Page 23 of Christmas Charms
“You’re so good at this, Mom.” I attempt to measure out two and half cups of flour and am immediately covered in a cloud of fine white powder. Fruitcake is sitting at my feet and sneezes four times in rapid succession.
“I’ve been doing it for more than thirty years,” she says. “It just takes practice.”
“Thirty years. Has it really been that long?” Is that sugar that I just added to the flour, or was it salt? I definitely shouldn’t be trying to carry on a conversation while I’m doing this. I add a little extra sugar, just in case.
“I started the first Christmas your dad was a rookie firefighter. We were engaged, but not yet married. I turned up at the firehouse a week before Christmas with the most pathetic looking gingerbread firemen and iced sugar cookies anyone had ever seen.”
I look up from the bowl in front of me, now overflowing with ingredients. Somehow, I’ve never heard this story. Probably because I haven’t helped my mom with her firefighter cookies in years. I used to love dressing up in one of her holiday aprons and licking the batter from the beaters of the mixer when I was a little girl. But as I grew older, I became far too intimidated by the perfection of her end results to try my hand at helping, convinced I’d just mess everything up. And lately, I haven’t been home during the holidays at all, as Aidan was so keen to point out earlier.
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I say.
“It’s true. They looked like a mess, but your dad and the other men at the fire house loved them—or at least, they loved that I’d made an effort—and somehow it became a Christmas tradition.” She’s moved on from the gingerbread men and is now dusting the snowflake sugar cookies with shimmery edible glitter.
“And you’re still baking them, even though Dad retired.” I feel myself smile at the idea.
“Of course. The firehouse is a very important part of the community, and really, I can’t imagine giving up the tradition just because your dad isn’t the chief anymore. To him, the men at that station are still family. They always will be.”
And now that family includes Aidan. My heart gives a little twist, and I add an unspecified amount of ground ginger to my batter. It’s hard to measure when my hands are trembling.
I don’t want to be this rattled by my latest encounter with Aidan. I really don’t. I just want to think about ordinary things, like getting my promotion and making my way to Paris for Christmas someday all on my own. But instead, I’m back in Owl Lake with a strange bracelet stuck on my arm and all sorts of strange and confusing feelings clouding my head over a man who hasn’t been a part of my life in almost a decade. Although truthfully, those feelings have been fluttering through me since I first ran into him outside of FAO Schwartz.
It doesn’t help that my mom’s story about baking for the firemen when she and my dad were newly engaged is giving me majorIt’s a Wonderful Lifevibes. I could have had that life.I could have been the one baking terrible cookies for my firefighting husband-to-be all those years ago, but I chose another path.
Rightly so, I remind myself. As Jeremy said the other night, I’m living the dream.
I flip the electric mixer to the on position. Fruitcake leans heavily against my leg, all warmth and comfort. He’s got a dusting of flour on his head, and it makes him look like he’s been outside playing in the snow. I smile, and as the cookie dough spins round and round, I realize just now was the first time Jeremy has crossed my mind all day.
Maybe my heart isn’t quite as broken as I thought it was.
“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” I take one last look at the platter of cookies in my hand and wince.
They’re every bit as bad as I expected them to be—worse, because I had such a good time with my mom in the kitchen that I let her talk me into trying to decorate the last batch of gingerbread firefighters and snowflake sugar cookies myself. Let me tell you, drawing things with frosting is a lot harder than it looks. My poor gingerbread firemen look like they’re wrestling yellow snakes instead of wielding fire hoses. Happy holidayssssssssssss.
“You helped make the cookies, so of course you should help deliver them too,” my mom says as we walk up the sidewalk toward the firehouse. Fruitcake trots alongside us on a candy cane-striped dog leash my dad picked up on one of his errands this afternoon. Any day now, the dog will probably have his own Christmas stocking hanging from the mantle. “Besides, it will be fun.”
“Are you just saying that because you don’t want anyone to think you’re the one responsible for the snake cookies?”
“Absolutely not. They’ll be thrilled to see us—and thrilled with the cookies. Just wait.” My mom laughs and gives me a little nudge, because the closer I get to the station, the more I’m dragging my feet.
What am I doing here? More to the point, why does one of our biggest family traditions have to involve delivering homemade baked goods to Aidan’s workplace?
With any luck at all, he’ll be out on a call. Not that I want anything in the nearby vicinity to catch on fire, but isn’t there a kitten in a tree somewhere that needs saving?
But the ladder truck, the pumper truck and the small engine are all present and accounted for, lined up side by side in the apparatus bay, as shiny and red as Rudolph’s famed nose. A wreath hangs on the grill of the ladder truck, and I can’t help wondering if Aidan hung it there himself. I’m guessing his job is more than a basic fireman. Since he drove me home in the rig, he must be the fire engineer responsible for the ladder truck.
I remind myself I’m not here to see Aidan. I’m here for my mom and her favorite Christmas tradition. But somehow my heart doesn’t seem to get the memo. It beats wildly out of control as Mom knocks politely on the door to the fire house.
“Martha!” The current fire chief’s face splits into a wide grin when he opens the door and sees my mom. His gaze sweeps over the trays of cookies in her hands, and then he does a double take when he spots me standing beside her. “Ashley? Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
“Merry Christmas, Uncle Hugh.” Hugh took over the chief’s position after Dad retired. He’s been with the department since my dad’s early days with the OLFD, and while we’re not technically related, he’s always been like an uncle to me. Somewhere along the way, I started calling him Uncle Hugh and the nickname stuck.
He winks at me. “I heard you were in town for the holidays.”
I’m sure you did.I paste on a smile and try not to think about my absolute certainty that everyone in Owl Lake is talking about my ride through town earlier in Aidan’s truck. It wasnota rescue, despite how it looked.
Hugh’s grin widens, and he tries to hug me, but it’s difficult with my platter of mortifying gingerbread firemen stuck between us. I pray for fate to be kind and intervene just enough for my cookies to slide to the floor and immediately get trampled underfoot so no one will ever see them, but alas, no such luck.
“Who’s this?” Hugh asks, ruffling the fur on Fruitcake’s head.
