The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap

by Kauffman, Donna; Angell, Kate; Kincaid, Kimberly

  Clara nodded, steeped in the misery of that horrible memory all over again. “Apparently no one was all that surprised to hear Pete telling me about how his career was demanding all his time, and how I was a really sweet person, but . . .” She shook off the remembered humiliation of how excited she’d been to see Pete was calling her cell phone, and how she’d answered it, almost giddy to hear his plans for their next date. Their third date. Well, sort of, anyway. That’s where she’d apparently, once again, read a whole lot more into his actions than he’d intended. “I was getting the supplies for you to bake my cookies, and I was trying to get them all on the counter and juggle the phone at the same time, and somehow I hit the speaker button just as he was regretfully telling me that he thought of me as a friend, and couldn’t see me again—”

  “Wait,” Lily said, her dark blue eyes going downright stormy. “He broke up with you over the phone?”

  Clara had to admit that maybe Abby had a point. Seeing the utter outrage on Lily’s face did make her feel a little better. “Well, I’m not sure he thought of it that way. I think I might have overestimated—”

  “That’s just about the lowest thing ever. Lower than low. Of course, being God’s gift to women, he probably didn’t even bat an eye. You’re right, Abby, men who look like him rarely ever think about women who—”

  “Look like me,” Clara finished.

  Lily turned her fierce look on her friend. “Now that’s not true, and not what I meant, and you know it. Guys like him, they go for the pretty, brainless sort, which you are most definitely not. Men like him aren’t looking for an intellectual, emotional connection with someone well rounded and—”

  “No, I think they’re looking for someone with a byline in the local paper,” Clara said, her misery complete.

  Both Abby and Clara’s mouths dropped open. “Oh no, he didn’t,” Abby said.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he did. I mean, thinking back over our lunch date, as soon as he heard I write a relationship advice column, he was a lot more casual. In fact, he made excuses to leave shortly after that, claiming some emergency at work. At the time I took it as a sincere thing, but now . . . I don’t know. I think he was hoping I’d do some kind of story.”

  “Pig.”

  “Rat bastard,” Abby added.

  Clara smiled. “You guys really are good for the ego.”

  “How did it go with Fran?” Abby asked. “I mean, I heard she was there and you two had a little chat, but she can hardly hold your personal life against you.”

  “She can when my professional life is about writing advice for the relationship-challenged, and she witnessed, before her very eyes, that her advice columnist is perhaps the most challenged of all in that arena. I mean, everyone was all ‘poor Clara-ing’ me and not one person was dogging on Pete. You know? Like they all know about my abysmal record with men and didn’t blame Pete in the least for moving on to greener pastures.”

  Lily and Abby wisely said not a single word to that.

  But Clara knew what they were thinking. Clearly what the whole town of Pine Mountain had been thinking. Clara sucked at love, she sucked with men, and the very last thing she should be doing was offering advice when it was clear she needed a heaping helping of her own.

  “So, are you saying Fran fired you?” Lily’s eyes were filled with compassion. “Oh sweetie, you should have told us.”

  “She fired me from the column, but I did a sort of fast dance and tossed out a few other ideas for other columns. I mean, I was hoping if the column went well, I’d get promoted to features, but . . .”

  “So, what did you settle on? What did she ask you to write?” Abby’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, honey, did you get something awful, like obituaries, or the crime column or something?”

  “Worse. She wants me to do a column on cookie baking. Between the huge resort cookie competition, and it being the Christmas season, she thought it would be a big hit. I don’t know where it goes after the new year, but if I don’t pull this off, I’m guessing the new year will have me hunting for a new job.”

  “Cookie baking column,” Lily repeated. “But you can’t bake.”

  “I know.”

  “So why would she even ask you to do that?” Abby asked.

  “Because she saw all the ingredients on the counter, the ones I was buying for Lily to make my cookie swap cookies, and . . . well . . . she might have jumped to a conclusion. And I might have let her.” She shrugged. “I was about to lose my job. In public. After being dumped. In public. I panicked. I said I could do it. She was so excited about it, you should have seen her. I mean, it was a good save, I thought.” Clara looked at her two friends. “I know you guys are busy like crazy, and it’s the holidays and all . . . but I thought, I don’t know, maybe you could help a sister out?”

  Before either could answer, there was a commotion at the entryway. Everyone turned to see a man, tall, good-looking, his dark hair expensively cut, as was his long, exquisitely tailored cashmere coat, nudge his way through the crowd, apparently in a hurry to find someone, or something.

  They weren’t close enough to hear what he was asking, because the bidding war was hot and heavy now, and, to Clara’s surprise, still on Abby’s cookie box. Apparently while they’d chatted about the end of Clara’s personal and professional life as she knew it, the male egos in the room had taken the innocent little bidding war into some kind of pissing contest.

  “Who is that?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know. Movie star looking for his remote set location?” Abby said with a deep, appreciative sigh.

  Clara’s gaze swung back to the entrance when Mr. Movie Star pushed further into the room, shoved his snow-dampened hair back with one hand, stuck his other one in the air, and shouted, “One hundred dollars.”

  The room went from noisy hubbub to pin-drop silence in the space of a breath.

  Marianna, who was used to dealing with a gymnasium full of intractable teens, didn’t bat an eye. She slammed her gavel down and said, “Sold! To the man in the nice coat.”

  “Thank you,” the man said, his voice deep and commanding. “Now, while I have your attention, could someone here be so kind as to direct me to Philadelphia? I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  “I knew it,” Abby said, her voice soft with female appreciation.

  Someone stepped up and helped the guy, as someone else shoved his cookie swap prize under his arm.

  Clara tugged on Abby’s arm. “Oh my God, he just paid a hundred dollars for your gingerbread men!”

  “I wonder if you could get him to give you a personal endorsement for your website,” Lily pondered. “Guy who looks like him would get you some serious traffic.”

  “I’d like to give him a personal endorsement,” Abby murmured, still starry-eyed, as the man left the building as swiftly as he’d come.

  The rest of the evening was comparatively tame and by the time the three of them wedged their way out the front double doors onto the cement steps, the snow had begun.

  “Wow, I guess it’s a good thing this got done when it did. It’s really coming down,” Lily said.

  Clara thought of her plans to head over to the neighboring town of Riverside, and the bookstore there. Specifically the baking section in the bookstore, where she’d hopefully find something so simplistic even she could follow the directions.

  “I better get up the mountain,” Abby said. “Before the roads slick over too badly.”

  “I’ve got two cookie recipes to tweak this evening,” Lily said, then grinned at her friends. “I have a competition to win.”

  “I’ve got to figure out how to make cookies without causing a three-alarm fire.”

  “I just wish I could thank that guy for saving my cookie-baking bacon.” When Clara and Lily looked at her blankly, she clarified, “I figure it’s better some devastatingly handsome guy is out there eating my peppermint penis gingerbread men than the mayor or the reverend.”

  All three of them laughed, t
hen Lily tugged them in. “Group hug.”

  Snow drifted down, dusting their heads, leaving melting crystals on the sleeves of their winter jackets as they all huddled for a quick embrace.

  “Drive safe everyone, especially you, Abs,” Lily said, as they hurried down the community center steps toward their cars. “I worry about you all the way up the mountain.”

  “Driven that road my whole life,” Abby called out as she made the dash for her car. “I’ll be fine.”

  The snow was coming down more heavily now, but Clara didn’t pick up her step. She loved the snow. She loved everything about winter. She waved at her friends as they dashed off, holding their swap winnings over their heads to protect their hair.

  “I’ll e-mail you some starter baking tips,” Lily called out to Clara. “You’ll do great. We’ll all help.”

  “Thanks. You guys are the bestest besties,” Clara called, making it to her little SUV as her friends made their way out of the packed lot. She sat in her car for a moment, gazing at the big brick building, reminding herself that they’d raised money for a good cause, she’d had a few laughs with her best friends . . . and, eventually, folks would stop looking at her with pity in their well-meaning eyes. She looked at the box of indecent gingerbread men sitting on the seat beside her. Right on top of the flier for the big ski resort cookie competition. She thought about her new job as cookie columnist and shook her head, smiling despite the knotted stomach. She’d been friends with Lily and Abby since grade school. They’d shared so many things over the years; teachers, parties, homework, sleepovers, bad dates, worse perms, even mono in the eleventh grade. “And now we’re the three sugar-cookie-baking amigos,” she murmured as she tried to decide what to do with Mrs. Teasdale’s tin of fruitcake, which, of course, Clara had “won.”

  Poor woman was a dear, but she was in her eighties and didn’t quite grasp the cookie swap concept. Every year she made a round fruitcake and wedged it into a cookie tin. And every year, everyone in Pine Mountain tried their best not to be the ones stuck with it at the swap. It was always easy to figure out which one was hers. Clara grunted as she hefted it to the back seat. Damn thing weighed a ton. Ignoring the fruitcake, she fished a gingerbread man out of the box and thought of her friends, of their immediate future, and lifted the stick man in a silent toast. “Here’s to another new adventure.”

  Lily was right about one thing. No matter how challenging things got, they always had each other. But as Clara pulled out of the lot, the thought of heading to her cozy, quiet little house just didn’t thrill her the same way as anticipating the sex date had.

  Girlfriends might be forever . . . but finding a good man, and better yet, keeping him? She snapped the candy off with her teeth and sighed as she crunched it. “Well, it sure beats playing with a peppermint stick.”

  Where There’s Smoke . . .

  DONNA KAUFFMAN

  Chapter 1

  The snow was starting to come down thicker and faster as Clara Parker drove away from the cookie swap . . . and away from her warm, cozy little cottage off Main Street as well. She flipped her windshield wipers to high and clicked on the rear defrosters as she headed over the mountain toward Riverside instead.

  A little snowstorm—or even a not-so-little one—wasn’t going to keep her from her designated mission: Operation Find Cookie Cookbook. It sounded like a rather silly mission to risk life and limb for, but it was precisely her life she was intending to save. Her first Christmas cookie column was due in to her editor in less than forty-eight hours. Her first of twelve consecutive columns, one per day, every day, leading right up to Christmas. Twelve columns. Twelve cookie recipes, complete with handy baking tips. So, she figured it might be a good idea if she, you know, learned how to bake.

  Clara prayed the Riverside bookstore had something with “for Dummies” in the title. “Okay, okay, ‘Really Big Dummies,’ ” she murmured, navigating her way carefully through town on the snow-covered roads. She knew Abby and Lily would happily help her muddle her way through this sudden, unexpected career change, but they had their hands more than full with their own career-oriented baking endeavors at the moment. Besides, she’d gotten herself into her current situation and she needed to prove to her herself, not to mention her boss, that she could get herself back out of it.

  It wasn’t like being the relationship advice columnist for the Pine Mountain Gazette had been her dream job, anyway. It had simply been a means to an end—a stepping stone, she’d hoped, to the type of local-story journalism she’d always wanted to write. So, losing that job wasn’t that big a blow. It was more like a relief, really.

  “Yeah, that’s what it was. A relief.” Clara fished another one of Abby’s anatomically correct gingerbread men cookies from the gift box on the passenger seat. “Who needs to earn money? Keeping a roof over my head and putting food on the table? Highly overrated.” With the engine idling as she sat at the last traffic light before leaving Pine Mountain, Clara studied the perfectly piped white frosting that trimmed the perfect little gingerbread man’s perfect little arms and perfect little legs. Cookies. What on earth had she been thinking, agreeing to write a column on Christmas cookies?

  The only thing she knew less about than how to have a functional, long-term relationship, was how to bake. If her chance to springboard herself from advice columnist to a local features writer had been dicey, then making the same jump from a column about baking when she couldn’t boil water? “Yeah. Awesome move, Clara. Awesome move.”

  Not that she’d had much of a choice. It had been writing a baking column or standing in the unemployment line. She sighed and snapped off a perfectly frosted leg, crunching as she waited for the light to turn green, trying not to panic. But there was no way around it, really. A columnist who wrote about baking would have to actually bake things. Which was really unfortunate, especially when one took into consideration that there should be a law preventing Clara Parker from ever being allowed, much less required, to voluntarily put herself in a position to be handling sharp objects around things that got really, really hot. Just ask the local fire department.

  She finished off the cookie leg and was halfway through the other one as she left the twinkling lights of Pine Mountain behind her. If only eating cookies counted as research. She’d be golden, then. What she needed was a boost of optimism and confidence. She’d gotten away with being an advice columnist for almost three years, hadn’t she? How hard could it be to get away with offering baking tips and recipes for the next ten days? So what if she couldn’t even reheat Chinese take-out without involving the local PMFD? Besides, they’d probably already forgotten about that whole incident with the melted toaster oven.

  Groaning, Clara snapped off a gingerbread arm, then munched her way through that, the other arm, and the head as she navigated the swirling snow and rapidly diminishing visibility down the other side of the mountain. Why, oh why didn’t you talk Fran into a column about something else? Anything else? She spared a quick glare at the protruding peppermint stick remaining on the front of the little cookie man’s torso, right before snapping it off with a decisive crunch. Men. It was all their fault, really, that she was in this predicament in the first place.

  If Pete Mancuso hadn’t been so charming when he’d rescued her runaway grocery cart that afternoon a week ago, offering to buy her a cup of coffee so she could catch her breath after almost being sideswiped by tiny Mrs. Teasdale in her mammoth Lincoln, she wouldn’t have assumed he’d been interested in her. And when he’d bumped into her again later at the local café and invited her to an impromptu lunch where they’d spent the afternoon chatting away about their work and such—surely any woman would have been swept off her feet, right? She could hardly be blamed for thinking his intentions were romantic in nature. How was she supposed to know he was just hoping she’d do a human interest story about his star-on-the-rise career as a local chef made good?

  But then, she of all people should have known better. She was astutely perce
ptive when it came to her friends, always aware of the things going on around her, even able to keep up or at least fake her way through most any conversational topic. All in all a pretty sharp, well . . . cookie. She also happened to be a too-tall, gawky woman who was a borderline klutz—and, okay, so maybe that line was invisible—with a shock of red hair, stick thin to the point that her curves ranked in the minus column, who possessed zero skill in knowing how to maximize any of it. And yet, there she’d sat, being all giddy date girl, while Pete had simply been networking. Of course he had. Because why in the world would a guy who looked like Pete Mancuso ever consider romancing klutzy Clara?

  And, before Pete? Yeah, there had been Stuart Henry, the accountant at the firm in Riverside that did her taxes. He’d been so serious and goal oriented, so . . . focused. Some might have used the term nerd, but to her it had been more of a hot, professorial, bespectacled kind of thing. And he’d always been so intent, concentrating exclusively on her whenever they talked, oblivious to the world around him, making her feel special, as if she were the only woman in the room. So, no one could blame her if it had taken a few dates—all right, maybe a few months’ worth of dates—to realize that he was, in fact, oblivious to the world around him, and that she really was the only woman in the room. The only woman in the room willing to listen to his endless soliloquies on tax law, his utter fascination regarding corporate withholdings, and the excitement of debating the relative merits of resort property ownership versus group timeshares.

  Even more mortifying? She hadn’t been the one to break up with him. Turns out Stuart’s mother didn’t really approve of him dating a redhead. She claimed they were all no-good homewreckers. Which, since Stuart was single, was somewhat confusing, until he explained that his father had run off with a redheaded actuary. All of which meant Clara really wasn’t the only woman in the room after all. Stuart’s mother was also in the room. In fact, Stuart’s mother owned the room. And she wasn’t about to sublet any of it to Clara.