Page 17 of The Christmas Cookie Crush

“Are they as bad as I think?” I ask, my voice a croak. I know the answer. They’re probably worse than I think.

Her brown eyes dance behind her glasses as she looks at me and nods slowly. “Oh, yeah. You can’t give these to that young lady. She’ll think you hate her.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” I groan, cringing at all of it. “Shealreadythinks I hate her.”

Sheila meets my eyes, shaking her head. “And this is an attempt to win her over?”

I shrug one shoulder. “Something like that.”

Looking thoughtful, she scans the mess once more. “Could you give her something else? We have great cake pops. What about picking up a box of those tomorrow?”

Scrubbing my hands over my face, I groan again. “Grampy made these cookies specially for her. And she’s sad he can’t make them this year. Shetoldme about it. I just …” I drop my hands, my shoulders drooping with dejection and exhaustion. “I just wanted to do something nice.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Sheila reaches over and pats my shoulder. She’s older than me, but I’m pretty sure she’s younger than my mom even though she treats me with a sort of overblown motherly affection. Or maybe like a really involved aunt? Since my aunts all live far away, I’ve never had that kind of relationship with them. But since I joined the team last month, Sheila and I have worked closely on scheduling and coordinating the baking for both the shop and the kiosk. We’ve worked out a good system of divide and conquer—the shop is her domain, and the kiosk is mine.

I’m not quite sure how that’ll change once ChristmasFest is over, but I don’t have the time or energy to think that far ahead. Right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to frost cookies for tomorrow.

“Have you eaten?” Sheila asks, seemingly out of nowhere.

I wrinkle my brows and shake my head. “I mean, I ate a couple of my reject cookies. Several of my first tries were truly terrible.” Her eyebrows climb her forehead like the idea of cookies even worse than the ones on display beggars belief. I raise my hands,palms out. “Look. I know it doesn’t seem possible to do worse than these, but I promise you, it is.”

She cracks a smile. “Go.” She makes shooing motions with her hands. “Get yourself some dinner. Relax for a bit. I’ll clean up here. Come back in half an hour.” She looks around again, hands on her hips. “Actually, make that forty-five minutes.”

“Sheila, no. You don’t have to—” My protest dies when she skewers me with a look. Raising my hands in surrender, I step toward the door. “Fine. You win. I’ll get some dinner. ButIcan clean up my mess.”

“Sweetheart, if I didn’t step in and help you, we’d both be here all night. And I’m too old to pull an all-nighter. I need sleep, and trust me”—she points a finger at me—“you do too. And food. Go. I’ll be fine. If I minded, I wouldn’t offer.”

“Okay,” I mutter, grabbing my jacket. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Take your time. The batch you made has to cool a bit more anyway. No need to rush.”

When I get back, the kitchen is cleaned up, the smell of baking cookies wafting through the air. A batch sits cooling on one counter, and Sheila has another counter prepped for cookie decorating.

Smiling, she motions me over and shows me her handiwork. Ranged in front of her are three Nora elf cookies.

I suck in a breath, torn between gratitude and frustration. “Thank you so much.”

She can obviously hear the “but …” I didn’t give voice to. “But you wanted to do them yourself. I know. These were my practice ones so I can show you how it’s done. I help with the cookie decorating when your Grampy’s out, but you’re right that he always did these himself. This was my first time, so I wanted to make sure I did it right before teaching you the steps. And you can tuck these into the bottom of the box you give her if you want to. Don’t worry.” She bumps me with her hip. “You’ll do at least some of them.”

With Sheila’s help, we finish a dozen cookies in a little over an hour. She did more than me, but I did four all on my own. “Come by tomorrow and I’ll have them boxed up for you,” she says as we toss our used pastry bags and take our other tools to the industrial dishwasher.

“Thank you so much for your help, Sheila.” This time my gratitude is completely unreserved.

She turns to me with a smile and gives me a quick hug. “You’re welcome. Consider it my Christmas gift to you. Don’t forget to pick up the cookies tomorrow!”

“Ha. Like I’d forget after all that work.”

With a grin, she waves me off. “Shoo. I have to finish locking up, which means you have to leave.”

A grin stretching across my own face, I follow her orders, feeling hopeful for the first time in quite a while.

CHAPTER TEN

Nora

Nervous anticipation thrumsthrough my veins as we finish setting up for the open house on Thursday evening. It’s the one day out of the whole month when Mom and Dad close the North Pole early so they can host their party.

Dylan and Lydia got in last night, Ty and Olivia arrived yesterday morning, and Sarah, Shane, and Sophie—Shane’s nine-year-old sister—are here helping set up as well. Instead of arriving right before Christmas and staying through New Year’s, everyone is here early for the open house and leaving pretty soon after Christmas Day. The house feels better being full of family like this. It’s felt empty and forlorn since I got back, and there’s a stark difference now that all my siblings and their significant others are here.

---