Decadent Dreams

Belinda nodded. “You’re right. We need to think about designs, too. Those shows pay a lot of attention to detail. Do we know what the theme is?” she asked.

Drake’s smile widened. “Around the World. We’ve got five different countries to work with. Five unique opportunities to show why we’re the best.”

“And since we are the best, we’re going to wow those judges with our cakes!” Shari added, her excitement showing in the smile on her round face.

“Not so fast,” Lillian interjected. “You all are rushing into this like winning is the only possible outcome.”

“It’s called confidence, Grandma,” Drake added, still smiling.

“The same confidence the Hare had when he thought he was a shoo-in to win that race against the Tortoise,” she replied with a frown. “Just because we bake good cakes here inside this bakery doesn’t mean we’ll be able to do the same thing in another location, against other bakers. Talent is not enough for this competition.”

“We’re not trying to be overconfident, Grandma,” Shari said. “We just know what our strengths are. We know what we’re capable of because we had the best teacher.”

Lillian could have smiled at that compliment but she didn’t want her grandchildren to become complacent. She hadn’t gotten this far in this business by believing she was the best; she’d done it by showing she was the best. Not just in baking, but in customer service and professionalism. This had been no easy feat, and she wanted her grandchildren to realize that.

“And that’s why I’m going to teach you something else,” she told her grandchildren. “This competition can only be won if you all work together. Teamwork has got to be the key. If all of you go out there trying to show that you personally are the best, you’ll fall flat on your face.”

“We know that we’re a team, Grandma,” Belinda added.

Lillian shook her head. Belinda came from what Lillian liked to call “Team Me.” She believed that she was the best at everything and so she rarely let anyone help her. She was independent to the point of being a loner and that definitely was not going to work.

“Then it’s time you all showed it. Play your strengths and divide and conquer. I want the team to win, not one of you. Your grandfather and I are looking to retire and we’d like to know who’s able to run this company and who’s not,” she said pointedly, being sure to look at each and every one of them that was there.

“We get it, Grandma,” Drake said after a moment of silence.

Shari nodded and reached out to touch Lillian’s hand. “We’ll make you proud.”

“I’m already proud,” Lillian said.

“Do you know who our competition is?” Malik asked Drake.

“They’re all listed in the back of the pamphlet. Two of them are relatively new but one—” He stopped to look up at Shari.

She had just flipped to the back of the pamphlet and they all knew the second she read the list of names because she dropped the pamphlet.

“I can beat her,” Shari said defiantly.

By “her” she was referring to Dina English, owner and head pastry chef at Brown Sugar Bakery.

“This is not the place for personal grudges,” Drake told Shari.

She lifted her chin and took a deep breath. “I don’t hold grudges.”

Everyone in the room went silent. That was one of the biggest and most blatant lies they’d ever heard. Shari indeed held a grudge against her once-best-friend Dina English, who had not only branched out and started her own bakery, but had taken a few of Lillian’s baking secrets with her. For years Dina had been like a member of the Drayson family, working summers in the bakery while she and Shari had attended college together. When she started Brown Sugar Bakery, it had come as a complete surprise, especially to Shari.

“I mean it. I’ll be fine,” Shari told them.

Lillian simply nodded toward her granddaughter, hoping she would be able to stand true to her word.

Chapter 3

She’d changed to flat black shoes with thick rubber soles that would grip the floor so there would be no slipping and falling. Her jacket and top had also been changed to a short-sleeved black T-shirt with the word DIVA scrawled across her delectable breasts in white rhinestones.

Malik continued to watch as Belinda went directly to the third hook on the rack that held their coats and jackets or whatever else they decided to hang up on any given day. Her apron was always on this hook and nothing was on the two hooks surrounding it. Belinda had a thing about her apron touching street clothes so nobody hung their stuff near hers. She pulled the apron over her head, reaching behind her back to tie it in place. He smiled each time he saw her put that on, he couldn’t help it.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked, her brows immediately wrinkling with a frown.

“You,” he replied, moving from where he’d been standing across the room to the double Sub-Zero refrigerator.

“I wasn’t aware I looked that funny,” was her cool retort.

Malik almost laughed again but knew better. There was only so far you could push Belinda and he wasn’t trying to get on her bad side. It wasn’t quite noon yet so they had a lot of hours to work together in the kitchen.

Shari was traveling with a delivery of two cakes that replicated sculptures by an up-and-coming artist that were being shown at a gallery in Bridgeport. Drake had closed himself in his office, making more moves where the bakery was concerned, no doubt. He was definitely dedicated to the business. As were the rest of the Draysons. They were a close-knit family, the business holding them as strong as their familial bond.

That left him and Belinda in the kitchen today to get out the orders. Carter was expected, but there was no exact time one could ever expect Carter. He worked his own hours, which were usually long and rigorous since he was always striving to achieve more, even though he was already a master at his craft.

“You don’t look funny,” he said when he’d closed the refrigerator, carrying the rolls of fondant over to the working table. “You look really cute in your Betty Boop apron.” It was an honest assessment, one he usually kept to himself. Today, however, Malik had the urge to go out on a limb.

“It was a gift,” she said, slapping her hands down over the apron. Too hard to be an attempt at wiping something off, more likely she thought she could erase Betty Boop’s voluptuously shaped body from the material.

“A very nice gift. Who gave it to you?” he asked as he worked.

Belinda had finally stopped touching the apron and obviously decided to get to work herself. There were two full sheet cakes on the other end of the table. She picked up a bowl of buttercream icing and a spatula and moved closer to the table, on the opposite side from Malik.

“My father.”

“You a Betty Boop fan?”

“Yes.”

It was cordial conversation, the likes of which he and Belinda had gone through on more than one occasion. It wasn’t normally this stiff, even though Belinda was not a fan of conversing while she was working. But Malik sensed there was something bothering her today. She was even more reserved than normal.

He retrieved a marble cutting board and rolled out the first layer of pea-green fondant. Using the rolling pin, he began the painstaking process of smoothing it out just another layer or so before he would drape it over the golf course cake he was working on.

“I can like Betty Boop if I want to. I’m not so stuck-up that I don’t know a simple cartoon character when it’s splattered on the front of my apron,” she said abruptly.

Malik had looked up at her, not speaking for a moment. She hadn’t even gazed at him, just kept scooping icing onto that spatula and gently smoothing it onto the cake. It was amazing how much pent-up emotion she was holding on to. He could see it in the stiffness of her shoulders, the stern set of her lips. And yet, her hands were supersteady, smoothing icing in lengthy strokes, making sure the cake was covered evenly.

“You can like whatever you want. That makes you decisive, not stuck-up.” And yet he wondered who’d called her stuck-up, and if they’d had the guts to do so to her face.

“Right,” she said slapping the spatula into the icing bowl. She turned the cake, surveying it.

“If you tell me who, I’ll gladly punch the person who called you stuck-up,” he offered with a serious face. “Providing it’s not a female.”

The edge of her lips twitched and he knew she wanted to smile. He’d seen her smile before, had received a sucker punch to his gut each time. This one, albeit small, was hard earned. Something was really bothering her.

“It’s not worth it,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “His loss.”