by Tegan Maher
"Holy cow," Dee said, her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide with wonder. She was obviously not seeing the jaded part. "This is amazing!"
We cut around a partition, and it was like somebody'd closed the door on the mess behind us. Two rows of workspaces, complete with stoves and ovens, stretched all the way back to the wall. There were at least twenty of them, each one identical to the next.
I turned to Dee to point out all the sparkling equipment and was shocked. Three seconds ago, she'd been thrilled, and now she looked like she was gonna throw up. I tried to see it from her point, and when I did, I understood the look of sheer panic on her face.
Harsh lights shone down on each station, and cameras were situated strategically so that not a single success or failure, no matter how large or small, would be missed. Every competitor could screw up at the exact same time, and one of the cameras or another would catch it.
This was the exact opposite of hiding in her safe little kitchen at home, and I worried for a moment that she would turn tail and run.
Instead, she pulled a deep breath in through her nose and blew it out her mouth. "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
"Yeah," I replied, giving her a little shoulder bump, "maybe not, but what's so great about Kansas anyway?"
CHAPTER THREE
"Dee!" An older woman called from a table in the far corner. She'd pulled a chair up to one of the workstations and had several folders open and scattered in front of her. "Over here! Thank you so much for helping with this—you're a life saver!"
She rushed to clear off a space so we could sit down. A young man carrying a clipboard and wearing a headset appeared, brows raised in question. "Ms. Brown, ladies. May I get you anything?"
The woman, whom I took to be Darla, looked at us over her readers. "Y'all want anything?"
Dee was still staring around at the set and all the fancy equipment, so I asked for two waters.
"Same here, Shane," she-who-must-be-Darla said with a small smile. "And thank you."
I stuck my hand out. "Hi, I'm Toni. You must be Darla."
Dee shook her head and pulled her gaze from all the fancy equipment. "Sorry, ladies. It's just ... there's so much to take in!"
My friend was still staring around, trying to absorb every detail.
"Pretty freakin' awesome, huh, Dee?" Darla said, following Dee's gaze.
"Terrifying is more like it," Dee replied. "I mean, it's not like I haven't seen the setup on TV a million times, but for some reason, I pictured guys walking around with cameras, not ones posted above each station."
Darla laughed. "Well, there will be those, too, but the mounted ones are to catch every detail. It won't all make the cut by a long shot, but if something spectacular happens while the judges or cameramen aren't right there, we'll still have footage. Helps eliminate any sort of cheating, too."
When Dee didn't say anything, Darla said her name again. "Are you okay?"
Dee shook her head and turned her attention back to us. "Yeah, I guess," she said with another deep breath. "I don't know what got into me. It's just a little overwhelming seeing it all for the first time."
"I guess it's better that you take it all in now than to see it for the first time ten minutes before you have to cook in it," I said. "That would suck."
"Yeah," she agreed, still a little dazed.
I wasn't used to seeing her wigged out by anything, so I was extra glad it was now rather than later. She had enough anxiety over just a stupid mixer, for heaven's sake. Hopefully, they'd do some sort of dry run to get the contestants used to how things would work before they actually started filming.
"Anyway," Dee said, shoving the folder holding the lists at Darla, "Everything's all set. Just go down this list, and if you find out you're missing anything, I've included all the numbers you could possibly need on the last page."
Just when she'd recovered her mental footing, a silver-haired woman in a smart business suit popped her head around the divider, smiling.
"Hi, Darla! I just wanted to follow up and make sure everything's all set for tomorrow."
Dee gasped and elbowed me. "It's her," she hissed as if the woman wasn't standing twenty feet away from us in an otherwise empty space. "It's Bella DaCourt!"
The woman turned to her, smiling. She was obviously used to hearing her name in a stage whisper, because it didn't seem to faze her at all.
"It is," she said with a wry smile. "And who might you be, young lady?"
Dee hustled forward, all color returned to her cheeks and then some. "Ms. DaCourt, it's an absolute pleasure to meet you. My name's Dee Miller, and this is my friend Toni Owens. I'm a huge fan!"
"Aren't you in the competition?" she asked. "“You own the local cafe, yes?"
Dee's head bobbed with pleasure. "I am, and I do. I've been looking forward to this competition for months."
I smiled. "And my hips are looking forward to fewer practice sessions now that the competition is starting. It's awesome of you to come over to judge it, Ms. DaCourt."
Unlike many celebrities or pseudo-celebs, she didn't give us one of those fake smiles, then blow us off. She spent a few minutes talking to Dee, asking about her history and her goals, and even giving her some tips.
While she was talking, I kept noticing movement out of the corner of my eye, but when I'd turn to look, there wouldn't be anybody there. I narrowed my eyes and kinda let them go out of focus a little, then scanned the room again. I'd learned that if Ms. Maisey was hanging out but didn't want to be seen, I could sometimes spot her by doing that.
Nothin' though. I wrote it off to hallucinations or some kind of weird eye floaters caused by the massive amounts of sugar flooding my brain right then.
"Anyway," Bella was saying to Dee, "don't be worried about the cameras. As a matter of fact, just pretend they aren't even there. Let the process absorb you like I'm sure it always does, and you'll be just fine."
I could tell Dee wanted to believe her, but she cast a doubtful glance toward the offending machinery and chewed her lip. "I'll try my best," she finally said.
Conversation had wound down, and Bella excused herself.
"You ready, Dee?" I asked as she gazed after her real-life superhero.
She nodded, her face glowing. "Wasn't she awesome?"
"She sure was," I said, and meant it. I'd expected somebody stuffy and condescending, but she'd been pretty much the opposite of that. "And you should take her advice. Heck with what other people think—like you said, you can do this in your sleep. Those other competitors aren't going to have a chance. Now, let’s go buy some of those fancy new appliances you're going to be working with tomorrow. I know you're gonna want to do at least on more practice run tonight anyway, so you may as well get confident on the mechanical aspects as well."
"What?" she gasped. "No! I thought you were kidding! That stuff's crazy expensive. It's not like the knock-off brands we'll spend a grand easy on just a handful of things."
"Then it's fate," I said, my tone smug. "The roofing job came in at a little over thousand under the estimate because he didn't have to replace as much as he thought he would. So it's found money. Besides, it's an investment. We have to have good tools to cook for guests and your pastry customers."
A slow smile spread across her face. "Well since you put it that way!"
We said our goodbyes to Darla, and as we were leaving, I caught that glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye again. I watched the spot where I'd thought I'd seen it, but nothing seemed out of place.
"I can't believe I just got baking and business advice from Bella DaCourt!" she exclaimed once we were back in the SUV. Dee was naturally a glass-half-full type of person, and seeing her so over the moon was awesome. She always did so much for others that I loved it when she just did something for herself.
Like this competition. She'd waffled back and forth for a week over entering, until I'd just sat her down and made her fill it out. Ever since, she hadn't stopped practicing�
��or talking about it. All I knew was that if she baked as well during the competition as she did at home and for her customers, there was no way she could lose.
Still, I watched the shows, and had no doubt that many of the folks who messed up and got themselves eliminated were good cooks, too. They just let the pressure get to them, got over-confident, or just made some silly error or another that they would have never made at home.
Of all the possible ways she could lose, if it absolutely had to happen, I hoped it wasn't because of any of that. She was wicked hard on herself, and that would devastate her.
CHAPTER FOUR
After we picked out her new kitchen toys, we decided to hit the local DIY store to pick up a couple new light fixtures for the bathrooms at the lodge. I was absolutely elated at the way things had worked out for us. In addition to getting a reward for solving a murder, we also had extra cash flow from three guys working on a road crew a half-hour up the road.
They'd been there for two months and were starting to feel more like friends than residents. I found I liked having people in the lodge, especially considering they were gone to work during the day. It was the best of all worlds. Dee always had her honey biscuits available and was a morning person, so she usually took the breakfast shift. I, on the other hand, was not a morning person. That worked, though, because it meant I was home to cook them supper.
Sometimes it was inconvenient, but then I'd remind myself that I was my own boss, and working a couple hours a day was nothing compared to some of the soul-sucking nine-to-five jobs I'd worked. And it paid better.
I did still work at the local bar, The Dead End, a couple of days a week just for mad money, but what the guys paid was more than enough to pay the bills and continue the renovations on the lodge. The place had been a money pit in the beginning, but between Dee and Scout, the awesome man who lived on the farm next to us, they'd known how to do most of the small stuff.
"I can't believe I actually have a Kitchen Aide mixer," Dee exclaimed as she pulled the gleaming red appliance out of the box and studied the instruction manual. Since I was big into fresh food, we'd gotten the pasta-making tool to go along with it, and I was as excited to try it as she was to make a batch of muffins in it.
"You deserve it," I said, and meant it. She'd been busting her hump getting the cafe up and running, all the while helping me get the lodge ready.
"Aww," she said. "Thank you. And in the spirit of taking your advice to treat myself sometimes, I don't even feel too guilty about buying it."
I gave her a cat that ate the cream smile. "Good. You spend so much time making sure everybody around you is happy, but you don't tend to include your own happiness. You need to."
The pleased blush that crept into her cheeks made me smile.
Just as she was testing the last of the attachments to make sure she knew how to use them, somebody knocked on the door. Bear raised his head and wuffed, and I raised a brow at him. "Now's a fine time to alert us somebody's in the yard."
From the apathetic look he gave me, I could tell my criticism was gonna keep him up that night.
"Hello to the house!" a rich baritone voice called. Dee waggled her eyebrows at me and I scowled at her, even though my heart had tripped a little when I'd heard him.
"In here," I called, and grinned when Scout, our next-door neighbor, volunteer handyman, and an all-around good guy, popped around the corner and into the kitchen.
"Nice mixer!" he said once Dee moved to the side. "It's about time. I felt like I was taking my life—or at least an eye—into my own hands every time I was within range of your old one."
Dee scowled at him. "I didn't hear you complaining when you were eating any of the goodies I made with it."
"Of course not," he replied, smiling at her. "Your mixer may have been a demon, but the results are always heavenly."
She rolled her eyes at him and pushed her bangs back off her forehead. "Really? That's the best you've got?"
He laughed. "Gimme a break. It was on the fly."
"So what brings you over?" I asked. "Not that we aren't glad to see you."
"I thought I'd stop by to see if you wanted some mulch for the flowerbeds," he said. "I just did some sprucing up over at my place and had a few bags left."
Though we'd managed to get most of the inside of the house done, there was still a lot to be done outside. We had a fabulous circular drive with a big statue in the center of it, and we'd spent a weekend painting the house, but the front of the porch was still bare. It looked half-finished; like many other parts of the house, it was still a work in progress.
"Absolutely," I replied. "It's just the incentive I need to get the front of the house whipped into shape. How much do you have? If it's not enough, then I'll go grab some more."
I kept finding reasons to put it off, but now that he was offering exactly what I needed to kick-start the project, I realized I was looking forward to it. Well, not to the work, but to seeing it all pretty when I came home.
"Plenty enough to do that and then some," he said. "Do you want me to just toss it out now?"
I shook my head. "No. I want to buy some of that black gardening material to put under it so I don't have to worry so much about weeds. And while I'm at it, I'll pick up some potted plants to decorate it with."
Maisey popped in at the mention of flowers. "And when are you going to get around to finishing my rose garden? It's been months, and that was one of few things I asked for."
Her husband had ordered her exotic roses from all around the world every year for her birthday, and she'd put her heart into building a beautiful garden. There were little stepping stones that led you through them, and a fabulous reading spot, complete with a wrought-iron bench. How that had survived the ravages of time was beyond me.
However, time hadn't been kind to rest of the garden, and it hadn't helped that future generations had let it go to seed, literally. Miraculously, most of the roses were still there, but they were buried in weeds.
Scout turned to her. "Ms. Maisey, I promise to get to that garden in the next month or so. Though you're going to have to walk me through it—I can grow just about any type of hay or crop you need, but I don't know diddly-squat about roses."
She gave a regal nod, or at least as regal as it could be with her floppy hat bouncing when she moved her head. "Don't you worry about that. I got more than enough knowledge for both of us. All I need is a willing pair of hands." She cast a pointed glance at Dee and I. "Or three."
"You're right," I said, holding up my hands. "We'll get to it next week. I promise."
"Thank you," she said, then her face softened. "I know you've been wearin' yourselves thin just gettin' this place back in livable condition, but I sure do miss being able to go out to my garden and just think." She glanced around the kitchen. "The love of my life and I built this house together, though you'd hardly recognize it now. If I had just a little spot that was still the same, just like I left it, then maybe I wouldn't feel so lost."
Wow. Talk about a kick to the gut. Even Bear gave a little whine and covered his nose with his paws.
She’d asked us to put it back together for her, but had never really explained why it meant so much to her. Or even that it did mean that much to her. We’d worked on it some together, but I'd sort of back-burnered it lately in favor of getting the rest of the place safe and guest-ready. I vowed then and there that the roses would be next on the list.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next day dawned bright and clear, and even the humidity was down for once. Georgia in the summer was brutal.
"See," I said to Dee, who was fidgeting like a little kid. "Even the weather cooperated so your hair won't be all frizzy by the time you get to the conference center. That's a sign for sure."
I'd gone as far as starting my SUV and cranking the AC for her a few minutes before we left so her makeup wouldn't run. I was trying to do everything in my power to make sure she was comfortable, but nothing I did seemed to make much d
ifference.
"What if I forget my recipes?"
I shot her a disbelieving look. "You're kidding, right? You've been practicing every sort of pastry recipe under the sun for the past month and a half ad nauseam. Shoot, even I'm comfortable making some of the stuff just from watching and listening to you, and I could barely make boxed brownies before this all started. No way are you going to forget your recipes."
"I might."
"Yeah," I said, rolling my eyes. "And I might win the lottery tonight, too, but what are the odds. The sky may fall on our way there, or the town may have a blackout and you'll have to cook everything over a campfire. Any of those are just about as likely as you forgetting how to make puff pastry or muffins."
"What about this top? Should I have worn something better?" She looked down at the simple blue polo shirt she was wearing.
"Um, no. You're going to have an apron on, and you would have melted or been uncomfortable in a dress shirt. And something floofy or florally isn't you, anyway. You look great." And that wasn't a lie. She'd taken great care with her makeup, and it highlighted her blue eyes. Her hair had cooperated for once, and hung in cute ringlets from her ponytail.
"Now, let me see some of that attitude I know you have buried in there. You're going up against people that think they're better bakers than you are. What do you have to say to that?"
She pulled in a deep breath, and I was happy to see her square her shoulders. "I say bring it! My muffins'll kick their fruitcakes' butts!"
"Yeah!" I roared in agreement. "That's my girl! You're gonna kill it!"
I flicked the turn signal on to turn onto the main road, and when I glanced out the passenger window to make sure it was all clear, I was glad to see she was smiling.
"This is gonna be so much fun!" she said.