Page 2 of Frosted Fakes

"I… what?" Julia's brain was struggling to catch up. "Mum, you can't just… I've worked for you for six years!"

"Exactly." Now Gabby did turn, fixing Julia with a stare that made her shiver. "Six years of fetching salt and managing my calendar when you should have been developing your craft. I've enabled your mediocrity long enough."

"My mediocrity?" Julia's voice came out slightly strangled.

"You're a Richardson. You were meant to be extraordinary." Gabby set down her whisk. "Instead, you've been hiding behind your little assistant job, pretending you don't have greatness inside you waiting to emerge."

"I don't have… Mum, I failed out of culinary school!"

"You gave up." Gabby's voice sharpened. "There's a difference. You got discouraged after a few setbacks and ran away. And I'm not allowing it anymore."

Julia opened her mouth to protest that burning down a teaching kitchen wasn't really a "setback" so much as a "major insurance claim and possible arson investigation," but her mother was already sweeping toward the door.

"Come with me."

"Where are we…?"

"Don't dawdle."

Julia followed, because what else could she do? She'd been following her mother's orders for twenty-nine years. It was basically muscle memory at this point. Her legs moved of their own accord, carrying her through the house like she was on rails, while her brain screamed that this couldn't possibly be happening.

They ended up in Gabby's home office, a space decorated with cookbook covers and photos of Gabby with various world leaders who'd sampled her cooking. There was one of her laughing with a former Prime Minister over Beef Wellington. Another showed her accepting an OBE from the King. Julia tried not to look at the family portrait on the desk, the one where Wolfgang and Marcella stood in their chef's whites, already accomplished, while Julia hovered at the edge, looking like she'd wandered in from a different photograph entirely. She'd been wearing a sundress. She looked like a random tourist who'd accidentally photobombed.

Gabby pulled out a folder thick with documents and dropped it onto the desk between them. "I've bought you a bakery."

Julia stared at the folder like it might bite her. Her heart finally started beating again. Far too fast. "You've what?"

"A gourmet bakery. In a charming little town called Oakhaven." Gabby's smile was the one she used when presenting a dish she was particularly proud of. "It's perfect for you. Small enough to manage, prestigious enough to matter. You'll focus on pastry and desserts. You always did have a delicate touch when you bothered to try."

"I don't… Mum, I can't bake!" Julia's voice pitched higher than she would have liked. "You know I can't bake. Everything I make comes out wrong. Remember the birthday cake? The one that collapsed and caught fire at the same time?"

"Because you didn't try hard enough." Gabby's jaw set in that familiar stubborn line. "No daughter of mine can't cook. It's in the genes. Your grandmother was a pastry chef, for heaven's sake. She made croissants that would make angels weep. You just need the right motivation."

"Motivation isn't going to change the fact that flour hates me!"

Gabby waved this away as an irrelevant detail. "You have twelve months. Make the bakery a success, and you'll have proven yourself. You'll finally have something of your own, something to be proud of." She paused, and her voice softened slightly, as close to tender as Gabby Richardson ever got. "I want you to succeed, darling. I want you to be happy."

"Then let me choose my own career!"

"This is your career." The softness vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "This is your heritage. This is what Richardsons do."

Julia looked at the folder, at the glossy photographs of a quaint bakery storefront with "Sweet Oakhaven" written in elegant script across the window. It was pretty. It was charming. It looked like something from a postcard, all honey-colored stone and flower boxes and a cheerful striped awning. It was absolutely, definitely going to be the death of her.

"And if I fail?" she asked quietly. "If I can't make it work?"

Gabby's expression didn't waver. "Then I'll know I did everything I could. And you'll know what you've thrown away." She straightened the folder's edges with precise movements. "The family money, Julia. The support. The connections. None of it comes free. If you can't be a Richardson in practice, perhaps it's better if you're not one at all."

The words landed like stones in Julia's chest.

"You'd cut me off?"

"I'd free you." Gabby's smile was sad now, almost pitying. "To pursue your little nursing fantasy or whatever it is you watch on that phone when you think I'm not looking. But you won't have the Richardson name opening doors for you. You'll be entirely on your own."

Julia thought about her trust fund. She thought about her flat, which belonged to her mother. Her car, a gift for her twenty-fifth birthday. Her entire life, built on the foundation of being Gabby Richardson's daughter.

She thought about twelve months in a bakery in a town she'd never heard of, trying to produce food that didn't give the local populace salmonella.

She thought about the alternative. About starting from nothing. About being nobody.