Page 1 of My Brooding Valentine

1

HAILEY

The next-door neighbor was working on that tree again—the tall, super-skinny one that looked like an awkward teenager.

The tree, not the neighbor. The neighbor was perfect. He had a close-cropped military haircut and a body sculpted by the gods. At least that was how it looked beneath his tight black jacket and jeans.

It took me a second to realize the weird sound was me sighing. I could stand here all day and watch him cut tree limbs with those gigantic scissors. The only thing better was when he grabbed his ax and started chopping wood like he did yesterday morning. My cookies would burn if he was doing that right now.

With another sigh, I pushed away from the window and headed to the kitchen. I’d found this cabin on the internet—it was super cheap, probably because not many people traveled in early February. It was the perfect escape while I prepared for the competition that would make or break my career as a baker.

What the owner didn’t know was that I was doing some serious baking in the cabin’s oven. We’d be baking on site, but we were also expected to show up with enough treats for all thejudges. That meant I had today and tomorrow to bake and ice at least a hundred cookies.

As I approached the kitchen, my spidey senses went on alert. Something was off here. My gaze had gone straight to the timer, but the oven panel had gone dark. No timer to remind me I was dangerously close to burning this latest batch, no temperature display, nothing.

The oven had died on me.

“Don’t panic, Hailey,” I said to myself as I walked around the island. I opened the door and looked inside. A dozen heart-shaped cookies stared back at me, but they weren’t really cookies. They were barely cooked dough. Completely inedible.

“Fudge,” I said, replacing the last two letters of that word before I spoke out loud.

Nobody was around to hear me, but my upbringing had taught me good girls didn’t curse. But good girls did know when they were hosed, and I was hosed.

I closed the oven and leaned back against the island, hanging my head. Now what? I’d paid a lot of money and driven all the way up here from my home in Billings to prepare for this competition, and now, on my third day here, the oven quit working.

Worst of all, I was hardly the type of person who could fix it. When something malfunctioned in my tiny apartment, my dad came over and helped. I’d tried waiting around for the apartment’s maintenance person but got nowhere, so I was lucky my parents lived nearby.

A noise from outside the cabin reminded me I wasn’t completely isolated. There was another cabin on this road, and it was owned by a strong, capable guy who probably knew how to fix an oven.

The question was, even if he could, would he?

I eyed my earlier batches of cookies spread out on parchment paper on the island. That was where I’d planned to ice everything. One batch was still cooling while the other was already iced. They were heart-shaped cookies with cute sayings, like those little candies that people gave out on Valentine’s Day.

Suddenly, I had an idea. Without allowing time to talk myself out of it, I headed over to the cabinet and opened it, pulled out a plate, and stacked a layer of un-iced cookies on it. I added some iced cookies on top. Just a dozen or so—enough to maybe entice a hot, sweaty, gorgeous guy into helping a damsel in distress.

Only as I stepped onto the front porch did I remember he probably wouldn’t be too hot or sweaty. He was outside in forty-degree temperatures. I was wearing thermals under my long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, and I was freezing.

As I scanned the landscape in front of me, I saw no sign of my hunky neighbor. My smile fell as I shifted my stare to his log cabin, identical to the one I was staying in. He must have gone back inside.

I took a deep breath to gather my courage and started down the steps leading off the porch into the yard. “Hi, I’m Hailey,” I rehearsed under my breath as I walked. “I’m your neighbor. I brought you some cookies. Could you do me a huge favor? I’m kind of in a bind.”

The guy had been nothing but unfriendly since I arrived. I’d waved at him several times. I even called out “good morning” once as I saw him getting something out of his truck while I was heading to my car to go grab some coffee. Not only had he not returned my greeting, he’d acted like he hadn’t heard me.

I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’d waved at him later that day as I passed him in his truck on the road leading to our cabins and he didn’t even lift one of the fingers gripping his steering wheel.

We were the only cabins on this road, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know I was here. Asshole.

But I needed him, which meant I had to put on some charm. I could do this. It was good practice for winning over the judges in a couple of days.

There was no doorbell. I glanced back toward my cabin with a frown. I hadn’t even noticed if mine had one.

With a shrug, I knocked, wincing at the feel of the rough wood against my knuckles. The door was solid. It had me wondering if I even had the strength to knock loud enough for him to hear.

Seconds ticked by, then a minute, then two. I looked around, verified his truck was still in the driveway, even though I knew it was, and tried knocking again.

This time, seconds didn’t pass. Not even one second. The door whipped right open, and a grumpy, flannel-wearing guy was staring back at me.

“Hi,” I managed to squeak out.

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