Cupcakes and Christmas - R.J. Scott Page 0,72

and uncle, but I wanted to know all of what made him Brody.

I refused to let doubt creep in, and with a second in the first part of this round, I was riding the high.

“And for today’s blind bake, the judges want you to make croquembouche, this edible spire of caramelized pastry should contain at least twenty caramel-glazed cream puffs and feature a spun sugar cage. Your cream puffs should be filled with a cream of your choice reflecting the theme of weddings at Christmas. You have two hours to create this masterpiece, and your time starts now!”

As soon as Courtney said the words I pulled off the cloth that covered the ingredients and stared at them. Flour, butter, eggs, the makings of pastry cream, and I knew what a croquembouche looked like. But choux pastry was my nemesis, and I had to take two very deep breaths and then count back from twenty as I pretended to check the recipe if you could even call a list of ingredients a recipe. There was no method, no suggested oven temperature, no timings and my mind was a blank. I could hear sounds from Brody behind me, water running, saucepans clattering, and I knew in my bones that this was something he would do brilliantly. A casual glance behind me as I pulled out a saucepan to boil the water, I saw Clare already confidently swishing and moving and generally looking efficient. So it was just me.

And when the judges got to taste all three, including mine in the middle that was a little crooked, with only half a sugar spun cage, I knew I’d come up short. I was in last place, Clare in second and yet again, Brody was first. Unless he messed up the wedding cake in the morning then he was going through to the final, but for me and Clare, it was going to go down to the wire.

I hugged him and congratulated him as soon as we got outside and away from the cameras, and he seemed embarrassed at the praise.

“I only just did a croquembouche for the last wedding, so I had an unfair advantage.”

“No,” I said quickly and kissed him hard. “You’re a freaking genius, and I’m so proud of you.” He blushed and scuffed his foot like a kid getting a good report, and I tilted his chin. “You can win this,” I told him.

I know I was quiet as we walked back to the hotel, and Brody didn’t push me to talk, just took my hand and tugged me off the main path so we could walk in peace and all too soon we found ourselves in front of Jeremy.

“I don’t want to go home,” I told Jeremy as I straightened his scarf. “I want to stay in the competition with your other dad.” Brody let me talk to the inanimate pile of snow as we patched up holes with ice and leaves. It was my way of explaining how I felt without having to face Brody and see the compassion in him that might be my undoing.

“You will,” he said after a short break. “I know you’ll be in the final.”

“With you.”

“Together.”

The snow was heavy overnight as an icy late October gripped Banff, and the flurries of snow were icy against any exposed skin. I didn’t complain because holding Brody’s hand and feeling the ice on my face made me feel alive. We woke up in my room again, wrapped in each other’s arms, and I ached from where Brody had bent me over the sofa in the small sitting room. When we came together again in the middle of the night, it was slow and steady and whispered endearments mingled with soft kisses. I was falling in love. I knew it, but I wasn’t ready to say it because what if I said it, and he left me.

I didn’t expect he would laugh at me or tell me that I was being stupid, but I feared the worst thing of all—that he told me he loved me back and then left me. How could I live the rest of my life knowing that I’d loved and lost? Who even though that it was better that way then never knowing love at all. An idiot, that’s who.

Now we were at breakfast, both with sketchbooks that we are scribbling ideas into, only he was working on some complicated design for someone important, and I was doodling this cake with numbers around