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Cole: It’s fine. Quiet.
Both of those things were lies. It was not fine and it was not quiet and he was sure Maple Falls was slowly driving him insane. But Rivera didn’t need to know that. Rivera needed to know that Cole was coming back in nine months and that the spot at Engine 54 was still worth holding.
By the time the first chainsaw started up somewhere on Birch Road, Cole was already dressed and reviewing his plan. He needed to deliver supplies. Check on the residents he hadn’t reached yesterday. And while he was out there, start asking questions about the stolen sugar and spice cookies. Nothing formal, just a few questions here and there, see if anyone remembered anything.
Who was at the bakery that day? Who had access? Who remembered what?
The plan was solid. The plan was clean. The plan did not involve Emily Whitaker in any way, shape, or form.
He should have known better.
Emily’s kitchen was already busy when he arrived. The wood-fired stove blasted heat across the checkered tile, fogging the lower corners of the windows. Loaves of bread crowded the cooling racks, their crusts still crackling, while soup simmered in stockpots, and elves were everywhere he looked.
Yes, elves.
Shoot me now, Cole thought as Emily marched toward him when he entered the kitchen, green felt hat in tow.
“Ah, there you are, our head elf!” she declared, handing him the hat.
He looked down. His name was embroidered on the brim in white thread. She’d had time to embroider his name? Which meant she’d been planning this.
“I’m a fire chief,” he said.
“And also an elf.” She smiled at him. “Put the hat on.”
Cole left that hat on the counter and surveyed the rest of the kitchen.
Emily rolled her eyes. “Told you all he’d love it,” she called out to her crew as she went back to her prep table.
Cole had to admit the elves were hard at work.
Anita was stirring a pot of soup, the bell on her hat jingling as she did.
Mrs. Bishop, loading up baskets, wore her hat at a jaunty angle, or it might’ve just slipped down.
A sign-up sheet was taped to the wall by the door. The header read OPERATION SUGAR & SPICE in red and green marker, with a hand-drawn candy cane border. Beneath it, Emily had listed the rotation: kitchen elves, delivery elves, and supply elves.
Between the relief basics, she was baking. Real baking. Snickerdoodles that made the entire bakery smell like cinnamon and butter. Chocolate chip cookies with flaky sea salt that people were stealing off the cooling rack faster than she could set them down.
Delivery elves loaded the snowmobiles every two hours with care packages Liam had assembled in his wicker baskets: soup in thermoses, fresh bread wrapped in cloth, cookies tucked into napkins, and jars of Cassidy’s hot cocoa mix with handwritten instructions. Supply elves made runs to the café, to Liam’s farm shop, to anywhere with ingredients that could be spared.
The whole thing hummed. Maple Falls taking care of Maple Falls, the way it always had, just with considerably more jingle bells than usual.
Cole watched it all from the edges, coordinating his own logistics for delivering to trickier residential situations alongside it, and tried very hard not to notice how good Emily was at this. How easily she moved about her kitchen, checking the bread dough as it proofed, sliding trays of cookies into the oven, chopping vegetables while another batch of soup simmered behind her.
His gaze kept finding her anyway.
Her hair was twisted into that loose slipknot, wisps escaping around her face, the ridiculous green elf hat perched at an angle on top. She should have looked absurd.
She didn’t.
“Delivery list for the south side is on the counter,” she said, somehow knowing he was behind her. “Jackson’s already loaded the first round. You can take the rest.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
They had, Cole reflected, achieved a remarkable efficiency in their hostility. They could coordinate an entire relief operation with minimal words, none of which required eye contact.
