Chapter 12
B iscuits . Lucas grinned as he set to work.
It was the perfect way to start: he and Dwayne planned to make the strawberry and white chocolate shortbread that was so popular with the humans at Muddy Paws Café, and on the side, they’d make a set of dog biscuits humans could eat and enjoy, to reflect the dog treats they gave away for free.
Dwayne was already whipping out the ingredients they needed, and Lucas set the oven to preheat at the right temperature.
When he glanced up at Clem not a few minutes later, the camera was sweeping by, homing in on her. Jonathan was accompanying it and asking her questions.
‘How are we feeling about round one, girls?’ he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘We know everyone is feeling really excited about you two!’
Did he mean Sylvie and Clem? Or was he talking about the comments made online, about Muddy Paws and Catpurrcino? Lucas wasn’t sure.
Clem must have asked herself the same question, because she dropped the carton of eggs she was holding at once.
The eggs splattered and cracked around her Converse, coating the front of them in gooey egg, the rest of the stringy liquid layered on the fake wooden floor.
Lucas hitched in a breath. Without thinking, he whizzed around the side of his workstation with their own carton of eggs, which had been sitting on the countertop.
‘Here,’ he said softly, holding the carton out to Clem. ‘Take what you need.’
As he spoke, he was now wondering if he should have remained at his own workstation.
The camera had swept from the spilled eggs to eagle in on him, filming their interaction.
He wanted to swat it away when her eyes widened, but he restrained himself, and tried to keep his back to the lens, shielding her.
He hadn’t meant to do this. Lucas had acted on impulse, automatically, as if he were working at Muddy Paws.
‘Th-Thank you,’ Clem spluttered. She glanced from him to the camera, looking like a nervous squirrel at risk of being spooked.
Reaching for the eggs, her fingertips brushed his as she took the paper carton, sending icy shivers down Lucas’s spine, even though warmth was building in the tent from the ovens.
It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to help her clean up the eggs splattered on the ground. But he held it in. He was wasting his own time. This wasn’t a charity bake sale, and he wasn’t working in catering and helping a colleague, either.
‘Get back here, mate,’ Dwayne was calling to him, right on cue. ‘Focus on your own bloody biscuits!’
Jonathan laughed, and the cameraman moved to Dwayne to catch him in the shot, too. Clem’s cheeks had flushed pinker, rose-red in intensity. ‘’Scuse me,’ she said, hurrying past Lucas to grab a nearby sweeping brush for the mess of eggshells.
The rush of air in her wake made him catch his breath, her long skirt brushing his legs as she hurried by.
Shaking himself, he rushed to his own workstation.
What was he doing ? His brain seemed to have forgotten he wasn’t at work.
Lucas told himself that was all it was: a knee-jerk mechanism learned from years of co-owning a café.
It hadn’t meant anything. Or had he spent too long helping his parents, his default setting becoming helper?
This was a competition; he needed to get his act together and win the prize money.
Behaving in this way would make those comments online worse, too.
‘Focus,’ Dwayne hissed at him. He’d already greased a baking tin and lined it with paper.
‘My bad.’
‘And you say you aren’t interested in women,’ said Dwayne, with an eyeroll.
Snapping to attention, Lucas began blending the butter and sugar to a pale fluffiness, adding a splash of vanilla while Dwayne measured out the flour.
As they worked, it was like Clem was a burning presence nearby, hot sunlight peeking from behind a building – he was aware of her even when he wasn’t looking at her.
The camera was still fixed on the Catpurrcino workstation, and he caught the tail end of an abrupt comment from Sylvie, directed at Jonathan Hale: ‘. . . silly to speculate, really – and they’re the competition anyway! ’
Not long after, the camera moved away to focus on other workstations near the front of the tent. Lucas blew out a breath, glancing over at Clem. Now the camera was away from her, she seemed to have visibly relaxed, the tension dropping out of her shoulders.
Dwayne had added the flour to their mixing bowl and was swiftly combining it with Lucas’s other ingredients to form dough.
Together, they floured their fingers until they were coated in white, and patted the dough into the pan Dwayne had already lined.
‘I’ll dock it and get it in the oven,’ said Dwayne, rummaging around for a fork.
Lucas nodded. They’d already decided the strawberry compote was his job – he always did it best – while Dwayne sorted out the white chocolate. He forced himself to tune out the room, and to stop his focus from straying to Clem as she bustled up and down her own workstation, skirt swishing.
When their crust was baked and Dwayne’s white chocolate was setting in the fridge, the camera roved over to them, the lens glinting as it caught the sunlight starting to spill in through the transparent side of the tent.
Lucas tried to occupy himself but his strawberry compote was still heating and there wasn’t much to do but stir it occasionally and aggressively clean the workstation so he looked busy.
The cameraman – and Jonathan – soon swept over to their workstation. Jonathan quizzed Lucas on what he was making today, and he was happy to answer, but all too soon the line of discussion went down a track Lucas didn’t like.
‘Your café, Muddy Paws, and Catpurrcino, the cat café, have proven quite popular already!’ Jonathan said. ‘What’s more, you seem naturally drawn to one another. Have you become . . . friendly outside the competition as well?’
A snarky retort of no comment whizzed across Lucas’s mind, but it made him sound so petulant – he wasn’t speaking with a journalist – so he decided against it.
Maybe they’d chosen to have Jonathan quiz them on purpose; he was a social media personality.
He must have seen the speculations, realised they could use this as an angle for Whisked Away to make it more exciting.
Draw it out during the rounds. Most of the team had probably realised that.
‘I imagine everyone here sees this as a friendly competition,’ he said instead, reminding himself of a politician trying to dodge a fraught topic he didn’t want to give a straight answer to.
‘We’re not mortal enemies.’ He smiled at the camera and stirred his compote some more, the strawberry-jam scent wafting up his nostrils.
But this only gave Jonathan another angle. He was practically frothing at the mouth when he replied, in an overly jovial voice: ‘But cats and dogs are known to be mortal enemies, aren’t they?’ He laughed. ‘Still, they say opposites attract!’
Thankfully, his strawberry compote was thick enough now, so he removed it from the heat and pretended to asked Dwayne if the white chocolate was setting okay, even though he knew it wouldn’t be ready yet.
Jonathan lost interest in him and drifted away to the workstation to their left, followed by the camera.
Over at the Catpurrcino workstation, Sylvie was melting chocolate, and Clem was meticulously decorating some biscuits she’d shaped into neat cat-head and pawprint shapes.
There were a few discarded ones nearby, broken up into bits, as if she’d decided they weren’t good enough – or she’d made a mess of them out of nerves; he couldn’t tell.
When the baking was done, they lined up behind the counter at the back of the tent with their bakes in front of them.
By this point, the day was getting on, and the tent was hot and sticky from the ovens and the people.
Dwayne had undone the top few buttons of his shirt, and Lucas’s scalp was prickling with sweat.
The staff placed them in a strict order behind the counter, rather than allowing them to stand where they wanted.
And Lucas found himself shoved shoulder to shoulder with Clem by a member of the crew with long, pink acrylic nails.
He was so surprised when they scratched his arm accidentally, he bashed into Clem with some force.
She stumbled, and he reached for her without thinking as she tripped, his arm going around her and pulling her upright.
Clem looked up at him, wide-eyed, cheeks cast in a hue of delicate pink.
He could smell sugar and butter on her clothes, and instead of stiffening at his touch, he could have sworn he heard her let out a soft sigh of relief.
He was reminded, stupidly, of those scenes in old movies he’d seen where a man grasps a woman around the waist.
He released her at once. ‘Sorry,’ he said, motioning at the cat biscuits she’d been lovingly working on. She’d almost crashed into them, and that could have sent them tumbling to the floor and breaking into pieces. ‘I thought you might break them . . .’
Clem raised her eyebrows. The flush remained on her cheeks. He wished he could read minds. What was that look she was giving him? What was she thinking?
Lucas had to suppress a groan when a shaft of sunlight caught the camera lens that had turned to them. The camera was watching them yet again, pointed straight towards them. Had it seen that interaction too?
Clem looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead she snapped her mouth shut and focused on the front of the room, on the judges.
They were side by side, like the lead singers in a band arriving to a sea of delirious fans – all were beaming and looking round appreciatively, and Ronan called out, ‘Now, are we ready?’
There were some nods and a scattering of applause for the judges as they stood before the table.