“Fine.”
“I hear you’ve taken a look at Henrik’s proposal for a bakery.”
“That’s correct. Or rather one of my colleagues did. It was a solid business plan.”
Hasse snorted. “I regard the fact that the bank approved the plan as pure nepotism.”
“As I said, it was a colleague who checked it over,” Vanja replied calmly.
“Henrik makes a good saffron dough, but he’s no entrepreneur,” Hasse continued.
As usual, no one said a word, once Hasse got going.
Henrik sat very still, hardly daring to breathe, as if his breath might ignite the tense atmosphere. He kept his eyes fixed on the dancing flames.
“Enough, Hasse,” his mother said.
“Don’t you dare tell me what I can say and do in my own house!” Hasse roared.
“The way you speak to your children ...,” Vanja began, but Henrik’s mother placed a hand on his arm and he fell silent.
She looked at her ex-husband. “Vanja is right. The way you speak tomychildren—I’m tired of hearing it.”
“So what are you doing here? In my house?”
Mom swallowed hard but didn’t reply.
“Henrik needs to hear the truth. The reason I’m hard on them is because they haven’t had to learn a thing for themselves. They wereborn into all this, the celebrity status, the money. If you take a chance on every crazy idea, you’ll run the family firm into the ground. Henrik is too much like his grandfather in that respect. Henrik proved he’s no businessman with that fiasco with the Coffeepot. He can bake, and he’s good on TV, but he willneverrun a business successfully.”
Henrik recoiled as if he had been slapped across the face. Why was he so shocked, though? Hasse had never believed in him.
A second later Elnaz came in, all smiles. “Everyone ready?”
“Absolutely.” Henrik did his best to bury his humiliation. God knows he was used to it by now—it shouldn’t be hard. He took a big gulp of the wine, which was so sweet that his whole mouth tingled. Then he stood up and took a deep breath. The smell of burning wood stung his nostrils.
As filming began, he made a decision. He was going to fight back, Hasse wasn’t going to get his new show in the fall. TheLet’s Get BakingChristmas special was going to be the best Christmas special ever. Longtime viewers would be surprised, and the buzz would attract new viewers. He was going to make sure everyone was talking about it.
He’d been faking things his whole life, so he might as well keep going. If a hot romance was what they wanted, then he would give it to them.
23
While Henrik was away in Stockholm, Nora worked hard to prepare for the bookstore event. Though the café was closed for the renovations, she was able to work in the bakery kitchen. The night before, she made Henrik’s gingerbread cookies. She noted that there was no allspice in the recipe and thought it couldn’t hurt to add a little. She would, however, use brown butter as per the recipe, and see how it turned out.
The wonderful smell of toasted cloves, ginger, allspice, cardamom, and cinnamon filled the air. She put a large chunk of butter in a saucepan, whisking it constantly to make sure it didn’t burn, and the slightly nutty aroma mixed with the spices was something else. This was going to be good.
Once the cookies were in the oven, she turned up the volume on the Christmas music she had put on to get her in a festive mood and sat down with a list of everything she baked and sold. She wanted to surprise Henrik with a shorter list when he returned. She had also been in touch with Jonathan—the Veg Guy—about local grain, and was planning to experiment with an exciting new sourdough. She was going to try to do things her way and see how it turned out.
She returned the following day and worked to the accompaniment of the carpenters hammering and sawing away in the café area. They had put up a heavy curtain over the entrance, and she had to make a real effort not to pull the curtain aside and take a peek. She buttered the crispbread and added thick slices of Christmas cheese, with smallwedges of fresh figs on top. Sliced the sourdough and topped it with a tangy mixture of stewed apple, crème fraiche, and blue cheese, garnished with toasted crushed almonds. Then she prepped for the next day, when the café was due to reopen.
The changes would bring results, but only gradually, and the bookstore event would provide a welcome bonus, but not enough to save her. She dreaded broaching the subject with Henrik tonight—but she really needed his help.
Later that afternoon Nora brought the food she’d prepared over to the bookstore. Like Nymans, it was a local institution. She set it all out on a long table, alongside large thermoses of mulled wine. The store was decorated with amaryllis and Christmas roses, and Advent stars shone in every window.
People started to arrive, and the TV crew filmed them as they helped themselves to food. When the star of the show arrived a few minutes later, the hum of conversation stopped for a few seconds and everyone simply stared at him. Including Nora. God, she’d forgotten how gorgeous he was. He pulled off his hat; the wet snow falling outside had made his dark hair go curly. He met her gaze and gave her a quick smile, but there was something different about him. She didn’t know what it was, but he looked tense.
A lady came over to speak to him, and he seemed to relax. She understood why he dreamed of running his own bakery—he really did seem to enjoy talking to people. And baking on TV wasn’t the same as being a professional baker. Whatever she had thought about Henrik in the past, he clearly loved baking.
He headed over to the makeshift stage and draped his jacket over an empty chair. Nora noticed that it was dripping, and a little puddle formed on the floor. Then he positioned himself front and center, and everyone sat down. Malin, the store owner, introduced him. As soonas he started talking about himself, his baking, and his latest book, the tension in his face disappeared. Nora couldn’t deny that he was made for the limelight. He was putting on a performance, and now that it didn’t involve her patisserie, she could see the magic—and why everyone loved him so much. The audience was spellbound. He made them laugh, even flirted a little with the ladies near the front. She caught herself smiling as he talked. He definitely had that charisma that only a real TV star had.
