Chapter Thirty-One
D o you really not care that you were eliminated?”
It was two a.m. and they were baking muffins in the inn’s kitchen—which was a terrible idea on multiple levels. Mac was being picked up in six hours, Magda had a nine a.m. call time, and both of them should be sleeping, but instead they’d thrown on his pajamas and snuck down to the kitchen.
Magda wore Mac’s button-down flannel pajama top and a pair of his boxer briefs, while Mac wore the matching pajama bottoms and a white undershirt that had been worn to threadbare softness. Magda had never really been comfortable lolling about naked—even after sex. But there was something about sharing his PJs that somehow felt more intimate than if they’d been naked in bed together.
They’d both been wide awake and starving. So an impromptu private muffin competition had been irresistible. They’d each made one tray of six muffins—Magda’s blueberry crumble and his maple bacon jalape?o—and were now waiting for them to finish baking.
Anyone could walk in on them—and Magda wouldn’t put it past the producers to try to make this part of the show—but she was having a night of very satisfying bad decisions. And she was tired of playing by the rules. Their rules sucked.
“I mean I care ,” Mac answered, peeking through the oven door to check on the muffins. “I would have loved that quarter of a million dollars—can you imagine the kind of space I could have gotten for the Cup with that? But I was always going to need an act of God to get past Sugar Week, and I guess She was busy elsewhere.”
“I was terrified of Bread Week,” Magda admitted. “I think I trained for that week more than any other. That and Sugar Week. I can’t count the burn scars on my hands anymore.”
He removed his muffin tray from the oven and set them aside to cool, then handed Magda the oven mitt so she could take her own muffins out.
When she set down her muffins, she turned to face him, leaning back against the counter. “It isn’t going to be the same without you.”
Something fierce kindled in his eyes. “You better not stop fighting for it just because I’m gone. If you let Tim win, I’ll never forgive you.”
She laughed. “As if it’s my choice? I just decide who wins?”
“Why not? You’ve always had the skill. You were the only one who thought you couldn’t take the whole thing.”
“I only won when you and I were partnered together. The closest I ever got by myself was second or third—good baking, good technique, but nothing special. No X factor.”
“You won that Skills Challenge,” he reminded her. “The one where you sabotaged me and Tim.”
“A Skills Challenge. Where they want us to replicate something they gave us. No creativity needed. But no one ever wins Cake-Off by being a perfect technique robot.”
He caught her hands, pulling her toward him. Her monogrammed inn slippers skidded across the tiles. “You aren’t a robot,” he insisted. Their fingers tangled together as he bent to kiss her. “You’re holding yourself back.” His head still bent close to hers, he murmured, “I’ve never understood how someone as brave as you are doesn’t want to take risks with her bakes.”
“Brave?” she asked incredulously. “Me?”
“You don’t think going to France when you didn’t know anyone and barely spoke the language was brave? Or starting your own business all by yourself? Or coming on a baking show and signing up to have everything you do criticized on national television?”
“I started my business with my aunt, so it never really felt like I was doing it alone—and I was mad at you. Which I guess makes me brave, because I was mad at you when I decided to go to France, too.”
“And the show? Was that also part of your quest for vengeance against me?”
It was so strange to have him talk about her hating him with that little quirk of his lips, as if their feud for the last fourteen years was now an inside joke they shared. “That wasn’t about you.”
“So why? What first made Magda Miller want to compete on the Cake-Off ?”
“It scared me,” she admitted, meeting his eyes. “Charlotte had just broken up with her awful ex and wanted us all to get dogs and swear off men.”
“I remember that.”
“Right. George.” Mac and George had become friends while Charlotte had been mid–Puppy Pact. “Obviously that didn’t quite work out. But for me… I’d never really dated all that much—but I always felt like I should , you know? Like everyone was just waiting for me to get married and settle down and bake birthday cakes for my kids. I don’t know how much of that was people actually expecting that and how much of it was me thinking that was what I was supposed to do, but when we made that ridiculous pact, it was like suddenly there was this other choice. My ‘little bakery’ didn’t have to be what I did until I got married and had kids. It could be my thing. My main thing.”
He nodded, but didn’t interrupt, and Magda went on. “I started thinking about what I would do if I didn’t care what I was supposed to do—I loved going to that pastry academy. It was terrifying, and it was not at all what I was supposed to do, but I loved it. So I asked myself what I would do if I wasn’t scared. If I wasn’t trying to follow the rules. If I just went for it .”
“Cake-Off,” he said, and she nodded.
“I’d wanted to be on the show since the second I first saw it, watching with Aunt Lena, but that was when I knew I had to go for it. I knew I had to try, or I would always wonder what if. Even if it scared me senseless.”
“See?” His lips quirked in that smile. “Brave.”
She met his eyes—and tonight? Tonight she did feel brave. And she couldn’t believe how much she’d held herself back.
Her stomach chose that moment to growl, and they both grinned. “Come on,” he said. “The muffins should be cool enough by now.”
They sampled the muffins right there in the kitchen, imitating Joanie and Alexander Clay and mock-judging each other. But when Magda tasted his maple bacon jalape?o muffin, she groaned.
“Damn it. You win. This is so much better than mine.”
“Nonsense,” he immediately countered. “Have you even tried this?” He pinched off a piece of her blueberry crumble and held it up to her lips.
She took the bite, and she had to admit that it was delicious—though the feeling of his thumb grazing her lower lip after she took the morsel into her mouth might have impacted the experience somewhat.
“They actually complement each other,” Magda commented, taking a bite of each.
“See? Bringing out the best in each other since…” He trailed off.
“Approximately ten days ago?” she finished for him.
“It’s weird. It feels like a lot longer.”
“ Cake-Off Standard Time.” She eyed him, taking another bite of his muffin.
Time moved differently here. They were still in the Cake-Off bubble. Everything was heightened and more immediate, and they were with each other 24/7. Would it be different when they got back to the real world?
Well, obviously it would be different , but how?
They’d vaguely mentioned “after,” but she didn’t want that outside world to intrude here, didn’t want to come right out and ask if this had been a show fling. Even if this felt like the beginning of something. Or, if she was being precise, like it was the evolution of something that had been building between them for years.
She didn’t want to think about it too hard. He was leaving in a few hours, and she just wanted to stay inside this moment, the light and easy and slightly against-the-rules moment of baking in the middle of the night with him.
His gaze was intent on her mouth. “You have a little something…”
He reached out a thumb, and she ran her tongue out to meet it. Mac’s eyes did that going-black thing that made her toes curl and he bent his head. “Here, let me.” Then he was kissing her, his own tongue stroking her lip and into her mouth, and he tasted of blueberry and maple and salt, and she pressed her thighs together on a rush of heat until he grabbed her waist, boosting her up onto the counter, and she was very glad there was nothing hot or sharp in range because a kitchen was a terrible place to make out, even when it wasn’t a public kitchen—
She broke away with a gasp. “The PAs,” she panted.
Mac swore, jerking back with his hands in the air like Jeffrey Flanders had just called time on a Skills Challenge. “Upstairs?” he asked, still breathing raggedly.
Magda jumped down from the counter and scooped the remaining muffins into a bag, quickly tossing the muffin tins into the dishwasher alongside the rest of the dishes they’d used. Mac tossed in the soap and hit the button to run it, grabbing her hand as they raced out of the kitchen and up the stairs, laughing and shushing each other the entire way.
“I should let you sleep,” he said as soon as the door closed behind them. But he was still prowling toward her.
And Magda had never been less tired. She didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but she knew she didn’t want tonight to end. She tossed the bag of muffins aside. “Don’t you dare,” she said, pulling his head down to hers for a long, lingering kiss.
When they finally came up for air, Mac was grinning. “You’re the boss, sugar.”
“And don’t you forget it.”