“I’m not giving you any of my cookies.”
I sidled up to her. “But you gave me some the other night.”
“Make your own.” She shoved me away.
My cookies were crumbly and didn’t smell like dessert when I chiseled them out of the beakers. The women in the audience tittered as I almost dropped the beaker.
Meg, meanwhile, was neatly soaking her cookies in the espresso she had made.
The coffee will chase off the burnt flavor,I assured myself as I poured it into the beakers. It was also going to help loosen the burnt cookies off the bottom of the glass. I looked over. Meg was layering her whipped eggs with the cookies. Hers were a lot fluffier than mine, which seemed a little runny.
“Five minutes!”
It was boiling hot, and sweat dripped down my nose. I jumped as Meg appeared right next to me.
“You’re getting sunburnt,” she said, reaching up to smear sunscreen over my nose. “You poor, dumb blond.”
“I’m not stupid!”
She looked down at my soupy eggs and chuckled. “You didn’t even whip your egg whites! I don’t think you should serve that to people.”
“I’m going to bake it, obviously.”
“You don’t bake tiramisu.”
“This is different.”
“Your cookies look like they’re dissolving,” she said. Her hand grazed my ass as she went back to her table.
“Crap.” I took a sip of the rum then a bigger sip.
My dessert was a mess. I scooped whatever I could salvage of the soggy cookies out of the beakers. I had one clean beaker left, so I used that to assemble my dessert. Meg was neatly layering her tiramisu in ramekins.
I just dumped mine in with a generous helping of rum and added a thin layer of egg on top. Meg was dusting cocoa powder on hers. She had a metal sieve and was neatly sprinkling the dark powder.
I did not have a sieve. I tried to carefully pour some cocoa powder on top of my beaker but ended up with more than a light dusting.
“And time!” Sadie called. “Let’s have the contestants present their desserts to the judges!”
Meg carefully untied her apron. The motion was enough to make me forget about my terrible dessert. I wanted her. She had been working me up in a tangle of sex obsession the past few days. I could barely contain my desire.
“Meg, you’re up first.”
The judgesoohed andahhed over her perfect tiramisu.
Show-off, I mouthed at her. She blew me a kiss.
“Hunter.” Sadie waved me up. I grabbed my secret weapon and swung it over my back. The large industrial blowtorch was used at the Svensson PharmaTech factory to work on their heavy machinery.
“While I have never claimed to be a baker,” I told the judges, setting down my beaker of burnt, soggy cookies, raw egg, alcohol, and half a bag of cocoa powder in front of the judges, “it can’t be said that I don’t give a good presentation.” I turned the torch onto its highest setting.
“Hunter, don’t!” Parker yelled out.
The alcohol caught on fire first, blue-white flames licking the side of the beaker. In the next instant, the cocoa powder dust ignited and expanded, creating a fireball that shot up ten feet into the air, singeing the canopy covering the judges’ table. The fire department doused it with water, spraying the judges and me and waterlogging my dessert.
“My word!” one of the judges said after a moment. “I haven’t had that much excitement in years. What a presentation!”
“You didn’t even taste his dessert.”
