Chapter Seven
Fourteen years later…
Magda had made a mistake. A terrible, stupid, thoughtless mistake.
The Cake-Off timer ticked mercilessly down as she stared at her soggy cake in mounting horror.
She’d put the glaze on too soon. She’d known it would melt into the cake and turn it into a soggy mess if she didn’t wait for it to cool all the way, but she’d gotten so nervous with that giant clock ticking down on her.
She’d wanted this first bake to be perfect. To “announce her position among the front runners” as Charlotte had encouraged her on their drive to Boston. She’d made this cake a thousand times. She knew everything that could go wrong—and she’d never made such an obvious mistake before. Not even when she was a rookie taking her first class at King Arthur over a decade ago.
It would be okay, she tried to tell herself. All she had to do was beat Mac.
She’d resisted the urge to look over at him for the last eighty-six minutes. She refused to let him tarnish this experience for her—this was her moment, damn it. But Mac had always gotten under her skin and made her do rash, impulsive things just by existing near her. Ever since that first awful summer.
Normally, her anger at him brought out her competitive side, but today her focus had been fractured by his presence. Her self-doubt had been waiting to pounce, and his confidence, his ease had given it the opening it needed. She’d found herself rushing—trying to ignore the sound of his voice as he chatted oh-so-comfortably with the cameras, telling them all about the spiced panna cotta he was making.
Panna cotta! As if there was half a prayer of it setting in time. His dessert was bound to be a gooey blob of almost-flan—but right now her sodden cake wasn’t looking much better.
A camera was suddenly in her face, the producer she’d thought she liked before this moment standing just behind it and gently asking, “How are you feeling about your bake right now, Magda?”
She was feeling like she was going to burst into tears if she had to say a single word about the glaze mistake. She’d ruined it. She’d been rushing and nervous and she knew not to put it on too soon, and yet she’d done it anyway. There was no unglazing the cake. Now all she could do was try not to ugly cry on national television.
“Magda?” Julia prompted softly, her eyes all compassionate understanding.
“I… I just hope I’ve done enough…” She trailed off on a shaky breath.
How quickly she’d gone from wanting to dominate the first challenge to simply hoping Mac screwed up even more spectacularly than she had.
She dared a quick glance in his direction as she decorated her cake with delicate edible flowers—as if the professional judges wouldn’t notice the mushy consistency of her sponge if it was just pretty enough.
Mac was still schmoozing the cameras. His freaking charming smile was flashing everywhere, doubtless making the producers swoon—though Magda had learned long ago not to trust that smile.
He looked like he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he couldn’t care less whether the panna cotta that was currently waiting in the blast chiller had set or not.
She should have chucked her cake in the freezer. She hadn’t wanted it to get too cold and dry out. She’d wanted it to be perfect . But she’d failed to take into account the heat of the high-powered lights they’d added for the cameras. With all the ovens blasting, the air conditioners had been struggling to begin with, and the kitchen had just gotten hotter and hotter as the ninety minutes ticked on.
She knew the usual temperature of this room and how long her cake usually took to cool—but the kitchen was currently closer to the surface-of-the-sun temps she’d heard other bakers bemoaning on the show as their cakes failed to cool and their chocolate work melted before their eyes.
But the panna cotta would melt too. That was her only hope. And her cake was still delicious. Even if it was moist to the point of mushiness. Her flavors were solid.
She should probably feel bad that Mac was going to be at risk of going home—maybe she’d even feel some sympathy later when they had her record her confessional footage to be intercut with the final few dramatic seconds of the clock ticking down, but right now she was just praying that panna cotta was goo as Mac jogged over to the blast chiller and hauled it open.
She didn’t bear him ill will—well, not a lot of ill will, anyway. She’d never intended to start a feud. Certainly not a decade-long one. Though it could be argued that Mac had started it. And she would definitely argue that, given the chance.
But she didn’t want him to fail. She just wanted him far away from her and her dreams.
Once he was gone, she’d be able to think. She’d be able to focus. And she could work her way back to the top of the leaderboard.
Charlotte would probably say it was a good thing she wasn’t going to dominate from the beginning. Everyone liked an underdog. She’d come from behind.
She just had to beat Mac.
The buzzer echoed through the room. Everyone—including Magda—threw their hands in the air to show that they weren’t doing any last-minute adjustments. And Magda looked over at Mac’s station—
At the flawless, glistening panna cotta.
She’d barely been able to talk during the bake, her throat closing off every time a camera appeared in front of her—but when she saw that luscious, tempting dessert sitting on his station she involuntarily gave them a soundbite.
“Oh, sugar .”
It wasn’t close.
All of the bakers were ushered out of the kitchen within moments of the buzzer going off. They were hustled into fresh outfits and fresh aprons, the sweat dabbed off their faces and their makeup touched up before they were herded into the Proving Room for the cast photos.
Magda was shoved next to Mac—whom she did her best to ignore, which was actually easier than it might have been, since all she could think about was mushy cake.
While the contestants forced smiles for the cameras, the kitchen was tidied by an army of production assistants and each of the desserts put on pedestals for glamour shots before the judges could defile them with forks and knives.
And all Magda could think was that her cake was just getting soggier the longer it sat.
She was so doomed.
The cast photos would have normally been taken before the first challenge, when all the bakers were shiny and eager, rather than bracing for the executioner’s ax in the first round of judging—but the producers hadn’t wanted to spoil the “surprise” arrival of the rivals.
When they filed back into the kitchen and lined up behind their perfectly spotless workstations, Magda’s cake at least looked presentable on its little pedestal. The home viewers wouldn’t know it was a disaster on sight.
And maybe Mac’s panna cotta would be horrible. Too bland. Too rubbery. Something.
The judges tried to build a sense of suspense. They gushed about Magda’s flavors and sympathized with the heat of the room, but it was obvious the second they each took a bite of Mac’s panna cotta which way the verdict was going to go.
“That panna cotta was unbeatable.”
Back in the director’s chair, facing the confessional camera again, Magda grimaced ruefully—or at least she hoped her expression looked like some suitable combination of disappointment and chagrin. The last thing she needed was the entire world seeing what she was really feeling at this moment.
She wasn’t even sure she could put into words the wretched combination of anxiety, exhaustion, and anger—at herself and at Mac.
The Speed Bake had been hell. Cupcakes she should have been able to make in her sleep had been underbaked thanks to an idiotic mistake with the oven temperature. She was just grateful she’d managed not to cry on camera when she’d been called down front as one of the bottom three out of the seven bakers who’d been forced to compete in the forty-minute challenge.
She’d had to stand there as the judges enumerated all the mistakes that had landed her in the bottom, and wonder if she was going to be the first eliminated. Wonder if this was it. If her entire Cake-Off experience was going to be defined by Mac and his damn panna cotta. Too mentally drained to do anything but nod numbly as the judges commented on her obvious skill, her impressive technique—and the thoughtless mistakes that had derailed both of her first bakes. The melting glaze. The undercooked cupcake.
The numbness spread, her thoughts fuzzy and jumbled, as the judging seemed to last forever.
And then they said Caroline’s name.
She’d survived by the skin of her teeth. And she’d almost cried all over again, something inside her collapsing in intense relief.
All while Mac had watched from the safety of the sidelines, making the experience that much more excruciating.
“Do you have any idea why today didn’t go as planned?” Julia asked, her tone so gentle and curious she might have been talking about a minor misstep and not the pair of massive brain freezes that had nearly sent Magda home.
Magda had already walked Julia through both bakes, step-by-step, reliving every detail and talking about it all as if it was happening in real time, so they could edit this footage in with the bake as they cut the episode together. But now apparently they needed to dig deeper.
This was part of being on the show, Magda knew that, but she was exhausted —not just physically but emotionally after coming so close to screwing up her dream, and she just wanted to go back to the Cake-Off house and curl up in bed for as many hours as she could manage before it all started over again tomorrow.
“I don’t know,” she hedged. “I planned for this. I practiced for months, but I was always in my own kitchen, with my own ovens. I think I underestimated how much the heat in the Cake-Off kitchen—both the literal heat and the pressure—would get to me. I timed everything out perfectly for the glaze—but the cake wasn’t cooling as quickly as it usually did. And then with the cupcakes—I haven’t underbaked a cupcake since I was nine years old, but by the time I noticed I’d set the oven to the wrong temperature, there was no time—and no coming back.”
“And Mac?” Julia prompted, still in that gentle tone. Not a judgment in sight. Just curiosity. “Did seeing him in the kitchen rattle you?”
“I was definitely rattled by seeing Mac standing there.” Magda obediently repeated the question in her answer. “I’d heard that he had auditioned too, but Cake-Off never takes two people from the same town, so to have him walk into the kitchen—and then to have to compete against him head-to-head in order to stay in the competition… it was a nightmare. An actual nightmare I’ve had before.”
“I understand you and Mac have known each other a long time?”
“Pine Hollow’s a small town.”
“Right.” Julia nodded. “And I understand there’s something of a long-standing feud between you two?”
“Yep,” Magda said curtly, suddenly not nearly so interested in being the good little interviewee and repeating the question in her answer. She was tired . “Look, can we do this tomorrow? Mac and I have been feuding for over a decade. I don’t think one more day is going to change anything.”
“Of course,” Julia agreed quickly, glancing at her Apple Watch. “You’ll want to get some rest. Another big day tomorrow. We’ll go over the rest of this then.”
Magda didn’t want to go over the rest—because she was pretty sure the rest was all Mac, and the last thing she wanted was for this experience to be about him. This was supposed to be her dream, her moment, and none of it had felt right since the second he walked into the Cake-Off kitchen in that damn blue apron.
She stood, statue-still as the sound guy, Richie, unhooked her from the wires snaking underneath her clothing. Then she turned to Julia, too tired to remember her own name at this point. “Where do I go?”
“One of the vans will shuttle you over to the house. Remember, no attempting to contact anyone outside the bubble. Just try to get some sleep. We’ll see you back here tomorrow, bright and early.”
Magda nodded obediently—even if she’d wanted to, she was too tired to try to funnel spoilers to the outside world. The Cake-Off people ran a surprisingly tight ship—no devices of any kind that could connect to the internet, either to give the bakers an unfair advantage or leak hints about what was happening on the show.
She wasn’t going to publish spoilers, but she did desperately wish she could call Charlotte and Kendall. If only to tell them that Mac was here. And so she could get her equilibrium back.
It had almost ended today.
Because of Mac.
Okay, perhaps not entirely because of him, but it felt like it was his fault. She’d been off her game from the second he walked through the door. She never would have made those mistakes if she hadn’t been so rattled. And he’d known . He’d stood there in her apartment when she was telling him about the show and let her make a fool of herself. Probably laughing at her the whole time.
Who did that?
A production assistant walked her through the darkened halls of King Arthur. Magda had long since lost any sense of time she had. She only knew that it was fully dark outside as the PA opened the exterior door, chattering into her headset about “5B rolling to transpo.” She herded Magda toward the waiting black van, and Magda hesitated, feeling like she was forgetting something.
“My stuff…?” she asked.
“Already at the house,” the PA assured her, yanking open the van door—
And suddenly Magda’s vague sense of unease vanished, along with her exhaustion, replaced by a rush of angry adrenaline.
There was one other passenger already waiting in the van.
Mackenzie freaking Newton.