Chapter Fourteen
F or your Cake Week Elimination Challenge, we have a little twist,” Jeffrey Flanders announced as they all stood obediently at their stations, waiting to see what the producers were going to throw at them next.
Mac knew he should be focusing on the words coming out of Flanders’s mouth, but he was distracted.
Between the interview last night—which had left him feeling weirdly introspective about whether he’d been subconsciously avoiding serious relationships for the last decade in some kind of self-defense mechanism to keep from letting people down—and then the minefield of a photo shoot he’d just been through with Magda—where they’d managed to trigger several of the mines—his head was in a weird place as he stood waiting for the next challenge.
This was supposed to be a baking show, not an unearth-all-your-baggage show.
Alexander Clay picked up the spiel. “For today’s challenge, you’ll be baking us a wedding cake—which I realize sounds simple, but we are expecting three tiers of absolute perfection —and you won’t be doing it alone. You’ll be paired off, and each team will present a single three-tiered masterpiece for judging. Which means, yes, you will be judged together. And yes,” he paused dramatically, “this is a double elimination.”
A gasp rippled through the room, and Mac’s distraction evaporated as his heart started to beat harder.
They wouldn’t.
They couldn’t make them work with their rivals, because not everyone had a rival left. Walter’s and Taylor’s had gone home. It wouldn’t be fair.
Not that the producers seemed to care much about fair this season.
But still.
It would be random, he assured himself. They would draw spatulas or something. Whenever the Cake-Off paired contestants off, it was always the hand of fate—and fate would not be so cruel. It wouldn’t be Magda. Not immediately after that nightmare of a photo shoot.
Judge Joanie spoke next. “Tim, as the winner of the Skills Challenge—though you did just edge Magda out by a hair—you have won an advantage in this round. Which means not only do you get to choose who you will be partnered with, you will actually have the privilege of choosing all the teams.”
A glimmer of hope.
Mac and Tim had met up for beers in the inn’s common area the other night, bonding over both being sabotaged. The high-end hotel pastry chef from California was extremely confident he was going to win, but Mac couldn’t really blame him for that confidence based on how he’d been baking so far. Mac was just hoping that his own bond with Tim was enough to get him a good partner.
Mac saw Magda and Leah exchanging looks of dread. The two of them were definitely the most likely to be sabotaged by being paired with the struggling bakers—Leah as his ex and Magda because she’d sabotaged him during week two.
Mac felt a little bad for Magda as Tim was ushered to the front of the room to stand beside the judges to announce his picks. He didn’t want her to go home. She’d looked even more rattled by the almost-slap at the photo shoot than he’d been.
Though he didn’t know why he cared so much.
Guilt, probably. It had been a low blow, throwing her old crush back in her face like that. They’d both been so careful never to reference it in all the years they’d been feuding, and then today it had just fallen out of his mouth.
What was it about Magda that made him the worst version of himself?
It probably hadn’t helped that he’d gotten about two hours of sleep total last night. He’d had the weirdest series of dreams about all of the women he’d dated shaking him awake and demanding he make them cake to show that he cared, but he didn’t have any flour.
Not exactly subtle with the symbolism there, his subconscious.
He’d never really worried about his relationship status. He liked dating—when he made the time for it, which wasn’t often. He worked too much—not because he felt he had to, but because he loved the Cup. He loved his life. He spent time with his grandmother—the lovable martinet—and had regular poker nights with his friends. He’d been recruited into a band a couple of years ago, with a couple of retired rockers from the local senior community, and they performed a couple of times a month.
His life was good, and when he’d wanted female companionship, he had been able to pop down to New York to see Cleo. No muss, no fuss.
Except Cleo was married now. And the poker nights could be irregular—with all of his friends starting to have little kids. And his grandmother had started hinting that he needed to settle down—which he always reacted to by telling her lots of people were perfectly happy without being tied down.
But Julia’s perfectly innocuous question about why he stayed single had kept him awake last night, distracting him when he should have been charging up for the competition.
He knew he had weird hang-ups about responsibility. He’d been raised by his grandparents because his parents hadn’t wanted to take responsibility for him. They’d been teenagers—but his mom had made the choice to hand him off to his grandparents, and his biological father had never been in the picture, even though the whole town had known who he was.
Mac made a point never to let anyone see how much that bothered him. He cultivated a carefree attitude that made him a town favorite even before he opened the Cup. Easygoing Mac. Fun Mac.
He’d done the therapy thing when he was younger. He knew how to process his feelings. How to talk about them. How to control the things he could and let the rest go.
Don’t want things you can’t have—like a normal relationship with your biological parents or the college degree you left behind when your grandfather got sick. Be flexible. Be adaptable. Don’t dwell on regrets. When something ends, it isn’t your fault; it just wasn’t meant to be. No harm, no foul.
But it had become a pattern.
He hadn’t set out to avoid commitments, but he did like being on his own. He’d gotten spoiled by his freedom. He could do whatever he wanted—like be there for his friends and family when they needed him. Because he wasn’t obligated to anyone. He didn’t owe them anything.
What he hadn’t realized was why he was doing it, pulling back whenever they started to get too serious. Applying too much pressure. Starting to become someone who expected something of him. Someone he might let down. Or who might let him down…
Shit. He needed to focus. Tim was speaking now. He’d already picked Abby—who had won week one and come in third on yesterday’s Skills Challenge—to be his own partner. It made sense. She was one of the strongest bakers in the kitchen.
He announced Leah would be paired with Walter. The older man with his multitude of bowties had definitely been struggling, barely making it through Pastry Week.
Mac felt a flicker of relief when he recognized Tim’s strategy. He was matching the best bakers with the worst bakers, to give himself the best chance of winning. Smart.
But Mac could work with anyone—and as someone who had been generally in the middle, he’d probably be paired with another generally middle baker, which with all the best bakers other than Tim and Abby at a disadvantage, might actually give him a chance of placing near the top.
Then Tim gave a smug little smile, his gaze landing on Magda. “For the next pair, I’ve chosen Magda to be partnered…”
Tim really was good at the dramatic pauses. He might be an arrogant sonofabitch, but he knew how to work the cameras.
“With Mac.”
Aw, hell .
Of course he picked Mac.
Magda had walked into the kitchen determined to put the morning behind her. To forget that she’d lost her freaking mind and nearly slapped Mac in a room full of people. She was here to bake. After that first day’s catastrophe, she’d actually found something of a comfort level in the kitchen. Pastry Week had settled her nerves, and she’d very nearly won yesterday’s baumkuchen challenge.
She could do this. She was braced for any catastrophe.
Or so she thought.
Until the producers threw yet another twist at her.
She should have known this was coming. She’d certainly suspected how this would play out as soon as Tim had been called up to pick the teams, looking entirely too smugly pleased with himself. Especially since the producers looked particularly smug, too—and Julia looked like she might be sick.
Mac seemed surprised as he came to stand beside her—maybe he’d thought Tim was his friend, but Tim was the prototype for “not here to make friends.” He’d paired up all the remaining rivals who seemed the most rattled by their nemeses—Eunice and Zain, Josh and his dad, Mac and Magda.
It was good strategy. Some detached part of Magda’s brain could acknowledge that.
Actually, all of her felt strangely detached at the moment. Maybe this was how it ended. A double elimination. Both she and Mac going out in a blaze of ignominy. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this show. It certainly wasn’t helping her grow as a person—as all the former contestants always raved. Part of her was almost relieved. She just wanted out of this mess.
Tim finished picking the teams and joined Abby, so they were all paired off. Six stations. Twelve bakers. Set dressers rushed around making sure the excess stations that had been set up to fake them out were cleared.
And then Jeffrey Flanders was speaking at the front of the room, an unnerving gleam in his eyes. “Now. You will have ten minutes to plan and three hours to complete your exquisite three-tiered wedding cakes, but we have one last surprise.”
He held up what looked like strips of dangling black cloth. Magda frowned, trying to figure out what the heck the surprise was. Were they going to be blindfolded? Have their hands tied behind their backs? What?
Then Jeffrey beamed—not in a nice way—and she realized it was some kind of Velcro harness as he announced, “You and your partner will be quite literally attached at the hip .”
Magda closed her eyes. Of course they would. “Shoot me now.”