Sasha nodded before handing the spoon back to Sydney. “That takes me right back to Venice,” Sasha said. “I could eat that every day. Well done, Charlie.” She started to head over to Austin’s station, and Cass was pleased to see the small frown he now sported, but then Sasha stopped and did an about-face. In a whisper she said, “Oh, almost forgot . . . Did you bring that stuff for me?”

“Uh . . . I’m sorry, what ‘stuff’?”

“Remember yesterday? I asked about your skin, and you promised you’d bring me some of your family’s starter.” She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “You know I like to keep my personal life out of the workplace, but my ex is going to be at the gala this weekend with his new trophy wife. I need to look ten years younger. I need that bread mask.”

Had Sasha actually been serious about that? Looking at her sister’s boss now, she could see she had been dead serious. And now it looked as though Cass had screwed up. Yet again.

“Right! I’m so sorry. I’ll bring it tomorrow, I promise.” Cass picked up the pen on her workstation and wrote down starter on the back of her hand; it was a reflex. This was how she remembered details at the bakery—if she put them on paper, inevitably she would misplace it—and often her entire forearm was covered in short-form scribbles. Walter always teased her that it looked like she was trying to write a recipe book on her arm, and one day she would turn the bread dough blue with her inky hands. She smiled at the memory, but Sasha and Sydney were staring at her hand, eyes wide and horrified.

“What did you just do?” Sasha asked.

That shaky feeling returned. Of course Cass couldn’t have pen marks on her hand when they started taping.

“I’ll just, uh, wash it off.”

“Make it fast, Charlie. We’re about to start.”

• • •

The audience—which Cass now realized was much smaller than it looked like on television—chuckled uncomfortably as the contestants who had been assigned Cass’s Aperol Spritz cupcakes recipe challenge brought forth their offerings.

“I feel like I’m on Nailed It,” one of them—a woman with platinum hair and a small nose ring—moaned to another contestant. “I forgot to add orange zest to the cupcakes, so I had to redo them. Then I could not get the gelée to set in time. It’s a disaster. I know I’m going to be sent home today.”

Cass tried to remain calm, but her heart pounded with her own anxiety. She may have switched to gelatin for the second attempt at the gelée, but she’d been so rattled by her exchange with Sasha she’d forgotten to change the recipe before Sydney had entered it into the tablets the contestants used. Sydney had been doing a hundred tasks at once and hadn’t caught the mistake when she entered the ingredients.

And now Cass had to play judge, comparing the contestants’ soggy cupcakes to the version she and Sydney had plated up, which looked gorgeous on display.