Page 5 of The Sugar and Spice Kitchen

And Emily knew being snowed in with Cole was far more dangerous than the blizzard outside…

TWO

COLE

Saturday, December 12th

Cole had been in worse situations. None immediately came to mind.

Emily was a five-alarm fire all on her own.

She stood near the front table with both hands planted on her hips, flour dusting the sleeve of her sweater, her blonde hair half-slipping from its knot. The cheeks of her heart-shaped face were flushed from anger, and Cole was aware of the muscle ticking in his jaw as he forced himself to unclench his teeth.

“We are not staying here together,” Emily repeated.

Cole took in the room automatically. The back door was buried. The front door had six feet of drift packed against it. That left the front window. It was a massive sheet of plate glass stretching nearly wall to wall. Above it, the roof groaned under what had to be a thousand pounds of snow. If he broke the glass, the wind would blast straight in, bringing the weight of the snow crashing down on their heads.

“You got a better idea?” he said.

“No,” she said, “but I’ll figure something out.”

Cole was worried she would.

Emily Whitaker was resourceful. Imaginative. Which would have been admirable if those qualities hadn’t spent most of their childhood making his life significantly more complicated. He could practically see the wheels turning behind those sharp blue eyes—calculating, assessing, looking for an angle he’d missed.

Her gaze slid past the blocked door to the wide display window beside it, then dropped to the chair at the nearest table.

“Bad idea.”

“Says you.”

“Says common sense. You destroy that window, we’ll both be dead before rescue arrives.”

He crossed to the wall ovens and checked the dials. “Suppose that would be just like you, running headfirst into a storm, consequences be damned.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The lights fluttered above as if on the brink of failure.

“You’re reckless,” he said, keeping his voice even. “You act first and think about it after, if at all.”

“I am not reckless.”

“Fourth grade. Field trip to the community park. Whose idea was it to build a raft and take it out on the lake?”

“You’re kidding me, right? You’re bringing up a field trip from almost twenty years ago?” Emily looked around, as if she couldn’t be the only person witnessing this.

Cole only stared back.

“I was using my imagination. Maybe you would’ve understood that if you weren’t such a snitch.”

“A snitch?” Cole’s eyebrows creased into a deep V. “If I hadn’t told Mrs. Engles what you were up to”—his voice rose a level—“half the class could’ve drowned.”

The lights flickered once more.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Nobody was going to drown.”

“You don’t know that.” He pressed on. “If you didn’t drown, you would’ve ended up with hypothermia or, knowing you, stranded in the middle of the lake.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Emily said, sweet as sugar. “If we’d needed a paddle, we could’ve just used the one stuck up your ass.”