Page 10 of Serving Bunt

Forget the charity calendar. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a small-town romance novel. Something with an adorably punny title like Fur-ever Yours.

Yeah . . . I’d read that.

I hated how good he looked like this. Worse, I hated how much I wanted to keep looking.

“Earth to Matty.”

Dani’s voice snapped me out of my daze. She was standing right beside me now, one eyebrow arched in a way that told me she knew exactly what—or who—had caught my eye.

“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”

Heat crawled up my neck. “I, um . . . no. Sorry. Mind saying it again?”

“Walk with me.”

She started toward the holding area at the back of the room, and I followed. Clarke fell into step beside us, Mo still tucked against her chest.

“What do you know about Sleigh the Bake?” Dani asked.

“The baking show?”

She nodded. “They’re doing a celebrity showdown holiday special and one of the teams dropped out last minute. The producer is a friend of mine, so she reached out to see if I had a few hunky baseball players to offer up as replacements.”

I blinked. “Uh-huh.”

I didn’t like where this was going. She couldn’t possibly be suggesting—

“They’re filming during the All-Star break and since you’ll be around . . .”

“You want me to bake?”

“Yes.”

“On television?”

“Right again.”

“And before you say no, just know that it is for charity,” Clarke quickly added. “Each team picks a cause and gets money just for showing up. The winning team takes home fifty grand.”

“I’m not much of a baker,” I told them.

That was putting it lightly. I knew my way around the grill, but the oven was a different story. I hadn’t baked so much as a birthday cake since high school, and that had only been because I’d wanted to impress my girlfriend at the time.

She’d dumped me four days later.

“Nobody’s expecting you to be Paul Hollywood,” Dani said. “The show is about personality more than anything.”

“Besides, it wouldn’t be just you,” Clarke offered. “You’d have a partner.”

“And it would be a great opportunity to promote the Junior Roasters.” Dani’s smile was genuine. “We all know how important those kids are to you.”

They had me there. The Junior Roasters was more than just a youth baseball program. For a lot of kids, many of whom came from low-income neighborhoods across Oregon and Washington, it was an escape, an opportunity to build skills and friendships. I had been volunteering with them for the past year, so I knew firsthand that fifty grand would go a long way.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Who would be my partner?”

Clarke and Dani exchanged a look.

“We’re thinking either Wes or Diaz,” Clarke answered. “Both would be great picks, but the producers are thinking Diaz might be more—”