Page 14 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

She pushes a strand of hair off her face with the back of her hand and unwittingly smears a bit of floury butter on her forehead.

“I texted the Sullivans, and they apologized for not letting me know they’d sold. Marilyn said it all happened so quickly they forgot to tell me. And she also said they’d forgotten to pack little Sophie’s decorations, and they were probably still in the closet in her room. So I thought I’d put them out to liven the place up a bit.”

She might be cute as all hell, but she’s also frustrating as all hell. “Seriously. Was I not clear?” My fingers tighten their grip around the edge of the counter.

“I thought maybe you were tired and crabby after the drive and the blizzard and your shoulder and everything, and that this might cheer you up.”

Her expression is almost childlike, radiating with the innocent bliss of the utter nonsense that is all this festive bullshit.

“It is doing the opposite of cheering me up. If being cheered down is a thing, I am being cheered to the deepest pits of cheerment.”

“See, you do have a sense of humor hiding in there.” She points her spatula at my chest, and a dollop of mixture drops from it onto the counter with a softsplat.

“Bet one of these will make you feel better.” She widens her large blue eyes and pointsat an array of cookies shaped like Christmas trees and snowmen laid out on a cooling rack. I have a cooling rack?

“I’m not the greatest baker,” she adds. “They won’t be as good as the ones from Kneads Must.”

“Kneads Must?”

“The bakery on Main Street.” She says it as if I should have known.

“Does everything around here have a cheesy name?”

She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, I haven’t decorated these yet. But you can try one if you’re good.”

There’s something about this woman that makes me want to benot good. Something that makes me want to yell at her to get out of my goddamn house and take all her Christmas garbage with her, but also to peel down those jeans and bend her over the counter—taking care with her ankle, of course.

Seeing the rocket ship shift across her breasts as she moves isn’t helping.

“Sit down.” She points to a stool opposite her and nudges the rack of cookies toward it. “I’ll make you some breakfast nog to go with it.”

I find myself doing exactly as she says and pull out a stool. Is it years as a teacher that’s given her some sort of magical tone that makes everyone instantly do as she says?

“What, in the name of God, is breakfast nog?”

“Well, it’s milk and nutmeg and?—”

“Absolutely not. I’m having coffee.”

“I have no idea how to work that machine.” She gestures to the counter under the kitchen window behind her, where the coffee maker sits between the fridge and the sink. “It has those pod things.”

“I’ll do it.” I snap out of obedience mode and move to her side of the island, casting my gaze over the bakingmassacre that’s taken place on it. “Was all this stuff here? The flour and the eggs and the butter and the…sprinkles? And the pans and the racks and everything?”

“Of course,” she says with a tone that says I’m an idiot. “Do you not know what you have in your own house?”

“I had a company send someone to furnish it.” I turn to riffle through the rack of pods and settle on the darkest brown one, labeled “Intensity.” That sounds like what I need to get me through this day. “But I wasn’t expecting them to assume I’m a baker.”

“Perhaps”—she lifts her dough-covered spatula in the air—“they assumed you were a normal human who likes the holidays and so might be doing what normal people do. Like, you know, having fun.”

I shake my head and turn my attention to the coffee maker.

“Well, lucky they did get this stuff,” she continues, “because it’s given me something to do while I wait for the fallen tree to be moved. I checked the town message group, and the latest post says it’ll be a couple more hours before they’ve chopped it up and cleared the road.”

“Great. That’s plenty of time to take down all these decorations.”

Shehumphs.

I’m about to close the lid on my pod but stop. “Do you want coffee?”

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