The photo that appeared on my social media an hour later, a long-distance shot of me and Brody rolling in the snow with all kinds of stupid ass hashtags made my heart fall. He was going to think I did that, and I tried to log in to delete it, but the password wouldn’t work. What the hell?
What did I do now?
Get ahead of it. Make a statement.
I sat on the window seat, turned on the lamp, and set up the phone, all on autopilot.
“Hi, Mallys!” I began enthusiastically. “Just wanted you all to know that the last photo was posted by mistake!” I needed to make sure that I chose my words carefully. “You should all be the first to hear that I’ve met someone and you all know him! Brody is a fellow contestant, and I’ve fallen harder than I ever thought.” I cupped my hands to make a heart on my chest and grinned. “Wish us well if you can. I think he might be the one. Night, Mallys!”
Hearts were already flying up the screen, and I’d mitigated the damage, now I just had to face Brody and tell him what I’d done.
My cell vibrated with a message. “I’m the one?” Brody typed, and I saw that he was typing more, so I waited. “I think you might be the one for me too.” He signed off with a kiss. I then sent a paragraph about how it wasn’t me that had posted the photo of us in the snow, followed by an email to Erin, threatening to sue her if she didn’t share the new passwords. Her response was instant. I went in, locked her out, and then felt like I had control.
And then? I sent a kiss to Brody, along with the cutest heart gif I could find.
“Ready for this?” Brody asked me from his work area behind me, and I turned to face him, leaning back on the counter and grinning. There was no way I could let him see too deep inside me because he wouldn’t only find fear and nerves about the bake, he’d find the love I had for him, which was nestled so far inside that to expose it would risk breaking me apart. I was still reeling over what I’d told Erin, and how direct I’d been, but I also felt lighter as if the weight of the Justin character I’d assumed had been lifted from me. Maybe it was okay to be me, maybe other people would like the real me.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I quipped back in my best ‘Justin-is-a-badass-and-isn’t-terrified-really’ voice.
Which is when everything went terribly wrong.
Part of my cake design was a dome of set jelly with a needled flower inside, and I left it in my refrigerator to set, but I must have put it too close to an edge because when I moved a tray just an inch with my perfectly baked sponges on it to cool, the entire shelf collapsed and the bowl of the jelly plus the cream I’d made smashed into each other. The crack of glass on glass was loud enough to wake the dead, and there was no mistaking Brody’s gasp. The cameras panned in on the chaos and then up at me staring down at the mess. There was no way I would have put my precious elements on the shelf in that kind of way. I’d have to start over and bake another cake layer as I was one short now. I backed away from the refrigerator slowly and straight into Brody.
“It will be okay, Justin,” he said softly near my ear.
How? How was it going to be okay?
“Cut!” the director called, and a group gathered around the devastation. My perfectly iced first bakes were scratched and tilted, the rest of the cream full of glass, and the beautiful scarlet jelly flower was destroyed. I wouldn’t have time left to do that again. I backed away from the group and headed to my table, Brody next to me and everything was wrong.
“What happened?” I wasn’t asking him, I was asking myself. “I checked the shelves, there was room, there was nothing that could have caused an issue when I put the bakes on that shelf.”
“It’s just bad luck,” Brody said, patting my arm. “You can pull this back.”
“How? I’m two bakes down, and I’ve lost my flower and the buttercream.” I glanced at the countdown clock that they had paused, showing forty-five minutes left.
Rita came and stood next to me, talking in a low tone and forcing me to lean down to listen to her. “We’re giving you half an hour to pull yourself together, get some baking in.”
“I’ll help,” Brody said, and I knew she would frown and tell him no, but she didn’t. She merely nodded and waved us on.
“What about what Clare thinks?”
Rita cast a dark look Clare’s way. Clare was sitting on her stool with an expression like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
“She’ll be fine.”
I made new bakes and cream but the jelly flower was out of my power, while Brody helped tidy around me and weighed things out. He never once touched the actual baking, but I knew I was gone from the competition. Would they televise this? Was my end resulting cake even going to matter?
I squeezed his hand briefly just as they called us to separate because they were restarting the clock. They’d asked me to use a different refrigerator, and I was attempting to stay as calm as I could.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For whatever happens.”
“Love you,” he whispered back, or at least I thought he said that, and he headed for his station.
Wait? He loved me? Did he really say that?
I should ask him, right?
But then he might say I’d heard wrong, and honestly? I wanted to believe that he’d just told me he loved me.
Chapter Twenty
Life is short… lick the bowl
Brody
Love you? Had I really just said that? It had slipped out as naturally as the next breath. I was mortified and couldn’t bring myself to look up and see if Justin was staring at me. I couldn’t feel the weight of his gaze on me, but there again, he had a lot of work to get done in the next forty-five minutes, and maybe he hadn’t heard what I said. Focusing back on the finishing touches for my cake, I ignored the hammering of my heart and the way my entire world perspective had shifted in just those few seconds of stupidity.
Almost two weeks. That was all we’d had together so how could that be love? Sex. That was all it was. Just all different kinds of sex. Mind-blowing, comfortable, hot, lazy, energetic, we’d covered it all, and the way we’d used whipped cream and chocolate last night had been a long way past sexy and onto highly charged erotic.
I’m getting hard just thinking about the way Justin was sprawled on the bed, writhing as I licked and sucked all that chocolate from his body, and how the cream—
“Concentrate,” I muttered under my breath and pulled myself back to the here and now. I had six roses to complete, and now only forty minutes in which to arrange them. They were already made from individually created petals in a mix of white and ruby chocolate, they just had to be placed in just the right spot. It took me a good few minutes to get back into the swing of what I was doing because somehow in those two words I’d spoken I had rocked my own world and probably messed with Justin’s.
“Bakers, you have ten minutes. That’s ten minutes to go.”
An eerie calm settled over the room, and I didn’t have time to think about anything but finishing my display, spraying the pearlescent highlights on the tumble of roses on my five tier rose and cream wedding cake. Each layer was a different flavor. The bakes were perfect, and when I stood back as they called time, I thought I’d made the best I could in the time I had. If this was for a real wedding, I would have worked for weeks, I wouldn’t have a loose petal on rose three or a slip in the chiffon lemon layer that made the whole thing just ever so slightly crooked. But ignoring all of that I had made a beautiful cake.