The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap
Page 1
ALSO BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
DONNA KAUFFMAN
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The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap
DONNA KAUFFMAN
KATE ANGELL
KIMBERLY KINCAID
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
ALSO BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Title Page
PROLOGUE
Where There’s Smoke . . .
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Gingerbread Man
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Sugar and Spice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
EPILOGUE
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE
December 12
The evening air was crisp, with a light breeze whispering the promise of snow. The air inside the community center was significantly more heated. Every man, woman, child, and baked good in the little Blue Ridge town of Pine Mountain was jammed inside the big redbrick building for the annual Twelve Days of Christmas Cookie Swap and were excitedly bidding on tins filled with delicious holiday treats, all in the name of charity.
Normally Clara Parker looked forward to the event. She loved the holiday season, the town traditions, the decorations, and, most definitely, the cookies. Normally. This Christmas, however, the very idea of cookies was filling her with anxiety and dread.
Abby Denton, best friend and professional cookie baker, nudged her elbow. When Clara looked down—she had to look down to make eye contact with pretty much everyone—Abby was pushing a small box into her hands.
“Shh, secret cookie swap,” she whispered.
Clara looked over Abby’s head at her other best friend, Lily Callahan, who was also the recipient of a box of Abby’s cookies. Which could only mean one thing.
Lily immediately shoved the box into her purse. “Oh no, you did not smuggle your X-rated gingerbread men into the community center. The community center filled with families. With children.” Lily looked over the red rims of her signature librarian-frame glasses, which looked fabulously smart with her smooth blond hair and neat-as-a-pin attire, and glared at their shorter friend. “We can’t open these here!” she hissed under her breath.
Clara, on the other hand, picked open the little flap on the cutely decorated little brown box. “What did you do to them this time?” was all she wanted to know. She peeked under the lid at Abby’s famous—or rather, infamous—anatomically correct gingerbread men. Her eyes went wide and stayed that way as she glanced at Abby, who tried—and epically failed—to keep her expression innocent and unknowing. “Peppermint sticks? Really?” Clara’s giggle turned into a significant snort that had heads turning their direction, despite the noise level in the building.
Clara’s pale skin warmed at the unwanted attention. With her narrow, six-foot frame and short cap of red curls, she liked to pretend she gave off a certain capricious, whimsical air, in the manner of, say, Katherine Hepburn. Only, in reality, it always seemed to play out a lot more like a really tall, awkward-looking Lucy Ricardo.
Lily leaned over and glanced in Clara’s box, her mouth forming the shape of an O as her eyebrows lifted above the red frames, but she quickly smoothed her expression and pretended to have a sudden, significant level of fake interest in the auction. “Put those away. People are watching,” she said out of the side of her mouth.
“They can look all they want, but they can’t have mine,” Clara said, her spirits significantly lifted. Or certainly more than she’d anticipated. To say it had been a rough week was the understatement of the year.
“Actually,” Abby said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, her curvy frame tensing a little as her expression took on a brief, pensive look. Which immediately dissolved as a mischievous light set her warm brown eyes to twinkling. “Someone here can.”
Clara looked from the little box in her hands to the tables that lined the walls around the community center’s main recreation room. All of them had started the night loaded down with boxes and tins filled with homemade Christmas cookies, but were rapidly emptying as Marianna, the center director, auctioned them off to the highest bidder. Most of the festive parcels went for ten to fifteen dollars, some higher. No one was supposed to know whose tin was whose, and the contents were a surprise for the winner. But Clara had seen the distinctive mail-order cartons Abby had ordered for her brand-new online cookie business and she skimmed her gaze over the remaining goodies. “Where is your . . . there!” She zeroed in on a gaily decorated brown box printed with white icing trim. “You put your cookies in the swap.”
“We all did,” Abby reminded her.
“Yes, but you usually keep your gingerbread cookies G-rated for friends and neighbors,” Clara pointed out. “No one is supposed to know about your little R-rated online enterprise.” She grinned. “But I guess that’s about to change. Go, you!”
Lily was forced to stop pretending she wasn’t paying attention to their every word as she realized what Clara was getting at. She turned her full attention to their short friend, who, though also a blonde, looked nothing like Lily. Abby was a bit shorter, a lot softer, and dressed significantly more casually. Both women were bakers, though Lily was a trained chef, whereas Abby had learned the craft at her grandmother’s side. Clara thought of Abby as soft hugs and warm cookies, whereas Lily was far more starched chef’s jacket and meticulous career plan.
“You did not,” Lily demanded of Abby. “Tell me you did not.”
Abby sniffed and looked anywhere but at her two closest friends. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But Clara saw the twinkle, and she applauded it. She wished she had half the confidence of either of her friends. And, with the recent sudden change in her job description, a fraction of their baking skills. She quashed the dread that curled right back into her gut and shamelessly kept the topic of conversation anywhere but on her. She’d been the center of enough of that in the past two days to last her a lifetime.
“Yes, Lily,” Clara said, “Abby put gingerbread men with peppermint-stick peni—”
“Shh!” Lily wh
ispered, so severely heads turned once again. “Don’t you dare say that out loud.” She pasted a serene, calm smile on her always carefully made-up face and nodded to some of their nearby neighbors as if to say, “nothing to see here, move along.” Once folks had returned their attention back to the next item being auctioned off, she turned her severe expression right back to Abby. “I thought you’d decided to keep the nature of your online business a secret. At least from the folks in town.”
Clara snorted again. “Like the town wasn’t going to find out. Nothing stays a secret in Pine Mountain. Trust me, I know that better than anyone.”
But Lily wasn’t listening to her. “What were you thinking?”
Abby lifted a smooth shoulder, her shiny blond hair brushing the shoulders of her hand-knit, soft green sweater. “That this town could use some livening up? Come on, I was just trying to have a little fun. Lord knows we could all use a little of that. Which is why I gave you your own little treat boxes.” Her expression softened as she looked at Lily. “We’re all going through stuff right now. You with this big cookie competition at the resort, me trying to get my online cookie business up and running, and Clara getting dumped right in the middle of Joe’s Grocery.”
Clara sucked in a breath. “You already heard?”
Abby rubbed Clara’s arm. “Honey, the whole town has heard. Half of them were in the store when it happened.”
Clara groaned, even as Lily said, “I didn’t hear. What happened?” She turned to Clara. “Why didn’t you tell me? Are you talking about Pete Mancuso?”
“Of course you didn’t hear,” Abby said. “Because you don’t have a life. If we didn’t drag you out to things like this, you’d never leave your kitchen.”
“I’m trying to launch my career, you know that. You better than anyone, with your business starting up. The big resort cookie competition is going to be my ticket. I have to win it. And if I’m going to win it, that means I have to come up with the best, killer cookie recipes on the planet. The galaxy. This means everything.”
“You put your business card in your cookie swap tin, didn’t you?” Abby asked, though Clara might have said it sounded a bit more like an accusation. “That’s the only reason you agreed to come tonight. You probably made test cookies for the contest and the ones in your swap tin are the rejects.”
Now it was Lily’s turn to pretend she didn’t know what Abby was talking about, but she quickly relented. “It’s not like they were horrible, they’re wonderful. Just not up to competition greatness. And of course I put my card in the tin. That’s just good business sense. Didn’t you? Now that you’re going public?”
Clara barely heard a word they were saying; the noise in the hall had turned into a buzzing inside her head. Everyone knew. Not just the folks in Joe’s, which had been awful enough. Everyone. Dear God, she wanted to crawl under the nearest table. The only reason she’d agreed to come tonight was because Lily was looking for an excuse to duck the event and Abby had forced Clara into double-teaming with her to get their workaholic bestie out of the house and into the real world, at least for the evening.
If Clara had known just how much of a laughingstock she actually was at the moment, she’d have picked Lily’s side and quite shamelessly hidden out in Lily’s tiny apartment kitchen with her. Heck, maybe she’d have learned how to bake something. Which would come in real handy, given she was now in charge of a cookie-baking column for the local paper and she couldn’t so much as boil water.
“She put a card in mine, too,” Clara offered helpfully, then winced when Lily jabbed her with a pointy elbow. “What?” she said, rubbing the spot. “You did. And I was happy to help.” She looked at Abby. “It is a smart idea. I’m surprised you didn’t do it, too.”
“Lily baked your swap cookies?”
Clara’s face warmed again, and she knew, with her fair skin, that her freckles were now standing out like little beacons of guilt. “I didn’t know you were going to put your gingerbread guys in the swap, I mean . . . Lily’s are G-rated, and this is a family thing, so . . . I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Abby said. “I’m not hurt that you got her to bake your cookies instead of me. I meant that it’s tradition to make your own. Even the kids have to make their own.”
“You of all people apparently know that I’ve had a hard enough week.” Harder than even they knew. “The last thing I needed was to burn my house to the ground trying to make snickerdoodles. And given my run of luck, and my significant lack of baking skills, you know I would have.”
“What did you enter last year? Or the year before that?” Abby eyed Lily. “Have you been covering for her all this time?”
Lily lifted her hands. “Boy, try to do a friend a favor.”
“Refrigerator cookies, the store-bought ones,” Clara said, ducking her chin as both of her friends swung their gazes to her. “Hey, not everyone is born knowing how to bake, okay?”
“It’s not that hard. I’d have taught you,” Abby said. “You should have asked me. You should have told us.” She folded her arms and tried not to look hurt.
Clara immediately felt bad. She knew traditions were huge for Abby, and having just lost her grandmother, this season they probably were more poignant and meaningful than ever. And guilt piled on top of guilt, given there was more she hadn’t told either of her friends.
“But that’s not the point here,” Abby said, regrouping and looking back to Lily. “I’m just saying that not everything has to be a business opportunity. Whatever happened to going out and mingling with your friends and neighbors for fun? You remember the word, right?” she said to Lily. “F-U-N?”
“Well, there’s no rule that says you can’t mix business with pleasure,” Lily countered.
“Shh,” Clara suddenly hissed, then excitedly grabbed Abby’s arm. “Speaking of not mixing business with pleasure—liar, liar, pants on fire—I believe that’s your little box of peppermint penises going up for grabs right now.”
Abby couldn’t keep the giggles from rolling out. “Grabs. Heh. I hope a woman wins it. I bet Catherine Carter wouldn’t mind a few grins.”
“Or maybe Tad Morgan,” Clara offered, talking about their delightfully colorful hairdresser. “Did you see the picture of his new ‘friend’ he posted on his station? I swear, all the good ones are taken, and the better ones are gay.”
“Tell me about it,” Abby commiserated. “If I wasn’t making anatomically correct gingerbread men, I might forget what that appendage looks like.”
Clara snorted, clapped her hand over her mouth when the sound was a bit louder than she’d hoped—it always was—then snorted again when Abby made a little circular motion with her hands.
“Stop it, you two,” Lily said, smiling benevolently through gritted teeth as several more heads turned in their direction. Then her face paled slightly. “Oh God. Oh . . . that’s so not a good thing.”
Clara gasped as her gaze followed Lily’s. “Oh no. Did Reverend Hughes just bid on Abby’s, uh, sticks-in-a-box?”
“He did,” Lily said.
Even Abby had the grace to look abashed. “Oh, come on, given all the confessions he’s heard in this town, surely he has a sense of humor, right?”
Then the mayor raised his hand, which got a friendly little bidding war going between him and the good reverend.
“Right?” Abby repeated, weakly. Even she groaned in defeat when the president of the school board—the same man who tried to get fish sticks and tater tots banned from the school lunch menu when he found out kids were making graphically suggestive arrangements with them—joined the fun. “I’m so going to hell.”
“See, be careful what you wish for,” Lily said. When Abby and Clara both looked confused, she added, “You were both just saying you were suffering from the lack of male attention. Well, looks like you’ll have some men paying attention to you now, just not in the way you’d hoped. See, you criticize me for not having a life, but at least I don’t have to deal with guy
drama. Speaking of which—” she looked at Clara. “What happened with Pete? I thought you guys were all hot and heavy after a few dates. You were hoping for the ‘big third date,’ right?”
“What’s the ‘big third date’?” Abby asked, making air quotes.
Lily looked at her. “The sex date? Come on, everyone knows if the first two dates go well, by the third date, someone is going to be clawing someone’s clothes off before the night’s over.” She looked back at Clara, who was a bit goggle-eyed. “Hey, just because I choose not to deal with the hassle doesn’t mean I don’t miss the sex.”
Heads were turning again, but even Lily was oblivious this time. She took Clara’s arm. “I am really sorry, whatever it was that happened. I know you really liked him.”
“What’s not to like,” Abby said. “There is no peppermint stick that would do him justice. But men like that, who look like him . . . I don’t know, Clara. I think you dodged a bullet there.”
“Maybe,” Clara admitted. “I just wished it hadn’t been shot at me while standing on line at Joe’s.”
“He broke up with you while you were buying groceries together? Wow, that’s low.” Lily’s gaze skimmed quickly over the crowded room. “Is he here? Because I’d love to give him a bit of advice.”
Clara winced at that, which brought Lily right back to her. “Oh sweetie, no, I wasn’t going to make another scene. It just bugs me to no end when anyone can be so cavalier and unthinking with someone else’s emotions.”
“I wasn’t wincing about the scene, though I’m very glad he’s not here. I don’t think I could have stayed otherwise.”
“Well then, what is it?”
“Nothing, just—”
“Fran was in Joe’s at the same time,” Abby helpfully provided, then patted Clara’s arm when she turned wounded eyes on her friend. “You should have told her. You should have told both of us.”
“Yes, you should have. And you don’t mean Fran—” Lily’s eyes widened. “Fran Stinson? The editor at the paper, your editor?”