Page 12 of My Irresistible Enemy

The guy from the ferry was there, sitting right in front of me.

3

Aiden

Holy shit.

The guy from the ferry stared at me, his face a picture of shock, but there was no way he could have been more shocked than I was.

Holy fucking shit.

What were the chances that the homophobic asshole I’d met on that boat would be the final contestant onA Piece of Cake?

Actually, no. Fuck that. The more important question was, what the hell was I supposed to do now?

He wasn’t going to say something, was he? I watched as he stared at me, his mouth opening and closing just as it had on the boat, bracing for him to say…well, I wasn’t really sure.Arrest this man for filming himself jacking off on a car ferry?

I flushed, remembering the way he’d looked at me when he’d walked in. It was just my luck that the most gorgeous guy I’d seen in ages would turn out to be a raging homophobe. A raging homophobe I now had to work with for the next eight weeks—assuming either of us lasted that long.

“Ah, Nolan, you made it. Wonderful. Why don’t you have a seat at the end there, next to Aiden?”

Vivian Vasquez, one of the show’s two judges, smiled at the guy from the boat and gestured for him to take the only remaining unoccupied stool—right next to mine, of course. So he had a name—and he actually belonged here if Vivian knew what it was.

His eyebrows drew down in consternation when he looked in my direction.Well, fuck you too,Nolan.

He didn’t move immediately. I held my breath, waiting for him to speak, but he just looked at me. After a moment, Tanner Carmichael, the other judge, cleared his throat impatiently. Finally, Nolan crossed the temporary floor that had been laid down under the tent and took the stool next to mine.

He gave me a look full of misgiving, and I could already feel myself switching from fear to annoyance. What right did he have to judge me? Maybe what I’d been doing yesterday was a little weird, but he’d very clearly enjoyed the show, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

Maybe I was just cranky because I hadn’t gotten my luggage back until four a.m. this morning, but there was no way I was going to apologize or cower in front of him. And I hadn’t finagled my way onto a baking show without having baked so much as a box of brownies only to get sent home before a single episode wrapped.

“What, afraid I’ll get mygayon you?” I whispered.

Nolan sniffed and shifted his stool a couple of inches away from mine.

“Relax, man.” I gave him my most innocent smile. “As long as you don’t tell anyone about what you saw, I see no reason to tell people how much you liked it.”

“Would you shut up?” Nolan hissed out of the corner of his mouth. He nodded towards Vivian, who’d started speaking again. “I’m trying to listen.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart.” I blew him a little kiss before returning my attention to the judges, and Nolan’s face darkened. It was almost a shame the cameras weren’t rolling.

Vivian gave us an overview of how filming would work. The show ran two episodes each week—not quite live, but working around the clock to get each episode out forty-eight hours after it was shot.

Mondays, like today, were for challenge episodes, where all the contestants baked something for the judges to evaluate. We’d also shoot confessional segments in the afternoon. Tuesdays were reserved for editing and filming extra footage. Then the challenge episodes aired on Wednesday evenings, and viewers had twenty-four hours to vote for their favorite bakers.

Results episodes were filmed on Fridays. The voting totals were revealed on camera, and the judges would send one contestant home from the bottom three bakers. Then the remaining contestants would receive the next week’s baking assignment, and we’d be filmed as we researched and practiced our bakes, showing off more of our dazzling personalities. The results episodes aired on Sunday evenings, right before filming began again on Monday.

“It’s a tight schedule,” Tanner said, taking over from Vivian, “but we’re confident that Season 13 is going to be the best season ofA Piece of Cakeyet. We have a crack team of producers, camera people, editors, techs, you name it, who will be working non-stop to put this all together, but we’ll need your cooperation to make this happen. You never know when we’ll need to film an extra segment or reshoot something, plus there’ll be a fair bit of B-roll shooting at all times. These are going to belongdays, and you should consider yourselves on call from now until you head home, got it?”

We all nodded. None of this information was new, but the woman sitting on my other side leaned over and whispered, “I think I might need to find an easier-to-maintain hairstyle.”

I glanced up at her giant blond beehive—like something straight out of the 1960s—and couldn’t help laughing.

“Just trying to be memorable on my first day,” she said with a wink.

“No shame in that,” I told her.

“Now,” Vivian said, “I believe we’ll be sending you out to film your entrance in a minute, but before we do that, let’s go around and introduce ourselves. It makes it so much nicer when we all know each other a bit. So please, tell us your name, your age—if you like—where you’re from, what you do when you’renotbaking sixteen hours a day in south Georgia humidity, and what made you want to try out forA Piece of Cake.”

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