Page 15 of The Gingerbread Bakery
Annie nudged Mac back onto his half of the seat in a desperate attempt to get her head on straight. His proximity was doing weird things to her judgement. ‘Not cold. Just excited to see the lights,’ she lied. The bus was slowly trundling down Main Street, Christmas music playing over the speakers, and she tried to focus on that instead of Mac’s newly uncovered charms.
Annie had a life-plan to manage, a cookie empire to build. She did not have time for distractions. She’d only agreed to this second meet-up—she would not call it a date—because she wanted to see the lights and her sisters were all refusing to come this year.
She dug into her oversized purse and pulled out a bag of freshly baked sugar cookies she’d made for the occasion. She held them out to Mac and the sound he made when he bit into one was so obscene that the older couple in the seat next to them turned in shock, as though they thought something untoward was happening over here. Annie felt her cheeks go up in flames.
‘Damn, Annie. You really know what you’re doing with these cookies,’ he said, eyes closed, head leaning back on the seat.
‘Of course I do.’
Mac’s lips tipped into a smirk even as his eyes remained closed. ‘I should have known.’
‘Known what?’
He opened his eyes and rolled his head to face her. ‘That you would be good at anything you tried.’
Annie swallowed hard. ‘I’m definitely not.’
Mac shrugged. ‘Well, you’re good at cookie-baking.’
‘Thanks.’ Had it gotten even warmer in here? Why had Mac’s words had such an effect on her? She knew she was good at baking. But she also knew that she’d tossed three imperfect batches of those same cookies into the trash today and these were the only ones that made the cut and that sometimes she wondered how she would put this crazy dream of hers into action. What if she worked hard and it still didn’t happen? What if she tried and failed?
‘What’s the matter? You look like I just told you your dog died instead of complimenting you.’
‘I don’t have a dog,’ she said weakly, trying to avoid the topic of her paralyzing fear of failure. She forced a smile. ‘I’m fine. I’m glad you like the cookies.’
Mac looked at her like he wasn’t totally buying that, but they’d turned down a side street and slowed down so that passengers could admire the first row of lit-up houses.
‘If you look to your left,’ Nancy’s voice came over the speaker as the whole bus turned their attention to the lefthand side, ‘we have Mr. and Mrs. Harris’s home, which has the county’s biggest display of nutcrackers.’ The crowd dutifully oohed and ahhed at the army of nutcrackers displayed on the lawn.
‘To your right, is the first of many nativity scenes on our route, this one with life-size figures.’
‘Jesus,’ Mac breathed.
‘Exactly,’ Annie quipped, and he laughed, his warm breath brushing her ear again since they’d both turned to look out the window. Another shiver ran through her.
‘I’m surprised they don’t have a live camel,’ he said.
‘Just wait until we get up to the Christmas Tree Farm. It’s the last stop, but I hear the owner, Edwin, rented a real camel and several sheep this year.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yep.’
Mac was encroaching onto her side of the seat again and she should really push him away. She had no business with a guy like Mac, and he was obviously just passing the time until his friends came home. They both were.
But then she remembered the sound he made when he bit into the sugar cookie and the way he’d looked at her as she warmed his frozen hands, and she thought maybe she could take a small detour from her grand plans. Just for the next few weeks. Just until life returned to normal after the holidays.
They turned a sharp corner, and she nearly fell into Mac’s lap and the universe settled things for her. When he wrapped his arm around her again, Annie didn’t push him away.
‘This okay?’ he whispered in her ear. She nodded and snuggled in closer as the lit-up houses passed by the window.
‘Yeah, it’s okay.’ It was perfectly okay that she was cuddled up with the one boy she’d claimed to hate while secretly harboring a crush on him that she never would have admitted even under threat of torture, but his arms felt so nice and it was her favorite time of year and the bus was so cozy with its twinkle lights and Christmas music…
It was perfectly okay.
She leaned back on Mac as through the window the light displays got more and more dramatic. She smiled as he gasped at the giant house on the end of Elm Street that had a full-size sleigh on the roof pulled by eight lit-up reindeer and, by the time he was enumerating his reasons for preferring multicolored lights over white ones, she knew she’d officially sold him on the Dream Harbor Lights Tour.
When they got off the bus and Mac was still holding her hand as they walked back to his car, she wasn’t sure what else she’d sold him on. Or if she was buying into whatever was happening here. But when Mac said he didn’t want the night to be over yet, she said she didn’t either.
