The cake is utterly perfect.

I put my hands on my hips and gaze at it. Four tiers, covered in flawless buttercream, the first and third done over with a hand-piped lattice pattern in a delicate matching color, though with a hint of glitter. Shining Swiss dots. The second and fourth I also did by hand, but the design is much more intricate—flowers so detailed they could leap off the cake, but in the same shade as the lattice.

Still, inside—inside is where it really shines. I made the vanilla bean cake in a marbled rainbow pattern I’d never done before. It took two days to get it right.

But get it right I did, because I am the best damn baker in Forestview, no matter what Cynthia Hayes thinks. I can practically see her now, sitting at home on Christmas Eve, stewing about the fact that Penelope Chadbourne chose me for her wedding.

I take a deep breath and release my built-up resentment into the air. I asked Cynthia for some tips on starting a bakery five years ago. To say she looked down her nose at me would be an understatement.

“You’ll never be able to compete with me.” Then she’d ushered me out the front door of her store—in a premium location on Main Street, of course—and closed it sharply behind me with a firm click.

Penelope Chadbourne is another story. Penny was a class above me in school at Forestview High—literally and figuratively. Nobody was more popular than Penny, and she basked in it, reveled in it. She once looked at me after an entire year on the same student council committee together and narrowed her eyes. “If you’d been here the entire time, I’d have remembered.”

“It’s Valerie Mitchell,” I’d whispered, but it was too late.

Of course, it’s easy to stay at the top of the food chain when you never leave Forestview.

That’s not fair. She did leave, just like I did, to go to some fancy college out east, where she connected with—you guessed it—another Forestview expat who, not coincidentally, makes a ton of money. Why they’re having a Christmas Eve wedding is beyond me, but there was no way I was going to turn down this job. Even if it means spending my Christmas Eve in the bakery, putting the finishing touches on and delivering the cake. It’s set to go in t-minus three hours, so all I have to is a little bit of disassembly and a lot of waiting.

This is my big shot.

I glance from the kitchen into the main store—not a sign of anybody, and I’ve been here for four hours with the open sign flipped, just in case. I baked a fresh batch of Santa Claus cookies and some pastries on the off chance that somebody would stumble across one of the few open stores on Fifth Street in Forestview on Christmas Eve and decide that baked goods were for them.

What’s Penelope Chadbourne’s dress going to be like?

The thought comes to mind just as I register the first flakes of snow drifting to the bare sidewalks. Winter is coming a little late to Forestview this year. I punch my fist into the air. Who needs a white Christmas when it just means a harrowing drive to the Forestview Country Club in…two hours and forty minutes?

I turn back to the cake and give it a firm nod. Everything is good to go. I just need to carefully, so carefully, remove the top two tiers and put them into their separate boxes, prepared just for this occasion.

I reach for the second tier and slide my hands underneath. They don’t shake at all as I lift the weight up, and to the side—in a few moments I’ll place them onto the table next to the bottom half, and then—

The front door of the shop slams open, the bell smashing against the window, and I’m so deep in thought about moving the cake, about Penny Chadbourne’s dress, that nagging thought that I wish I could be her, I wish I could be—that the sound startles me, my entire body jerks, and the cake—oh, God, the cake—

It slips.

It slips out of my hands in slow motion. I try to tighten my grip, though I try to shift my weight to get it back in balance, it just falls, colliding with the ground in an explosion of rainbow cake and Swiss dots.

I stand over it, mouth frozen half-open, and stare at the ruins of my career.

Which might seem dramatic, if you didn’t know how much sway Penny Chadbourne could have over my fledgling bakery.

After several long moments I turn my head to see what hellish creature has caused this to happen. At first, all I see through the kitchen door is a man, standing in the middle of the shop with his hands in his pockets and his head cocked a little to the side, like he’s trying to figure out what the noise was.

Well, it was just my dreams crashing to the ground, Mr…

My heart leaps in my chest, then plummets to the ground next to the pile of buttercream frosting and broken dreams.

It’s the last person I want to see in the world.