Page 1 of Sugar and Spice
CHAPTER1
DAISY
“If you were to say that you disliked Austin Finnigan would that be A: a big fat lie or B: a wildly inaccurate statement?”
I glanced up from the cake I was icing and frowned at my assistant. “Those are basically the same thing, Piper.”
She nodded, her sleek raven hair bouncing as she did so. “Yeah, I know boss, but would you also go on to agree that you do not hate him more than Christmas?”
I said nothing, but studied her. Piper was an open book, always had been. It was one of the things I loved the most about her. I didn’t like surprises, and having someone like Piper close by was nice because I always knew what she was thinking. Right now she was hiding something. Poorly, if her question was anything to go by. She cleared her throat, blue eyes darting to the left, fingers nervously tucking a loose strand of her chin-length bob behind her ear.
“We both know how I feel about Christmas.”
She squirmed. “Well, yes, but I-”
I pointed the piping bag in my hand at her, cutting her off. “Why are you asking me that, and why are you fidgeting?”
“I am not fidgeting.”
“Yeah, and it’s summer right now,” I replied, jerking my chin at the window where a gust of wind kicked up a spray of snow against the glass. The front of our bakery, Sweet Tooth, was glass-fronted with our name in gold filigree on the windows that extended the length of our shop. Sweet Tooth sat on the corner of Main Street and Hemlock, which meant we had a pretty little piece of real estate. Inside the bottom of the windows to the left were rows of cases we filled daily with pastries ranging from sweet to savory. Croissants, buttery rolls, sweet fruit tarts, all of it ready and waiting for customers to fill the paper bags we had waiting for them to take home. Customers could order a nice cup of tea or coffee from our small but pretty awesome list of local offerings. Right now we had marshmallow maple tea, and even mulled cider that went beautifully with our apple tart. I knew them to be the perfect Christmas treat. Even if I hated the holiday.
High ceilings and dark wooden beams, a small collection of cafe tables at the back of the bakery, and pretty white and turquoise tile accented in gold covered the floors and made Sweet Tooth the perfect backdrop for anyone’s social media feed.
Sweet Tooth was cozy but hip, and I had worked damn hard to make it that way. It made the fact that I was still in Alaska, small-town Clarity, Alaska, as bearable as possible. Despite all the lofty plans I’d had as a teenager I hadn’t landed more than a stone’s throw from where I had grown up. It was tough to swallow. I was still here.In Alaska.Freezing during the winter, and seeing the same faces I had grown up with.
Austin’s was one such face. The man was horrible. Always had been, ever since we were kids we had clashed.
“You know, it’s summer in Australia, so that statement isn’t really wrong,” Piper hedged, and I snorted. Lazing on a beach would be an amazing way to spend Christmas, but instead I had snow drifts and grizzlies to look out for. That was December in Clarity, and thankfully, I didn’t notice it too much, not with it being our busy time with parties and wedding celebrations. And seeing as I’d been pretending Christmas didn’t exist since I was a kid, I could tune out most of the holiday cheer, caroling, lights and decorations around me. Outside of Sweet Tooth, the town was decked to the rafters, or the pines? Whatever it was that you could decorate within an inch of its life on the Alaskan Frontier was what our little town had shot for. There wasn’t a window or doorstep without a wreath or set of lights and there was holly and mistletoe every other inch. I swore someone was looping a Christmas carol soundtrack through the PA system downtown.
But there wasn’t a speck of Christmas to be found in my bakery, and I liked it that way. Not even the cookies, cakes and breads in the store showed it. I would be damned if I frosted a single snowflake sugar cookie or snowman gingerbread man.
It wasn’t going to happen. Not now, not ever, and thankfully the town respected it. They knew what to expect from me, and they went with it. I was the best baker in town, but I wasn’t going to serve up holiday cheese for any price. The cake in front of me was for a sweet little holiday wedding and it was a work of understated art. Lemon curd, white buttercream frosting with delicate lines of gold piping, and a light dusting of edible gold to bring the whole thing together. Decorating relaxed me, but now at the barest mention of Austin, I was tense.
Austin wasn’t just someone I disliked. I hated the man.
And he hated me, which suited me just fine. But if Piper was bringing him up then something wasnot good.And there was the fact she was comparing him to Christmas, which was just...well, that was another can of worms entirely. It wasn’t that I was the Grinch, per se, but if I never saw another Christmas tree it’d be too soon. Okay, so maybe I could be the Grinch’s understudy in a pinch, but I had my reasons.
I narrowed my eyes at her and set down the piping bag in my hand. “Don’t lie, Piper. Your face gets all splotchy when you lie.”
She groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Damn it all. Okay, I was fidgeting, but I’m just...curious.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t get why you two have to be at war.”
“We are not at war,” I corrected her, looking at the cake in front of me. I picked up the piping bag and turned the cake slightly to work on frosting the other side of it. “That man is at war with how shitty a baker he is. It isn’t my fault that he lost last year’s competition,” I told her smugly.
“You stole his butter,” she whisper-screamed at me.
“Look, that could have been anyone. Butter is a very common thing to go missing.”
“You literally said, ‘Look! It’s Austin’s butter. Fuck him.’ And then you threw it in the river,” she went on, her whisper scream increasing in volume. I might have made her an accomplice to my butter crime. Looked like Piper wasn’t quite over it.
I bit my lip and looked at her before putting the piping bag down. “I might have done that,” I said after a beat.
“You made me post it on social media.” More whisper-screaming.
“Oh, all right, I definitely did it!” I crossed my arms. “What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? He deserved it! After what he did to us at the state Sweet’s Taste Off! That man single-handedly sabotaged us when he hooked up with that judge. She was out to get us after that. It didn’t matter how light my goddamn macarons were, she was going to hate them.” I glowered, fingers twitching dangerously on the piping bag.. The disgusted look from the judge replayed in my mind, her pretty face twisted up as she shoved the plate away from her, declaring it inedible and costing us the round. I hadn’t missed the sly wink she’d sent Austin’s way when the results had been tallied. I jerked my hand away from the piping bag before I squeezed the hell out of it and lost my beautiful gold frosting.
