The Christmas Cookie House: A Sweet Holiday Romance (Christmas House Romances)

by Jennifer Griffith

  “Rookie move. You should have said Can’t wait to get involved.” Emily cackled.

  Involved. The word hung in the steamy air. Leela hadn’t been involved, at least not with a guy, in a long time. Not since Blaine, whose empty promises decimated her senior year of college, uprooted her to work at the bookshop in Reedsville, and left Leela with a lot of Unfinished Everything in her life.

  Leela scrubbed harder, her knuckles scraping against dried-on dough. Then she got an idea.

  Who all will be there tomorrow? If it’s just going to be me and the new owner, I have to admit, I’m a little on edge. Will you be there, too? What if the owner is—

  She typed and hit send before thinking. But not before adding icky? to end the text.

  Icky! She’d just suggested the new owner of the Layton Mansion could be icky. Why couldn’t she unsend texts? Leela should stick her head in the dirty dishwater and never come up for air.

  “What’s wrong?” Emily snatched Leela’s phone. “Icky? Seriously, Leela? You’re hopeless at this flirting thing.”

  “I know,” she moaned. She didn’t even argue that she hadn’t been trying to flirt. Misery, thy name is texting.

  The pile of dishes shrank, with no response from Jay Wilson. How stupid could she be? How insulting? This was his client, and how was Jay supposed to respond?

  So much for all her feigned professionalism.

  So much for the Layton Mansion as the Cookie House.

  Tomorrow morning, she would start walking all through Massey Falls, door to door up and down Society Row, and then branch out from there, begging for someone to let the Ladies’ Auxiliary invade, remove all furniture, and redecorate—a few days before Christmas.

  If only Leela had one of those newsboy caps, some rags to wear, and could put a little soot on her cheeks to look as pathetic as she felt.

  The last dish clunked into place in the cupboard. “I guess I’ll head home.” Emily got her coat. “I guess he’s not texting back.” The side of her mouth tugged into a smirk.

  “I can give you a ride home. It’s cold tonight.”

  “Can I say good night to Uncle Frank before I go?”

  Leela’s phone chimed.

  “It’s him!” Emily lit up, and she clutched her fists together at her throat. “Read it.”

  Leela took a steadying breath and pulled out the text.

  He’s not icky. I guarantee it.

  Again, her fingers flew faster than her good sense. Guarantee? What kind of guarantee?

  He responded right away. Look, you can be the judge. If you decide he’s “icky,” I’ll take you to lunch to make up for it.

  Now that sounded like a date. Leela almost hoped the new owner would be icky. Done, she responded.

  Emily did a cheerleader jump beside her, the Herkie one with a bent leg. “You’re going out with Jay Wilson! Give me a Jay! Give me a Jay! What’s it spell?”

  “It spells calm down, Emily. He didn’t ask me out.” But even Leela had to admit the texts read like flirtations. “Changing the subject. What kind of cookies should I bake for the Cookie House? I’m ruining a whole lot of flour doing research.”

  “That’s so easy it’s ridiculous.” Emily flicked a stray crumb off the countertop. “I don’t know why you’re wasting time on that garbage when you should be making Aunt Freesia’s gingersnap cookies. Hello. She baked them every year for the Cookie House. Everyone will be expecting you to bring them, especially if you’re running the event. Which you will be, right?”

  No kidding. But it wasn’t that easy. “Except I can’t—because I can’t find the recipe anywhere. And I’m apparently not great at winging it.” Five failed attempts at reverse engineering them proved it. “I have to come up with something else.”

  “Yeah, that or you could drive me home, come inside, and just get the recipe back from my mom. She raided Aunt Freesia’s recipe box a few years ago. Aunt Freeze let Mom take the ginger cookies card since she had it memorized.”

  No way. It had been at Emily’s house all this time?

  And gingersnaps are Jay Wilson’s favorite.

  Jay hadn’t outright agreed to show up tomorrow morning, but if he did, Leela had a plan to sweeten her case for the Layton Mansion as Cookie House, literally.

  Jay

  “Yeah, I am still interested in the buy-in.” Jay paced on the front porch of the Layton Mansion, talking to Rance the brokering agent for the vet clinic’s partnership, who loved an early-morning phone call. Snow fell in clusters of flakes so heavy they bent the leaves on the chinaberry bushes beside the veranda. “I’ll be procuring the funds in a few days.”

  “You do hear the clock ticking, though.” Rance sounded stern for pre-dawn negotiations, like he hadn’t gotten his morning caffeine yet.

  “I hear it. And I really appreciate Precious Companion holding it for me. I had the results of my boards forwarded to them today. I assume they received them?”

  “Yes. Great scores, young man, which is why they are anxious to move forward.”

  “Trust me, I’m as anxious as they are.”

  “Yes, but can you give my clients any reassurance? I’m getting a lot of possibly empty promises. How will you be getting the funds, Dr. Wilson?”

  Dr. Wilson—wow. That sounded strange. But he could get used to it. “My real estate agent assures me that my house sale is almost a sure thing.”

  “Almost and sure thing don’t go together well.”

  Time to feign total confidence. “I will have them for you by New Year’s Eve, as discussed. Is there some other problem, Rance?” Pushing back sometimes helped negotiations, right?

  “Precious Companion has had another offer, for cash.”

  “My offer will be cash.” Probably.

  “This offer is ready now, funds in hand. Doctors Foster and Cody will honor their agreement with you, since that’s the kind of businessmen they are. But with another offer on the table—willing to put down money sooner”—Rance did his best hard-sale money-grubber impression—“if you want to guarantee your position, I suggest you move up the timeline.”

  They couldn’t do that to him. New Year’s would already push it. “Move it up to when?”

  “The third Tuesday in December.”

  That was mere days away! Was it even possible to finish the attic, list the house, and get the sale money deposited in that amount of time?

  Well, it would have to be. I need this job.

  “I’ll have it.”

  His phone burned in his hand. To blazes with the attic project—Jay was selling now, with all the contents included.

  He pressed the screen to dial Burt Basingstoke. Jingo Layton couldn’t put fifty million contingencies of sale in his will. There had to be a way around it.

  A car pulled up in front of the house. Leela. He stuck his phone in his pocket.

  Maybe one day cleaning out the attic wouldn’t hurt.

  “Hey, there.” Up she walked to where he stood on the wraparound porch. In the morning sun, her eyes were even more sparkling than yesterday.

  “Hey. You look nice today.” Really nice. A red turtleneck sweater poked out from beneath her coat’s collar. It set off her skin, making it rosy. “That sweater’s nice.”

  She looked like she didn’t know how to take the compliment. “I didn’t know for sure if you’d show up. You were kind of cagey in your text.”

  “Cagey?” He’d meant to be direct. Well, other than not telling her point blank that he owned the place. Last night, over texting, he should have told her straight out, but then she’d accused him of being—what was her word?—icky. “How is your father?”

  “He’s all right. Thanks. Just a fall.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” It sounded scary.

  “Emily helped him. He’s always better after a drink of grape soda.” She seemed to be taking it in stride, like this was just par for the course. “I brought you something.” In the dim of the pre-dawn morning, a circular sheet of aluminum foi
l glinted in her hands.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a bribe.”

  “I like bribes. Come inside.” He stomped his boots on the stoop before entering the big, hollow room. Every footstep on the newly finished wood floors echoed from the basement to the attic. The house, though beautiful, was too empty. “It’s arctic this morning.”

  “If the new owner comes—”

  “About the new owner …” Jay really had to tell her now, but she placed the plate in his hands, distracting him.

  “If he comes, I didn’t bring him any cookies, so either hide them or else you’ll have to share. That’s the rule.”

  “Rule, huh?” He peeked under the foil. “Cookies?” The aroma of ginger, molasses, and cloves floated through his head. “You made gingersnaps?”

  “Well, they’re soft. They don’t exactly snap. It’s my mom’s recipe.”

  He peeled back the foil and saw a dozen, perfectly round, sugar-crystal-coated cookies in a rich, honey brown.

  “You made these?” He lifted one and took a bite. “Jolly holidays!” Jingle bells chimed, Santa chuckled ho, ho, ho, and brightly wrapped presents collected under his inner Christmas tree. “These are good.” Understatement.

  “To be honest, I tasted them, but I can’t trust myself.” She slid her shoes off and placed them on the grate. Her socks sported red and white candy-cane stripes. “Are they all right?”

  All right? They were a time machine. “My grandma used to make gingerbread cookies, but these are”—his mouth exploded with spices, the taste transporting him back to his childhood—“they’re so much better.”

  Leela stopped her sock-slide across the polished floors. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not the type to give empty compliments.” He shoved the rest in his mouth and spoke through the chewy goodness. “Seriously incredible.”

  “I can’t believe it.” She started to laugh. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand. A tear squeezed out of the laughter-squinted edge of her eye. “For weeks I have made nothing but prize winners for World’s Most Disgusting Baked Goods.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Nobody who could make cookies like these could fail anything else.

  “Trust me. The flour and butter I’ve tossed in the bin could feed a family of four in a developing nation for a month.”

  “Are these gingersnaps going to be for sale at the Cookie House thing?” He ate another one.

  “They are now.”

  “Good.” He ate two more, barely stopping to chew. He needed trays and trays of these, in succession. “Because I need an infinite conveyor belt of them.” With me at the belt’s end with an open mouth, he thought as he gestured toward the stairwell.

  “We’re already going upstairs?” They reached the landing, where the second story of the house opened up. “Aren’t we going to wait for the owner? Oh, my gosh!” she interrupted herself. “Do you see all these built-ins? The shelves! My friend! Look at all of the readily available places we could stack plates and plates of cookies.”

  Jay knew all about the built-ins. He’d sanded, primed, and painted every crevice of them. “They don’t build details like this into houses anymore.”

  “No, they don’t. Man, and I thought I was in love before, when I’d only seen the outside and the downstairs.” She ran her fingertips across the bookcases near the landing, and then went to admire the corner shelves, after which she threw wide some cupboard doors. “Shelf after beautiful shelf! This house was born to be the Cookie House.” She turned to him. “Where’s the owner? Is he already upstairs? Is he meeting us in the attic?”

  Wide crevasses between truth and time cracked open. “I meant to tell you yesterday.” He turned and led her to the next staircase. It was easier to say this on the move. “I’m afraid you jumped to conclusions.”

  “Oh, I’m the queen of that. I shouldn’t have called the owner icky. Please tell me he doesn’t know about that word.”

  Oh, he knew all right. And after he quit laughing himself into a coughing fit, he’d responded to her text with his guarantee—and the guilty hope that he’d get a date with her. Even if he were leaving for Reedsville soon, he could still go on at least one date with this bright-eyed girl.

  They reached the third floor, and across the small first room lay the closed door to the attic. Jay crossed to it and pushed his shoulder against its resistance.

  “The owner didn’t mind your icky word.” He pulled the chain on the light fixture, which was a bare bulb. “I mean, I didn’t mind.” While he climbed the steps, she stayed down by the door.

  “I don’t follow,” she said from below, her hand gripping hard the railing.

  He beckoned to her. “No, seriously, it’s safe. The structure of the stairs is as sound as the rest of the house.”

  “No, I mean I don’t follow what you’re saying.” She took only a single step upward but stopped again. “You did or you didn’t tell the owner about my gauche comment?”

  “You told him.” He pushed open the door at the top of the narrow staircase, and it swung to reveal the attic. Oh, merciful roast goose dinners, what a sight! Boxes stacked floor to ceiling from wall to wall, like Tetris, but a whole lot dustier. “Whoa.”

  Leela appeared at his side, huffing. “What do you mean, I told him? I don’t even know who—whoa.” She looked around, the two of them standing paralyzed side by side. A joint overwhelm petrified them both. Human limestone.

  “It’s a lot.”

  “Whoa,” Leela breathed again. “What is all this stuff?”

  “It’s the home improvement task.” Somehow the word Herculean needed to fit into that phrase. “All of it has to go before the house can go up for sale.”

  Leela chortled. “You’re telling me the owner expects me to clean this out?”

  “Not all by yourself.”

  “Still! Speaking of guarantees, Jay Wilson, this here chore had better be in exchange for a guarantee of using the Layton Mansion not only this year’s but every third Tuesday in December forevermore. It’ll have to be grandfathered into every future sales contract.”

  Wait. What? Jay’s knee buckled. “Did you say the third Tuesday in December?”

  “Yeah.” She swept aside a curtain of cobwebs. “I told you yesterday. The Cookie House is always held on the third Tuesday in December.”

  He raced through his memory banks but couldn’t locate that conversation. “That’s not a great day for it. Can it be changed?”

  “Are you kidding?” She whistled the tune from that Fiddler on the Roof “Tradition” song. “Massey Falls’ whole lifeblood revolves around it. School is canceled. No sporting events or concerts are scheduled for that night. The local churches all clear their calendars, too. Third Tuesday in December is written in stone as the Christmas Cookie House fundraiser and the Holiday Ball.”

  No budging. Was it his mind, or had all the boxes just cloned themselves? “It’s a big deal. I see that.”

  “Huge. Bigger than pasta is to Italy.” Leela stepped closer to him, her eyes alight with energy—energy from how important this obviously was to her. Not just the town. Her gaze penetrated him to the glowing center. “And you, Jay, can make this year’s event happen. Convince the owner for me.”

  “I’m the owner.” There, he’d said it.

  But Leela hadn’t heard him. “Do this, and you’ll embrace the culture of the community, save the Cookie House. Everyone will love you and bring their business to you.”

  “Business?” He hadn’t told her about Precious Companion. Or the fact he was a veterinarian.

  “You know. As a Massey Falls real estate agent. You’re working with my cousin-in-law, right? Burt?”

  “Uh, yes, and no.” That’s what she’d thought he was all this time? His mind raced back through all their conversations. Yeah, he could see how she might have gathered that—and also why he hadn’t caught on until now. “He’s working with me, more like.”

  “Don’t get ahead
of yourself. Burt’s been in business here a long time.”

  “No, I mean I’m not a real estate agent.”

  “You’re … not?” The sides of her mouth tensed. “Then why did you bring me up in this attic?” True fear clouded her face, like she was waiting for him to reveal he was one of those handsome psychopaths. “Please, dude. I told everyone I was coming here. I posted it on social media. I sent texts to my cousins and their husbands, one of whom is on Massey Falls City Council. You’re not going to get away with it.”

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. “Hey, Leela.” She was cute when she was terrified. Ooh, that sounded like a psycho killer thing to think. “I’m not a killer. I’m not a real estate agent. I’m a veterinarian and”—he said it louder this time, so she couldn’t mistake his words—“I’m the owner of the Layton Mansion.”

  Leela

  “The owner!” Leela took a step backward, bumping into a tower of dusty boxes, toppling it sideways into another stack. “Oh!” She whirled around and threw out her arms to steady it. She righted a few box stacks. Once they were secured, she turned back to Jay, her feelings jamming up and straining her speech. “You … deceived me.”

  “I meant to tell you several times. Honest, I tried to tell you.”

  “Not hard enough.” How embarrassing! Lame comments had flowed like … something really lame. The stairs beckoned, Leave now, before you embarrass yourself even more. “You let me go on and on about the owner. And it was you.”

  “The second I realized you’d confused me with a real estate agent, I came clean. I did try before that.”

  Seriously? Well, he had said something last night—I need to clarify something—right when Emily had called about Dad. Okay, so maybe he had tried, and she’d cut him off. So this was partly her fault.

  “You do know what this makes you, Jay Wilson?” Her mind pounced on a sole word, and she uttered it: “Icky.”

  Jay blinked a few times at her. “I guess you’re right.” Something about the way he bit both his lips told her he was biting back laughter.

  “Yes, I’m right.” Of course she was. Any guy who let a girl talk to him like he was a real estate agent and not the owner of the property was totally icky. Well, at least pesky. Icky had different connotations. Still … come on.