Chapter 1

Do you really think there is a possibility that Gerald Montgomery would come all the way to Bald Eagle Falls?” Vic asked. Her tone was doubtful, but her eyes were bright. She was, Erin thought, trying to tamp down her excitement over the idea, not wanting to get her hopes up for something she considered to be unlikely.

“I didn’t think it was possible,” Erin admitted. She and Vic sat at the table in Erin’s kitchen with their heads together, going over their plans for the next week. “It seems like a stretch that anyone would want to come way out to rural Tennessee to a little bakery like Auntie Clem’s. But my sources say we are on Montgomery’s Muffin Mania tour route.” She shrugged, holding her hands palms up. “If he’s going to be in the area, then he’s coming to Auntie Clem’s. It’s the only bakery around that makes gluten-free muffins. Even in the city, only one place makes its own gluten-free cupcakes and muffins. Everyone else either orders from them or gets commercial stuff shipped from Nashville.”

And that meant that they weren’t fresh. Gerald Montgomery wasn’t interested in something pulled from the freezer or sitting on the shelf for a couple of days. He had criticized restaurants or bakeries in the past for trying to pass something off as fresh when it was a day or two old. It wasn’t worth his attention if it hadn’t just come off the stove or been baked in the last few hours.

“Your sources?” Vic swept her long blond hair back, tucking it behind one ear. “How reliable are these sources?”

Erin Price couldn’t blame her young assistant for being skeptical. Rumors that came over the grapevine in Bald Eagle Falls were plentiful but not necessarily accurate. The women of the town—and many of the men, too, Erin suspected—enjoyed gossiping about their neighbors. If there wasn’t anything legitimate to discuss, they didn’t seem to have any scruples against speculating or flat-out making something up. Some of the rumors that got back to Erin about herself or Vic or another friend or employee of Auntie Clem’s Bakery were so far from the truth that Erin wondered whether the person who had started them was testing to see just how bizarre a rumor had to be before people would begin to question what they were hearing.

“Well, you know Cherise, the woman who runs the restaurant supply store in the city?”

Vic nodded, leaning forward with interest.

“Well, her nephew works in Gerald Montgomery’s office. He saw Montgomery’s travel itinerary for this tour and Bald Eagle Falls was on it. He figured she probably knew the bakery he would visit, so he called to share the news.”

“And Cherise called you.”

Erin nodded. “She knows I run the only bakery operating in Bald Eagle Falls and that everything here is gluten-free, so it was a no-brainer that if Montgomery is coming to Bald Eagle Falls, he is coming to Auntie Clem’s Bakery.”

“How did her nephew know he was coming through Bald Eagle Falls rather than just staying in the city? His itinerary is that detailed?”

“He’s staying at the B&B.”

“Which one? Mrs. McClung?”

Erin nodded. She had already confirmed the booking with Mrs. McClung. There wouldn’t be any reason for Montgomery to stay at the B&B in Bald Eagle Falls unless he was planning to go to Auntie Clem’s Bakery. If he wanted to go to the bakery in the city that made gluten-free muffins, he would have stayed in the city. The accommodations would be more convenient than staying in Bald Eagle Falls.

“Well…” Vic drew the word out long in a drawl. “Don’t that beat all. He’s coming to Auntie Clem’s Bakery!”

“Who’s coming to Auntie Clem’s Bakery?” a male voice asked.

Erin didn’t need to look up to know it was Officer Terry Price, her… significant other. She really hated the word boyfriend. Partner sounded too much like business. Spouse wasn’t right since they were not married, much to the dismay of the church ladies who patronized Auntie Clem’s Bakery.

Erin sat back in her chair and stretched her back and shoulder muscles. Terry entered the kitchen to fetch a bottle of beer to drink while he watched the game on TV. Erin wasn’t sure what game he was watching or even what sport. He had told her, she was sure, but she had been too distracted by the news of Gerald Montgomery’s tour to retain any details.

“Just Gerald Montgomery,” Vic said, her voice high and dramatic. “Just one of the most famous food critics in the country, coming to taste muffins at Auntie Clem’s Bakery.”

Terry looked at Erin. “Really? That sounds pretty prestigious.”

“If he likes it, yes. If he doesn’t like what he tastes… a review from a guy like Montgomery is enough to make or break a bakery. And he’s very tough.”

“Sounds like the plot of a Hallmark movie,” Terry said. “If you can just find the right recipe to impress him, he’ll give you your five gold stars and you can save the bakery from certain ruin and pay off the mortgage and fix all of the appliances in need of repair…”

“Well, there’s no mortgage to pay off or appliances needing repair, but we do need to figure out what to serve him when he gets here. We can’t just serve him an everyday rice bran or blueberry muffin and expect him to be impressed.”

“Why not?” Terry challenged, “Your baking is the best. You shouldn’t need to do anything special to impress him.”

He removed the cap from the beer and had a swig.

“He’ll be expecting something special,” Erin said. “The everyday fare at Auntie Clem’s is just fine—”

“Outstanding, even,” Vic inserted.

“—But this guy is testing gluten-free muffins all across the country. You think he will be impressed with just any old muffin?”

“I don’t think you sell ‘any old muffin.’ ” Terry said generously. “You can’t even tell them apart from a muffin made with regular wheat flour. And when you dress them all up with icing and other little bits…”

“Decorate them,” Erin advised.

“When you do that, it takes them to a whole new level.”

“Those prepackaged gluten-free blueberry muffins you can get at the store,” Vic said slowly, “they don’t even have real blueberries in them. They have simulated blueberry nuggets…”

Erin shuddered. “Well, anyone can make a muffin better than that. But we have to make a muffin that’s better than them all.”

Terry and Vic both looked at her. “That’s a pretty tall order,” Terry said. “You’re not baking these muffins in the fires of Mount Doom.”

It was Erin’s turn to stare. “What?”

“Lord of the Rings,” Terry advised. “The one ring to rule them all…”

“Oh.” Erin gave a nod. “Yes, you’re right. I won’t be baking them in the fires of Mount Doom.” she paused for dramatic effect, “but it will be the one muffin to rule them all.”

Chapter 2

What kind of muffin are you going to make?” Terry asked.

“I don’t know, that’s what we need to work out. We need to create something truly special. He’ll take some of the other varieties, too; he always explores your range, but we need something that is… new, different, and special.” Erin looked at Vic. “What do you think?”

Vic nodded, pursing her lips. “We should probably look over what he has liked at other restaurants and bakeries. Get a feel for what he likes or dislikes. Some people like a lot of rich sauces or rare ingredients, and some really like simplicity and making sure you have a solid grasp of the basics.”

“Good,” Erin nodded. “That will give us a good place to start. I’ve heard he also has allergies, so we’ll need to get a list of what he can’t eat. We want to have lots of options available to him. It wouldn’t do to have a specialty bakery where he can’t eat anything.”

“It must be hard for him to be a food critic if he has multiple allergies. It can be really hard for some people to find anything they can safely eat.”

Vic had learned all about how complicated it could be working with Erin at Auntie Clem’s Bakery. People who needed to eat a gluten-free diet due to celiac disease often had other food allergies as well, and Vic knew of a few customers who came to Auntie Clem’s—some from quite a distance—because they knew that Erin would work with them to find or create something they would be able to eat.

The Fosters were among their favorite customers in town. The oldest child had celiac disease and was very sensitive to any traces of gluten, and they were still trying to sort out all of the sensitivities of the youngest Foster child, Allan, to figure out what he could eat without digestive distress.

“I guess it would give him a chance to test out the service level of the restaurant, too,” Erin suggested. “He can get a feeling for how they treat people with allergies or special needs, whether they have the right protocols in place to protect people who have allergies. Or else if they are sloppy and act like they don’t want to deal with a customer who is particularly demanding.”

Vic nodded. “I’ll do some internet research and start pulling together a dossier. We’ll get it all pinned down so we have plenty of safe choices for him.”

Terry nodded at the two women and headed back to the living room as the commercial break ended and his game started up again.

“He shore likes his football,” Vic drawled, drawing the word out.

“Is that what he’s watching? I wasn’t even paying any attention.”

Vic laughed. “Growing up with so many boys, there was no escaping the almighty pigskin in the Jackson family. And I was right in there with the rest of them. My poor ma!”

Vic was transgender and had grown up as one of the brothers in the Jackson family before running away at seventeen to live as Victoria instead of James. Even knowing Vic as well as she did, Erin had a hard time remembering that the pretty young blond had once been a rough-and-tumble, shotgun-toting farm boy in the Jackson clan, one of the notorious organized crime organizations in the area. Vic had certainly transformed her life in the short time she had been living in Bald Eagle Falls.

“Did you want to go check the score?” Erin offered.

“I’m fine!” Vic assured her. “I’ll watch the highlights with Willie later.”

Erin nodded and glanced across the backyard toward the loft apartment over her garage, where she assumed Willie was sleeping or doing computer work. Willie still had his own house but hadn’t been there much lately. Since he had started chelation protocol to reverse heavy metal poisoning, he had been in Vic’s apartment most of the time, too tired and ornery to see to his own meals and other needs. Willie had always been totally independent, and none of them had expected the chelation to affect him as much as it had.

The doctors had suggested he would be dealing with “flu-like symptoms.” But Erin felt like it was more like going through chemotherapy. He was constantly exhausted and nauseated, along with a whole host of other symptoms, not the least of which was “irritability.” Vic was a saint for putting up with his whining, demands, and moodiness.

“How is he doing?”

“Well, William Andrews ain’t the best patient in the world. But he does try my patience.”

Erin chuckled. “I’m sure he does.”

Vic looked at the clock on the wall. “He should be good for a while yet. Let’s spend a few more minutes on the muffins and Mr. Montgomery before he wakes up from his nap.”

“Have they said how long it will be before Willie is done with the chelation and can return to normal?”

“They just say he’s progressing, still clearing heavy metals from his system, and sooner or later…” Vic sighed and held her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Sometime…”

Erin grunted. Wasn’t that the way it always worked? The doctors had a prescribed protocol, but how long it would take and what the side effects would be were far less predictable than they would have liked.

“So this Montgomery,” Vic insisted on turning the conversation back to the critic, “I’ve seen the guy on TV. He’s tough. You sure you want him coming to Auntie Clem’s?”

“Well, it isn’t like I can tell him not to! I didn’t arrange for him to come and can’t exactly turn customers away. If I told him I wasn’t interested in a review, he’d just give me a bad one.”

“You have the right to decide who to serve.”

“And he has the right to say whatever he wants to in his show.”

Vic grunted and nodded. “Do we at least know when he’s coming?”

“We know Montgomery’s Muffin Mania has already started, though they’re not revealing where he has been or where he is going next. I have the dates that he has reserved a room at the B&B, but I’m sure he doesn’t plan to be here more than one night, so he must not be sure exactly when he will arrive.”

“So we need to be prepared that whole time.”

Erin nodded. “And it’s not so bad. We can make a special muffin several days in a row and just not roll it out until he gets there. I want it to be a surprise, for him to be the first person to try it out. If we make a batch each day and those just go into the freezer if he doesn’t show up, that’s fine. Then when he comes, we roll them out and he gets to tell the world what he thinks of them.”

Even though Erin said it casually, breezily, her stomach tightened at the thought of it. What if Montgomery didn’t like them? What if he really didn’t like them and gave them one of his trademark horrible reviews and everybody thought that Auntie Clem’s Bakery was sub-par?

“Everybody here knows Auntie Clem’s is a great bakery,” Vic assured Erin, reading her expression. “They love your baking. If moody Montgomery doesn’t like the baking, that won’t change.”

Erin knew that was true. Her customers already knew her product. But it would cut down on the number of people out of town who made the trip to see what she had to offer. If Montgomery gave her a rave review, the traffic from the surrounding areas would increase. Maybe by quite a bit.

“We’ll get a good review,” Erin declared, making a positive statement like all of those build-your-success books said to. She didn’t know if she believed in all of the positive-affirmations-lead-to-success stuff. But it couldn’t hurt. “He’ll give us a great review, and it will be great for the business.”

I hope you enjoyed this sample of

Muffin to Hide

By P.D. Workman

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