Chapter Thirteen
“Oh no,” Poppy cried. “This didn’t happen.” Her heart dropped to her toes. Disappointed nausea overwhelmed her and tears filled her eyes. She blinked away the moisture, closed her eyes and prayed that when she opened them that she was mistaken. Her worst nightmare hadn’t just come true.
“Hold still,” Darius urged. “Don’t move, we can fix this.”
Her eyes flew open and she stared in dismay at the disaster in front of her. She’d gone through the castle; the treasure boxes lay upside down and sideways in the horse paddock. Two horses, their icing still wet, lay smeared and hanging half off the base. Her arm was deep in the castle, the front edge up to her elbow. Everything listed sideways like it had been built by a two-year-old or cobbled together by a drunk.
“Let me help this gentleman up first.” Darius assisted an older man to his feet and ensured that he was uninjured before allowing a contest assistant to lead the man away.
Poppy stared at the devastation that was once a stunning castle.
No way. This wasn’t happening. Frozen in place, she closed her eyes, counted to ten and opened them again. Tears dripped off her chin and splashed on the cracked, distorted building. It was ruined. Weeks of practice. Hours of precision work. Totally destroyed. Worst of all, they’d never win now. Her dreams of a new oven were gone in a moment of someone else’s carelessness. It wasn’t even her mistake that lost the competition for them.
She bit her lip to keep from cursing out loud. Every last shred of her optimism fled on a wave of despair and disappointment. She bit back a sob.
“I’ve almost got it,” Darius declared, his hands busy straightening the structure and attempting to glue it back together with icing.
“Don’t even bother,” she whispered brokenly. She was defeated. Emotionally and physically. “We can’t fix this.”
“Okay, pull your arm out. Slowly.”
Ever fiber of her being wanted to pick up the castle and hurl it to the floor and absorb the satisfaction of taking out her rage on the broken pieces. She’d stomp them to crumbs and enjoy every second of it. Instead, she listened to Darius and inched her arm backward, pausing as sharp edges gouged into her skin.
Darius worked frantically to free her.
“Thirty minutes remaining,” a voice called out over the loudspeaker.
Her heart sunk further. Time to pack it in and go home.
She pulled her arm free and stared down at the disaster before her, cursing under her breath.
“It’s ruined.”
Darius dropped the icing bag and rounded the table to embrace her. He turned her in his arms so her face was buried in the fragrant curve of his chest. He trembled under her cheek, his heart pounding in her ear.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” she blurted through her angry tears.
She hadn’t been this broken, this disheartened since her grandmother’s funeral. She’d wanted to make her grandmother proud. Instead, she had a leaning, half collapsed disaster of yuck.
“I’ll just go withdraw from the competition,” she said, reluctantly pulling from Darius’s embrace.
“No. we’ll enter anyway. We’re not going to quit. Let’s patch her up as best as we can. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone else will have a worse disaster.”
She winced at his words.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he rushed on. “I meant—never mind.”
A reluctant chuckle left her. “I get it.”
Suddenly his face broke into a grin. “Holy cow. I have an idea. A brilliant idea. We can fix this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t fix this. It’s a total catastrophe.” Despite her objection, a tiny kernel of hope blossomed in her chest.
“Don’t give up on me now, Poppy. You’re the toughest, most optimistic person I ever met.” He leaned in close and whispered his idea in her ear.
“It’ll never work,” she moaned.
