Page 27 of A Different Kind of Hooker

“Good but boring,” Charlie snorted. “Where’s your creativity.”

“I usually save that for the field or bedroom,” he chuckled.

“Family-friendly channel here,” I called out, reminding them that minors might be watching.

“Yeah, you’re really going to have to change that,” Sean remarked.

I glanced around at my team. “Because you guys really plan on coming back on the show?”

Christian’s brows furrowed. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I thought you guys were just…just doing a favor for Heron,” I stammered.

Charlie snorted from the other side of the bedsheet. “This was our idea. He tried to talk us out of it, though we prevailed.”

“Yeah, said that he didn’t want us scaring you off,” Oscar added.

“Personally, I think he just doesn’t want his girlfriend to see him get his ass kicked in a bake-off,” Christian added. “I mean, I get it. No man wants to look like a loser in front of his girl.”

“I’m not going to lose, assholes,” Heron called out, defending himself.

“Family-friendly,” I repeated, a little bit louder this time.

“Ignore him,” Sean ordered. “Let’s get to decorating.”

Thirty minutes later, our team had all our cookies decorated, and I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d had such a fun time. Sean and Christian had taken the competition so seriously that it’d been hard to hold in my laughs while they’d decorated their cookies.

“Okay, we’re ready,” Heron announced. “Let’s take down the bedsheet.”

No one said anything as Sean and Heron took the bedsheet down, revealing our cookies to the other team, and I started laughing at how similar they looked. Granted, there were only so many rugby designs that could go on a cookie, so there was that as an excuse.

Looking into the camera, I said, “Okay, the moment of truth. I enabled the comments for this episode, so enter your votes, folks.”

We each held up our plate of cookies, letting our viewers get a good look, and after I showed my plate, I grabbed my phone to pull up my account, realizing that I had hundreds of viewers voting, and that I was actually going to have to count each freakin’ vote.

“We really should have thought this through a little more,” I muttered as comments and votes started coming in.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Heron asked as he walked over to look over my shoulder.

“It’s going to take forever to add up the votes,” I told him. “We actually have several hundred viewers.”

When I looked up at Heron, he was grinning down at me. “That’s a good thing, Eliza.”

“I know, but…we might not find out the winner until later today,” I pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sean said from the counter. “It’s clear to see that our cookies are way superior.”

“Did you get high before coming over here?” Charlie asked. “No way are your cookies better than ours. Did you see the detail on our uniforms?”

“That’s a picture of our uniforms?” Christian mocked. “I thought it was an ugly Christmas sweater.”

“Yeah, because is that supposed to be a ref’s shirt or a high school band uniform?” Oscar shot back.

I shook my head, trying to hold in my laugh, as Heron’s arm wrapped around my waist. “I knew they were going to scare you off.”

Two hours later, the kitchen was cleaned up, the cookies were boxed up for Oscar, and my team had been declared the winner. Though the vote had been close, we had come out the victors, and I’d never seen three grown men look so bummed. Luckily, we had another bake-off rescheduled for next week, and I really was going to need a bigger kitchen.

Epilogue

---