by Maggie Knox
“Who’s responsible for this?” Sasha glanced around the room, and there was a lot of shuffling of papers but no one spoke.
“What did I say?” Cass whispered to Austin, forgetting for a moment he was not her ally but rather her enemy.
“It’s day three,” Austin whispered back, smirking with delight. “Someone screwed up the prompter. But I would have caught it. Guess that bump on the head is getting to you, huh?”
Cass glanced at the prompter, clearly reading the “day two” written on the screen. Way to go, Cass.
“Sorry, Sasha,” she called out. “I should have caught that. Ready whenever you are.” Her confidence was now shot, and a cold and clammy sheen of sweat covered her arms. She was out of her league here. Way out of her league.
“Well, you didn’t write the damn script,” Sasha muttered, giving a pointed glance to one of the headset-wearing men who was also holding a clipboard, looking guilty. “Fine. Let’s go from the top again. Charlie, first pass is day three. Got it?”
“Got it,” she replied, nodding and clearing her throat. They were counted in again.
“I’m Austin Nash . . .”
“And I’m Charlie Goodwin . . .”
“And together, we’re Sweet and Salty!”
Cass smiled, hoping it looked natural. “Welcome to day two of . . . Oh! I’m so sorry.”
There was shuffling and coughing in the background, and Sasha let out another sigh. Cass was ruining this, and she’d only been at it for about two minutes. “Austin, swap lines with Charlie.” Cass wished she could run off set, straight back home to Starlight Peak. But even if she wanted to, these heels wouldn’t let her get far.
Austin was flawless, of course, effortlessly picking up where she left off. Cass struggled to find a rhythm with the script, screwing up a few more times as they worked through the various intros for the baking competition.
Finally, Sasha called for a break, and Priya came out to freshen up both Austin’s and Cass’s makeup. As Priya powdered away Cass’s nervous sheen of sweat, she saw Austin and Sasha off to the side, talking animatedly but too quietly for her to hear.
Priya followed Cass’s gaze, then harrumphed. “Don’t you worry about him, hon. Sasha knows exactly who Austin Nash is.” Cass was grateful to her sister’s best friend, but she was worried about the secret huddle. Just then Austin glanced over, giving Cass a big smile.
“Happy to pick up the slack,” he said, loudly enough for the rest of the set to hear him. “We’re a team, right, Charlie?”
Cass smiled wanly in response. “You bet,” she replied brightly, feeling a touch better as she imagined throwing one of the whipped-cream-topped cranberry-cloud pies the assistants were prepping into his smug, gorgeous face.
4
Charlie
Tuesday: 11 Days to Christmas . . .
Starlight Peak
The bakery’s morning to-do list was long and the note from Cass not long enough.
I put the dried fruit in the rum to soak before I left. Walter Demetre, the student who helps me in the bakery—remember him? We used to babysit him and his sister—comes in at 5:45 a.m. Also, Gateau has outdoor cat aspirations, so keep her upstairs during morning rush. xx
Charlie glanced again at the list and the note, and the words blurred momentarily. She sipped at her coffee but scowled when none of the flavor or aroma came through—it might as well have been hot water. For a moment she indulged her panic that maybe this loss of her senses could be permanent, and a deep feeling of dread settled in. The devastation, both personal and professional, would be . . . Stop it, Charlie, she silently chastised herself. She had to assume this was merely a temporary side effect of her concussion. Any other outcome was unacceptable.
Shaking off the worry, Charlie took another big sip of the coffee because, even if she couldn’t taste it, she needed the caffeine. Charlie had to convince everyone she was Cass—which physically wouldn’t be hard, but she was fuzzy-headed and hadn’t worked in the family’s bakery since she was a teenager, except for the odd Christmas holiday when she was home early enough to help out. Over the years the two had swapped identities on numerous occasions. Once Charlie had pretended to be Cass at the local fall fair baking competition, because Cass had strep throat and had lost her voice, and brought home the blue ribbon for her twin’s pecan squares. But those times were nothing like this. For one thing, the swaps were brief, and there had never been quite so much at stake.
Charlie sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes tightly closed. Her head was killing her. Even the ibuprofen she’d taken an hour ago wasn’t touching the searing band of pain. She was running on no sleep and too much coffee, and couldn’t shake the feeling she had made a terrible mistake in asking Cass to switch places with her. Maybe her head injury was worse than she thought.
It was still dark outside. Charlie hadn’t been back home in almost a year—the show had been incredibly demanding on her time—and she was looking forward to seeing Starlight Peak once the sun came up. She hoped the familiarity of her hometown would be a soothing balm to her rattled nerves.
Rubbing her temples, Charlie surveyed the bakery’s kitchen. Little had changed since she and Cass were kids, helping their parents make and bake the treats for their tight-knit community. At Christmastime, though, the bakery’s production ramped up to a breakneck pace, and today alone she had to make dozens of loaves of the holiday Starlight Bread, along with the regular bakery offerings. She felt pressure against her shins, heard purring, and glanced down to discover Gateau, Cass’s beloved black cat, winding between her feet.
“Are you hungry?” Charlie asked, crouching down to scratch Gateau behind the ears. She was a dog person, but Gateau was more like a dog than a cat—Cass had apparently taught the cat to play fetch with a miniature tennis ball—which Charlie appreciated.
Cass had mentioned something about when and how to feed Gateau, but she couldn’t remember any of it. She looked around, wondering where Cass kept the cat food. She opened the bakery’s fridge and found some ham, which they used for the ham and cheese croissants, and rolled up a piece in her fingers. Glancing at the clock—a cuckoo clock in the shape of a cat, whose eyes moved back and forth with each passing second—Charlie saw it was almost six.
“Let’s get you upstairs. As much as I’d love to fulfill all your dreams and let you outside, your momma would kill me.” Charlie wiggled the ham roll and then called for Gateau to follow her upstairs to Cass’s apartment, which was over the bakery. A two-bedroom best described as “laid back,” not untidy but certainly more cluttered than what Charlie was used to. There were cheerful overstuffed pillows in pinks and oranges, and lemon-yellow drapes that captured the sunlight and spread it throughout the apartment. The apartment couldn’t have been more different from Charlie’s, which featured granite counters, stark-white cabinetry, and modern touches. But this homey space was perfect for Cass, and Charlie suddenly missed her sister and all the time they used to spend together. With a sigh, she put the piece of ham on the floor of the small kitchen, and Gateau happily sat in front of it.
“I’ll find your food later, Gateau. Let’s not tell Cass about the ham, okay? Our little secret.” Charlie shut the door tightly to make sure Gateau couldn’t get out, then went to walk back downstairs. But the quick change of direction made her dizzy and she pressed her hands against the wall.
Charlie waited for the feeling to pass, then made her way down the stairs and back to the bakery. At that moment she heard a soft rap at the front door, and saw a young guy wearing a winter hat peering through the window. He waved when he saw her and she unlocked the door.
Charlie couldn’t believe this was the kid she and Cass used to babysit more than a decade ago. “You’ve grown like a foot since I last saw you!”
Walter was in the midst of stomping his boots on the front doormat, sprinkles of snow flying off them, when he
stopped and gave her a curious look. “I saw you yesterday, Cass.”
She managed a laugh. “Right. Yesterday.”
“Everything okay?” Walter asked, bending down to untie the laces on his boots but keeping his eyes on hers.
“Just a bit of a headache.”
“Maybe you need to sleep more?” Walter suggested. “How’s the dough looking—I hope I left everything in good shape?”
“Um, pretty good I think.” Charlie glanced toward the row of baskets and wanted to cry with how many there were. She held out her arms for his coat and hat. “Let me hang these up for you.”
“Thanks, Cass,” Walter said. “Hey, cool ink! When did you get that?” For a moment Charlie was confused, but she followed his gaze to her wrist, and realized he was referring to her tattoo.
“Oh. My ink.” Her sluggish brain just couldn’t keep up.
Walter tied his apron and put a hairnet on. Then he frowned at Charlie. “What’s up with you today? Is it the Makewell’s rumor? I wouldn’t worry too much, Cass. Woodburn’s will be fine.”
“Of course it will.”
Charlie had her back to Walter as she hung his coat on the hook to the far side of the bakery, where two small tables with a couple of chairs provided space for patrons to enjoy their baked goods with a coffee. She paused to gather herself. You are Cass. You have a cat named Gateau and you live upstairs and do not have a tattoo.
“It’s just a temporary tattoo, for fun. I should probably cover it for work, so it doesn’t fade too fast,” she replied, smiling as she turned back around. “And Makewell’s would never fly in this town. I’m not worried at all. The people here like their traditions.” Then she saw Cass’s note on the countertop and lunged to grab it. Walter looked surprised at her quick movement. “Sorry, just needed to take a look at this before we get started.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Walter asked.
“Absolutely,” Charlie folded Cass’s note and shoved it into her apron’s front pocket. “Now, how about we get these loaves going?”
* * *
• • •
A couple of hours later Walter had left for class and Charlie was checking the daily bakery stock against the list. Croissants. Eclairs. Scones. Three kinds of cookies. Date squares and raspberry bars. Whole wheat and pumpernickel loaves. The Starlight Bread she and Walter had baked this morning was on shelves in the back of the bakery, cooling before the loaves headed to the freezer, where they rested until the town threw its annual Starlight Eve bash in the square on December 24.
Suddenly her Sweet & Salty television schedule didn’t seem quite as grueling. How did Cass do this every day? Some of the items, like the cookies and bars, could be made every other day, but the Woodburn’s sourdough was baked fresh daily. Charlie checked the sourdough loaves in the oven and saw they had about thirty minutes to go. She couldn’t smell anything but suspected the bakery was filled with delicious scents. Charlie had hoped her sense of smell would have come back by now, but it had only been a day since the accident. And she wasn’t exactly resting like she had been told to do at the hospital.
The bakery opened at nine o’clock, which meant she had just under an hour before she had to start greeting customers. Thank goodness for Walter. Things were almost ready to go.
Charlie decided a few moments of rest would be fine. Just to briefly close her eyes, which felt gritty and sore from lack of sleep. Before she dragged herself upstairs she found a bandage in the bakery’s first aid kit and applied it to her wrist, covering her tattoo. Then she lay on Cass’s couch, telling herself she would set her alarm for fifteen minutes. Plenty of time left to finish the bread and get the coffee brewed for the morning rush. Setting her phone beside her, she leaned back onto the pillows and closed her eyes.
* * *
• • •
Charlie woke up not because of her phone’s alarm, but because of another alarm—this one painfully loud. Confused and disoriented, she sat up quickly and instantly felt dizzy. She reached for her phone but it was no longer beside her. Where was it? With a grunt of frustration, she glanced at the kitchen clock and saw she had been asleep for forty-five minutes. Which meant the bakery was opening in minutes. The fire alarm screeched so loudly she had to cover her ears as she ran downstairs from Cass’s apartment.
It only took her turning the corner from the staircase into the bakery’s back room to understand precisely what the problem was. Smoke billowed from the ovens. And even though Charlie could smell nothing, it was clear what had happened. She’d burned the sourdough loaves.
“No, no, no . . .” she mumbled, racing into action. First, she turned off the ovens, making the decision to pull out the burning loaves rather than leaving them in the ovens to char further. Quickly putting on the industrial oven mitts that went past her elbows, Charlie opened the doors one at a time and grabbed the blackened loaves; the billowing smoke made her cough and her eyes water. Then she opened the front door and all the windows, despite the cold winter air, and reached for one of the cardboard menus from the countertop before jumping on a chair to try to disperse the smoke away from the fire alarm in the ceiling. She nearly toppled over with another wave of dizziness, but managed to stay upright.
That was where she was—desperately fanning at the fire alarm, oven mitts still on and tears streaming from her eyes because of the smoke—when she heard the sirens approaching.
For a moment Charlie paused her fanning, ducking slightly to look out the front window to see the fire truck pulling up outside. She cursed under her breath.
In a moment the Starlight Peak Fire Department was going to be inside the bakery. Right in time for opening.
* * *
• • •
“Your parents go on their first vacation in ten years and you try to burn the bakery down, huh?” Fire Chief Matthews, whom Charlie had known since she was a girl, winked at her and took a bite of the raspberry bar in front of him, washing it down with a coffee.
Charlie grimaced and shrugged. “I guess the timer is on the fritz?”
“On all three of these?” a voice asked. Charlie glanced over at a firefighter she didn’t recognize, saw him pointing at the three ovens and their timers. She had noticed him right away when they all got out of the truck, and not only because she didn’t know him. He was tall and clearly well-muscled under his uniform, good-looking in a way that made her feel off-kilter—though that could have been the concussion, too.
“Weird, huh?” Charlie said, weakly.
The firefighter raised an eyebrow and smiled behind a neatly trimmed beard that was a deep shade of amber. Then he set the first oven’s timer for ten seconds and Charlie watched as it counted down and then beeped when the seconds ended.
“Should we try the other two?” he asked, finger hovering above the timer button, and Chief Matthews chuckled.
“Come on now, Jake,” Chief Matthews said. “Don’t you think she’s having a rough enough morning without your razzing?”
Charlie extended her hand toward the new-to-her, too-handsome-for-his-own-good firefighter. “I’m Cass.”
There was a moment of silence as the firefighter and Chief Matthews stared at Charlie’s outstretched hand in confusion. Charlie realized this new-to-her firefighter was, of course, not new to Cass. She was about to try and cover her tracks, when the chief burst out laughing. “Cassie Goodwin, if you aren’t just as witty today as you were when you were five years old. Always clever, this one.” He stood up and put his helmet back on. “Jake, let’s take some of these cookies and bars back to the station house. Can you pack some up for us, Cass?”
Charlie was about to get one of the take-out boxes when Brett burst through the door.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Brett ran a hand through his hair, which somehow stayed meticulously coiffed with nary a strand out of place. Charlie did her be
st not to scowl, knowing her sister’s history with Brett—including what had happened the night before. Though she hadn’t been able to get a lot of detail from Cass when they met at the gas station, she had heard enough to make her blood boil. Charlie had never understood Brett Linklater’s appeal.
He was overly confident in a way that Charlie found grating—much like Austin, come to think of it. The “good old boy” sort who always acted like he was performing for a crowd. The sort Charlie had no time for. She was glad Cass had come to her senses; she couldn’t have imagined Brett as her brother-in-law. Not that Charlie was any sort of expert in the romance department: she’d been on a handful of dates in L.A., and had been in a brief relationship with a fellow chef at Souci that had fizzled out before anything got serious. Ultimately she didn’t have the time to juggle work and dating, so mostly she didn’t bother.
Brett engulfed Charlie in a stifling hug and she stiffened, her arms still by her sides.
Brett released her finally, then he pulled back and gave her a curious look. “Did you change your shampoo? You smell different.”
“Uh, yeah. Ran out, so this is a new bottle.” Charlie shrugged. It was becoming clear that swapping identities with her twin might be more complicated than she’d considered.
“Hey, what happened here?” Brett was now holding Charlie’s arm, running his fingers over the bandage on her wrist that covered her tattoo.
“Oh,” Charlie said. “A small burn from earlier.”
“You should have someone take a look at it,” Brett said. Charlie pulled her arm out of his grasp.
“No need. I know how to take care of myself.”
“My poor Cass-baby.” Brett rubbed a hand up and down her back, and Charlie tried not to shudder. It reminded her of the way Austin would rub her shoulders after long days on set—without her permission—when he was trying to disarm her, playing the part of caring, sensitive co-host. “What happened?”