Chapter 11 #2
He nods. “Yeah. Right. Merry Mayhem. That’s what I meant.”
I turn back in the kitchen doorway. “Remember, you’re my sister’s boyfriend.”
His gaze lifts from my ass to my face. His eyes and tone are serious. “I am not your sister’s boyfriend, Thea.”
I feel warmth rush through me. “Remember, you’re acting like you’re my sister’s boyfriend,” I amend.
“Yeah,” he nods. “For a couple of days.”
“Right.”
“Only for a couple of days,” he repeats. “Don’t make me resist you in public longer than that.”
I’m smiling all the way upstairs, through getting ready, and the whole time he holds my hand on the drive downtown.
At two minutes to seven, Josh and I are standing at a long table in the town’s square along with all of the other contestants.
Before us are plates of plain sugar cookies, bowls of frosting, and multiple decorations—colored sugars, sprinkles, piping bags filled with more frosting in various colors, and tiny candy snowflakes, stockings, and candy canes.
We are also bundled together into one winter coat. We have our arms around one another inside the coat, and my left arm is in the left coat sleeve, Josh’s right arm is through the right coat sleeve. I also have a mitten on my left hand, and he has one on his right.
All of the other pairs are in coats and mittens as well.
Muriel and Patty fought over who should get the right and who should get the left mitten.
Jesse and Brad, the married couple, are just now putting on their coat and mittens because they have all their kids home for Christmas and couldn’t get into the bathroom on time to get ready and get down here.
The two teens, Mitchell and Max, were the first ones here and are directly across the table from us, grinning and seemingly excited about the contest. Sam and Ashley are cuddled up in their coat, whispering together, and smiling at each other like love-sick fools.
“If I’d known I’d get to be right up against you like this, I would have been very excited about this first challenge,” Josh says, for my ears only. Beneath the coat, his left hand slides down to my ass.
“Behave,” I tell him softly. But I really like his hand there.
Thank goodness it’s only about fifty degrees this morning. It will be way too warm for a winter coat later. Not to mention being pressed up against this guy’s hot body. Literally. He’s warm.
“You’re going to decorate as many cookies as you can in the next ten minutes, but you can each only use one hand. You need to work as a team!” Nora is grinning as if this is the most fun thing she’s ever seen.
But Nora looks like that about every activity during Merry Mayhem.
Okay, she looks that way about almost everything the Parks and Rec department does.
“Whichever team has the most well-decorated cookies at the end wins. But there will be judging. The cookies need to look good, too.”
“Really good!” a voice calls from the audience that has gathered to watch despite the early hour.
I look over and see Thurman Lafitte, otherwise known as Brewser.
He’s the retired town doctor, but was given the nickname long ago because, as a kid—the story varies between ten years old, six years old, and fourteen years old—he started helping an uncle brew beer and moonshine in their backyard.
Considering that was sixty-some years ago, he’s very good at it by now.
“You’re one of the judges?” I ask.
“You know it!”
“And me!” His constant companion, William Bienvenu, whom they call Wilson because his bald head reminds them of a volleyball in some Tom Hanks movie, is right beside him.
“Are they tough?” Josh asks.
I laugh. “Very. But they also like you a lot because you’ve been so good to Harley, and they’re Harley’s best friends.”
“Harley has a lot of friends.”
“He sure does.”
“Does that mean we can get by with some sloppy cookies?”
“Maybe a couple of smudged edges, but nothing major.”
“Okay then, let’s go.”
I grin up at him. “I’m ready.”
He smiles down at me. “This is the most fun I’ve had in a very long time.”
“We haven’t even started,” I protest with a laugh.
“I know.”
Dang, it’s really going to be hard to resist him in public for much longer, too.
“Ready, set, go!” Nora calls.
Jingle bells ring, and everyone reaches forward, the table bouncing as we bump into it.
“Grab the round one,” I say. “We’ll start easy with an ornament.”
Josh grabs a round cookie and puts it in front of us.
“Are you right-handed?” I ask him.
“Yep. But pretty ambidextrous. I can start an IV with either hand. Can do sloppy sutures with my left if I have to. Can’t intubate lefty though.”
I stare at him.
“I mean, I can stabilize the tubing with my left, of course,” he goes on. “I just can’t thread the endotracheal tube with my left hand. Unless I really had to. I probably could.” He seems to be thinking that over now.
I laugh. “Okay. I definitely think you should frost. I’ll hold the cookie still.”
Can the guy do sutures and intubate? Yeah, he can handle a piping bag.
He grins and grabs for the white icing, painting on a plain background, then reaches for the red piping bag.
Across from us, the brothers are bickering.
“I can’t do it left-handed either!”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know! Just do something!”
“I can’t do shit with my right hand,” one of the twins—I can’t tell them apart—whispers to his brother.
“I can draw with my left hand, but I’m still shit. I’m a terrible artist,” the other says.
“I’ve never used one of these things to decorate anything,” the first twin says. “Can we just do sprinkles?”
“We can, but we won’t get as many votes.”
The twin who claims to be shit at drawing picks up one of the piping bags. “How does this work?”
I lean over. “Just squeeze from the top, like a tube of toothpaste. The frosting will come out the tip. Then just use it like a pencil.”
The kid nods and puts the tip of the icing bag against the cookie. But he does it too hard. It digs into the frosting they’ve already spread on the cookie and drags that frosting with it.
“Not like that!” His brother protests.
“I don’t know how to do this!” the one with the bag exclaims.
“Gentler,” I say. “You’re just writing on top of the other frosting.”
I glance down at our cookie. And damn. Josh can do sutures, and he can draw a pretty great design with red frosting. It looks like basket weaving across the middle of our white round cookie.
I look up at him. “I’m impressed.”
“My mom and aunt are great bakers. I might’ve had some practice in the kitchen growing up.”
I grin. “How about silver balls across the top?”
“Awesome.” He starts picking up the tiny balls between his thumb and index finger. He drops them into place in a perfectly straight line.
“You weren’t kidding about your exceptional fine motor skills.”
He shoots me a smirk and squeezes my ass at the same time. “I’m very good with my fingers.”
I feel my cheeks flush as I look up at him quickly.
He winks. “Yes, that’s exactly how I meant that.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say breezily.
“Yes, you do. I can see exactly what you’re thinking. And we are on the same page.”
I drop my voice even lower. “Stop it.”
“No one’s watching us. Everyone’s concentrating on their own cookies.”
“We have an entire audience watching us.”
“We just look like really good contest partners.”
“Dammit!”
I look across the table to find the cookie that the twins were decorating crushed.
“This is hopeless,” one of them groans.
They look so disappointed.
“We can’t even get our first challenge right,” one says.
“Maybe we should just back out,” his brother says miserably.
“Oh damn,” Josh groans as he drags the side of his mitten across his perfectly decorated cookie, smearing frosting and sending little silver balls rolling across the table. He looks at me. “Sorry. It’s been a while since I did this.”
I give him a little frown. It was obvious he did that on purpose. But I nod. Maybe we’re teaching the guys a lesson. “It’s okay. We’ll just start over.”
He looks across the table. “You have to be able to pivot quickly in something like this,” Josh says. “Think on your feet. Get creative.”
“Sure. But…we have to follow the rules,” one twin says.
“But what are the rules really?” Josh asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You have to frost as many cookies as you can. And they have to look good, right? But “good” is in the eyes of the judges. We just need to impress them somehow,” Josh points out. “That’s it.”
“What are you getting at?” I ask him.
Josh looks down. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I say honestly.
He grins. “Great.” He looks across the table to the twins. “I have an idea. You up for trying something?”
“We have nothing to lose,” one says, gesturing at the mess in front of them.
“Exactly,” Josh says happily. “Start frosting the round cookies with white frosting. As quickly as you can.” He looks at me. “Us too.”
I laugh. “Okay.”
“We’re making snowballs,” Josh says. “So they don’t have to be perfectly round either.” He pinches the edge of the cookie in front of him, making the edge jagged.
The boys are grinning, and I love the fact that he wanted to help the boys through this and turn their frustration into fun.
We quickly start frosting round cookies, completely white, and then, with Josh’s instruction, dabbing the tops of them with multiple little white balls. The boys enjoy even crushing a few.
Then, as the timer ticks down, we scatter the cookies between us.
“Time!” Nora calls out happily.
Everyone steps away from the table, and we grin at the twins, who look like they've been let in on a big secret.
“Okay, judges, see what you think,” Nora says.
Wilson, Brewser, and a couple of ladies from the city council start walking up and down the table. When they get to us, all eyebrows rise.
“This looks like you had a food fight,” Brewser says.
“Kind of,” one of the twins says. “Joint venture. The theme is snowball fight.”