The Gingerbread House Rivalry

• Chapter 1 Flour, Debt, and Desperation
• Chapter 2 The Golden Ticket
• Chapter 3 Packing the Piping Bags
• Chapter 4 Lights, Camera, Gingerbread
• Chapter 5 A Ghost from Culinary School
• Chapter 6 Icing on the Ego
• Chapter 7 The Foundation Crumbles
• Chapter 8 Sugar Glass and Sharp Tongues
• Chapter 9 Midnight in the Pantry
• Chapter 10 A Pinch of Sabotage
• Chapter 11 Snowed In
• Chapter 12 The Secret Ingredient
• Chapter 13 Frosting Over Old Wounds
• Chapter 14 A Gingerbread Truce
• Chapter 15 Sparks in the Oven
• Chapter 16 The Semi-Final Showdown
• Chapter 17 Caramelized Confessions
• Chapter 18 Under the Mistletoe
• Chapter 19 Producer's Meddling
• Chapter 20 A Bitter Aftertaste
• Chapter 21 The Village in Ruins
• Chapter 22 Walking Away
• Chapter 23 A Taste of the Truth
• Chapter 24 The Grand Finale
• Chapter 25 Sweet Victory
• Chapter 26 Home for the Holidays

At four-thirty in the morning, the temperature inside Hearth & Crumb was approximately three degrees warmer than the frozen sidewalk outside, which meant Clara Vance could see her own breath as she measured out twenty pounds of bread flour. She wore two pairs of wool socks, a frayed thermal Henley, and an apron so stiff with dried buttercream and caramelized sugar it could probably stand up on its own if she ever took it off. Outside the frosted front window, Pine Hollow, Vermont, was buried under six inches of fresh November snow, the streetlights casting long, lonely cones of amber light over an empty Main Street.

Clara liked the quiet of the early shift, mostly because it was the only time of day nobody asked her how business was going.

She hoisted the heavy canvas sack of flour onto the stainless-steel prep table, her shoulders protesting with a dull, familiar ache. At twenty-eight, she had the forearms of a lumberjack and the dark under-eye circles of a Victorian ghost. She dumped the flour into the massive bowl of the Hobart mixer, added salt, yeast, and lukewarm water, and flipped the heavy metal lever. The machine groaned, a low, rattling complaint that sounded suspiciously like a dying tractor, before the dough hook finally began to turn.

"Come on, Gertie," Clara muttered, patting the chipped cream-colored enamel of the mixer. "Just hold it together until New Year's. Please."

Gertie had been her grandmother’s pride and joy when Hearth & Crumb opened in 1978, a top-of-the-line beast that could knead enough brioche to feed a small army. Now, Gertie was forty-six years old, held together by food-grade silicone, prayers, and a very expensive repairman named Sal who had recently informed Clara that if the transmission went out again, she’d be better off using the bowl as a birdbath.

Clara turned her attention to the deck oven, squinting at the digital thermostat. It was supposed to be at four hundred degrees. It read three-forty, and the little red indicator light was flickering like a dying firefly. She gave the side of the control panel a sharp, practiced smack with the flat of her palm. The light steadied, and the gas burners kicked on with a satisfying whoosh.

"Still got it," she said to the empty kitchen.

For the next two hours, she moved in a practiced, rhythmic blur. She shaped loaves of rosemary sourdough, rolled out sheets of laminated pastry dough for croissants, and slid trays of cinnamon rolls into the proof box. The kitchen slowly warmed, filling with the rich, comforting scents of toasted butter, brown sugar, and yeast. This was the magic of it—the reason she hadn't walked away when her parents retired to Florida three years ago and left her holding the keys, and the reason she still got out of bed when her alarm went off in the pitch dark. When the dough rose just right, when the crust crackled as it cooled on the wire racks, everything else in the world seemed manageable.

Until seven o'clock, when the front door chimed and reality walked in, bringing a blast of freezing air and a stack of envelopes.

"Morning, boss," Pippa said, stomping snow off her boots onto the welcome mat. At twenty-two, Pippa possessed an irritating amount of morning energy, a bright pink beanie, and a refusal to wear anything less than three layers of mismatched flannel. She dropped her backpack behind the register and immediately reached for the espresso machine. "Smells like heaven in here. Please tell me you made the maple scones."

"Top rack," Clara said, wiping flour from her forehead with the back of her wrist. "And you're five minutes late."

"The plow buried my Civic," Pippa countered cheerfully, pulling a shot of espresso. "I had to dig myself out with a dustpan. Also, Mrs. Gable’s cat is loose again. I saw him trying to fight a snowblower on Elm Street."

Clara couldn't help the small smile that tugged at her mouth. Hiring Pippa straight out of community college had been one of the best decisions she’d ever made, even if half the time she felt more like an exhausted older sister than an employer.

"How's the register looking?" Pippa asked, glancing at the vintage brass cash drawer as she tucked a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. "Did we do okay yesterday afternoon?"

Clara’s smile faded. She walked over to the glass display case, arranging a tray of glossy, cardamom-scented morning buns with a little too much precision. "We sold four loaves of sourdough, a dozen cookies, and enough coffee to keep the mayor awake through the town council meeting. So, no. Not great."

Pippa winced, leaning her elbows on the counter. "It's just the post-Thanksgiving slump. Everyone's still eating leftover turkey. Once December hits and the tree lighting happens next weekend, Main Street will be packed."

"Yeah," Clara said softly. "Maybe."

She didn't have the heart to tell Pippa that December foot traffic wouldn't fix a forty-thousand-dollar hole in the budget. Pine Hollow was a postcard-perfect town, the kind of place people from Boston drove to for foliage in October and skiing in January, but the local economy had been quietly bleeding out for years. The hardware store down the block had closed in August. The boutique across the street was running a permanent thirty-percent-off sale. And Hearth & Crumb, despite being a town institution, was drowning in the rising costs of butter, eggs, utilities, and a commercial mortgage that seemed to swell every time Clara blinked.

The bell above the door jingled, saving her from having to say anything else.

For the next three hours, the morning rush—if one could generously call it that—trickled in. Mr. Henderson, the retired postman, bought his usual black coffee and a bran muffin. Two nurses from the clinic down the road grabbed a box of croissants. A young couple wearing matching Patagonia jackets wandered in, asked if the pastries were gluten-free, vegan, and keto-friendly, and left without buying anything when Clara apologetically explained that croissants were, by definition, mostly butter and flour.

By eleven o'clock, the snow had started falling again in thick, lazy flakes, and the shop was dead silent.

"I'm going to go do the inventory order," Clara said, untying her apron and hanging it on a hook by the kitchen door. "Holler if anyone comes in."

She stepped into the tiny back office, which was really just a converted broom closet crammed with a battered oak desk, a filing cabinet that wouldn't close all the way, and towers of cardboard boxes holding extra paper cups. She sat down in the squeaky swivel chair and reached for the stack of mail Pippa had tossed on the blotter earlier.

Utility bill. Overdue. Dairy supplier invoice. Due in five days. Insurance renewal. Up twelve percent.

At the bottom of the pile was a crisp, white envelope with a window displaying her name and address in neat, impersonal font. The return address belonged to First Heritage Bank of Vermont.

Clara’s stomach dropped. She slid her thumb under the flap, tore it open, and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside.

FINAL NOTICE OF DEFAULT, the bold black letters screamed from the top of the page.

She read the rest of it twice, hoping the numbers would magically rearrange themselves into something less terrifying. They didn't. When her parents had refinanced the bakery's mortgage five years ago to replace the roof, they’d signed onto a commercial loan with a balloon payment due at the end of the term. Clara had known it was coming—she’d been scrimping, cutting her own salary to minimum wage, and picking up freelance cake orders on weekends to save for it—but the roof repair had been followed by a burst pipe, and then the new walk-in cooler compressor, and then a summer where tourism dropped by thirty percent.

She was short. Not by a few hundred dollars. Not even by a few thousand.

She needed thirty-eight thousand dollars by January fifteenth, or the bank would initiate foreclosure proceedings.

Clara let the paper fall onto the desk. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands. The silence of the little office pressed in on her, heavy and suffocating. She could hear the faint hum of the walk-in cooler through the wall, a steady, rhythmic vibration that cost her four hundred dollars a month in electricity just to keep running.

Thirty-eight thousand dollars. She might as well try to raise a million.

She thought about calling her parents, then immediately dismissed the idea. Her dad’s knees were shot, her mom’s arthritis had forced her out of the kitchen years ago, and their retirement savings were barely enough to cover their condo fees in Sarasota. They had worked their entire lives to build Hearth & Crumb, and they had trusted her to keep it alive. The thought of calling them on Christmas Eve to tell them the bank was taking the building made her throat tighten.

A sharp knock on the doorframe made her jump.

"Hey," Pippa said, poking her head in. She was holding two mugs of hot chocolate, steam curling over the whipped cream. "You've been in here for forty minutes. Thought you might need a sugar boost."

Clara quickly swiped at her eyes, hoping they didn't look as red as they felt, and forced a tight smile. "Thanks, Pip."

Pippa didn't leave. She stepped into the cramped space, set one mug down next to the bank notice, and her gaze dropped to the bold black lettering. Her cheerful expression vanished instantly.

"Oh, Clara," she whispered. "Is that...?"

"It's fine," Clara lied, reaching for the mug just to have something to do with her hands. The ceramic was warm against her cold fingers. "I'll call the loan officer on Monday. Maybe they'll grant an extension. Or I can look into a small business grant."

"You already applied for the state grant in September," Pippa said gently. "And the loan officer's name is Richard, and he has the soul of a parking meter. How much do we need?"

Clara stared into the melting whipped cream. "Thirty-eight thousand. By mid-January."

Pippa let out a low whistle, sinking onto the edge of a stack of flour sacks. "Okay. That is... a lot of maple scones."

"About fifteen thousand of them, give or take," Clara muttered. A bitter, hysterical laugh bubbled up in her chest. "Maybe I can sell a kidney. Do you know what the going rate is for a slightly bruised, flour-dusted kidney?"

"Don't joke like that," Pippa said, though her lips twitched. She took a sip of her cocoa, her brow furrowing as she stared at the wall behind Clara's head, where a framed black-and-white photo of Clara's grandmother hung next to a faded ribbon from the 1984 Vermont State Fair. "There has to be a way. What about catering? Holiday parties?"

"Everyone already booked their catering in October. Besides, I can't do forty-person dinner parties with Gertie sounding like she's about to throw a rod."

"Well, what about—" Pippa stopped, her eyes widening. She scrambled off the flour sacks, nearly spilling her mug, and bolted back out into the shop.

Clara blinked, too tired to even wonder what had gotten into her. A moment later, Pippa came tearing back into the office, clutching her phone like it was a winning lottery ticket.

"Look at this," Pippa said, shoving the bright screen three inches from Clara's nose. "My cousin sent me the link yesterday because she knows I work at a bakery, and I totally forgot about it until right now."

Clara leaned back, squinting to focus on the screen. It was a brightly colored webpage covered in digital snowflakes, candy canes, and a flashing gold banner that read: THE GREAT HOLIDAY GINGERBREAD SHOWDOWN.

"Pippa," Clara sighed, rubbing her temples. "I don't have time to watch a baking show."

"Not watch it! Enter it!" Pippa tapped the screen aggressively, scrolling down to a block of bold text. "Look at the grand prize. Fifty thousand dollars. Cash. Plus a feature in Holiday Living magazine."

Clara froze. Her eyes locked onto the number. $50,000.

"It's a reality TV show," Clara said slowly, the initial jolt of hope immediately tempered by a wave of skepticism. "They film those months in advance. It's almost December."

"No, look at the dates," Pippa insisted, pointing at the fine print. "It's a live-to-tape holiday special. They're filming the whole thing over two weeks in December at some fancy ski resort in Stowe, and airing it right before Christmas. One of their original contestants just dropped out because of a family emergency, so they opened up a last-minute casting call for New England bakers."

Clara took the phone from Pippa's hands, her heart beginning to beat a little faster against her ribs. She read the requirements. Applicants had to be professional bakers or pastry chefs, available for fourteen consecutive days starting next Monday, and capable of constructing large-scale architectural gingerbread structures under extreme time constraints.

"I haven't built a competition gingerbread house since culinary school," Clara murmured, her thumb hovering over the screen. "And even then, I hated the cameras. Remember when the local news came to interview me for the town's bicentennial? I accidentally called the mayor 'Mom' and dropped a tray of eclairs on the reporter's shoes."

"You were nineteen and you'd been awake for thirty hours," Pippa said, planting her hands on her hips. "And you're the best baker in this state. Your gingerbread is incredible. You literally built a working replica of the Pine Hollow covered bridge out of spiced cookie dough and spun sugar for the winter carnival two years ago."

"It collapsed ten minutes after the judging."

"Because a golden retriever ate the support beam!" Pippa threw her hands up. "Clara, listen to me. You have a thirty-eight-thousand-dollar problem and a fifty-thousand-dollar solution sitting right in your hand. If you don't apply, we close in January. If you do apply, the worst thing that happens is they say no, and we're in the exact same spot we are right now."

Clara looked down at the glowing screen, then over at the FINAL NOTICE sitting on her desk.

Fifty thousand dollars. It would pay off the bank, fix Gertie's transmission, replace the dying heating element in the deck oven, and leave enough left over to actually pay herself a living wage for the first time in three years.

"When is the deadline?" Clara asked quietly.

Pippa grinned, a fierce, triumphant expression. "Midnight tonight. All you have to do is upload a three-minute video introducing yourself, show off some photos of your work, and hit submit."

Clara looked out the tiny office window into the kitchen, where the afternoon light was fading into a dull, snowy gray. The thought of leaving Pippa to run the shop alone for two weeks—even during a slow December—made her stomach twist. The thought of standing in front of bright studio lights, being judged by strangers while cameras zoomed in on her every mistake, made her want to crawl under the desk.

Then she thought of her grandmother's hands, dusted in flour, teaching her how to crimp pie crust. She thought of the brass bell above the front door, and the regulars who depended on their morning coffee, and the quiet pride of keeping something real alive in a world that seemed determined to pave everything over.

"Okay," Clara said, handing the phone back to Pippa. "Get the ring light out of the storage closet. And grab a clean apron. If I'm going to beg for my bakery on national television, I'm at least going to look like I know what I'm doing."

The ring light Pippa dragged out of the storage closet had seen better days. One of the plastic tripod legs was held together with neon green duct tape, and the power cord had a slight kink in it that made the LED bulbs flicker like a haunted motel sign if anyone walked too heavily across the floorboards. Clara had bought it two years ago during a brief, misguided attempt to make Hearth & Crumb go viral on Instagram, an endeavor that had ended after three blurry videos of sourdough starters and a comment from a teenager asking if the bakery was a front for money laundering.

"Okay, stand right there by the prep table," Pippa instructed, squinting through the lens of Clara’s phone, which she had wedged into the plastic clamp at the center of the light. "No, a little to the left. If you stand there, the glare off the stainless steel makes you look like you’re ascending to heaven."

Clara shuffled two inches to the left, tugging nervously at the hem of her cleanest apron. She had scrubbed the flour off her forearms, pulled her dark hair back into a neat, tight bun, and even dabbed on a coat of tinted lip balm she’d found at the bottom of her purse. Still, under the harsh, clinical glow of the ring light, she felt entirely exposed. Every dark circle under her eyes, every stray gray hair, every crease of exhaustion seemed magnified.

"This is ridiculous," Clara muttered, crossing her arms. "I look like I’m about to record a hostage video."

"Uncross your arms," Pippa commanded, waving a wooden spoon like a tiny director’s megaphone. "You look defensive. Smile! You love baking! Baking is your passion! You are not currently being threatened by a bank!"

"I am being threatened by a bank," Clara pointed out, though she forced her arms down to her sides and plastered a stiff, toothy grin onto her face.

"Better. Sort of. Okay, remember the prompt. Three minutes max. Name, bakery name, why you want to be on The Great Holiday Gingerbread Showdown, and a quick showcase of your skills. Ready? Three, two, one... action."

Clara stared into the tiny black glass eye of the camera lens. Her mind, which could effortlessly calculate baker’s percentages for a hundred-pound batch of brioche at four in the morning, went completely, terrifyingly blank.

"Hi," she said, her voice pitching up an octave higher than usual. "I’m Clara Vance. I own Hearth and Crumb in Pine Hollow, Vermont. I’ve been baking since I was... well, since I was tall enough to reach the counter. Which was around age seven. Or eight. Actually, I had a step stool, so maybe six." She paused, wincing. "Sorry. Can we start over?"

Pippa sighed, hitting the red stop button. "Yeah, let’s maybe skip the exact timeline of your childhood vertical growth. Just stick to the basics. Pretend you’re talking to Mr. Henderson, not a camera."

"Mr. Henderson is eighty-two and half-deaf. If I talk to him, I have to yell."

"Then yell cheerfully! Take two."

Take two was interrupted thirty seconds in by Gertie, whose ancient compressor chose that exact moment to kick on with a sound like a bucket of bolts being fed into a woodchipper. Take three was ruined when Clara accidentally knocked a stack of aluminum pie tins off the shelf behind her, sending them clattering across the tile floor like cymbals. By take four, the ring light’s cord had slipped, plunging the kitchen into dramatic, moody shadows right as Clara was trying to explain the structural integrity of royal icing.

By nine o'clock that night, the bakery was freezing, Clara’s cheeks hurt from forced smiling, and she was ready to throw the tripod into the snowbank outside.

"One more," Pippa said, her own energy finally starting to flag as she stifled a yawn behind her hand. "Just forget the script. Forget the prize money, forget the cameras. Tell them why you’re still standing in this kitchen at nine o'clock at night."

Clara let out a long breath, watching it puff faintly in the chilly air. She leaned back against the edge of the prep table, letting her shoulders drop. The rigid, customer-service posture melted away. She looked past the glaring ring light, out toward the darkened front of the shop where the brass bell hung silently over the door, and then down at the scarred wooden cutting board beside her—the same one her grandmother had used to roll out gingerbread dough forty Christmases ago.

"Okay," Clara said softly. "Roll it."

Pippa tapped the screen.

"I’m Clara Vance," she began, her voice steady and warm, stripped of the frantic cheer she’d been trying to force. "I’m the owner and head baker at Hearth & Crumb in Pine Hollow, Vermont. My grandparents opened this place in 1978, and my parents kept it going until three years ago, when they handed the keys to me."

She picked up a piping bag she’d filled earlier with stiff white royal icing, her fingers automatically finding the familiar, comfortable grip.

"People think baking is all sugar and nostalgia, and sometimes it is," Clara continued, looking directly into the lens. "At four in the morning, when the cinnamon rolls come out of the oven and the snow is falling outside, it’s the best job in the world. But it’s also brutal. It’s broken mixers, and rising butter prices, and wondering if you’re going to make it through the winter. I’m applying for The Great Holiday Gingerbread Showdown because I need to save my family’s bakery. Plain and simple."

She offered a small, genuine smile—the kind that actually reached her eyes.

"I’m not a flashy pastry chef," she said. "I don’t use liquid nitrogen or gold leaf. I use real butter, dark molasses, and recipes that have been tested for forty years. If you put me in a kitchen with a deadline, I don’t panic—I just bake. Because that’s what I do every single day."

She held up her phone, showing the camera a few photos she’d pulled up earlier: the intricate, two-foot-tall gingerbread replica of the Pine Hollow covered bridge—taken before the golden retriever incident—alongside a tiered winter wedding cake adorned with delicate spun-sugar snowflakes and a batch of stained-glass sugar cookies that looked like miniature cathedral windows.

"I’d love the chance to show you what a small-town Vermont baker can do," Clara finished. "Thanks for watching."

Pippa didn’t hit stop right away. She stared at the phone screen for a beat, then lowered it, her eyes shining. "Okay. That was it. If they don’t cast you after that, they have no souls."

"It wasn’t too depressing?" Clara asked, rubbing the back of her neck. "I basically just told them I’m broke."

"You told them you’re real," Pippa corrected, tapping furiously on the screen to upload the video file to the casting portal. "Reality TV producers eat that stuff up. Plus, your covered bridge looks insane. Now, let’s attach the photos, fill out your contact info, and..."

The little blue progress bar crept across the screen. Outside, the wind rattled the front windowpane, sending a swirl of dry snow skittering across the glass. At 11:42 PM, eighteen minutes before the deadline, the screen flashed a bright green checkmark.

Application Received. Thank you for applying to The Great Holiday Gingerbread Showdown!

Clara stared at the message, a sudden, dizzying wave of exhaustion washing over her. "Well. It's done."

"It's done," Pippa echoed, wrapping an arm around Clara’s shoulders and giving her a quick squeeze. "Now go home and sleep. Tomorrow, we wait for Hollywood to call."

Hollywood did not call on Thursday.

Instead, Thursday brought a busted radiator pipe in the customer bathroom, a twenty-minute phone call with the dairy supplier begging for a five-day grace period on the milk invoice, and a grand total of thirty-eight dollars in the register by noon. Clara spent the afternoon on her hands and knees with a wrench and a roll of plumber’s tape, trying to stop a slow, rhythmic drip while her phone sat face-up on the sink beside her, mocking her with its silence.

By Friday, she had checked her email so many times that her thumb ached. She checked her inbox. She checked her spam folder. She checked the "promotions" tab, half-convinced a reality TV casting offer might have been sorted alongside coupons for discount winter tires. Nothing.

"They had a last-minute dropout," Clara reasoned aloud on Friday afternoon as she scraped burnt caramel off a sheet pan with a metal bench scraper. "Which means they probably got five hundred desperate bakers sending in videos on Wednesday night. They’ve probably already picked someone from Boston or New York. Someone with a Michelin-star pastry background and a jawline that doesn't disappear in bad lighting."

"You have a great jawline," Pippa said loyally from behind the espresso machine, though she sounded a little less certain than she had forty-eight hours ago. "And maybe they’re just slow. TV people are notoriously flaky. My cousin’s boyfriend once auditioned for a game show and didn’t hear back for three weeks."

"Filming starts on Monday, Pip. That’s three days away."

Pippa winced, wiping down the steam wand with a damp rag. "Okay, yeah. Fair point."

Clara tossed the bench scraper into the sink with a loud metallic clatter. The worst part wasn’t even the silence; it was the fact that, somewhere between filming the video and hitting submit, she had let herself hope. For the first time in months, she had pictured a way out of the suffocating gray fog of debt. She had pictured paying off Richard the loan officer, buying a new heating element for the deck oven, and sleeping past four in the morning without waking up in a cold sweat.

Having that tiny spark of hope snuffed out felt almost worse than never having it at all.

"Forget it," Clara said, untying her apron and tossing it onto the prep table. "It was a long shot anyway. Even if they did call, how would I leave you here alone for two weeks? Who would do the early morning bake?"

"I could do it!" Pippa protested, though she looked slightly terrified at the prospect of wrestling Gertie at four-thirty in the morning. "I’ve watched you do the sourdough a million times."

"You forgot to put yeast in the cinnamon rolls last month, Pippa. They came out like hockey pucks."

"That was one time! And Mr. Henderson said he liked the crunch!"

Clara couldn’t help but laugh, the sound breaking some of the tension coiled tight in her chest. She walked out into the front of the shop to flip the Open sign to Closed. It was only four o'clock, an hour earlier than usual, but a freezing sleet had started coming down, turning Main Street into a treacherous sheet of gray slush. Not a single car had driven past in twenty minutes.

She grabbed the mop from the utility closet and began swabbing the salt-stained tile near the front door, her mind already drifting back to the grim math waiting for her on the office desk. Maybe she could sell the vintage Hobart mixer to a collector. Maybe she could rent out the apartment above the bakery—the one she currently lived in—and move back in with her parents in Florida, though the thought of trading Vermont snow for a pastel condo association made her want to weep.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket.

Clara ignored it, leaning into the mop to scrub a particularly stubborn puddle of melted snow. It was probably another automated reminder from the electric company.

It buzzed again. And again. A persistent, rhythmic vibration against her hip.

"Are you going to get that?" Pippa called out from behind the counter, where she was wiping down the glass pastry case.

"It's a spam call," Clara sighed, propping the mop against the wall and pulling the phone out anyway.

She glanced at the screen. The number had a 310 area code. Los Angeles.

Clara’s heart stopped, then slammed violently against her ribs. She stared at the glowing screen as if it might bite her.

"Who is it?" Pippa asked, instantly sensing the shift in the room. She dropped her rag and scrambled around the counter. "Is it them? Answer it! Answer it right now!"

Clara fumbled with the screen, her damp fingers slipping twice before she finally managed to swipe the green icon. She pressed the phone to her ear, her throat suddenly bone-dry.

"Hello?" she squeaked.

"Hi, is this Clara Vance?" a brisk, hyper-caffeinated female voice asked. There was the faint sound of typing in the background, along with the muffled murmur of an office.

"Yes. Speaking."

"Clara! Hi, this is Chloe Miller, senior casting producer for The Great Holiday Gingerbread Showdown. I’m so sorry to call out of the blue like this, do you have five minutes to chat?"

Pippa, who was standing three inches away with her ear pressed dangerously close to the phone, let out a silent, high-pitched scream and began furiously fist-pumping the air. Clara swatted her away, gripping the edge of the counter to keep her knees from buckling.

"Yes," Clara managed, trying to sound like a calm, collected professional and not someone who had just been mopping up slush in wool socks. "Yes, I have time."

"Amazing. Look, I’m going to be totally transparent with you because we’re on an insane crunch here," Chloe said, talking at roughly ninety miles per hour. "We loved your tape. Loved it. The authenticity, the family legacy, the whole small-town Vermont vibe—it’s gold. Especially next to some of the... well, let’s just say some of the bigger personalities we’ve already cast."

Clara blinked, unsure what that meant, but she didn’t interrupt.

"Our original twelfth contestant had to pull out because of a burst appendix," Chloe continued. "Which is tragic for him, great for you. The executive producers watched your tape this morning, and we’d love to bring you in for the show. But before I send over the paperwork, I need to ask you a few quick questions. Can you actually build a four-foot gingerbread structure in under eight hours?"

"Yes," Clara said, her confidence snapping back into place the second the conversation turned to baking. "As long as I have a decent oven and enough powdered sugar, I can build anything."

"Good. Second question: how are you with pressure? Because there are going to be cameras in your face, a ticking clock, and judges who do not sugarcoat their critiques. Literally or figuratively. Last season, a guy from Chicago cried into his fondant."

"I’ve worked the morning rush at a bakery with a broken espresso machine and a line out the door," Clara said dryly. "I think I can handle a ticking clock."

Chloe laughed, a sharp, delighted sound. "I love it. Okay, last thing. We film at the Summit Ridge Resort in Stowe. You’d need to be on-site by ten a.m. this Monday, and you’d be sequestered at the resort for up to fourteen days, depending on how far you make it. No phones during filming, strict confidentiality, the whole nine yards. Can you make that happen?"

Clara looked over at Pippa, who was nodding so hard her pink beanie was slipping down over her eyebrows. Then she thought of the FINAL NOTICE sitting on her desk.

"I'll be there," Clara said.

"Fantastic! Check your email in about thirty seconds. I’m sending over your official welcome packet, the NDA, and the filming schedule. Consider it your golden ticket, Clara. Welcome to The Great Holiday Gingerbread Showdown. Try not to burn anything before Monday!"

The line clicked dead.

For three full seconds, the only sound in Hearth & Crumb was the low, steady hum of the walk-in cooler. Clara slowly lowered the phone from her ear, staring at the darkened screen.

"Well?" Pippa demanded, grabbing Clara’s shoulders and shaking her slightly. "Well? Did we get it? Are we going to Stowe?"

Clara’s phone chimed—a single, bright ping. She looked down as a notification popped up at the top of her screen: Subject: OFFICIAL WELCOME PACKET - THE GREAT HOLIDAY GINGERBREAD SHOWDOWN.

"We got it," Clara whispered.

Pippa let out a whoop that rattled the glass in the pastry case, pulling Clara into a fierce, rib-crushing hug. Clara laughed, a breathless, slightly hysterical sound, and hugged her back, burying her face in Pippa’s flannel-clad shoulder.

When they finally pulled apart, reality began to trickle back in, cold and sharp as the sleet tapping against the window.

"Okay," Clara said, suddenly shifting into crisis-management mode. "Okay. Today is Friday. I have to be in Stowe by ten o'clock Monday morning. That gives us forty-eight hours to figure out how you’re going to run this entire bakery by yourself for two weeks without burning it to the ground."

"I won't burn it down!" Pippa said, then paused, squinting thoughtfully. "Probably. Wait—how do you turn off the gas main again?"

Clara groaned, covering her face with her hands. "We’re going to need a very large whiteboard."

"And a lot of coffee," Pippa agreed cheerfully, already heading toward the back office. "Come on, boss. Let’s go read your golden ticket."