Gracie never dreamed Benny would want to spend the evening here instead of at home with Red, but he’d insisted that he and Olivia could do homework while their parents worked on their own collaboration.
Honestly, Gracie was thrilled the kids were here. They added a level of excitement and had made the whole project more fun.
The initial setup of the house—which still needed an official name on the display entry card that sat on the counter next to them—had gone well. The only mishap was a spilled bottle of inexpensive vanilla extract that Gracie had no idea was even in her kitchen. Benny had accidentally dropped it, giving the air a slightly cloying sweet scent.
Once the whole structure was built, Marshall and Gracie started the decorating phase, which they’d been doing for well over an hour now, settled into a comfortable rhythm. In the frontof the bakery, the kids were talking and laughing more than writing essays or doing math problems.
That had Marshall and Gracie joking about how even their little overachievers had “winter break-itis” and could barely concentrate on these last few days of school.
Olivia had made a Christmas playlist that Benny uploaded to the bakery sound system, filling the place with holiday music. Olivia’s choices had a surprisingly slow beat that actually relaxed Gracie as she concentrated on framing her doors in red licorice.
As she worked, the world narrowed to the hush of parchment paper crackling under her forearms and the clean, rhythmic squeak of a metal bowl turning against the counter.
Directly across from her, Marshall sat on a baker’s stool that Benny had kindly set up for him. He wore an old Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt and jeans and piped a bead of royal icing—sweetened with honey and stiffened with whey—along the seam of their combo-structure’s roof, his handsome features drawn in concentration.
He hummed under his breath—not to the music on the speakers, but something soft from his chest, a steady, almost holy melody. Every time he glanced up to check alignment, the overhead light caught his eyes, and the color reminded her of so many things she loved, like caramelized brown sugar, maybe, or a dark chocolate ganache.
Something warm and sweet and tempting.
Between them, the gingerbread replica of Sugarfall and Craving Clean rose and came to life, two separate buildings that had yet to be joined.
“So how should we do that?” Marshall asked as they paused their work to consider the baking and engineering challenge.
“How should you do what?” Olivia asked, appearing in the kitchen with Benny as if they had been hovering outside—were they listening to the conversation?
Probably, given the fact that they’d orchestrated this wholegroupproject.
“We need to connect the two structures,” Marshall told them, waving the kids in. “Ideas are welcome.”
“Sure,” Olivia said. “Can we steal some strawberries and dip them in chocolate?”
A frown pulled as Marshall regarded her. “You don’t like strawberries, Liv. You said they make your throat itch.”
“Benny wants some,” she said. “And you two might like them, too.”
Gracie pointed to the walk-in fridge. “There’s some chocolate on the first shelf that’s easy to melt in the microwave, Olivia. And a basket of fresh strawberries. Help yourself.”
“Will you eat a few?” Olivia asked.
“Of course,” Gracie assured her. “But we need two giant brains to help us figure this out.”
The kids came closer and examined the work, oohing and ahhing over the marshmallow snowdrifts banked against pastel candy bricks on the Sugarfall side. Olivia gushed over the gumdrop topiaries marching down a walkway crushed from candy canes into rose-white gravel.
Of course, Benny—always wanting to be fair—complimented Marshall on his almond-flour walls in perfect plumb lines, sunflower-seed shingles with realistic texture, and the protein bar “pillars” flanking a fondant door stamped with CC in neat block letters.
“In order to submit this as an entry in Mistletoe on Main and get the PR benefit and foot traffic, we have to have one structure,” Marshall explained, pointing to the card Eleanor Locke had left in his mailbox earlier that day. “I was thinking a connector piece that we cover in icing?—”
“Icing?” Olivia leaned into Gracie with a smile, whispering, “That’s what my dad calls whipped coconut cream with monk fruit.”
Gracie laughed. “We can just use good old fondant and sugar.”
“What about a bridge?” Benny suggested.
They all looked at him, interested.
“Full disclosure,” he added, “I’m trying to write a book report onThe Wind in the Willows. The bridges over the river are symbolic, at least according to my research?—”
“Yes, Benny!” Olivia gasped. “That’s exactly—oh, perfect! A bridge is a…aconnection!” She cooed the word, drawing it out with just a little too much meaning.
