Page 76 of The Merry Matchmaker

Everyone looked to Theresia, the queen of the chocolate croissant.

She held up a hand. “Oh no. I don’t want that responsibility.”

“I’ll help you,” Frankie offered.

“That’s not a good idea,” Barbara said sternly, pulling a frown from Frankie. “Your employee is competing. You’ll be biased.”

“I’ll help you,” said Autumn.

“I can be on the judges panel as well since none of my employees are competing,” said Barbara. Which meant Elinor’s gingerbread house wouldn’t stand a chance.

“You already have so much to do,” said Frankie, throwing Barbara’s earlier words to her back at Barbara. “I can see if Mayor Lent would like to judge. As our mayor, she should be involved. And she should be the one to award the winner.”

“Excellent idea,” approved James.

Barbara stiffened but managed a smile. “All right. I’ll contact the mayor.” Of course she would. That was too important a job to leave to her underlings.

“That should be enough judges, right? What do you think, everyone?” asked Frankie.

“I think that sounds good,” said Autumn, and Frankie smiled sweetly at Barbara, enjoying her petty victory.

“That takes care of that then,” Barbara said stiffly.

“We need to make sure we have ballot boxes next to all the gingerbread houses,” Frankie insisted. “Even though we have judges, the people’s vote should be the most important.”

“Agreed,” said Hazel.

“Oh, very well, but if you ask me this is turning into a very unusual pageant,” Barbara grumbled. “One vote per person,” she added, looking at Frankie.

“As if I would stuff the ballot box at the pageant,” Frankie said to Elinor when she got back to the shop. There would be too many witnesses.

“I could probably use it,” Elinor said. “I have no idea how I’m going to make a gingerbread house.”

“No worries,” said Frankie. “Team Elinor is here for you. We’ll all help. We should do it tonight. That way, if something goes wrong, we’ll have time to fix it. Mom,” she called to Adele.

Her mother was over by the Disney ornaments, supposedly helping Mr. Bellagamba, their mailman, pick out an ornament for his granddaughter but mostly yakking.

“Can you come help us with gingerbread house construction tonight?” Frankie asked loudly.

Adele said something to Mr. Bellagamba, then called back, “Tomorrow night is better.”

Natalie, who was putting out the last of the tree-shaped mint chocolates she’d brought in earlier, called, “Gram Gram, what are you thinking? Tomorrow is Warner’s Winter Concert.”

“That’s right,” said Frankie. “Then we’ll have to do it on Thursday.”

“That’s the night before the pageant. What if something goes wrong?” Elinor fretted.

“What could go wrong?” Frankie scoffed. “Anyway, Thursday is better. That will give me time to order a pattern.”

Or not. As she searched various sites on her phone, she discovered that gingerbread house patterns were either temporarily out of stock or wouldn’t arrive until Friday, the day of the pageant.

“This isn’t good,” she said in a low voice to Natalie.

“See if Mitch can come up with something. He is a handyman, and he did design that addition he put on his house.”

“Good idea,” said Frankie, and texted him.

I can come up with something for you, he promised.Will drop it by your place later.

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