Page 58 of I'll Carry You

Jason froze. “Individually?” He didn’t know a damn thing about cooking.

Her grin widened at his discomfort. “By team. So as long as you smile and look pretty, we should be good to go.” She winked at him, then pulled him into the holding area.

Two hours later,Jason felt more out of his depth than he’d felt in a long time. They’d made it through the first three rounds, which had whittled the crowd of over one hundred and fifty contestants down to ten. Because it was being televised, the contest had drawn entrants from the tristate area, and Brandywood was bursting at the seams with tourists.

The owner of the store, Peter Yardley, was acting as the host and chief judge of the competition, with two other people from the magazine and channel as judges. He was speaking to the camera now, and Jason could see why the magazine had chosen him to work with. Despite being an older man, he was charming and had a magnetic personality. Considering his obviously successful bar and the Depot, he clearly had a shrewd eye for business.

He reminded Jason of his grandfather.

As Jen sorted through the ingredients at their station, Jason eyed the crowd. Besides Jen’s family, he’d spotted Mildred come through the door. He avoided looking at her, but he saw her now, sitting in the back corner of the seated section.

TJ was there, too. And Ned.

Ned didn’t hide his presence, and it wasn’t as though Jason could kick him out.

“Ready?” Peter motioned to the contestants. “Time to bake!”

Jen turned to Jason. “Hold on. Let me help you tie your apron on.” She pulled an apron from the canvas bag he’d gotten during check-in, also emblazoned with the store name.

“I don’t think I’ve ever worn an apron in my life,” Jason muttered back to her. She’d tied one on herself without blinking. He wasn’t used to doing anything he didn’t excel at. Anything he couldn’t do, he just didn’t. The kitchen was not a part of the house where he’d ever spent any time. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t just stand here next to you as I did during the quiz stuff.”

“I’ll talk you through it. I got us through the other part, didn’t I?” Jen gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. She looked at the assignment card and read it out loud to him. “Make a signature pastry that is an expression of both people in the relationship.”

Jason blinked at her. “Come again?” The blush that spread on her cheeks was enough to make him grin. “You know what I mean. Good God, your parents are over there.”

She planted a kiss on his cheek. “I know what you meant. And I’d be happy to do the other one at another opportunity. Right now, let’s bake.”

“Bake what? I don’t understand what the hell that means. Don’t we need a recipe?”

“I am the recipe.” She checked the clock. “We barely have enough time for this because they have to sit for a while before we bake them.”

Her mind was clearly going at a speed he couldn’t keep up with. But she was skilled in this without the slightest self-doubt. He liked how confident and clear-minded she was even though he felt like an idiot.

In order to keep the streaming and live audience entertained, the camera crew stopped by each of the tables three times during the baking part to interview them. They were the last station on the end, which meant they had some time before they came for the first interview.

Jen was moving with a quickness he couldn’t follow, cracking eggs. She separated the whites from the yolks into two separate bowls. He stood next to her, using the cart to shield him from view. “Give me something to do.”

She didn’t look up. “Okay, grab that sieve from the side of the cart.”

He set his hands on the cart, then checked the side. He looked back at her. “What’s a sieve?”

“Strainer.” Her focus remained on her work, but she’d finished the eggs and had moved on to opening a bag of powdered sugar.

He saw two options—one that looked like a fine net and another with wider holes. “Which one?”

She opened a small bag labeled almond flour and jutted her chin toward the fine net. “That one.”

He set it next to her. “What are we making?”

She weighed her ingredients out in a bowl on a small kitchen scale. “French macarons.” She gave him a jaunty grin. “Chocolate French macarons, to be exact. One with peanut butter buttercream, one with mint buttercream, and one with strawberry buttercream. Hand me that big bowl over there.”

The fact that she’d come up with that so quickly deserved a medal by itself. If they’d given him two days to come up with something to bake with that prompt, he’d probably still be wearing a blank expression when they returned for the final product.

Despite his lack of any skill, they fell into a routine quickly enough. She’d spent enough time in a kitchen ordering other people around, and he could fetch things and move things as she finished with them.

As the camera crew neared stopping a few stations down, Jason slinked beside her. “Should we figure out a couple story?”

She frowned, pulling the bowl of merengue she’d made away from the stand mixer. She grabbed a whisk. “I don’t have time to talk to them. I’ll let you do most of the talking, and I’ll just go with whatever you say.”

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