Page 5 of His Big Holiday Firefighter
He pulled the pan off the heat at exactly the right moment. The butter was perfectly browned and fragrantly nutty. I leaned in despite myself, our shoulders touching as I inhaled the aroma.
“Perfect,” I admitted.
His answering smile was almost shy. “I had an excellent teacher.”
We fell into a rhythm after that, moving around each other in the kitchen like we’d done it for years. His self-taught methodswere unorthodox but effective, and I learned a few new tricks even as I shared my own technical expertise.
“No, like this,” I said, reaching around him to adjust his grip on the rolling pin. “You want to keep the pressure even.” His back was warm against my chest, and I could feel the slight catch in his breath. The position brought us close enough that I could see the dusting of flour in his hair, could sense the solid strength of him.
“Show me again?” His voice was low, almost husky.
I swallowed hard, hyper-aware of everywhere we touched. “You just?—”
The shrill tone of an emergency alert cut through the moment like a knife. Noah stiffened, already reaching for his phone, and I felt the loss of contact like a physical chill.
“Structure fire on Maple.” His expression shifted to professional focus with impressive speed. “I have to?—”
I stepped back from him. “Go. Of course.”
He was already moving, shrugging into his jacket with practiced efficiency. He paused at the door, snow swirling around him like he was stepping into another world entirely. “James, I?—”
“Be careful,” I said, the words carrying more weight than I’d intended.
Noah’s smile was quick but warm, softening his now-serious expression. “Save me some cookies.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone in a kitchen that suddenly felt too big and too quiet. Another pan of butter was browning on the stove, filling the air with its nutty warmth, but all I could think about was the way my hands still tingled where they’d touched his.
I finished the shortbread alone, each step seeming somehow incomplete. When I finally pulled the perfectly golden cookiesfrom the oven, I found myself waiting for approval from someone who wasn’t there.
My phone buzzed. The real estate agent again, with another interested buyer. I stared at the message, then at the cookies cooling on the rack. They were technically perfect, exactly the way I’d been trained to make them. Even spacing, uniform color, precise edges.
So why did they feel like they were missing something essential?
The answer came in a memory of Nai Nai’s voice, gentle but firm. “Baking isn’t about perfection, little dumpling. It’s about love. And love is never perfect—that’s what makes it beautiful.”
Outside, sirens wailed in the distance. I moved to the window at the front of the shop, searching the snowy street as if I could somehow see all the way to Maple. The sky was darkening with more snow, and somewhere out there, Noah was doing his actual job—the important one that had nothing to do with cookies or Christmas competitions.
“He’ll be fine,” I told myself firmly, turning back to the kitchen and my cooling cookies. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. Just a few more days.”
But as I began cleaning up, I couldn’t help noticing how empty the bakery felt with only one person in it, or how the silence seemed to echo with all the things I was trying not to feel. The recipe cards caught my eye again, and I picked up the one for orange-cardamom shortbread. At the bottom, in my grandmother’s careful hand, was a note I’d missed before.
Remember: cookies baked alone are just food. Cookies baked with love are magic.
I set the card down carefully, trying to ignore the way my hands shook slightly. I just had to get through the next few days without doing anything stupid, like falling for a small-townfirefighter who knew my grandmother’s recipes better than I did.
But as I wrapped up Noah’s share of the cookies, carefully placing them in one of Nai Nai’s old tins, I had a sinking feeling it might already be too late.
CHAPTER FOUR
I hadn’t expectedto find a second recipe box.
I’d been deep cleaning the storage room, telling myself it was for the buyers’ inspection and not because I was avoiding thinking about Noah out fighting fires.
It was a lie I almost believed, right up until I knocked over a stack of old cake pans. Behind them, tucked against the wall like a forgotten treasure, sat a battered tin box I’d never seen before. The metal was worn smooth in places, as if hands had opened it countless times over the years.
The lid stuck slightly. When it finally opened with a soft creak, my breath caught. Inside were recipe cards, but not my grandmother’s usual precise notes. These were different. They were covered in two distinct handwritings, one her familiar mix of Chinese and English, the other a messier scrawl I didn’t recognize.
I pulled one out.
