Sugar Rush (14 page)

Everyone stared at them now, no doubt the ones who couldn’t hear wondering what the hold up was.

The female judge reacted first. “Well, we’ve got to finish the judging. For now we’ll continue as if nothing…nefarious is going on,” she said, and Dulcie felt like she’d been sent to the principal’s office.

Clearly, Mr. Sugarman had the advantage, having unveiled his so-called creation first.

Dulcie’s one glimmer of hope was that the judges all seemed to appreciate her chocolates, nodding and smiling even with the dark cloud of deceit hanging over the competition.

Chapter Fourteen

Nick returned from the restroom to chaos. Well, it was a controlled sort of chaos, but people definitely chattered about something.

“What’s going on?” he asked his father.

He sniffed. “Well, it would seem your little
friend
,” he said, the word bitter on his tongue, “has the same entry as we do.”

“What?” Nick snapped his head to Dulcie’s station, but she was nowhere to be found.

“It’s good for us she ran off,” his father continued. “Makes her look like the guilty party.”

Nick scrunched his face. None of this made any sense. “But…how did she know what we made? Why would she even want to copy ours?”

The corner of his father’s mouth twitched.

Nick squinted. “Did you…do something?”

His father wore a smug expression. “All’s fair in love and war,” he said.

“What do you mean love and war?” he asked. “There is no war here.”

He didn’t say anything about the love part.

“No war? Tell that to her grandmother!” Mr. Sugarman said.

Nick suddenly got the feeling the bitterest wars were fought over something that had begun as love.

“Dad, what did you do?” Nick scrutinized the room, panicked. There was no sign of Dulcie or her grandmother, only an empty plate sitting in front of an empty gap in the competitors.

Whispered chatter spread through the judging hall, gossip and rumor traveling at a speed much faster than the judges making their final notes. The entire room pulsed with a wave of shock, and something else. That self-important air of righteous people catching someone doing something wrong.

Nick’s heart sank when he realized they were all talking about Dulcie.

And his father seemed as superior as the rest of them.

“Dad,” he said, his tone more forceful now.
“What did you do?”

His father shrugged, then flicked a piece of lint off his sweater vest. “Nothing. Don’t worry.” He stood to face the table again, folding his hands in front of him. “Nothing they haven’t done to us in the past, anyway.” A satisfied glint sparkled in his eyes.

“What the hell does that mean?” Nick whisper-growled.

He needed answers, but the last thing he wanted was more eyes on him. More people talking in hand-covered whispers. More attention on Dulcie.

“Look, Nick, you’re a grown man. You’re old enough to realize you fight fire with fire, and ten years ago, those women started all this. I’m simply repaying the favor,” he whispered.

Nick was speechless, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. In no way could he imagine Dulcie doing anything to harm his business.

He had to find her.

“I gotta go,” he said. “I’ll deal with you later.”

He had never spoken to his father like that before. It actually felt kind of good. Especially once he caught the floundering expression on his face.

…

“I have to get out of here,” Dulcie announced to her grandmother as she stormed through the hotel.

“What’s going on?” Grams asked. “I couldn’t hear anything they said. You were pacing like you might lose your cookies. Are you feeling all right? You’re very pale.”

“No, I am not feeling all right.” She took a deep breath. She couldn’t get enough air.

“That…bastard stole our recipe.”

Grams grabbed her arm, stopping her. The force of it swung Dulcie around to face her. “What do you mean?”

Dulcie had never seen Grams so serious.

She inhaled, her chest rising, though she still felt like she lacked oxygen. She closed her eyes and said calmly, “How Sweet It Is had an entry called the Salted Caramel Apple…get this…
Confection.
”

Grams gasped. Like, actually gasped out loud. “Confection?” she said, her voice rising into a pitch only Dulcie, and perhaps all the neighborhood dogs, could hear.

It was rather dramatic, even for Grams.

“But how did he…? When would they…?” She grabbed both of Dulcie’s arms with vice-grip fingers. “How did they know about the recipe?”

She shook Grams off and charged toward their room. “Nick must have stolen some of the chocolates when he was at the shop.” She fought with everything she had not to cry.

“But I didn’t think he was even at the shop after you found the…” She paused, her mind catching up with her mouth. “Shiznit!” she yelled.

Usually Grams’s creative ways of expressing herself amused Dulcie, and with the way the man waiting for the elevator jumped, it should have been funny, but Dulcie was in no mood for humor. All she felt was shame. So similar to the shame she’d felt the last time, when the judges nearly spit her entry back out. Only this time it was so much worse.

She had done nothing wrong.

Well, other than fall for the wrong guy.

Not that she had even fallen for him, Dulcie tried to convince herself. She’d only fallen for the the handiwork of a master con artist.

But in true Dulcie fashion, she had absolutely no way to prove it. Who were the judges going to believe? Mr. Sugarman, who’d been an upstanding entrant for so many years, or Dulcie, whose only other solo appearance garnered her nothing but disgust and humiliation?

She’d seen it in the short judge’s eyes, how he recognized her all too well, even scrunching up his chubby face and taking a deep breath before he dared the tiniest bite of her creation.

Her mother’s creation.

God, this time she really had dragged her mother’s memory through the mud.

“You’ve been meeting that boy behind my back, haven’t you?” Grams groaned. “I warned you. I told you they were nothing but trouble, and now look what happened.”

Dulcie turned to her grandmother. “Grams, I’m a grown woman and can make my own decisions…and even my own mistakes. I realize I screwed up and I’m sorry, but all I can think about right now is getting the hell out of here. I cannot bear all those people staring at me like that again.”

A tear squeezed out the corner of her eye, which made things so much worse.

Grams didn’t even seem taken aback by Dulcie’s outburst, only nodded once. “You’re right. Let’s get you home. We’ll figure everything else out. Plenty of time later.” She patted Dulcie’s hand.

It was perhaps the most grandmotherly thing Grams had ever done.

So of course, Dulcie flat out started bawling.

She had never witnessed a force of nature as fierce as her grandmother packing their suitcases—she could win some sort of world record at the rate she was going. Dulcie had a sneaking suspicion it may have something to do with a little rage for Nick and Mr. Sugarman. She would not be surprised if she heard word that How Sweet It Is had a flaming bag of doggie doo pummeled at their door before week’s end.

“Check the bathroom, make sure we didn’t leave anything in there,” Grams said as she quickly folded a T-shirt and whipped it into a suitcase.

By the time Dulcie had collected the hair straightener and toothpaste, Grams was finished with all the clothes and was taking a last sweep of the room.

“Let’s go,” she said, hiking both suitcases into her arms.

For someone so dainty on most given days, Grams sure had some spitfire if the situation called for it.

Dulcie grabbed the rest and they snuck out the door. “Elevator?” Grams asked.

Dulcie shook her head. She didn’t want to risk running into anyone from the competition.

“Right,” Grams said, nodding and shoving the door to the stairs open with her butt. “You go wait outside; I’ll take care of checking out. Stand a couple buildings down. That way no one should bother you.”

How did Grams come up with this stuff? Shuffling her out, sending her down the street, and, she noticed, somehow weaseling her way in front of the two people standing in line waiting for the front desk clerk.

They didn’t even seem upset or anything; just let Grams waltz right on in front of them. Dulcie wondered if she even wanted to know how Grams accomplished the things she did.

Grams turned around and shot her a look like, “What are you still doing here?” so Dulcie made her escape. When she breathed fresh air, she had never been more grateful to get away from any place in her life.

She walked up the street, desperate to get away from the building.

More importantly, desperate to get away from Nick.

…

Nick went straight to Dulcie’s room. He banged on the door for several minutes, remembering how long it had taken Dulcie’s grandmother to answer last time. That must be the hold up. Maybe she decided to take a nice long bath to ease some of the stress.

She can’t have gotten away already
, he thought.
There hasn’t been time.

But no one came to the door.

He went down to the front desk. “I’d like to leave a message for room four-twelve, please,” he said to the desk clerk.

The man typed something into his computer at warp speed. “I’m afraid number four-twelve is empty, sir. There were occupants this morning but they’ve checked out.”

“Shit!” Nick spat without so much as glancing at the man.

He started wandering through the lobby, resisting the urge to pull his hair out. He’d missed his chance; she was already gone. And now she had the entire car ride home to stew over everything. To make matters worse, if her grandmother hadn’t hated him by association before, she certainly would now.

He had to do something. Make it right.

Still fuzzy about the details, there was only one place to start. He headed back to the judging hall.

Several of the contestants still mulled around chatting with one another, exchanging stories of which sports stars ordered from their shop, or what movie star always used their shop’s candy as an apology to his wife.

His father was still there, chatting with some old acquaintance. The man left as Nick walked up.

“So, now that I’ve calmed down, tell me exactly what happened.”

His father turned and pretended to clean up the area where the Salted Caramel Apple Confection had been displayed.

“Dad, I’m serious, you have to tell me.” He tried his best not to grit his teeth while he talked, but that was easier said than done.

“It’s simple,” his father said. “Years ago, that woman stole my recipe for this very contest. I simply repaid the favor.”

“I very much doubt Dulcie stole your recipe ten years ago, since she was a kid,” Nick said, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

His father shook his head in disgust. “Of course not the girl. That…woman,” he sneered.

“If you’re talking about Dulcie’s grandmother, I think I’m going to be sick. She hasn’t had a thing to do with the shop since Dulcie’s mother died. Hasn’t even stepped foot in it.”

“Well, that’s what they say, of course, but if you knew Evelyn when I did, you’d realize how preposterous that sounds.”

“Oh, I know all about you and Evelyn,” Nick said. “Is that why you broke up? You have some grand illusion she stole a recipe from you?”

Nick’s father’s jaw dropped, his eyes growing wide. “You know?”

Nick shrugged. “Enough, yeah. And I really don’t give a shit. What I do care about is Dulcie. Now tell me what you did. Because whatever happened a decade ago has nothing to do with her now, except, of course, she’s fielding the entire shit storm you started.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell the judges.”

“No!” his father yelled.

“Then tell me,” he said, his face more serious than his father had probably ever seen it.

Mr. Sugarman glanced around. A few people had started looking in their direction. “Let’s go somewhere else. We can’t risk our reputation.”

Nick squinted in disbelief. “Our reputation? What about Candy Land’s reputation?”

Mr. Sugarman snorted. “What reputation? That store is barely still running. I’ve been waiting for it to go under for years.”

“And yet Dulcie still fights to keep it open. I guess it must mean a lot to her. You know, like her livelihood.”

Nick’s father rolled his eyes. “I bet she can’t wait to be rid of the burden her mother left behind.”

Nick’s hand clenched into a fist. “It is
not
her burden; it’s her life,” he said, leaning close to his father’s face. Nick didn’t go against him often, but he had hit his breaking point. “And you probably killed her dream. Her life.”

Mr. Sugarman snorted. “Oh please, it was her mother’s dream, not hers.”

“How do you know?” Nick yelled.

Mr. Sugarman took him by the elbow and pulled him out of the room, to the elevators. The only reason Nick went along was because he wanted to start a scene about as much as he wanted to chew broken glass.

A scene would make things worse for Dulcie, even if she were already halfway home.

“I don’t understand you, Nick,” he said. “Why are you making such a big deal about this? We had to repay her, that’s how feuds work. I’ve waited years for this opportunity. I didn’t think I would get it after Evelyn’s daughter died.” He met Nick’s gaze. “She was the one who created the best recipes.” He sat on a bench in the hallway.