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Zach looked at the engine one more time. “You could’ve just used a hose, you know,” he said. “Would’ve been faster.”

“I know,” Cole said.

“Right.” Zach put his hands in his pockets. He looked like he had more to say and was deciding whether to say it. He apparently decided against it, because he turned toward the door.

“Zach,” Cole said.

He stopped.

“She’s lucky to have you looking out for her,” Cole said. “I mean that.”

Zach turned back halfway. “Yeah,” he said. “Well.” He paused. “Don’t make me regret staying out of it.”

He left. His boots echoed across the concrete, and then the bay door was just the bay door again, letting in the cold December air and the thin winter light.

Cole looked at the engine.

Captain padded over and sat on his foot.

Cole reached down and scratched behind his ears and thought about the girl who had punched him in the face in the fourth grade and been getting under his skin in one way or another ever since. He thought that Zach Whitaker was probably right that things with Emily were never going to be simple.

And he was about to find out just how much he liked that.

TWENTY-NINE

EMILY

Sunday, December 20th

“I might rethink my sexuality if a guy carried me like that,” Kit said, pressing a row of cinnamon candies into the frosting line of a gingerbread roof. Her eyes were bright and her grin wicked.

Emily was at the Cinnamon Spice Inn, helping with the gingerbread town. She thought she’d be exhausted seeing it was the first day the bakery was back open, but it turned out that Cole was the gift that kept on giving. Even after baking all day, chatting with customers, whipping up coffees and buttercream, she still had energy to spare.

Which was a good thing, because Kit’s gingerbread vision was ambitious. The plan was to display the edible town in the inn’s lobby on Christmas Eve. Kit came up with the idea last year, starting with a model of the inn itself, and this year she was determined to make it bigger and better than ever before.

Emily was slightly envious every time she worked in this kitchen for its sheer size. The counterspace was three times what she had at the bakery kitchen; a wide back window looked out onto the snow-covered garden, filling the space with evening light and casting it warm across the walls.

Between them, sheets of parchment covered nearly every inch of the island, crowded with gingerbread walls, sugar-glass windows, bowls of candy, and half-built replicas of the shops along Oak Way. The room smelled of cinnamon, coffee, and the brown butter croissants cooling beside the stove.

Still, Emily wouldn’t have traded her cozy bakery kitchen for anything.

Not that she was thinking about kitchens at the moment. Not really.

She was replaying last night.

Emily set a bowl of icing on the table and reached for a piping bag. “He did lift me against the wall. For a very long time.”

The words left her mouth with shocking ease.

Even more shocking, she somehow didn’t blush.

Kit’s hand froze over the candies. Slowly, reverently, she set one down. “Cole Alders. Who knew he was a sex god under all the gear?”

Emily laughed despite herself, which was dangerous, because laughing made everything inside her feel loose and warm and embarrassingly happy. She still hadn’t figured out what to do with happiness where Cole was concerned. Rage had been much more convenient. Rage had structure. Rage had a long, satisfying history.

Happiness had broad hands, a rough voice, and the nerve to carry her through her own bakery as if she weighed nothing.

“What are we talking about, dear?” Edith asked, appearing at Emily’s elbow with her enormous crafting tote over one arm and a covered tin in the other.