Page 64 of The Sugar and Spice Kitchen

She kissed him back, sliding her hands around his waist, fingers slipping beneath the hem of his shirt to find warm skin. His tongue brushed hers and the taste of him made her dizzy. He kissed like he was savoring her, like every small sound she made was something precious he wanted to collect.

Time stretched. There was only the steady rhythm of his breathing, the faint scratch of his stubble, the way his fingers flexed against her back like he was fighting the urge to pull her even closer. When he finally drew back, it was only far enough to rest his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling.

Emily could feel his restraint—the tight coil of it—and she understood it, because she was holding herself back with the same fierce effort. This man had been her enemy for so long that softness between them felt dangerous.

He exhaled shakily.

“I should go,” he said, voice low, glancing around the kitchen like it might betray him.

Emily knew exactly what he meant. This kitchen still carried the ghosts of their past—the frantic heat, the cold tile, the way they’d torn into each other without thinking. It would be so easy to fall back into that. To let anger and lust take the wheel again and pretend this new thing between them had never happened.

But they were past that now. This felt deeper. Scarier. Like the beginning of a chapter neither of them had seen coming.

“Good night, Emily,” he said. His voice was rough at the edges.

She swallowed hard. “Good night, Cole.”

He straightened, releasing her slowly, as if it pained him. And walked back out front to where Captain waited, still not giving up his search for Nutmeg. He paused at the door, and for a second she thought he might say more—might acknowledge the earthquake that had just shifted the ground beneath them.

He didn’t. He simply looked at her with an open, unguarded expression she hadn’t seen on his face in years. Then he was gone, the door pulling shut behind him. A rush of cold air swept in, then vanished.

Emily stood alone in her bakery.

The coffee machine beeped, but she didn’t move.

She pressed her fingers to her lips, still tingling from his kiss.

It wasn’t the kiss she’d been expecting. She had braced for something hot and desperate—another collision like the pantry floor—something they could both dismiss later as a lapse in judgment, a one-time loss of control between two people who couldn’t stand each other.

This had been nothing like that.

This had been deliberate. Careful. Cole chose to kiss her like she was something worth treasuring, and it had undone her more thoroughly than any amount of anger ever could.

She needed to make sense of it.

Cole had fixed her car. He’d done it quickly, without ceremony, and without making her feel stupid for not knowing about the cable. Maybe it was that. Gratitude, making her feel something unexpected, making her mistake it for something warmer.

Except she’d been grateful to people before and not felt like this.

He’d shown up for this town. That was the other thing she kept coming back to. He’d been here every single day since the storm, door to door, early to late, organizing and lifting and fixing and showing up. She’d watched him do it. And the thing that had gotten under her skin was that he hadn’t done it for credit. He hadn’t done it because it was his job, though it was. He’d just done it because that was the type of person he was. He helped people in need without expecting anything in return.

She didn’t know what to do with that.

She had spent years slotting Cole Alders into one neat, safe category: enemy.

But the evidence no longer fit the label. Maybe it hadn’t for a while, and she simply hadn’t wanted to examine it.

Because if she looked—really looked—she would have to face the next terrifying question:

What if she had been wrong about him all along?

TWENTY-TWO

COLE

Saturday, December 19th

The next morning, Cole sat on the edge of his mattress and looked at the floor and thought about not entering the bake-off.