Page 8 of A Mustang River Christmas

After that? He just hadn’t gotten around to it.

Punishing yourself is so like you.

He ignored that.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “I know you’re on an early schedule, and I’m on a dinner service schedule, so if you get tired, of course, you can leave.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m raring to go. I haven’t done anything of the kind in a minute.”

“Which is... insane. Because you are extremely well known. I’m actually embarrassed that I didn’t immediately realize who you were.”

“Why would you? I’m not quite in your field. Also, it’s been a number of years.”

“I’m not that much younger than you. I’m thirty-eight, and I’ve been working in kitchens since I was eighteen.”

“Forty-five. And same.”

“I... I actually can’t believe you’re here, and I can’t believe that you’re going to help me. I saw the gingerbread house that you made at the Gold Leaf. That was... it was so intricate.”

“Yeah, it was. And I don’t know that we have the kind of time to get something that intense together, but we can certainly make a go of it.”

“I saw your chocolate sculptures, too. They’re incredible. Everything that you do looks incredible. And delicious. I heard that you had an accident,” she said.

“Thought you might.”

“That’s why you quit?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Effectively. Again, shit’s complicated. But we’re not here to talk about me, we’re here to talk about gingerbread. I need to get a look at your schematics.”

“Okay,” she said.

She pulled out a stack of plans that she had clearly been working on, and he looked at her ratios, the math that she had done for the larger pieces.

“So you were starting with a small version earlier today?”

“Yes. But I’m having a lot of trouble with the icing.” She let out a sigh. “Among other things, but I probably need to start with the icing.”

“Yeah, that was all wrong. Listen, my primary passion for dessert is in the taste. But a display gingerbread is not about taste. It’s about art. One thing I love about the architectural side of sweets is that it can transport people. It brings you back to that magic that you felt when you were a kid and you got to go into a candy store. Or you were looking at your birthday cake. That, to me, is the goal with a big centerpiece like this. So now you’re talking probably five feet tall?”

“Yes. And then it will be up on a raised table, so probably elevated eight feet all the way to the top.”

“Perfect,” he said, taking a pencil out from behind his ear and going in on her schematics. “So, these are essentially the blueprints for the resort, and you’re planning a wooden structure to go beneath gingerbread panels?”

“Yeah, I thought that would be the best way to do it.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of glass. So that means we’re probably going to end up doing a lot of isomalt sugar.”

“I haven’t even gotten around to experimenting with that,” she said.

“That is fun. I mean, I like it. Making it into thing sheets with no bubbles is always a great time, trying not to give yourself third-degree burns with hot sugar is another.”

He started to feel passion burning in his stomach, a feeling that wasn’t entirely foreign when he was near Laney, but having a spark about creating something in the kitchen again? That was great.

“The load-bearing pieces should be wood – that’s just practical on something this size, but we still need sturdy gingerbread tiles and frosting that’s basically cement.”

She nodded, and he began to mentally adjust ratios.

“I don’t want any part of the wooden structure to be visible,” he said. “We’re going to have to be clever with it because in the back of the resort you have this whole wall of windows, and we don’t want anyone to look inside the gingerbread structure and see supports. We want them to look inside and see candy. Candy furniture, a candy front desk. Again, that sense that there’s a whole candy store inside and you can only just kind of see it.”