Page 1 of Grumpy Mountain Man
1
DAKOTA
Could I get arrested for this?
That thought hit me as I unzipped the tent flap and looked around one more time before kicking it inward with my foot. Then, with yet another look around, I stepped inside and did a quick scan before turning and zipping the flap back up.
Nobody had to know I was in here. It was only slightly warmer than the subzero temperatures outside, but the oven would heat things up a little. I could turn on one of the many heat lamps they’d installed throughout the tent to keep baking contestants warm, but with my luck, I’d end up burning the tent down.
I took the oven in the far corner, figuring that was as far away as I could get from the ski lodge that was only a five-minute walk from this tent. In a few hours, my fellow national baking competition contestants would be traipsing over here, but I’d snuck out well before sunrise.
My roommate had flown the coop. Her boyfriend showed up yesterday and somehow managed to get a room someone had canceled at the last minute, so she’d spent the night with him.
That had given me plenty of time to consider how I was pretty much screwed. I tossed and turned all night in my room alone, thinking about how I’d forgotten one of the most important requirements of the competition. I hadn’t brought any baked goods to hand out to the judges.
Nobody else had forgotten. My roommate had cookies, and the other women I’d met yesterday had cupcakes, candies, and all kinds of unique items. No one had a cake, though. Not one that was unique and could be sliced into pieces to hand out.
I just needed an oven. And that was what led me here, setting the temperature to let it preheat while I unloaded the items in the backpack I’d brought with me. Items I’d grabbed from the twenty-four-hour megastore a half hour away this morning when I realized I’d majorly screwed up.
Pulling out my phone, I tracked down my cheat sheet, saved in a notes file. I’d made this particular cake so many times, I could do it in my sleep, but the recipe served as more of a checklist—a way to make sure I didn’t forget anything. It was 6:45 in the morning and I’d had not a drop of caffeine, so forgetting was likely.
I hummed while I worked, choosing a particularly inspirational song—a song that reminded me I could do this. I could win. I’d been born to kick ass in this baking competition—one that had a prize of fifty-thousand dollars. The best part was, the winner got help opening a bakery.
I lived in the town next to Seduction Summit and had all my life. Since I was a little girl, I dreamed of living up here in the mountains in a log cabin when I grew up. I’d raise kids and run my own shop. Okay, so in elementary school, that shop was a toy store, but as I discovered a love for baking, the dream had changed.
This town had zero bakeries and plenty of wintertime tourists, with plans to bring in even more tourism outside of skiseason. This was where Dakota’s Desserts would change the face of dessert in this town forever.
I was preparing the icing while waiting for the cake to finish baking when I heard a strange sound outside—the low hum of a truck. It stopped my heart for a second, but silence soon fell all around me again.
I shoved it off and kept working. But as I scooped confectioner’s sugar into my bowl, I heard a new sound. It was an engine, but not one that belonged to a truck.
Was that a chainsaw? Oh crap, I’d seen this movie. I’d even been personally chased around by a guy holding a fake chainsaw at a haunted house a half dozen times or so as a teenager. It was an annual ritual back then, and I screamed and ran every time.
I couldn’t scream and run today. I had a cake to bake.
Vroom-vroom.
I dripped in a few drops of food coloring.
Vroom-vroom.
I added the vanilla extract.
Vroom-vroom-vroom.
I set my spoon in the bowl and stepped back, staring in the direction of the noise. All I could see from here was the wall of the tent—a cream color. I could go out there and ask the chainsaw wielder to knock it off, but I wasn’t supposed to be in here. It was better that I just shut out the noise and work.
I’d turned to pull some more supplies from my backpack when suddenly, I heard a crash so loud it was impossible to ignore. The walls of the tent trembled. The ground shook. The prep table—a cheap, lightweight, temporary version of the kind that would be used in a real bakery—shook against my hip.
I stared at the stove—one of a long row of them brought in specifically for this competition. Had it shaken too? And if so, what had happened to the cake inside?
My stomach clenched as I pressed the button to turn on the oven light. I leaned down and looked through the window, and my heart sank at what I saw.
The cake had fallen in the center. It looked like a bundt cake, only the center was still there, just…flattened. And I didn’t have replacement ingredients.
I thought I was screwed before, but this took it to another level. My future as a bakery owner was officially in the dumper—and all because of whatever was going on outside this tent.
Someone was going to pay.
