some cupcakes. “Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink peppermint cookies.” She motions to a plate of cookies and a pie. “A pine soda pie.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Pine soda?”
She nods. “I heard the theme is childhood Christmas memories. My mom always made orange cinnamon rolls and I used to like to eat them with some candied cranberries. Peppermint candy canes were my fave. And my grandmother always made a pine soda pie. I don’t have her recipe, so this is my twist on it. ”
Interesting. The fact that she shared these things with me feels very…
intimate as if we’re on a date. For the briefest of moments, I wonder what her family is like.
Does her family have one of those big American holiday parties that you see in movies?
Did her grandmother live with her family?
A dozen questions pop into my head but I don’t ask a single one. Instead, I step forward.
She motions for me to try one. I take a bite of a cupcake because the orange smell is calling to me. I hold back a groan. Damn. This is good.
I chew and am surprised by little pops in my mouth. I swallow. “Is that…are the cranberries…” I trail off as I examine the cupcake more closely.
“I candied the cranberries first and then dipped them in powdered sugar so they wouldn’t sink to the bottom,” she explains. I’ve heard of pastry chefs rolling things like blueberries in flour to prevent them from sinking, but this is genius.
I nod and set the cupcake down. I move on to the cookie. I take a bite. Shockingly, the peppermint isn’t as overpowering as I thought it would be. There’s just a hint of it.
I look over at her. “I did the smallest amount of crushed peppermint. I didn’t think people would want to be overpowered.” She pauses and reaches over, taking a bite of one of them. She chews it and tilts her head to one side as if contemplating something.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m not a hundred percent about this one. I like it, but peppermint is a strong flavor. I might lose some judges with it. What do you think?” she asks.
I nod. She’s not wrong. “I agree. Maybe we consider a different cookie just to be safe.”
She reaches over and cuts a piece of pie and sets it on a plate with a fork. She pushes it over to me after adding a dollop of what looks to be homemade whipped cream.
I examine it, still unsure about this one. With a slight shrug, I take a bite. It’s shockingly good, like really good.
“This is great,” I admit begrudgingly.
She smiles, and with another fork, she takes a small bite right from the pie. She grins. “Gan-gan would be proud.”
“Gan-gan?” I ask, fighting a smirk.
She blushes and the color of pink roses coats her ivory skin.
I watch it bloom across her neck and I wonder if it goes all the way to her breasts which are covered by the T-shirt she’s wearing.
I give my head a little shake to clear my thoughts.
I absolutely cannot think about her that way. What the hell is wrong with me?
“That’s what we called my grandmother.” Her blush grows a little darker. “I couldn’t say Grandma.”
I smirk. “You seem to have recently mastered it. Well done, you.”
The blush dissipates and she glares at me.
“So, what are we going to do for the cookie?” I ask, deciding to ignore her cute angry stare.
She whips around and pulls a tray of cookies off her cooling rack. She places it in front of me.
“What am I looking at here?”
“I read an article about your family and it inspired this cookie,” she states as she motions to the cookies.
I give her a curious look. “What article?”
She pulls a phone out of the pocket of her apron and passes it to me.
I scan an article from about ten years ago.
I don’t remember this at all, but then again, I was probably tripping balls on a Caribbean island or fucking two girls at once on the family yacht.
I grimace at the memories. The article was mostly interviewing my mother about holiday traditions in the McDowell family. She mentioned eggnog.
“Eggnog?” I ask, memories are falling from the far corners of my mind. It was something we always had at the holidays. We didn’t have many traditions but that was most definitely one of them.
She nods. I bite into a cookie. It definitely has an eggnog taste to it and it also has a cinnamon-flavored frosting with little gold flecks. And fuck, this is a good cookie.
“This is the one,” I state as I finish the cookie and grab another. “How did you get the cookie to mimic the eggnog flavor so well?”
She smirks. “I guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”
Now, it’s me glaring at her. “You know by contract I get the recipes, right?”
She nods. “Yep.”
I feel my jaw clenching. This woman drives me insane.
“Fine,” I say sighing. “I’ll approve these three recipes. But we should come up with a fourth one in case of a bake-off tiebreaker round.”
She nods. “What else do you remember from the holidays?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a holiday type of person,” I admit.
I start thinking and truly I don’t remember a lot about holidays.
My parents always threw a big holiday party for friends and family.
We often went to our beach house in the Caribbean for New Year's.
There were always lavish gifts. But not a ton of traditions.
Then a single memory comes to the front of the pack. “Gingerbread,” I state as I look over at her.
Her lips twitch and I can tell she’s fighting a grin, but the smile wins and spreads across her face. I realize I haven’t seen her smile before, not really. She’s breathtaking like this. She should always be smiling.
“I love it. We used to make gingerbread houses at my gan-gan’s house,” she says, her smile widening.
“We used to make them too. Well, my brothers mostly made them and I just sat and ate the candy and gingerbread men,” I admit.
She giggles and now I’m fighting a smile. “Same. My brother is a lot older than me. I think he would get frustrated with my childish antics. I loved eating those little cinnamon candies and the gumdrops.”
“Red or green?” I ask, raising an eyebrow in a challenge.
“Red, of course.”
I laugh. “So there is something we have in common.”
She rolls her eyes. “What? I doubt it, aside from we are both humans, living in the same city, working in the same industry, we’re both youngest siblings, we’re both business people, both love eggnog and red gumdrops, and we both have a penchant for speaking before we think?”
Well, talk about feeling called out. “Fine, I guess we have about eight things in common.”
“Oh my God, did we just become friends?” she asks sarcastically.
“Nope. No worries there, you are still my competitor except when we are working on this competition,” I say, my jaw ticcing as I let her get to me again. I need to play it cool. I cannot let this woman win even one small battle.
“Fine, a truce only during our working hours together,” she says as she holds out her hand.
I shake it. “Works for me. Speaking of working hours. I’m done for the night. I need you to send me a list of supplies. I’ll have our staff stock them for the competition,” I state as I head to the door.
“Anything else, sire?” she asks as she follows me.
“Sire? Really? That’s the best you can do?”
She shrugs. “It’s late. I’m sure I can be more irritating at our next meeting.”
“Please see that you are,” I say as I open the door. She walks up to me with a bag in her hand and I look at it.
“I boxed some of the things up in case you want any other taste testers,” she explains.
I take the bag. “I think I should taste-test them all again. Just to be sure, of course.”
She laughs. “Well, let me know any further thoughts, then.”
“I will,” I say as I leave, fighting the urge to smile. Why does this infuriating woman have to be so charming and witty? Part of that makes me hate her more, but I also feel a pull toward her in a way that I will not be letting myself explore.
I contemplate what just happened the entire drive home. Is Camryn Tanner not as bad as I thought? No. There’s no way. Right?