Sweet Stuff (32 page)

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Authors: Donna Kauffman

BOOK: Sweet Stuff
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Makes approximately 18 cupcakes.
Did you miss the first book in The Cupcake Club series? Go back and read SUGAR RUSH!
“Take charge,” she said flatly. “With Baxter. How often has anyone been successful doing that? Oh, right. Never.”
“I’m simply saying—”
“Charlotte has a point,” Franco chimed in. “At least you can let him know that you know what’s going on, and set the tone for how you’re going to handle it with him. You don’t work for him anymore, you don’t run his place anymore, you aren’t beholden to him for anything, Leilani. Think about it. He has no hold on you.”
Oh, if only that were true,
Lani thought, then paused, hands ready at the squeeze. Franco did have a point, though. She really hadn’t thought about the situation like that. Not in a purely professional sense. She’d been confronting the news like the woman she’d been before leaving New York, the one still pathetically half in love with a clueless man who’d have never even noticed her if it weren’t for her crazy mad baking skills.
But she wasn’t that woman any longer. Not entirely, anyway. It hadn’t been all that long since she’d left New York for good, but so much had happened since she’d come to Sugarberry. Her entire life had changed. She had changed. “You know, maybe you’re right.”
A short cheer went up on the other end of the line.
“I want to hear every detail,” Charlotte said.
“You go,
ma chérie amour
!” Franco sang out.
A series of buzzers going off came through the speaker. “I’ve got to go, the cakes are coming out,” Charlotte said hurriedly.
“We’ve been making solidarity cakes this morning in support of you,
ma chère
,” Franco said. “We’re featuring your to-die-for black walnut spice cakes with cream cheese and cardamom frosting as today’s special.”
“Thanks, you guys,” Lani said sincerely.
“Every detail! Call me!” Charlotte ordered before clicking off.
Lani stood there, pastry bag still at the ready, and looked at the racks in front of her. And thought about her friends in New York. Solidarity cakes. Salvation cakes. “Healing the disgruntled, displaced, and just plain dissed,” she said, smiling briefly. “One cake at a time.”
She and Charlotte knew a lot about that. They’d been friends since culinary school. Charlotte had more actual business experience than Lani, as she’d gone straight to work post-graduation as a pastry chef for a small boutique hotel in midtown, while Lani had gone overseas to continue her studies in Belgium and France. Lani’s mom and dad had moved from D.C. to Sugarberry shortly after that.
It had been a time full of transition and change, but also one of promise and excitement. Lani’s best friend had been launching her career in earnest while Lani was grabbing the chance to learn at the hands of Europe’s best. For her dad, it had been retirement from the D.C. police force and taking on a very different challenge in Georgia ... and for her mom, who’d grown up in Savannah, it had been a chance to go back home again, to a place she’d always missed dearly.
Lani and Char had kept in touch throughout that time, their friendship only deepening as their separate experiences widened their respective paths and boosted their dreams. When Lani had come back, Char was still in New York, having already worked her way up to executive pastry chef at the same hotel. Franco was on board by then as her right hand and had quickly become Lani’s other best friend. Lani had gotten an offer in the city, as a staff baker for a well-known restaurant in a five-star, Upper East Side hotel. The same hotel that had just brought on board the hottest import from the U.K. America was the new playground for the young and impetuous, and ridiculously charismatic Baxter Dunne.
He’d risen quickly, and had taken Lani with him, plucking her from the ranks to make her his personal assistant and pro-tégé when he’d opened Gateau a miraculous eighteen months later. His had been a rare, meteoric rise in a very challenging and competitive industry. By the time he’d made his move to the television cooking world three years later, his immediate dominance hadn’t surprised anyone.
Lani blinked away mental images of him, how he’d been then, how totally infatuated she’d been with his charisma and his talent almost from the moment she’d first set foot in that Upper East Side kitchen. Okay, the lust had started before then. She’d known a lot about him, more than most, having heard quite a bit during her time in Europe. He was three years younger than her, and light-years ahead in every way measurable in their field. The baker in her wanted to be him when she grew up. And, the woman in her wanted to be with him
as
a grown-up. It had been harmless idolatry and fantasy.
Then she’d gotten the opportunity of a lifetime.
She’d been convinced the heavens and fates were sending her a direct message when she’d tried for, and gotten the job working under him.
Under him.
Lani made a face at that unfortunate double entendre and moved to a fresh rack of cupcakes, forcing her thoughts back to the job at hand.
The pathetic irony was that she’d wished she had been under him. In every possible sense. Then everyone else had speculated, quite nastily, that the very same thing was actually happening. When it wasn’t. Lose-lose.
The competition in any kitchen was fierce, but with a rising star like Baxter running the show, the battle to dominate his kitchen was downright apocalyptic, the chance to make a name and launch huge careers the spoils of winning the war. He was the epitome of the golden boy, from his looks to his demeanor, to his unparalleled talent. The speculation regarding their relationship was the hot topic of the day, every day. Fueled by jealousy, fear, and paranoia, the chatter was nasty and vicious. And not particularly quiet.
In order to keep up with the chaotic pace and the insane demands, every kitchen had to work like a well-oiled machine, which meant teamwork in the most basic sense. It was a close, if not close-knit, environment, where you worked all but on top of each other. There was no place to go, no place to hide. And certainly no place to speak privately. Not that the gossips would have bothered to, anyway.
Every chance they got, at least when Baxter didn’t have her working right by his side, they’d done everything they could to undermine her.
As her esteem had risen in his eyes, and he’d given her more and more preferential treatment, the gossip had just gotten uglier and uglier. What could he possibly see in the mousy girl from D.C. who was too nice to know better? What made her so special? That Lani was certain she’d looked at Baxter like the pathetic little smitten kitten she’d been only made the whole ordeal even more painful to recall. She’d tried to rein that part in when she’d realized what was happening, heard what was being said. She knew she was only hurting herself further with her stupid crush, personally and professionally.
Of course, at some point, as it all escalated, she’d privately thought—hoped—that Baxter would ride to her rescue. He was the white knight, after all, wasn’t he?
So many illusions had been shattered, so rapidly. She was tougher than any of them had thought, her time overseas preparing her in ways many of them couldn’t have imagined. She was calm and well mannered because she chose to be, not because she was some silly ninny who couldn’t defend herself. She simply chose not to, as any attempt would be drowned out by the chorus against her, anyway. She’d rather hoped her hard work and Baxter’s faith in her would speak for her, but that hadn’t been the case. So, ultimately, she’d figured out that if she wanted to survive there, the easiest path was simply to stay in her own world, build a certain kind of calm around her, where she could focus on learning. And on Baxter. Preferably doing both at the same time. But ... not always.
She’d endured almost five years of that constant bedlam. And, in doing so, had learned more, professionally, from Baxter, than she’d ever hoped. She had no regrets. So what if Baxter never had come to her rescue? So what if he had, in fact, thrown her directly to those very same wolves when he’d left for the bright lights of his own brand new television show, and put Gateau, his baby, essentially in her hands? She’d done it, hadn’t she? She’d shown them all.
Though it had come at a cost. No matter how calm and centered she remained, that kind of life took a toll. She thought about all the baking therapy she and Char had done together during that time. Usually in the wee, wee hours. Those sessions never had anything to do with their respective jobs.
And everything to do with salvation.
Their worlds might be uncontrolled chaos, but baking always made sense. Flour, butter, and sugar were as integral a part of her as breathing.
Lani had long since lost count of the number of nights she and Charlotte had crammed themselves into her tiny kitchen, or Charlotte’s even tinier one, whipping up this creation or that, all the while hashing and rehashing whatever the problems du jour happened to be. It was the one thing she truly missed about being in New York.
No one on Sugarberry understood how baking helped take the edge off. Some folks liked a dry martini. Lani and Char, on the other hand, had routinely talked themselves down from the emotional ledge with rich vanilla queen cake and some black velvet frosting. It might take a little longer to assemble than the perfect adult beverage ... but it was the very solace found in the dependable process of measuring and leavening that had made it their own personal martini. Not to mention the payoff was way, way better.
Those nights hadn’t been about culinary excellence, either. The more basic, the more elemental the recipe, the better. Maybe Lani should have seen it all along. Her destiny wasn’t to be found in New York, or even Paris, or Prague, making the richest, most intricate cakes, or the most delicate French pastries. No, culinary fulfillment—for her, the same as life fulfillment—was going to be experienced on a tiny spit of land off the coast of Georgia, where she would happily populate the world with gloriously unpretentious, rustic, and rudimentary little cupcakes.
“That’s me.” She lifted her pastry bag in salute. “Cupcake Baker Barbie!” She aimed the silver tip, and bulleted a row of raspberry shots with rapid-fire precision, then another, and another, before finally straightening, spent pastry bag cocked on her shoulder like a weapon. She was a take-no-prisoners Baker Barbie, that’s what she was. “Yeah. Welcome to the Cupcake Club,” she said, giving it her best Brad Pitt impersonation. She grinned at that, and tried to convince herself she was ready to take on the true test of her newfound toughness, the real proof of her independence.
The phone call.
She could do it. She would do it. She didn’t need to bow down to the whims of Baxter Dunne any longer. Wasn’t she standing right there, in her own kitchen, working for her very own self?
“Damn straight I am.” She moved to the next tray, discarding the spent bag for a freshly filled one, then positioning it like an expert sniper lining up his next kill shot. “Hear that, Chef Hot Cakes?” She completed the next three rows with deadly precision. “I ... don’t ... need ... you.” She punctuated each word with another squeeze.
She straightened. And swore. “Yeah, that’s why I’m standing here at the crack of dawn, shooting raspberry truffle filling like a woman armed with an AK-47.” But, she had to admit, it felt good. Powerful, even.
Salvation cakes, indeed.
So, she went with it. Moving to the last tray, she shot another squirt of raspberry, picturing his smiling, handsome face as she did so. “
Why
are you doing this to me, Bax?”
Pow, pow, pow
. “Why are you invading my world?”
Bap, bap, bap
. “
My
world,
my
kitchen,
my
home.” So many questions scrambling her brain. Making it impossible to think straight, impossible to concentrate on anything except—
“Dammit !” Lani glared at the oozing, overly truffled cupcake like it had committed an unspeakable cupcake crime.
She blamed Baxter for that, too.
She might have growled, just a little. It was stupid to be so upset about this. Like Franco said, she was operating from a position of strength here. Who cared why he was coming to town?
Or what laying eyes on him again might make her feel?
She’d handled worse things, she reminded herself. Far, far worse things. Losing her mother two years ago. Almost losing her father ten months ago. “I can handle Baxter Dunne,” she muttered.
But as she stood there with flour powdering her hair, a smear of raspberry truffle across her chin, a spent pastry bag in her hand—happily content in her own element—she thought about it all, and tried to harness her inner Smackdown Baker Barbie ... she really did. But she kept picturing his face, hearing his voice, seeing his hands move so precisely perfect, so beautifully efficient as he worked, making every step look so effortless, so simple ... and wishing he’d put those smart and clever hands on her ... and found herself failing. Miserably.
The sound of the delivery door slapping shut behind her made her spin abruptly around, the flailing pastry bag sending at least a half dozen freshly filled cupcakes skittering to the floor.
The sight that met her eyes sent her heart skittering as well. As only Baxter could.

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