Chapter Twenty-Eight
F ive minutes! Five minutes remaining!”
“We aren’t going to make it.” Magda’s hands were shaking.
Eunice was frantically popping her chocolates out of the molds. Mac and Magda had already finished theirs and added them to the display, but Eunice had volunteered to make the chocolate ring box portion of their centerpiece—and she’d ended up having to remake it when it shattered to pieces, so she’d been late getting her chocolates into their molds. They’d barely had time to set, and Magda would normally be helping her, but their flaming heart chocolate sculpture was refusing to stay upright.
She should be using this time to spray it with the hot-pink edible glitter, but instead she was bracing it between her hands and trying desperately to figure out something edible they could use as a prop so it wouldn’t go crashing to the floor the second she was forced to step away.
“Don’t worry. We’ve got this.” Mac’s voice was cool and calm—and entirely too close to her ear as he reached around her with a can of freezing spray. His chest brushed against her arm, the heat of him making her flush even in the insane heat of the kitchen. He blasted the icy spray at the joint where the vertical portions of the sculpture connected to the base. “It’ll set. It just needs to cool.”
“How is it supposed to cool when it’s eleven million degrees in here?”
“Don’t worry, sugar. Just give it the ice queen glare you’ve been giving me for the last decade and we’ll be golden,” he quipped, aiming at another joint.
“Ha.”
He flashed her an impish grin that absolutely did not melt her knees—she refused to think about melting anything right now—and then moved again. Magda bent as he twisted, contorting himself to hit another melting joint with the freezing spray, and his breath stirred the hairs at the back of her neck.
She shuddered, fighting to keep her hands steady.
The chocolate. It was all about the chocolate. She was not attracted to this man. Even if he was a calm, competent leader who never let them get discouraged and always rallied with a quick change of plans when part of their plan fell apart. Even if they had been working in close proximity for the last few days, in a hot kitchen that had left him just sweaty enough that his auburn curls were sticking to the back of his neck—which she absolutely should not be noticing. Even if his hands seemed to be constantly brushing hers, his arms bumping hers, little accidental working-in-tight-quarters touches that had amped her up for three days straight until she was one giant aching nerve—
“Okay. Release.”
It took her stupid, hormone-addled brain a moment to realize he meant the sculpture.
“Let go,” he repeated. “It should stand now—and if it wobbles, we need to know where.”
“One minute, bakers!”
Magda forced herself to take a breath and opened her hands, still gently bracing the sculpture between them for a moment without holding it before tentatively, oh-so-carefully spreading her hands wide. She heard Mac catch his breath and held her own, her gaze locked on to the sculpture even as she felt the heat of his body behind hers, his hands in the air below hers in case the chocolate started to fall.
“It’s holding!” she gasped.
“Eunice.” Suddenly his warmth was moving away from her, and she remembered their third teammate was still desperately trying to get the last of her chocolates onto the display area.
Magda whirled, following him to Eunice’s station. “What do you need?” she asked Eunice and the girl looked at her with wide and panicked eyes as Flanders called out, “Thirty seconds!”
“The dipped chocolates haven’t set!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mac said, taking the tray of slightly gooey dipped chocolates and rushing them over to the display, Magda and Eunice hot on his heels. They all quickly transferred the chocolates, ignoring the chocolate smudges on their gloves.
“Five… four…”
“We’ve got this,” Mac muttered—and Magda wasn’t even sure he was aware he was speaking out loud. Their hands flew back and forth.
“Two… One… Hands in the air!”
Magda flung her hands in the air, taking a step back—and straight into Mac. When she would have bounced off him—right into the table holding their display—one of his arms closed around her stomach, yanking her back against him, and her breath whooshed out as her back connected to his chest.
They were both breathing hard—from the challenge, just from the challenge—when Eunice marveled, “I can’t believe we just did that.”
Magda’s heart was beating out of her chest—but the cameras were rolling, even if the challenge was over, and she held herself perfectly still as Mac’s arm moved and the pressure of Mac’s body shifted away from her back. His hands steadied her waist for a moment, to be sure she had her balance. And then his touch was gone, Eunice was hugging her, and she was trying to remember what the world had felt like before this moment.
“All right, bakers! Time for interviews!”
Their chocolate showpiece was dripping.
Mac’s heart thundered as the judges examined it from every angle. They’d decided to do both a cake and a sculptural piece in the hopes that even if the sculpture collapsed, the deliciousness of the cake would save them. It had been Eunice’s idea to make their entire “shop” Valentine’s themed. Dozens of heart-shaped chocolates. A heart-on-fire sculpture perched on top of a three-tiered cake—at the base of which was a molded chocolate ring box with a sugar-diamond ring inside.
If it hadn’t all been melting, it would have been amazing.
Mac stood lined up with Magda and Eunice, watching the judges eye their work, and comforted himself that at least the other team’s sculpture was also melting. It was taller than theirs, but it was listing gently to the side. Would that be enough?
Judging was often an out-of-body experience, but today that feeling was exacerbated by Magda and Eunice being judged alongside him. Suddenly he wasn’t so confident about the way he’d picked his team. If they were in the bottom, one of them would be going home. Which meant either him, Magda, or Magda’s closest remaining friend in the competition, whom he’d become incredibly fond of over the weekend working together.
So much for strategy.
Magda squirmed at his side as the judges spoke, and he reached out, almost without thought, and caught her hand. He squeezed gently and was rewarded with a python grip as the judges’ words washed over them.
“Beautifully tempered… gorgeous mirror glaze… decadent…”
That had to be good, right? Decadent?
Magda’s hand tightened on his, and he clutched her back, probably squeezing too hard. He wasn’t ready for any of them to go home—but the judges had raved about the other team’s chocolate. It was going to be tight.
The last few days had been brutal… but he’d never had so much fun in the Cake-Off kitchen. Eunice had been easy to work with, but it was Magda who had made him laugh—even when they were panicking about whether they could get chocolate to temper properly in the heat. Magda who had made him feel calm and centered and like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.
A song whispered in the back of his head, but it wasn’t “I Hope I Get It” from A Chorus Line , which usually ran through his head on repeat during judging. It was “Bad Idea” from Waitress . He’d had that musical stuck in his head a lot over the last few weeks—half the songs were about baking pies—but this particular song was about irresistible attraction.
Bad idea, me and you…
He’d been trying to ignore this thing between them. She didn’t want a distraction. That was smart. But this thing… it wasn’t going away. The more he ignored it, the louder it got, screaming through his body.
And it felt like it had been going on for much longer than a few weeks. He’d always fixated on her, and he felt more alive on the days when he sparred with her, and yes, the feud wouldn’t have lasted as long as it had if he hadn’t cared—intensely—what she thought of him, but he was the one who’d rejected her . He could have said yes, all those years ago…
Except it felt like he couldn’t have. She’d been so young, and she’d looked at him with that little edge of worship in her eyes, and it had felt wrong somehow, like he would have been taking advantage of Elinor’s baby sister’s little friend’s adorable crush. So yes, he’d destroyed her, and it was the right thing to do. Because taking what her earnest, hopeful face had been offering would have been wrong on a visceral level.
But he’d always liked her. Even back then. Even when she was eighteen. She was smart and funny—though most people didn’t notice those things about her because she was so quiet, she would disappear in the noise of her much louder friends and family—but that just made it that much more special that he’d figured it out. Like her awesomeness was a secret that only he knew.
He’d loved that summer. Driving with her. Talking with her. Baking with her. He’d liked her far more than he should—but she was a baby, and he shouldn’t take advantage, so he’d tried to take them back to being just friends and ended up burning their friendship down in the process.
Then she’d come back, at a time when he’d felt off-balance and unsteady. She’d looked older—she’d been older, but it had been her eyes. No longer eager and hopeful, with that disconcerting edge of hero worship. They’d been confident, those eyes. Sure of who she was in a way that was insanely sexy. And yes, she’d probably still been too young for him. But she’d walked into the Cup like she was his equal—when in fact she had already surpassed him. She’d chased her dream. She’d seen the world. She’d been too good to work for him—and then she hadn’t wanted to. Her anger about the cake recipe—which he hadn’t stolen , damn it—had been so visceral, and when she’d stalked out of the Cup, he’d thought it was for the best. Working with her would have been a minefield.
But then she’d stolen his location, and he’d overreacted. Then she’d refused to be on a committee with him—or maybe he’d said something about how they wouldn’t work well together, and it had gotten blown out of proportion? Hell, who remembered after all these years?
All he knew was that she’d become his nemesis—but also his obsession. Gorgeous. And challenging. Nothing had ever fired him to want to be more, to want to succeed, more than Magda. It had mattered so much that he always be there, toe to toe, matching her.
Shit. Had he secretly had a thing for her this entire time? A secret even from himself?
And then he’d come here—for the money, he’d told himself—and everything had changed. All the walls they’d built between themselves over the years had started to come down, and suddenly it was him and Magda again—only this time it didn’t feel like such a bad idea. This time she didn’t feel like an adoring teenager or a pastry academy graduate who had catapulted past him. It felt like they were equals, finally. Like they respected each other—with a respect built from competing with each other for the last decade. If one of them had won every competition, it wouldn’t have been fun. They were so evenly matched… and now for the first time in years, it felt like they weren’t competing against each other.
Which was insane, because they were literally competing against each other. But now… this… even when they weren’t working together on chocolate centerpieces… they felt like a team. She felt like the perfect complement, clicking into place.
At least he felt that way.
He didn’t know how Magda felt.
But he wanted to find out. Tonight.
Top five. Magda paced in her room, too agitated to sleep. She’d made it to the top five of Cake-Off . They’d barely edged out the other team—thanks, the judges said, to the cake they’d made, which had tipped them over the top. The cake had been Eunice’s idea, but Mac had baked it and Magda had decorated it, and it really had been a group effort. They’d survived—and the naked disbelief on Tim’s face when the winning team was announced had been almost as satisfying as the win itself.
Though seeing Abby eliminated as captain of the losing team had really driven home that anyone could be eliminated at any time.
Abby, who had been winning challenges since the beginning, who everyone had expected to win the whole thing, was gone.
But that wasn’t what was keeping Magda awake.
It should be. She should be completely focused on the competition, getting her rest in preparation for the next challenge tomorrow. But instead she couldn’t stop thinking about Mac. About his hand on her back as he brushed past her while they were working, or the glint in his eyes when he made a joke at his own expense.
Was this just insane attraction? Or was she falling for him all over again? Like she had when she was eighteen. But she’d been so wrong about him last time. She’d thought there was something building, and then he’d yanked the rug out from under her. She needed to be wary of letting her emotions run away with her. Especially with Cake-Off on the line.
Of course, last time he hadn’t kissed her.
But they’d never really talked about that insane moment in the hallway. Which had been her call, absolutely her call—she wanted to focus on the competition, she needed to focus on the competition—but now it was driving her crazy not knowing. What that was. What he wanted.
Was this thing, this feeling that seemed to be building between them, this friendship and connection and sense that they just fit , was that real? Or all in her head like it had been last time? Or was Mac, the king of short-term flirtations, just flirting with her—not with malice or ill intent, just for the fun of it, but it still didn’t mean what her stupid, desperate heart seemed to want it to mean?
He had talked to her about avoiding commitment the other day. Had he been warning her off?
Why couldn’t she just be sophisticated and play it cool? Why did it have to mean something just because it was him? She’d been so happy when she didn’t care what men thought. When all she wanted was Cake-Off and she stopped caring about whether or not she had someone in her life—
But the truth was she’d kind of like to have someone in her life. If it was the right someone. She didn’t need to be alone, even if she was perfectly whole and happy that way. Even if being alone was a perfectly respectable choice. She still wanted him , in spite of all her better judgment arguing against it. She loved being with him. The thrill in her blood—
The knock at the door made her jump.
It was a soft knock. It was late, after all, but her light was on, and whoever was on the other side of the door must have been able to see that. She was in her pajamas—blue fleece ones with little pink cakes on them that Charlotte had given her last Christmas. They were cozy and comforting, and Charlotte had been calling them “ Cake-Off PJs” for so long that they’d become a sort of talisman. Armor.
Magda knew who would be on the other side of the door before she opened it.
“Mac.”
He stood in the hallway, still wearing his clothes from this afternoon’s bake. She could see a smudge of chocolate on one sleeve, and she focused on it so she didn’t get sucked in by the dark chocolate intensity of his eyes.
“This isn’t working.”
That brought her gaze up to his. “What?”
“Pretending there’s nothing here. Putting it off. It’s distracting.”
Oh good heavens. Was he suggesting they give in to this? She was suddenly ridiculously aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“I know you want to focus on the competition, and I respect that,” he said—and she blinked. So not a proposition? What was happening? “But I just—I thought maybe we could talk.”
“Talk,” she echoed, sounding as baffled as she felt.
“I don’t know when this started. I think it’s been under the surface for a long time. But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore. I can’t think anymore. This…”
“This?” she echoed. She seemed to be doing a lot of echoing.
“Magda… you know that I’m attracted to you…”
Do I? Had she known that? She’d wanted to believe it, but after last time… Then she heard herself whispering, “I’m attracted to you, too.” But. There was always a but.
And he heard it even though she didn’t say it out loud. “But?”
She looked up at him. She wanted to give in to this. She wanted to go crazy. But she heard Charlotte’s voice in her head—Charlotte, who was almost never the voice of reason, sounding worried and disapproving.
“But why now?”
It was subtle—a slight withdrawal in his eyes, a shift of his weight back onto his heels, his chin notching up ever so slightly, making her more acutely aware of his five o’clock shadow. All the tiny signs that he’d realized she didn’t fully trust him.
“It had to be now,” he said, no defensiveness in the words, just fact. “We were so locked into the feud in Pine Hollow, we had to break out of it to see what was underneath it.” His gaze held hers. “Doesn’t it make sense, in a way? No one has ever driven me as crazy as you do. This feeling between us. We’ve always been raw with each other. Maybe because we started by being so completely honest with each other. I’d never told anyone some of the things I told you that summer—and then, yeah, everything exploded, but I still kind of felt like you were the only one in town who actually knew me, the real me, you know? I felt more alive when I was with you—I still do.” He shook his head. “And I’m not saying this to throw you off or mess with your game. I know you must think that—I’ve certainly earned your mistrust over the years. But being in this limbo is driving me crazy, and I just want to know if it’s just me. Alone in here.”
Magda bit her lip, holding his gaze, and then whispered, “It isn’t just you.”
He started to take a step toward her, and she held up her hand. His chest slammed into it, and they both gasped as if electrified by the contact. “It isn’t just you,” she repeated, her hand flexing on his pectorals. “But I can’t do this. Not now. I can’t let this be about us, do you understand? Not during the competition.”
He nodded, shifting back on his heels again, easing the pressure against her hand. “And after?”
She forced levity she didn’t feel into her tone. “Are you still going to want to after, if I trounce you?”
He grinned, that dimple popping. “I’ve never been intimidated by your badassery in the kitchen, Mags. It’s sexy as hell.”
Her face heated to cupcake briquette temperatures. “Okay. Then we’ll talk. Once one of us gets knocked out.”
“The finale’s only a week away. I can wait. Now that I know what I’m waiting for.”
She felt like a candle was glowing inside her chest. A flicker of hope and possibility. “Okay.”
He started to back away, and she suddenly fisted her hand in his T-shirt. The one with the chocolate stain on the arm. She used the soft fabric to yank him forward. Mac was a lot bigger than she was, if he’d wanted to, he could have easily stopped her, but he came willingly, his eyes flaring with interest and surprise a moment before she used her other hand to reach up and guide his head down toward hers, her palm curving around the back of his neck. Even on her tiptoes, he had to bend for her to reach his mouth.
She smiled a fraction of a second before their lips made contact, and whispered, “How about a preview?”
Then he was smiling, too, and their smiles were brushing for just a moment before they fell together into the kiss.
For two days awareness of him had sizzled over her skin as he brushed past her and worked beside her. The little touches. The little smiles. She’d been buzzing on him, attuned to him, and from one heartbeat to the next all that sensation came rushing back—and then surged right past the point it had been during the competition and into wildfire territory.
His hands were in her hair, hers still gripping his shirt and nape, as the kiss went on and on. It grew and burned, and Magda realized dimly that without someone to interrupt them, it might just go on forever, or until one of them passed out from exhaustion or oxygen deprivation.
She pulled away with a gasp, and Mac lurched backward, breathing hard. “Shit,” he mumbled, raising one hand to his lips. “Okay. Good preview.”
“Right. See you tomorrow,” Magda said—all in one breath, retreating back into her room and shutting the door before she could do something entirely too reckless and drag him in there with her.
They still weren’t supposed to fraternize—though on the nights when they didn’t have any advance notice of what they’d be doing tomorrow, she didn’t know how it could be a problem. But no. She was doing this for herself. This show was hers . And even if the possibility of them bubbled in her blood like hot caramel, she didn’t want that to touch this.
Even if they got together, they might break up someday, and she didn’t want to look back at her Cake-Off experience with questions or the bitterness of a missed opportunity. So for now, a preview would just have to do.