Chapter Seventeen
D id you really punch Mac in the face on camera?”
Magda groaned as Leah sat down across from her with those words. “Where did you hear that?”
“From two different PAs. It’s the hot rumor on set,” Leah explained as she opened a bottle of wine.
“I heard it too,” Eunice added—and Magda cringed.
“I didn’t punch him,” she clarified. “I might have almost slapped him, but it was all for the show. We staged it for the photo shoot.”
Leah snorted her disbelief, and even sweet, bubbly Eunice looked skeptical.
The remaining Red Team cohort had congregated in the inn’s breakfast room with a couple of bottles of wine that Leah had somehow managed to procure—though it was a smaller group since Walter had declared himself too exhausted to grab a drink, and Abby was off trying to get the Cake-Off producers to let her call her family again. She’d been able to wrangle supervised calls a few times already, but being separated from her kids was proving harder on her than she’d anticipated.
Beyond them, Magda, Eunice, and Leah were all that was left of the Red Team, after Josh’s tearful exit this evening when he and his dad fell victim to the double elimination, but Leah had insisted they had to celebrate Magda’s win and the three of them making it through the first week of filming—or week three, as it was becoming bizarrely natural to think of it.
Before they’d been released for the day, Jeffrey Flanders had announced the week four theme in the most vague and confusing way possible—calling it a “World Series of Pies”—but other than their designated practice times in the inn’s kitchen, the weekend was their own.
Though the same rules applied. No phones. No internet. No recipe books. No leaving the inn.
It did limit what they were able to do quite a bit—but it didn’t stop them from celebrating, small though their celebration may be. They could have invited the Blue Team bakers to join them, but there was still too much animosity between the two groups.
It was a strange season. They would forever be linked to those Blue Team bakers, sharing this bizarre experience, but Magda felt like a line had been drawn between the two teams that couldn’t be crossed.
The Blue Team didn’t seem to have bonded the same way the Red Team had. They were much more “every man for himself.” But Magda was incredibly grateful for Eunice and Leah. Having someone to go through this crazy experience with was invaluable.
Even when they were watching her with expressions that screamed they didn’t believe a word she’d just said.
“I believe you almost hit him,” Leah said. “I just don’t believe it was all for show. Even if you did plan it.”
“Are people really talking about it?” Magda wanted to crawl under the table. As if sensing her distress, the inn’s terrier, Ethan Allen, padded over to her and hopped onto her lap. She immediately sank her fingers into his wiry fur for some puppy therapy.
“If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t the only ones who lost it,” Leah said. “Apparently Abby and Cherise got in a screaming fight at their photo shoot, during which Abby called Cherise a spoiled brat who’d always had everything handed to her, and Cherise called Abby a judgmental bitch who couldn’t stand anyone who had made different life choices than she did.” She lifted her wine glass in a mock toast. “Good times.”
Magda grimaced. That did not, in fact, make her feel any better. “How were your rival shoots?”
“I didn’t cry,” Eunice said, as if that was an achievement in itself.
“And I didn’t stab Tim in the throat with a paring knife. We’re all winners here.”
“I can’t picture you with Tim.” Magda took a sip of her wine, still feeling far from celebratory.
“Can you believe I used to find his confidence sexy? He was always a dick, but he was so good at what he did, and he never doubted himself or whether he belonged in the best kitchens. Somehow, being with him felt like that extended to me. Like I belonged more, too.” Leah grimaced. “Welcome to my emotional baggage.”
“He’ll go home soon,” Magda promised—though it was more hope than confidence. Tim and Abby had been the other team in the top today.
“I’m just glad Walter and I squeaked through. Poor Josh.”
“Poor Josh,” Eunice and Magda echoed, all of them raising their glasses and taking a sip.
“Stephen really is a gargantuan asshat. And Tim—but we knew that already.”
“Were you okay today?” Magda asked Eunice. “Your bake looked pretty contentious.”
Eunice groaned. “I wish it didn’t bother me. I tell myself his opinion doesn’t matter, but it’s like I can’t do anything right, and then I hear my parents saying I should go back to school for accounting and do something practical. That this is a nice hobby, but it’s time to be responsible because there’s no way I can win.”
Magda took Eunice’s hand. “And here I thought I was going to be the shy one who needed to believe in herself.”
“Shy?” Leah asked incredulously. “With the way you and Mac glare lasers at each other? No one was going to believe that.”
“What’s the deal with you two?” Eunice asked.
“No deal,” Magda evaded. “We’ve just never gotten along.”
Leah arched an eyebrow. “Is that what you’re trying to sell the cameras? Because it isn’t very convincing.”
“She’s right,” Eunice agreed.
“We’ve told you ours,” Leah coaxed.
She wasn’t wrong. Her friends had been so open with her. Magda didn’t want to lie to them, but…
“It’s embarrassing.”
“The reason you hit him?”
“ Almost hit him.” Magda blushed, but took a fortifying sip of white wine and forced herself to admit. “A million years ago, we both took a baking class at King Arthur.”
Leah oooh ed eagerly, settling in for the story.
“I had a huge crush on him—and I got it in my head that it was reciprocated, even though I was barely eighteen and he was twenty-four and owned his own business. I actually thought he wanted me as his business partner—in addition to his romantic partner.”
Both of her friends winced sympathetically. She hadn’t told this story in a long time—not since it happened. And then only Kendall and Charlotte had known. But she forced herself to keep going.
“At the end of the summer, I wrote up this whole business plan and made him a special cake that all the women in my family make for the man they love—”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. He laughed me out of the building.” He’d been so repulsed by her. Horrified by the very idea. “So I ran away to Paris and enrolled in a pastry academy. Best thing I ever did. I learned everything I could, staying in Europe and taking more courses. It was three years before I came back—and I’d probably seen Sabrina too many times, but I really thought he would take one look at my posh Parisian-trained self and beg me to be his pastry chef—after which he would naturally realize what a fool he’d been and fall madly in love with me while we were making pain au chocolat. And I would reject him, of course,” she insisted, because she wanted this next part to be true. “I didn’t want him anymore. I simply wanted him to fall at my feet, showering me with apologies until I ultimately decided whether he was good enough for me.”
“Of course,” Leah agreed. “But?”
“But instead, I came home to find that Mac had used my business plan to expand his business—to the letter. And he was selling my grandmother’s famous maple cake in his café.”
Leah winced. “Damn.”
“He kept insisting he had no idea what I was talking about, but he’d obviously stolen my family recipe on the same night he rejected me.”
“Dick move.”
“Total dick move,” Magda agreed. “I’m standing there with my resume like an idiot—and he tells me he can’t afford to hire anyone because he’s getting ready to move to a prime location that’s opening up on the square. He just needed to get his deposit together.”
Leah nodded, already seeing where this was going. “And you snagged it.”
“Oh no,” Eunice moaned. “I wanted you to open a place there together—”
“Yeah. This is not that story. I may have wanted him to beg me to be his pastry chef, but my aunt and I had been talking about opening a little French bakery in Pine Hollow for years—and it really was a prime location. It’s not my fault he didn’t have the deposit and I did.” She shrugged. “The feud sort of snowballed from there. He refused to be on a town committee because I was on it, and the word got out that we hated each other. It became a whole thing. People in town took sides—for a while, it was almost a game.”
“But then why did you try to smack him today?” Eunice asked.
Magda flushed, embarrassed all over again. “We never talk about why we’re feuding—people in town make a game of guessing, but no one really knows, except my best friends. I didn’t think it even meant enough to Mac for him to talk about it, you know? But now the producers keep asking us how it started and telling us one of us is going to get to control the narrative, and I keep saying he stole a family recipe—and I think he’s been telling them I stole his spot on the square—but then today, when we were at that photo shoot, he referenced the night he rejected me. In front of twenty people and cameras and… all of a sudden I was eighteen and begging him to want me, and he was laughing at me again. I’ve never even thought about slapping someone before. I don’t know what came over me. And then I panicked. Even though I didn’t actually hit him, do you know how easy it would be for them to make it look like I did? Or for him to say the only reason I didn’t was because he stopped me? He could have gotten me kicked off the show. But instead he said it was planned. It was staged. And I don’t know why. I don’t know… Do I owe him now? Is that what this is?”
“Maybe he wants to make amends,” Eunice suggested softly.
“He did suggest a truce, but how do I trust that? We’ve been at each other’s throats for fourteen years. How do I trust that this isn’t some tactic?”
“You don’t,” Leah said firmly. “This show is not about amends. Not this season.”
“But it could be,” Eunice argued.
“People don’t change,” Leah insisted. “They just reveal who they are.”
“Yeah, but it was a long time ago. What if he regrets it, but he doesn’t know how to change the pattern you’ve fallen into?” Eunice said. “You guys obviously worked well together today. We all tasted that cake. It was insane—” Her eyes flared. “Wait, was that the cake?”
At Magda’s nod, Eunice groaned. “I should hate him for that, shouldn’t I? For stealing your cake? But I just want everyone to live happily ever after.”
“Again, sweetie, this is not that season,” Leah said.
“Why not?” Eunice demanded. “I would love to change the way I am with Zain. I don’t think he’s actually a bad person. And I thought maybe since he knew I was coming on this show, he had to want that pattern to change, too. At least on some level?”
“You’re too nice,” Leah said. “Tim came on this show to prove he’s better than me and fuck with my head.”
“So why did Mac come?” Eunice asked.
“I don’t know,” Magda admitted. A week ago she would have said it was some kind of revenge, but if he’d wanted to take her dream away, he’d had the perfect chance this afternoon. So why was he here?
Was it just to win? To beat her? To claim ownership of the maple cake?
Or could it be something else?
And did she want it to be?
She couldn’t open herself up to being hurt by him again. When it came to Mackenzie Newton, her walls were sky-high and fortified. But was there something else there?
Today had been good. At least when they were baking together. Those three hours had felt…
No. He’d said they brought out the worst in each other, and he wasn’t wrong. That wasn’t going to change. She just needed to ignore him and maintain the truce and focus on the show. This surreal reality they were all trapped in now.
“Forget about them,” she said, raising her glass. “To the top ten.”
Eunice and Leah clinked their glasses against hers. “To the top three ,” Leah corrected.
Magda smiled, trying to absorb some of her confidence.
She would reset her equilibrium. She would focus on her bakes. And hopefully Mac would be knocked out soon.
But somehow that thought wasn’t as comforting as she’d hoped it would be.