Chapter One
The smell of freshly baked passionfruit tarts nearly made Olivia Canelas smile.
Nearly.
With the concentration of a nuclear scientist, she transferred the tarts to a cooling rack and began to waft a metal sheet pan over them, cooling the tiny pastries by hand.
The man next to her groaned.
“Are you serious?” DeAndre Thorne huffed in disbelief. “Girl, just get you a damn blast chiller in here already.”
Olivia gave him a withering glare. “Julia Child didn’t need no fucking blast chiller.”
DeAndre just rolled his eyes, his ebony skin gleaming in the artificial lights of her baking warehouse. Olivia wasn’t a complete heathen. She had a blast chiller at her two bakeries, but here in her creative space, she was a purist.
No blast chiller. No liquid nitrogen. No fucking nonsense.
Just heat and sugar and the perspiration generated by a heavy-duty oven.
“Christ, it’s like you’re seventy,” DeAndre groused, but then tapped the document on the counter. The real battle he was here to wage with her. “Did you look at the contract?”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t look at it?”
“No, I’m not doing it.”
DeAndre dug the heel of his hands into his eye sockets. “Liv…”
“No, D.” Olivia didn’t even spare the contract another glance. “There’s still way too many memes of me jetting around the internet the last time I did one of those stupid shows.”
One particular clip and her look of horror at a contestant’s subpar croquembouche had been captured and replayed the internet over.
“It was four years ago and you know that’s not the real reason.”
“You’re right.” Olivia set her sheet pat down and gave the man a look of disbelief. “I’m not going to subject myself to a bunch of athletes,” she spat the word like a curse, “for five fucking weeks.”
“It’s not like Ian is participating or anything, Liv.”
Olivia glared at her closest friend, business manager, agent, and general life wrangler. The mere mention of her ex-husband’s name made Olivia want to cross herself and throw some salt over her shoulder.
“He’s not Beetlejuice, Olivia,” DeAndre shot back. “Saying his name won’t summon him.”
“No,” she muttered. “He’s more like Voldemort.”
“No, he’s just a fucking asshole who’s still living in your head, rent free, even two years later.”
Her glare turned murderous. “I’m about to kick you out of here.”
DeAndre raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “Did you even look at the paycheck?”
Not really. The contract had said Cleats & Cakes: Holiday Edition and she’d stopped reading. Olivia knew the show. It was wildly popular. Some enterprising producer had the brilliant idea to combine two things that Americans worshipped—sports and cooking shows—and created a sensation. Turned out the discerning viewing public was desperate to watch popular athletes baking to win a boatload of money for their favorite charities.
The first year, the participants were less well known and could barely crack an egg. But now, after five years of unmitigated success, the show attracted incredibly popular athletes, from Stanley Cup winners and Olympic medalists to NFL all stars and MLB sensations. And the baking had gotten more legit too.
Olivia had to give credit where credit was due. The contestants were no longer completely clueless; there was some real baking talent now. Not that she watched the show all that often, but she didn’t live under a rock and she was in the industry.
“I don’t need the money.”
“You’re still sending monthly checks to your lawyer.”
“Because I want to,” Olivia said with a thin smile. “I do it with relish. It’s a good reminder.”
Like he could read her mind, DeAndre sighed. “I know, Liv. I manage your money, remember?” He was well aware she could have paid off her divorce lawyer in full. “I know you could have just sent one giant check to Mario.”
She could have. She could have just written a check and liquidated the legal bills from her very high-priced divorce lawyer but Olivia took some kind of perverse pleasure in sending the man who had crushed Ian in court a check every month. He had been worth every penny, and there were a lot of fucking pennies.
God, her blood boiled, thinking of the way Ian had dragged out their divorce for over a year. Fighting her on everything. Making ridiculous demands every step of the way. A stake in her bakeries, a cut of the royalties on her cookbooks. Fucking alimony. Even though he was a very high paying soccer player with millions in the bank. Not to mention, the man had zero interest in baking. It had been truly insane. The divorce had been longer than the actual marriage.
The giant, unmitigated fucktard.
She’d never fucked up so epically in all her thirty-two years of life. A fact that was hard to forget when her family loved to remind her.
“I know that face,” DeAndre piped in. “You’re seething with rage and contemplating a felony.”
More beautiful than Idris Elba and with the IQ of Stephen Hawking, DeAndre never let her get away with shit.
“Will you drop this?”
“No, actually, because it’s my job to make sure you don’t make foolish, emotional business decisions.” He tapped his perfectly manicured hands against the contract. “Look, your bank account is healthy, okay. The bakeries and the royalties are no joke, but you know there’s always plenty of operating expenses and the legal bills put a not insignificant dent in your bottom line.”
“I know,” she conceded with a frown. “That’s why I agreed to write another cookbook.”
“Those royalties are a long ways away, Liv. You haven’t even decided on a topic.” He gave her a sharp look. “Guess you’ve given up on starting Sugar and Spice, huh?”
“Low blow,” she muttered.
Sugar and Spice.
Her baking camp for kids who dreamed of being a baker but didn’t have the means, resources, or the support to so much as attempt to reach for that dream. She’d been that kid once. Her immigrant parents had wanted her to go to law school or med school or some kind of school that would generate some initials after her name. Get a real job. But Olivia had only ever wanted to bake. She would have killed to go to baking camp.
Olivia hadn’t given up on Sugar and Spice. It had just been derailed by a douchebag and an outrageously expensive divorce. The capital she would have used for the camp went to a divorce lawyer instead.
Fuck.
Olivia sent DeAndre a dirty look. “Fine, what’s the number?”
DeAndre simply thumbed a couple pages of the contract and pointed. Olivia leaned forward, dark eyes going wide. “What the fuck?”
There were way too many zeroes for a standard judging contract on one of these reality shows.
“They are doing a whole holiday special for Netflix,” DeAndre explained, rubbing his hands gleefully. “The ’flix don’t play. They got money to burn and they don’t mind spending. And they want you to say yes.”
“Clearly.”
“BakingLab would still be on the air if you’d signed on for season two.” He wiped away an imaginary tear. “So much money left on the table.” A hard look that she knew meant he wasn’t fucking around. “Let’s not make the same mistake twice. Read the contract, Liv.”
DeAndre reached for a tart, and she smacked his hand away. “They are not glazed yet.”
He pouted a little, making her lips twitch. She reached for a brush and dipped it in the honey pistachio glaze she was experimenting with, making one tart glisten sinfully. She handed it over and DeAndre scarfed it back in two bites.
“God, you’re a genius,” he mumbled around pastry crumb. “Whoever gets you as their mentor is going to win the whole fucking thing.”
“Mentor?” she echoed.
He gave her a winning smile, white teeth blinding against his dark skin. “They are spicing things up a little for the holiday special.” A long finger tapped on the page displaying the contract offer. “It's not an offer to judge, Liv. You think all those zeroes don’t come with some strings?”
“Figures.” She threw him some side eye. “Am I going to have to pretend to have Christmas spirit?”
“It’s a holiday special, Olivia,” he deadpanned, running a hand along his perfectly coiffed dreads. “What do you think?”
Her frown became thunderous as another thought occurred to her. “I hate to travel.”
“Seriously, who hates to travel?” He shook his head in despair. “It’s like saying you hate joy. But lucky for you, my little grinch, they’re taking their whole winter wonderland real serious and filming right outside of Chicago.”
“I already hate this.”
“You’ll survive.” Olivia got a cheerful smile and a thumbs up that made her growl. “I gotta run.” He gave her a smacking kiss and a pen. “Sign it and email it to me.”
“I haven’t said yes.”
He pretended not to hear her. “Gotta get that to the producers by Monday.” A nod to the contract. “Filming starts next month.”
DeAndre walked out and Olivia grabbed the contract bad temperedly from the counter. She eyed the document with nothing less than distaste.
“Gonna fucking regret this.”
