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“It’s like arts and crafts, with food,” Brooke said, grinning. “I love it.”
Relief filtered through Megan, and her shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t realized how much tension she’d been holding in them. “Exactly, and if anyone needs help working out how to use something, or coming up with ideas, I’m here to help.”
“Awesome.” Kat selected four tall glasses from the cabinet and poured a generous portion of cranberry juice into one, then added a splash of pineapple juice, and a healthy dash of coconut rum. She took a sip and smiled, which stretched the scar down the left side of her face. Megan wanted to know how she’d gotten it, but hadn’t asked because she didn’t want to be intrusive. “That’s good.”
Faith shimmied Kat to the side and took her place, expertly mixing liquids together in two of the glasses, offering one to Megan when she’d finished. “Do you trust me?”
In response, Megan drank the amber liquid, sweetness exploding in her mouth. As she swallowed, the alcohol burned down the back of her throat.
“You like it?” Faith asked.
She nodded. “I do. What is it?”
“My own variation on an amaretto sour with bourbon.”
Brooke wrinkled her nose. “Bourbon. Not my favorite thing.” She poured herself a simple vodka with orange juice and checked out the labels on the other bottles.
Meanwhile, Megan took the cupcakes from the pantry and pointed out the different flavors. “There’s pina colada, passion fruit mojito, tropical mai tai, and strawberry daiquiri. The frosting over there,” she motioned toward it, “is a basic buttercream, but there are a bunch of ingredients you can add to flavor it. Liquor, coconut, vanilla, fruit sauce. If you’d like to try using fondant, there’s plenty of that, and also cookie cutters to make shapes.” She’d lost all of her specialized fondant cutters when she ran away, and cookie cutters was the best she could get from the local minimart.
“Yum,” Kat said, placing one of each flavor on a plate and scooping a dollop of frosting into a bowl. “This was a great idea, by the way.”
Her cheeks warmed. “Thanks.”
“You don’t mind if we eat them, right?” Brooke asked.
She laughed. “Of course not. That’s the whole point. Go right ahead. Anything you don’t eat, you can take home with you. I don’t want two dozen cupcakes left behind. Do you know what that number of calories would do to me?”
Brooke and Kat exchanged glances, and Faith rolled her eyes. “As if. Girl, I get the impression you could eat an entire batch of brownies and not gain an ounce. Have some sympathy for us mere mortals. The sugar goes straight to my hips.”
Megan scanned the outline of Faith’s body. The other woman had opted to wear high-waisted three-quarter-length pants and a striped tank top that was knotted at the waist. On Megan the outfit would have looked ridiculous, but Faith wouldn’t have been out of place in a fifties pinup calendar.
“There’s nothing wrong with your hips,” she said. “You’re gorgeous, and you rock that retro vibe.”
“Aw, thanks sweetie!”
“Agreed,” Brooke added. “If cupcakes give you curves like that, I say eat as many as you like.”
Faith piled cupcakes on a plate, shaking her head. “You two are going to be bad for my waistline.”
Brooke grinned. “But good for your ego.”
Megan chose a strawberry daiquiri cupcake, whisked a smidgen of strawberry sauce into buttercream, and spooned it into a piping bag. With deft movements, she covered the cupcake in a series of buttercream rosettes, and then sprinkled edible glitter over the top. She drank more of her cocktail and wandered around to see what the other girls were doing. Brooke had smoothed frosting over one of her cupcakes, rolled out a portion of fondant, and was cutting a shape from it, her lip between her teeth as she concentrated.
“Is that the Starfleet insignia?”
Brooke finished a precise cut and dropped the knife. “Guilty.”
“Impressive.” The design was reasonably intricate. “If you have trouble moving it, try using a spatula, but be gentle.”
She moved on and paused by Kat, who’d taken a break to drink her cocktail. She seemed to have completely ignored the frosting and dug around in the refrigerator for fresh fruit, which she’d sliced and set atop her cupcakes.
“Sweet isn’t really my thing,” she explained.
“Fair enough. They look great.”
Faith had gone the opposite of Kat. The lone cupcake she’d started on was extravagantly decorated, with coconut in the frosting, piled high, edible glitter scattered over it, along with sugar pearls that she must have brought herself. She was working on a complex fondant butterfly, coloring it pink and purple with food dye.
“Wow.”
