Making Christmas

by Patricia McLinn

  Gramps grumbled, but didn’t look up.

  The tiny kitchen was also clean and orderly, though Bexley guessed disuse explained it here, in contrast to the bedroom and bathroom.

  Gramps rallied. “You’d best all get out of here in case the propane blows if you really want to test it,” he said with relish.

  Dan scoffed, “We’d smell it long before that.”

  “Right. Rotten eggs, isn’t it?” Kiernan asked.

  “Or skunk,” Eric said, while Dan nodded.

  “Fine, fine, but the lot of you back up so I can get to the oven to turn it on. Not you,” Gramps said sharply as Pauline reached toward the oven. “My oven. If it does blow, it’ll be me. Even if you all did force me to my death.”

  “No, no. Don’t do it,” Lizzie said.

  Gramps looked down at her in surprise. She’d caught the side hem of his loose jeans in one fist. His expression changed. Gruffly, he said, “Don’t you worry. I’m too tough to get blown up by a stove. Now, go on, all of you. There’s not room in here.”

  That was true.

  Dan took Bobby from Molly and flopped in the recliner. They took up less than half of its width.

  “C’mon, girls, let’s go see about ingredients,” Bexley urged them. “This is one recipe I know by heart.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The girls found frozen cookie dough right away, a clearly unnecessary fallback option as they gathered butter, sugar, flour, eggs, even baking soda — though in a rather dusty box.

  “But no chocolate chips,” Molly pointed out. She carried the mini-carton of eggs, while Bexley held the other ingredients in a pouch created by holding out the bottom hem of her large sweater.

  “That’s okay. Have you ever had M&M cookies?” Bexley led them into the candy aisle. “We can use those instead of chocolate chips.”

  They didn’t greet her suggestion with as much enthusiasm as she might have hoped.

  “But chocolate chip’s Dan’s favorite,” Lizzie protested.

  Her sister nodded. “And if we can make him chocolate chip cookies, maybe he won’t be so sad this Christmas.”

  The top of Bexley’s nose prickled with threatening tears. She doubted cookies would cure the boy’s heartache, but making them for him might help his sisters.

  “Okay. Then, we’ll make our own chocolate chips.”

  “Can you do that?” Molly regarded her with wide eyes.

  “Sure. After all, what are chocolate chips but chips of chocolate? So, we’ll chip chocolate.”

  Lizzie pounced on several plain chocolate bars. Her hand hovered over more. “What about some with nuts?”

  “Great idea, Lizzie.”

  The girl added those to Bexley’s sweater pouch.

  As they prepared to return to the private area, Pauline, Kiernan, Eric, and Gramps emerged, Pauline holding a finger to her lips. “Those boys are sound asleep.”

  “Bobby missed his nap yesterday and Dan was up real early with Daddy, loading the truck.”

  Bexley thought of the man, who’d probably been up even earlier and now was out in this storm. She sent up a good thought for him and returned to what she could do something about — making his kids’ Christmas a little brighter.

  “We’re better off mixing the dough out here, anyway,” Pauline said. “Since this man doesn’t have a mixer and the kitchen’s so tiny we’d be on top of each other. I found this pot we can use for a bowl, a measuring cup, and three stout spoons. I also found—” Pauline added with emphasis. “—that the man has a set of real dishes. No more paper plates.”

  “Paper plates don’t need washin’.”

  Pauline majestically ignored Gramps’ complaint.

  At the table, the girls took turns proudly unloading the ingredients from Bexley’s sweater.

  “No vanilla,” Bexley told Pauline.

  “Ah, but a bit of brandy will do. And I saw some in the bedroom.”

  “What? Now you want my brandy? What next?” From outraged, Gramps’ expression turned crafty. “Besides, you shouldn’t be giving alcohol to kids.”

  “A couple of teaspoons divided among all the cookies will be okay, not to mention baking will remove enough of the alcohol.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  Kiernan and Eric received disapproving looks from Pauline for their poorly masked chuckles at Gramps’ retort. Bexley escaped because she was behind Pauline when she grinned.

  “Flavor is the point. Go get the bottle. And don’t wake up those boys.”

  That settled, Bexley tackled the next improvisation required.

  “Kiernan, Eric, can you find a hammer or something else to pound with and be our designated chip makers?”

  “We also might need some brawn for mixing by hand,” Pauline said.

  “Sure, but what are you going to put them on to bake?” Kiernan asked.

  “I don’t suppose there was a cookie sheet?” Bexley looked to Pauline.

  “I didn’t see one, but maybe—” She tipped her head toward Gramps, coming toward them with a slow, reluctant tread with the bottle cradled in the crook of one arm.

  Pauline took it from him without waiting for him to offer it. “Thank you. Do you have a cookie sheet?”

  “A—? No. Never had any need of such a thing.”

  “Baking pans? Glass pans?” Bexley asked.

  Pauline and Gramps shook their heads simultaneously. Odd to see such unison in those disparate characters.

  “I did see a couple skillets,” Pauline said.

  “My cast iron skillets? They belonged to my granddad,” Gramps objected.

  “Then they’re not likely to be hurt by being in the oven. But even using both, they wouldn’t hold many cookies at a time.”

  “One big cookie,” Eric suggested. “Then we could cut it up. Like a pizza.”

  “Pizza… Wait a minute, in college we used to rewarm pizza in the cardboard box in the oven,” Bexley said.

  Kiernan backed her. “Of course. We did the same thing. There must be cardboard boxes around here we can break down.”

  “Won’t a cardboard box burn?” Eric asked.

  “Not a’tall,” Kiernan said. “One of my roommates’ father was a fireman and he said it doesn’t burn until four-hundred-and-twenty-something degrees Fahrenheit. Unless cookies—”

  “Three-fifty, maybe three-seventy-five. But the cookies will stick unless — aluminum foil. We need aluminum foil.”

  Gramps reared back as if Bexley had slapped him. “Aluminum foil? I don’t have aluminum foil in my kitch—”

  “It’s in the store. I saw it on the shelves,” Lizzie said.

  Bexley patted her shoulder. “Good eye, Lizzie.”

  “My store? My store? Again? Who’s going to pay for all this coming out of my store?”

  “You are,” Pauline said. “For your grandchildren to make and eat Christmas cookies.”

  Gramps glowered and continued muttering under his breath, but he did not contradict Pauline, nor did he try to stop his granddaughter from scooting into the store and returning with a roll of aluminum foil held aloft as triumphantly as the Olympic torch.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  While Pauline and Bexley guided the girls in measuring and combining the initial ingredients, Kiernan and Eric pounded away at the candy bars with a hammer and the handle of a huge screwdriver they found behind the store’s counter.

  The guys also were a huge help in stirring the chips into the thickening batter.

  They found suitably stiff, corrugated cardboard and cut it to cookie-sheet-sized dimensions, which Pauline and Bexley covered in aluminum foil.

  “Looks like we might need another box to be safe,” Pauline said.

  Kiernan stood. “Saw one in the store. I’ll get it.”

  On impulse, Bexley followed.

  She caught up with him where the back aisle intersected with the one that led to the front door.

  “Kiernan.”

  He turned, surprised.

>   So was she, because they’d practically collided.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No. Yes. Just… We are giving these kids a Christmas.”

  “What?”

  She checked over her shoulder. Yes, they were being watched from the other room.

  She got a grip on the loose material of his shirt above his elbow and tugged. Although her brain registered she probably couldn’t have moved him if he hadn’t cooperated, another part of her felt great satisfaction at the idea she’d dragged him down the aisle that led to the front of the store, then into one of the side aisles.

  She was not thinking about another time she’d gotten a grip on one of his shirts, how she’d used that grip, and what it led to.

  Was. Not.

  “I said, we are giving these kids a Christmas. You said not to promise them what I — we — can’t deliver and I’m telling you we are going to deliver. We — all of us — are going to do whatever we can to make this a real holiday for them.” She looked around at hanging rows of beef and turkey jerky packages surrounding them. “We don’t have a lot of raw material to work with, so we’ll improvise. Somehow. You are going to help, along with Pauline and Eric, because together we can accomplish more for the kids. And there are some things that will be easier for you to do.” She waved a hand toward him, carefully not looking closely at what she was waving at. “Strong things. Tall things. You and Eric, I mean.”

  Back to staring at jerky packages, she cleared her throat and went on quickly. Yanking the bandage off to get it over with.

  “Look, we probably could have ignored, uh, what happened last summer if we’d been able to keep driving. Me sleeping while you drove, you sleeping while I drove. We wouldn’t have had to talk much at all. But here, now, and with making a Christmas for these kids, that makes it a lot harder. So I’ll say it right out to set your mind at ease. I got the message. I won’t try to jump you or—”

  “You won’t?”

  “No.” She made it absolutely firm, because there’d been something deeper, beneath his quirk of amusement — with her, not at her. “Or make things uncomfortable for you. For either of us. It was a mistake, you recognized first, and now we’re past it.”

  “Bexley—”

  “Don’t argue with me. What matters is those kids — all of them. Even if Dan does act like he’s fourteen going on ninety-four. We’re going to give them a Christmas. It will take all—”

  “Okay.”

  “—of us to— What?”

  “I said—” Something flickered across his eyes, as if a grin lurked somewhere. “—okay. Where do you want me to start? Go out in the storm and cut down a tree?”

  “Did you see a good tree when we came in? I didn’t but, if you saw one….”

  She went quickly to the front of the store. Not to get away from a grin lurking in his eyes or anything else to do with Kiernan McCrea, but simply because she needed to look out the window, since the door was plastered over with signs.

  With shelves up against the outer wall and the window set high, it required standing on her tiptoes, peering between still more signs half peeled off the window, and trying to see out into the wind-driven snow. But she did it.

  Which revealed a flaw in her approach.

  After all, even if she could see past the wind-driven snow, she was looking at the parking area. A most unlikely spot for a Christmas tree candidate.

  “Didn’t see one coming in.”

  The way Kiernan said his first word sounded more like dinna and sent a small shiver up her backbone.

  The next instant, she realized more than a word might have started that shiver. Because he’d come up behind her, slightly to her left, and the exhalation of his breath stirred the hairs at the back of her neck.

  She clapped her hand to the spot.

  That didn’t help because now his breath teased the hairs on her arm. She’d swear even his inhalations whispered to them, firing goose bumps across her skin.

  “I was concentrating on getting that vehicle through the snow, not searching for potential Christmas trees. Sorry to disappoint you. Do you see any now?”

  His words were as bad in the hair-tickling department.

  She stepped to the side. Away from him. “See any what?”

  “Trees, o’ course.”

  Had his accent thickened or was she imagining it? Didn’t matter. Stick to the point.

  What was the point?

  Oh. Right.

  Trees.

  She focused outside. Or she tried to. Her sidestep had put the edge of the door and the door jamb directly in her line of sight. Her peripheral vision amounted to a blur of white movement.

  He’d go out in this to try to find a tree? To cut it down and haul it—?

  “Do you know how to cut down a tree, Kiernan?”

  “Whack at the trunk with something sharp. Doesn’t strike me as very technical.” He came near to saying someting and doesna and verra.

  She would not let his accent get to her. She would not.

  She turned to him.

  And then there was him getting to her. The broad shoulders. The sad eyes that should be happy. The darned scent of him, which she hadn’t forgotten.

  She should have. She really should have.

  She backed up. Right into the edge of the counter. Boomeranged into him — full frontal contact. Well, almost. More like her full front into his three-quarters front. His arm and hip and thigh…

  Clothed. All clothed. And she was, too, so what was the big deal?

  Nothing.

  No big deal.

  She scuttled sideways, back toward the interior of the store.

  Because cold came through the door.

  Only because of the cold.

  “Have you done it?” Her voice scratched and broke. She looked away so she wouldn’t have to see he’d heard the break and divined its cause … knew its cause.

  “Done … it?”

  “Chopped down a tree.” Her words came breathless. Because she’d hurried them out. That’s all. “Ever chopped down a tree.” She spoke as carefully as Eliza Doolittle once she learned precipitation limited itself to flat areas of Spain.

  “No. I’ve not done that.”

  “A blizzard’s no time to start. We’ll think of something else for a tree. In the meantime, after we finish the cookies, we’ll set them all to making decorations. We’ll figure out where to hang them later.”

  “Bexley?” Lizzie’s voice floated to them before she turned into the aisle where they stood. She looked from one to the other of them. “What are you doing? It’s cold here.”

  Bexley turned the little girl around. “It is cold here. Let’s get away from the door. Do you need something?”

  She meant the words for the girl, but they tangled with another meaning when she looked over her shoulder to shoot Kiernan a warning look. A look to remind him not to give away their Christmas plans to Lizzie or the other kids.

  No specific plans yet, but they planned to make plans.

  As if that weren’t convoluted enough, shooting that warning look over her shoulder at him at the same time she said the words Do you need something? gave them an entirely different meaning and directed them at him.

  And then — and then — she imagined the answer was yes and—

  Nope. Not going there. Not. Making. That. Mistake. Again.

  “Pauline says we need you and Kiernan,” Lizzie said.

  Bexley stalled for time for her brain to re-engage with a neutral “Uh-huh.”

  “Because you and Kiernan are the cardboard cookie sheet experts. That’s what she said. We have the cookies on them, but she won’t let anybody move them in case they bend and the cookies fall off.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Pauline had a good point about cookies potentially falling off.

  Kiernan solved the issue by flattening six-pack carriers for beer bottles and sliding them under the “cookie sheets.” The six-pack carriers were stiff enough to
stabilize, though they couldn’t go in the oven because of the colored print and special finish on them.

  Even so, the loaded cookie sheets required careful handling to avoid disastrous bends or folds on the first trip to the kitchen.

  Bexley stayed behind when the others took that trip.

  When they returned, Dan came with. Pauline reported a successful transfer of the first cookies into the oven and Bobby had slept through the commotion.

  “I haven’t been idle, either. I found instructions on how to make decorations online,” Bexley said.

  A sort of growl came from Gramps.

  “Oh, c’mon, you can’t object to us making decorations,” Bexley said.

  “Should be saving that phone of yours for connecting to better things.”

  Her smile stalled. “You think the connection will go out?”

  “Probably first thing to go. Power next.” Apparently satisfied he had all their attention, he added, “Could run out of propane, too.”

  Lizzie’s lower lip trembled. Molly’s mouth opened in dismay. Dan scowled fiercely. The adults didn’t react as strongly, but Bexley suspected her expression resembled the thoughtfulness she saw in Pauline’s, Eric’s, and Kiernan’s faces.

  Kiernan spoke first. “What is the propane situation? Should we not use it to bake cookies?”

  “Baking cookies won’t take much.” Gramps’ sudden earnestness drew suspicious looks. “Just don’t want to waste it.”

  Bexley bit the inside of her cheeks that he didn’t consider cookies a waste. Clever of Kiernan to use that to get an accurate assessment of their primary heat source.

  “What uses up the most propane — hot water heater, furnace?” The way Eric asked, Bexley suspected he already knew the answer.

  “Hot water. Especially laundry stuff.”

  “Okay, so we don’t do laundry. If we spread out the showers so it doesn’t have to work hard for lots of on-call hot water, that should help. Supplement the heat with the wood stove…”

  “Then we can bake lots of cookies,” Molly declared, dismay forgotten.

  No one argued.

  But that settled only one possible issue.

  Clearly that was on Kiernan’s mind, too. “There’s naught we can do if the electricity goes out—”