The Holiday Swap(18)

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Walter asked.

“Absolutely,” Charlie folded Cass’s note and shoved it into her apron’s front pocket. “Now, how about we get these loaves going?”



* * *



? ? ?

A couple of hours later Walter had left for class and Charlie was checking the daily bakery stock against the list. Croissants. Eclairs. Scones. Three kinds of cookies. Date squares and raspberry bars. Whole wheat and pumpernickel loaves. The Starlight Bread she and Walter had baked this morning was on shelves in the back of the bakery, cooling before the loaves headed to the freezer, where they rested until the town threw its annual Starlight Eve bash in the square on December 24.

Suddenly her Sweet & Salty television schedule didn’t seem quite as grueling. How did Cass do this every day? Some of the items, like the cookies and bars, could be made every other day, but the Woodburn’s sourdough was baked fresh daily. Charlie checked the sourdough loaves in the oven and saw they had about thirty minutes to go. She couldn’t smell anything but suspected the bakery was filled with delicious scents. Charlie had hoped her sense of smell would have come back by now, but it had only been a day since the accident. And she wasn’t exactly resting like she had been told to do at the hospital.

The bakery opened at nine o’clock, which meant she had just under an hour before she had to start greeting customers. Thank goodness for Walter. Things were almost ready to go.

Charlie decided a few moments of rest would be fine. Just to briefly close her eyes, which felt gritty and sore from lack of sleep. Before she dragged herself upstairs she found a bandage in the bakery’s first aid kit and applied it to her wrist, covering her tattoo. Then she lay on Cass’s couch, telling herself she would set her alarm for fifteen minutes. Plenty of time left to finish the bread and get the coffee brewed for the morning rush. Setting her phone beside her, she leaned back onto the pillows and closed her eyes.



* * *



? ? ?

Charlie woke up not because of her phone’s alarm, but because of another alarm—this one painfully loud. Confused and disoriented, she sat up quickly and instantly felt dizzy. She reached for her phone but it was no longer beside her. Where was it? With a grunt of frustration, she glanced at the kitchen clock and saw she had been asleep for forty-five minutes. Which meant the bakery was opening in minutes. The fire alarm screeched so loudly she had to cover her ears as she ran downstairs from Cass’s apartment.

It only took her turning the corner from the staircase into the bakery’s back room to understand precisely what the problem was. Smoke billowed from the ovens. And even though Charlie could smell nothing, it was clear what had happened. She’d burned the sourdough loaves.

“No, no, no . . .” she mumbled, racing into action. First, she turned off the ovens, making the decision to pull out the burning loaves rather than leaving them in the ovens to char further. Quickly putting on the industrial oven mitts that went past her elbows, Charlie opened the doors one at a time and grabbed the blackened loaves; the billowing smoke made her cough and her eyes water. Then she opened the front door and all the windows, despite the cold winter air, and reached for one of the cardboard menus from the countertop before jumping on a chair to try to disperse the smoke away from the fire alarm in the ceiling. She nearly toppled over with another wave of dizziness, but managed to stay upright.

That was where she was—desperately fanning at the fire alarm, oven mitts still on and tears streaming from her eyes because of the smoke—when she heard the sirens approaching.

For a moment Charlie paused her fanning, ducking slightly to look out the front window to see the fire truck pulling up outside. She cursed under her breath.

In a moment the Starlight Peak Fire Department was going to be inside the bakery. Right in time for opening.



* * *



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“Your parents go on their first vacation in ten years and you try to burn the bakery down, huh?” Fire Chief Matthews, whom Charlie had known since she was a girl, winked at her and took a bite of the raspberry bar in front of him, washing it down with a coffee.

Charlie grimaced and shrugged. “I guess the timer is on the fritz?”

“On all three of these?” a voice asked. Charlie glanced over at a firefighter she didn’t recognize, saw him pointing at the three ovens and their timers. She had noticed him right away when they all got out of the truck, and not only because she didn’t know him. He was tall and clearly well-muscled under his uniform, good-looking in a way that made her feel off-kilter—though that could have been the concussion, too.

“Weird, huh?” Charlie said, weakly.

The firefighter raised an eyebrow and smiled behind a neatly trimmed beard that was a deep shade of amber. Then he set the first oven’s timer for ten seconds and Charlie watched as it counted down and then beeped when the seconds ended.

“Should we try the other two?” he asked, finger hovering above the timer button, and Chief Matthews chuckled.

“Come on now, Jake,” Chief Matthews said. “Don’t you think she’s having a rough enough morning without your razzing?”

Charlie extended her hand toward the new-to-her, too-handsome-for-his-own-good firefighter. “I’m Cass.”

There was a moment of silence as the firefighter and Chief Matthews stared at Charlie’s outstretched hand in confusion. Charlie realized this new-to-her firefighter was, of course, not new to Cass. She was about to try and cover her tracks, when the chief burst out laughing. “Cassie Goodwin, if you aren’t just as witty today as you were when you were five years old. Always clever, this one.” He stood up and put his helmet back on. “Jake, let’s take some of these cookies and bars back to the station house. Can you pack some up for us, Cass?”