Chapter 7
Candace had to hand it to Laurin: he was a showman. He hit every beat of her missive, and he did it with a splash that kept a camera on him the entire duration of filming.
The camera seemed to help him, in fact. The cameraman said nothing critical, but in asking Laurin to explain what he was doing, Laurin seemed to catch several mistakes that could have set him back.
As he discussed the pitfalls of choux pastry, Laurin went to say something about proper filling technique and then blurted out, “Hold up, I forgot to make the hazelnut custard filling.” He encouraged the camera to zoom in on the madeleines in the oven and acted surprised that the improvised batter — proper batter needed to rest longer than he had time for — was rising faster than expected.
Maybe he was just that good on camera that he did have the custard already scheduled further down and did know how quickly the madeleines would rise, but Candace didn’t think so.
He was frustratingly, charmingly sincere.
She told herself she should regret helping him, that if this was his weak area, he was obviously a force to be reckoned with.
But then the cameraman voiced some skepticism over his flavor profile of the shortbread, and Laurin responded by digging up a chunk of cookie dough from the mixing bowl and waving it at Candace.
“Do you think this is okay?” he asked.
Candace stared at his finger, not sure how he wanted her to taste it, before swiping her finger up his and licking the batter off that.
Laurin’s eyelids dipped as his attention snapped right to her tongue, but he was smiling at the camera before she could think about that or about how, yeah, she kind of wanted to see what else she could do to get that reaction from him.
Then she was distracted by the contrast of a cool orange burst and a snap of black pepper.
She was about to comment on the interesting pairing when it mellowed into sweet, floral lavender.
She let it roll on her tongue, analyzing each layer and then the whole of it again. Each flavor was distinct and powerful on its own, but it all blended into a bright, intriguing marriage.
“This is exceptional,” Candace admitted, unable to hold back her compliment. She licked the rest of the dough off her finger.
Laurin watched again.
Candace’s toes curled. Just a little.
“Great, thanks,” he said after a breath and got back to his baking.
Any fuzzy feelings she might have had in her stomach flopped right to anger. Laurin was flirting with her, trying to knock her off her game. He probably figured after what happened during Summer Bakes, she’d be an easy target.
Candace was a bitch, but she wasn’t a slut, no matter how it looked on national TV. She wasn’t about to fall for Laurin’s charms. She just needed to work harder and ignore him.
She returned to her bake with a new motivation, nailing all three of her cookies to prove not only that she was better than Belle but that no man was ever going to derail her plans again.
She knew her recipes were solid, but she scratched her plan to lay the cookies out on a nice platter and let the flavors speak for themselves.
Instead of the simple display, she took the bottom of a box and wrapped it in parchment.
She used gold leaf on both the turtles and the sandwich cookies to spruce them up before stacking them in the box and made stands out of chocolate for her gingerbread reindeer.
Leftover caramel from the turtles was thick enough for ropes to run between them to lead the box, and a liberal dusting of powdered sugar on the light blue platter gave it an adequately wintry ambiance.
The cameras hardly ever visited Candace, which she preferred. The producers were always pushing for the bakers to act rushed when the cameras were on them. Some worked well with that, but Candace tended to make more mistakes. Better for her to shine in other portions of the episodes.
Or to get caught with the director’s hand up her skirt. That had been great for ratings.
When time was finally called, the contestants were corralled to the testimonial rooms, where everyone was privately grilled about their time in the kitchen. Candace had a suitably callous response prepared for any questions about the note she’d written, but it wasn’t brought up.
No one had seen it. Either that, or they didn’t want her story. They didn’t want to show her committing an act of kindness.
The work stations were all clean when they returned, and everyone stood by their creations while the hosts and judges chatted and sampled their cookies.
Since Laurin was in front of Candace, she had no choice but to stand there and stress about her reindeer slowly tilting under the hot spotlights while they interviewed him.
“Well, these are just about the oddest chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever seen!” Dorothy laughed as she took one of the eclairs from the serving tray.
The way they stood gave Candace a clear view of Laurin’s strong profile — and his wink at Dorothy. “That’s because they’re French,” he joked.
She and Lacey Evers, owner of the Flowers & Lace High Tea chain, each took a bite and cooed over the filling. “Is that a hazelnut creme pat?” Lacey asked.
Laurin nodded. “With chocolate chips.”
“More of a shaving than a chip,” Dorothy said as she set the eclair on a plate and the brown-flecked filling pooled around it. “And delicious, but more of a pastry than a cookie, isn’t it?”
Laurin dipped his head once, playing it smart by not arguing the assessment.
He didn’t miss a beat as Lacey said, “I take it these are French lemon bars, then?” though.
He flashed a brilliant smile with a waggle of his brows and said, “Oui.”
The women tasted the curd-filled madeleines and repeated their feedback about it being well-executed but ultimately a petite cake, not a cookie.
There was some added criticism about cheating on the batter.
Laurin took it in stride, hanging his head in mock shame and scratching the back of his head, mussing his hair into a far-too-alluring bedhead as he said, “Yeah, maman won’t be too pleased about that. ”
He presented his shortbread cookies next.
Dorothy and Lacey nodded in approval of the presentation, a stack of a dozen cookies, iced in white buttercream and topped with green marzipan.
The cookies decreased in size and the buttercream oozed just enough to give off the look of a stylized evergreen laden with snow, and the clever bastard had made some miniature pine cones to scatter around it and perched a tiny squirrel on one of the tiers.
“That is almost too precious to eat,” Lacey said but snatched the top cookie right up and bit into it. Her eyes went every bit as wide as Candace’s must have when she’d tried the batter. She glanced between Laurin and Dorothy, raising the cookie to her nose to identify the notes better.
“Is it good or bad?” Dorothy asked, hesitating on the cookie she’d taken. She smelled her own and tilted her head at what Candace knew to be a confusing scent.
“Oh my goodness, try it!” Lacey said with a little happy dance.
“What a unique flavor!” Dorothy gushed.
Kate and Jannie split a cookie between them. “This flavor is nuts!” Kate said. “Is this French?”
“Italian,” Laurin confessed. “I was introduced to oranges with olive oil and black pepper by a teammate from Venice. We always made fun of him for the lavender cocktail he was crazy about, but it was a good combination.”
“Your teammate, was that from . . . ?” Jannie started.
“World Cup. My second time around.”
Holy cow.
World Cup?
Laurin’s mostly southern accent made it easy for Candace to forget he was actually European. When he said ‘football club,’ he was talking soccer. Professional soccer. If he had done multiple World Cups, he had to have been a phenomenal player.
Why on Earth was he baking shortbread for an outside chance at $100,000 and D-List celebrity on a cooking channel?
Candace was even less of a natural on camera than the edited episodes let on.
Laurin noted that she accepted praise from the judges gracefully and answered all their questions succinctly, but her signature haughtiness that showed clearly on the TV screen belied the nervous wringing of her hands behind the workbench.
Dorothy said she always looked forward to Candace’s cookies, and Candace said, “Okay.”
Lacey asked how the bourbon flavor was so well infused, and Candace said, “I mixed it into the batter.”
Kate asked how she made the sandwich cookies fizzy, and Candace literally cocked an eyebrow and said, “Science.” Laurin envisioned how this would look when the episode aired, like a cup of sass and a pinch of charm, but in person, he saw a glint of fear in her emerald eyes.
She must have known the science behind what she’d done but worried she wouldn’t be able to explain it. And Laurin would bet anything that if he asked her privately when she was in a sharing mood, she’d explain that science better than any textbook.
The whole time they talked, Candace was vibrating slightly, nothing that would have been seen on film with all the other motion, but enough that Laurin deliberately dropped a pen onto the floor so he could peek around to see what it was.
She had her weight on one patent leather-clad foot while the other foot was kicked back so she could anchor the toe and swing the heel back and forth, a jittery schoolgirl giving a speech in front of the class. Vivvy did the very same thing when she was reading out loud.
No wonder she had such well-defined calves, Laurin thought, immediately rolling his eyes at how ridiculous he was.
The more time he spent with Candace, the more he should have despised her.
She certainly made it clear that she despised him and everyone else here.
In another couple weeks, they’d all go home, and if he was lucky, he’d never see her again.
If he were really lucky, though, the network would like him enough that his and Candace’s paths would cross on more of these bakery sets.
If he were the luckiest man in the world, he’d never see her again, because the network replaced her with him.
He told himself that, but his gaze still lingered on her calf, and he still foolishly planned to invite her along on his free-time activities.
He did want to see her again. Hell, he wanted to drop back down to the floor so he could take hold of that leg in a show of solidarity that was in no way intended as an opportunity to look up her skirt.
One way or another, Candace Coale felt very much like either his salvation or his disaster in the making.
Candace’s attention stayed on the judges as they crossed over to the second row of contestants, so Laurin lingered on her a bit longer, noting that as soon as she was off-camera, she started gnawing away at the matte sugarplum stain on her lips.
The habit was bad enough the production crew had interrupted her multiple times to reapply for video continuity, but now they were about to get a break while the judges decided. She could chew her lip in peace.
Not wanting to get busted for looking too closely at her mouth again, Laurin dropped his gaze down to her workbench, clean now except for the Coco Chanel notebook, still opened to one of her recipes.
He wasn’t interested in the recipe, but the plain, cream, unlined paper and the neat handwriting caught his attention.
In all the adrenaline of the last few hours, he hadn’t had a chance to make up his mind about who had written the note to him, but now—
Loud, hacking coughs snatched Laurin’s attention from the notebook, instincts nearly vaulting him ahead before he saw it was Lacey spitting out a partially-chewed cookie at Greg’s station and scraping remnants off her tongue.
Everyone around her was aghast, glancing among themselves and backing away from her as she smacked the uneaten sugar-encrusted fortune cookie out of Dorothy’s hand.
The older, austere editor clucked her outrage while Jannie handed Lacey a glass of water. Lacey swished it around and spit it out into the sink without concern for where the cameras and Greg were.
“What is it?” Jannie asked as Lacey resumed pawing at her tongue. “What’s wrong?”
Lacey glared at the remnants of the shattered cookie on the floor. “I can’t get it out of my mouth!” she cried, attempting the water again. “It tastes like . . . like . . . like . . . “
“Like what?” Kate asked.
“Like the Michelin Man’s asshole!” Lacey squealed before being saved by a hunk of strong ginger provided by Patty at the next table.