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Tyler took a piece. Ate it. Said nothing for a moment, which from Tyler meant more than words.

“Ho. Ho. Now that is a good cake. Been years since I’ve had a piece. This is just as good as I remember it. Maybe better.” He reached for a second piece.

“He made it every year?” Jackson asked.

“Every Christmas, down at the hardware store. Sold by the slice.”

“I would have bought the whole cake,” Jackson said. He was already eyeing another piece. “Emily’s in trouble.”

Cole said nothing. He sat back down in front of his chili, picked up his spoon, and let the quiet satisfaction sit with him for a moment without examining it too closely.

He was a little ashamed of how much he wanted to crush Emily in this bake-off. He wanted to watch her face when the judges picked his cake over hers. He wanted the satisfaction of finally winning.

… At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

Because the alternative—the truth that almost broke through today in her bakery kitchen—was far more dangerous. That version of him didn’t want to beat her. That version wanted to spread her out on his bed, worship every inch of her body, and hear her moan his name.

Cole clenched his jaw and shoved that thought down hard.

No. Fuck that.

She was still Emily Whitaker. Still the enemy. This rivalry was simple. Clean. Safe.

But if that was true, he wouldn’t be fighting unwelcome heat pooling low in his body, pulsing with a desire that sooner or later was going to tip over the edge.

He could see it, feel it, taste it so vividly. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

SEVENTEEN

EMILY

Thursday, December 17th

Two days later, Emily was at the butcher-block counter, peeling potatoes, chopping carrots, and dicing celery with more precision than a pot of soup required. She might not be able to crack her nana’s sugar and spice cookie recipe, but she could make a mean potato soup, and today she was going to do exactly that.

“I think your bread bowls are about done,” Zoe said. “I can smell them.” She sniffed the air and laughed.

She’d told Emily earlier that her nose had been in overdrive since reaching the second trimester. According to her, it was blessing and a curse.

Zoe owned a flower shop, and she had been fussing over a holiday arrangement she’d made for the front bakery counter—all evergreen sprigs, white ranunculus, red berries, eucalyptus, and tiny gold ornaments tucked between the stems—while Christmas tunes floated from her phone’s playlist. Zoe made everything prettier, even when she was supposed to be sitting down with her feet up.

“Those are beautiful.” Emily shook her head, taking in her friend’s talents, so different from her own. Zoe could take weeds and turn them into a designer bouquet.

Zoe disappeared through the swinging door to set the arrangement out front. Her chestnut hair was swept up in a high ponytail, green eyes bright even under the warm glow of the fairy lights.

Emily turned back to her cutting board. With the chimney now cleaned out, the wood-fired stove was back to doing all the heavy lifting—bread bowls, soup, and heat for the whole kitchen, the wall ovens dark and useless without power. The stand mixer sat idle at the end of the counter, crusted with the last batch of dough she’d kneaded by hand. Cooling racks lined the space beside the stove, and on them sat the problem.

She eyed the tenth—or was it the eleventh?—batch of spice cookies cooling in neat rows, and felt her jaw tighten. Nothing about them was right. Not the taste, texture, or color. It was maddening. And she was flat out running out of time. Two days. That’s all the time she had left until the big ol’ bake-off.

“They’re just cookies, Em,” Zoe said.

Emily looked at her. They were so much more than cookies. Finding the recipe—Nana’s recipe, the one she’d guarded like a state secret, written in her loopy cursive on a card that had long since disappeared—was the closest Emily had felt to her in years.

Sometimes she could still smell it, that combination of cinnamon and nutmeg and something else, something she’d never been able to name, that had clung to Nana’s apron and her kitchen curtains and the whole downstairs of the farmhouse every Christmas Eve. If she could just crack it, get the balance right, it would bring some of that Christmas joy back to Maple Falls. The part that had died out all those years ago amid the stolen cookies scandal. It would keep her nana alive in some way.

Because every year she lost a little more. First, it was that she couldn’t quite hear Nana’s voice anymore—the way she’d hum “Silver Bells” off-key while she rolled out dough. Then it was the details. Which hand she used to stir the batter. Whether her apron had been red or green. Five years since Nana had passed, and Grandpa not long after, and the memories were wearing thin as old ribbon.

Christmases got quieter. Her mom was always busy working at the café, and it had fallen to her and Zach to keep the traditions going. But by then they’d all moved out of the farmhouse next door to the Alderses’ place, and they’d all realized, almost too late, how important their childhood home had been to holding them together.