Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,108

spent baking together—how good it had felt to share that time with him, when they were both doing something they loved. “I can probably get a babysitter.”

“How about Thursday?”

“Sure—I’ll do my best.”

He smiled. “Are you headed for the car park?”

All things being equal, and knowing her father would be late, Rosaline would probably have lingered for a little while with Harry and Anvita. But having accidentally ditched Alain the night before and then tried to make up for it with less-than-enthusiastic sex, she felt that refusing to walk with him to a place she would definitely need to go was crossing the line from distracted to, well, diss. “Give me a moment to grab my things.”

She offered a hasty farewell to Harry and Anvita, and by the time she came back with her bag, they’d gone their separate ways. Alain was where she’d left him, staring off into the distance with a slightly frowny, slightly contemplative look.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said.

He started. “Not at all.”

And so they set off up the hill together, the dreamy early evening somewhat marred by the desperate scurrying and shouting of the technical crew as they dismantled the sprawl of rigging and electric gear that discreetly occupied much of the grounds.

Since Alain still seemed distracted to the point of brooding, Rosaline thought she’d better seize the bull by the horns. Or, at least, the goat by the ears. “Alain, are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m just”—he huffed out an aggrieved sigh—“I’m getting a bit sick of all this You’re not being wibbly-wobbly, airy-fairy, touchy-feely enough. Frankly, I feel I am showing who I am. Except apparently who I am needs to be the sort of person who cries over meringues or has a profound emotional reaction to buttercream.”

It wasn’t personal. But Rosaline still cringed a bit remembering the time she’d sincerely broken down over dulce de leche. “It’s Bake Expectations. You have to cry over meringues. And then you have to give a teary interview where you say I can’t believe I’m crying over meringues. It’s what people love about the show. Low stakes that we all care way too much about.”

“Perhaps this is another aspect of my upbringing that the BBC finds defective, but when I care about something I try—and stop me if this sounds absurd—to do it well.”

If there was anything Rosaline got, it was that. And probably she’d be feeling the same way if she’d been as consistently excellent as Alain. “I think you can probably take it as a compliment?”

“How is Your personality is wrong a compliment?”

“Well . . .” This had the potential to go very badly, and the last thing Rosaline wanted was a repeat of the biscuit argument. “The way I see it, what these shows have to do is find a flaw in you that they can fix. Because otherwise, it’s not a story, it’s just about someone who’s better than the competition. Like in season one there was the young woman who was very good but lacked confidence, and in season two there was the guy who was really brilliant but really erratic and needed to be more disciplined, and in season three there was the slightly older woman who was really good but lacked confidence, the woman who won season four had amazing presentation but her flavours were sometimes off, and—”

“So what you’re telling me,” Alain cut over her, “is that I need to be a woman who lacks confidence?”

Okay. So this had, in fact, gone very badly. Shame they couldn’t just have sex. That usually seemed to fix it. “I think it’s more that male contestants usually don’t lack confidence because blah blah patriarchy. And so the show needs to give them a different story. And because of blah blah patriarchy redux, You’re very technically skilled but aren’t in touch with your feelings is probably a good arc for them to give a male contestant.”

And now she’d articulated it, Rosaline’s heart flumped like a soufflé. Because, yeah, that was definitely the story for this season. Which meant Alain was winning and she was the one who looked good in a pinny.

Question was, did she look good enough in a pinny to get through to the final?

Alain was frowning again. “It’s a baking show. It should be about how well you bake.”

“It’s a TV show. It’s about how well you TV.”

“Aren’t we cynical, Rosaline-um-Palmer?”

She put what she hoped was a reassuring hand on his arm. “You know you’re an excellent baker. You just need to show