Chapter Three
M agda was still in the kitchen with flour up to her elbows when Charlotte and Kendall arrived to pick her up.
“Your driver has arrived, Ms. Miller,” Charlotte called out as she walked in the door, pulling up short when she spotted Magda. “Whoa. I can’t tell. Is this panic baking or regular baking?”
“That man .” Magda kneaded the bread dough harder.
“Ah,” Charlotte nodded. “Rage baking.”
“Let’s get this show on the—” Kendall came in behind Charlotte, breaking off when she saw Magda. “You’re not ready? I thought you’d be waiting for us on the sidewalk.” She rubbed absently at her lower back, a habit she’d picked up now that she was approaching her third trimester.
“I’m almost done.” Magda thwacked the dough she was kneading with cathartic force—and knocked her knuckles on the counter hard enough to bruise. “Ow, biscuits !”
“Mac,” Charlotte stage-whispered.
Magda shook out her stinging hand. “Someone told him.”
“It wasn’t George,” Charlotte said quickly. “He promised not to tell a soul.”
“It’s fine,” Magda said, giving her hand one last shake before returning to taking out her aggression on the rye. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone’s going to know soon anyway.”
Kendall leaned against the counter. “So why are we rage baking?”
Because Mac had implied she’d need to be a good actress on the show and all of her deep, dark fears had come out to play. Because it was easier to be angry at him than it was to face her anxiety that she wasn’t good enough. That they’d made a mistake in casting her.
Magda wasn’t the special one. She wasn’t the smartest or the funniest. Kendall had been a world-class athlete. Charlotte had skipped grades and become a doctor by the time she was twenty-five. They were the stars, not her. Even in her family, Magda always had a tendency to disappear. She was the quiet one.
The boring one.
Hence the reason she’d been rejected for Cake-Off twice. And her current anxiety was in no way eased by the fact that they’d picked her this time.
Just don’t be yourself.
The words had been a joke. Kendall had been giving Magda a pep talk before her last interview. Magda knew Kendall had meant them sarcastically—but she hadn’t been herself that day.
It had been a freaking out-of-body experience, that interview. After years of working toward getting on the show, after two dull-as-dirt, boring-old-Magda interviews that had resulted in “not quite right for this season” rejections, she had been determined that this time was going to be different. She would be dazzling. She would wow them.
Then, five minutes before she was supposed to go in for her interview, Kendall had let slip that Mac had also scored an interview, and that his had apparently gone brilliantly.
Magda had seen red.
Something inside her had unlocked. Something wild and a little feral. From one second to the next she’d gone from desperate hope that this time she would get it to blazing anger that he would dare to try to take this from her.
She barely remembered what she said in the interview—she just knew she’d been energized. Her blood had felt like it was rushing in her veins—and not from nerves. She hadn’t stumbled over her words; she hadn’t had to be reminded to speak up so the cameras could hear her. She’d been vibrant and witty and bold—all the things Magda usually wasn’t.
And she’d gotten a call two days later that they wanted her on the show.
But that wasn’t her .
They wanted personalities. They wanted vivacity. And Magda desperately wanted to be what they wanted. But she wasn’t a good actress.
She was going to let everyone down—the producers who had finally cast her after years of auditions, the friends who believed in her and expected her to win the whole thing, and the town that would be rooting for her when the show aired. It wasn’t even the baking that terrified her. It was that feeling that it was her , that she wasn’t enough.
And Mac had somehow known exactly what to say to trigger an entire tidal wave of insecurity.
But she couldn’t say that to her friends, so Magda just shook her head and kneaded harder.
“Mags?” Charlotte prompted gently.
“I don’t want to talk about Mac. I don’t want to think about Mac,” Magda said, throwing the dough into a bowl and shoving it into a proving drawer. “The best thing about the next four weeks is that I don’t have to think about Mackenzie Newton at all.” She cleaned up her working space with brutal efficiency, slapping a sticky note on the proving drawer with instructions for what her bakery assistant needed to do with the dough. “Though it might not be four weeks. It might not even be one.” She turned vulnerable eyes on her two best friends. “What if I’m eliminated first?”
“Then at least you did it. You were on Cake-Off . That is badass, even if you totally crash and burn,” Kendall insisted.
Magda cringed. “Please don’t say burn. I’ve had recurring nightmares about burning pies for the last two weeks. What if I panic?”
“Don’t borrow trouble—isn’t that what you’re always saying?” Charlotte reminded her. “Just take it one bake at a time.”
Don’t borrow trouble. It had been her Aunt Lena’s mantra. Her aunt who had first taught her to bake and paid for her to go to the fancy pastry academy in France when she was eighteen. Who had given Magda the money to open the bakery.
Lena had always believed Mags was special, even when she didn’t believe it herself. She’d always known Magda would do big things. And now she had the chance to do them.
“I’m just so scared of letting everyone down. And that I’m going to show up and they’re going to tell me they made a mistake and accidentally cast fourteen bakers and I’m out.” It was a well-known fact that the Cake-Off always started with thirteen bakers. The famous Baker’s Dozen. “I didn’t know it was possible to be this scared of going—and making a complete fool of myself on national television—while also being totally petrified of not getting to go—when they realize they never wanted me and the whole thing was a huge mistake.”
“You think anyone fills out that much paperwork as a mistake?” Kendall asked skeptically, still absently rubbing her back.
“You’re in, Mags,” Charlotte confirmed. “And you’re going to be amazing.”
“Mac doesn’t think I can do it.”
“Since when have you ever cared what Mac thinks?”
“I don’t.” Except she’d always cared what he thought—no matter how much she wished that weren’t true. That was why he’d always been able to get under her skin.
Kendall and Charlotte exchanged a look. “Apron?” Charlotte asked.
“Apron,” Kendall confirmed—reaching into her bag.
“We got you a little something,” Charlotte explained as Kendall withdrew a small tissue-wrapped parcel. “We were going to give it to you in Boston, but I think you need it now.”
Magda wiped her hands on her apron and pulled back the wrapping. “You didn’t need to do this.”
“Yes, we did,” Kendall said.
The last of the paper came away and Magda released a startled burst of laughter at the sight. The hot-pink apron was bedazzled—which was very Charlotte—and the sparkly writing spelled out “Not Here to Make Friends”—which was all Kendall.
“Remember that,” Charlotte said, pointing to the words. “You’re a baking badass. Be mercenary. No playing nice.”
Because Magda was always nice. Too nice.
Don’t be yourself.
“Thanks, guys.”
“You’re going to win the whole damn thing,” Kendall said with absolute confidence. “Don’t worry about Mac or the town or anything else. Just go wild. Enjoy this. Though I don’t know how this town is going to survive without you for a month.”
Nerves did a conga through her stomach. “It might not be a month…”
“It will ,” Kendall insisted.
“Pine Hollow will just have to miss you. You have a competition to win,” Charlotte said. “Though it will be weird with both you and Mac gone.”
A whisper of alarm rose at the back of her thoughts. “Mac’s going somewhere?”
“George is feeding his cat for him,” Charlotte explained.
“I’m planning to start a rumor that you two ran away together,” Kendall said, wicked laughter glinting in her eyes.
“Too late,” Charlotte said. “I heard that one this morning. Along with something about Mac being seen leaving your house at dawn?”
“His cat broke in again.” Magda hesitated, uneasiness teasing at the back of her neck, raising the hairs there. “You don’t think…”
“What?” Charlotte prompted.
“He did audition… but the Cake-Off never takes two people from the same small town. They wouldn’t.”
Would they?
God, that was the last thing she needed. This was supposed to be her thing. And it had nothing to do with him.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t,” Kendall assured her. “And if he was going, someone would have heard. No one in this town can keep a secret.”
“You two did,” Magda reminded them.
“He’s just doing one of his Broadway binges,” Charlotte said. “ You are the star. And we should get going. We still need to drop Cupcake off with George before the drive.”
“Right,” Magda agreed, squashing that last frisson of doubt.
She wouldn’t even think about Mac for the next four weeks. This was her moment.
Just don’t be yourself…