Page 54 of Christmas at the Guest House

The other woman had made her way to her station, pulling the items she had brought with her out of their bags and getting everything set up as she would need it. Mindy seemed to sense Sarah’s arrival, and the woman’s brown eyes darted up and landed on Sarah.

A slow, feline smile tugged up the corner of Mindy’s lips.

“Well, hello there,” she said sweetly before turning her attention back to her tasks. “Come to sniff out the competition?”

“No.” Sarah shook her head, hoping that her nerves weren’t obvious to the woman in front of her. “I just figured I’d come over and see if you needed help getting everything set up.”

Mindy’s brow furrowed, and the woman blinked at her for a second. “You’re offering to help?”

“Well, just to help you unpack,” Sarah answered with a shrug. “I can’t exactly offer you help in the bake-off.”

Mindy narrowed her eyes almost suspiciously, but then the look was gone in a flash.

“That’s sweet,” Mindy said in a short but not entirely un-polite tone. “But no thank you. I’ve got it all taken care of.”

Sarah almost asked if she was sure, but then stopped herself.

“All right.” She gave the other woman a quick nod. “Let me know if anything changes. I think we’ll be getting started soon.”

As if on cue, Lacy’s voice began ringing out over the crowd. Somewhere in the last few minutes of Sarah coming in, the party had begun in full swing. And Lacy had placed herself in the middle of the two workstations as she began to call for everyone to settle down.

“All right, everybody!” Lacy yelled, clapping her hands in excitement as every pair of eyes in the large dining room turned toward her. “As you see behind me, we have not one but two amazing bakers setting up to give us a real treat!”

A few groans at the pun peppered through the crowd, and Sarah couldn’t help but laugh.

“Sarah from Sweet Thing,” Lacy continued jovially, “and Mindy from Baking Fiend have joined us tonight for a good old-fashioned holiday bake-off!”

There was a round of applause as Lacy flung out her arms wide, gesturing to the two women who stood behind her. Sarah gave everyone a quick, shy wave as she made her way back to her station and began pulling on her apron. It didn’t matter that she knew almost every single person in the house with them, she still wasn’t entirely sure she liked all of their attention on her at once.

Thankfully, Lacy was still announcing the details of the contest, and she drew their attention back to her.

“These two lovely ladies will each have ninety minutes. And in that time, they will be creating three delicious pastries and morsels for us to try, and we’ll vote on our favorite to determine who will win the bake-off. So give these two fabulous gals a round of applause before we start the timer and let them get bakin’!”

Another round of applause and cheers sounded, and Sarah blushed as more than a few people wolf whistled while raising their glasses into the air. Lacy made a big show of clicking start on the timer on her phone, and then they were off.

Sarah pulled over her brand-new bag of flour, ripping it open as she got out her measuring cups. After her baking frenzy earlier in the week, she had been able to narrow it down to three recipes. Two of them were favorites that sold out at Sweet Thing almost every single day: chocolate croissants and her ooey, gooey cinnamon rolls. But the third was something she had come up with not that long ago. It was a pistachio, mint and honey muffin, with a crumble coating.

She had developed the recipe not that long ago and hadn’t put it on the menu yet at Sweet Thing. But when she’d had William taste test it for her, he had lost his mind over it. Sarah could only hope that everyone else did the same.

She gave herself over entirely to the baking, humming Christmas carols as she went and tuning out the noise of her fellow townsfolk around her. She was measuring, rolling out dough, hand mixing, machine mixing, everything at random. She felt like a blur.

In no time at all, she was setting out her first tray of chocolate croissants, followed shortly after by the cinnamon rolls. She threw a quick glance over to the table where Mindy was working frantically. She was taking something out of the oven and bringing it over to the table. Sarah couldn’t see through the throng of the crowd what it was, but almost immediately she heard their hums of approval as people began to sample it.

A fierce, competitive excitement tore through her, and she turned back around to check on her muffins. Glancing at her watch, she realized there was only twenty minutes left before Lacy called time on the competition. But that was fine with her, the muffins would be done in five.

She tapped her foot impatiently, standing by the oven as she waited to take them out. When the timer on the oven she was using dinged, she jumped and pulled the door open. Throwing on her oven mitt, she grabbed the tray of muffins and set them on the counter to cool.

Sarah bent her face over the steaming, delicious pastries, grinning as she marked that they were baked to perfection. And just as she bent her face over them, inhaling their nutty, sweet scent, a frustrated cry echoed through the kitchen from somewhere behind her.

She snapped up, her head swiveling around to find the source of the noise, but it didn’t take her long at all. Mindy was standing on the other side of her at her station, her hands flapping wildly in the air over a tray of small, deflated lumps of pastry dough.

“No, no, no, no,” Mindy began to say, color rising high in her round cheeks.

Sarah watched, worry flooding her as the other woman’s eyes began to dart around the crowd. Mindy noticed that she had garnered attention from the crowd, and tears began to dance along her lower lashes. A pang of sympathy hit Sarah, and she took a step toward the other woman.

The movement made Mindy’s gaze dart back to her, and an emotion that Sarah couldn’t entirely place flashed across the woman’s face. Before Sarah could go to her, Mindy bowed her head and ran from the room, disappearing down the hallway and toward the back of the house.

Sarah looked around the kitchen, her eyes landing on William at the edge of the crowd. She felt at a loss for what to do. Should she go after Mindy and make sure she was all right? Or should she stay here and serve the muffins? Muffins that she knew were going to win her this competition.

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