Page 7 of Coming for Her Brother’s Best Friend (Coming For Christmas #4)

HAYES

The storm hadn’t just arrived. It had taken over.

Snow fell in heavy, relentless sheets while the wind whipped across the lake hard enough to make the walls of the lodge groan.

The world outside the windows had narrowed to a blanket of white noise and motion.

There was no way to make out the ground or sky.

It was all a big blur with no sign of stopping.

A plow growled past the front drive, carving ruts that filled back in before the taillights disappeared.

Guests huddled in the lobby, watching the weather like it was a tiger pacing just outside the glass.

I sipped from a mug of lukewarm coffee and scanned the room until I found Sidney.

She stood near the concierge desk, her phone pressed to her ear and the clipboard balanced on her hip.

She gestured to a bellman with one hand, scribbled something with the other, and answered questions from the mother of the bride.

Her voice stayed even, but her eyes seemed too bright.

I’d seen that look on guys who were ten seconds from dropping but refused to admit it.

“I need them here in the next hour or they won’t acclimate in time. Yes, I know the roads are bad. Please tell me you’re already on your way.” She paused. “Then you’re already going to be late.”

She hung up, blew out a slow breath, and for half a heartbeat didn’t move.

I moved toward her. “Which fire is this one?”

She didn’t glance up. “The flowers for the wedding arch.”

“Are they still coming?”

“Supposedly.” She flipped through her notes, muttering under her breath. “The quartet’s grounded in Spokane, the power’s flickering in the east wing, and—” Her phone rang again. “Bluebird Events.”

I watched her face go still. “Wait… what do you mean, slid off the road? Is the driver okay? Where did it happen?”

Her clipboard wobbled in her grip.

“Highway 93,” she said, her voice too calm. “Twenty miles south. The cake truck’s in a ditch.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No.” She swallowed. “But they’re stuck waiting on a tow. If the cake shifts, it’s ruined. And even if it survives, it won’t get here in time.”

I set my coffee on the counter. “I’ll go.”

That got her attention. “What?”

“I’ll go get it.”

Her head shook before she even thought about it. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t just… this isn’t some sheet cake from the local grocery store. It’s five tiers with sugared cranberries and spun-sugar snowflakes and?—”

“It’s still just cake,” I said. “A very expensive cake. In a ditch. That you can’t leave to rescue.”

Her jaw clenched. “If it’s ruined?—”

“Then it’s ruined whether you’re here or not. But if you go and the florist shows up or the power cuts or Harper needs you?—”

Her shoulders slumped, just for a second, like she was about to buckle under the weight of everything that had gone wrong. Then she handed me her phone.

“The driver’s name is Lily. She’s with Mountain Delight Catering Company. If you get it here in one piece, it goes on the table by the dance floor. There’s a floor plan on the back of my clipboard.”

“Got it.”

Her eyes met mine. Fierce, exhausted, and full of something that made my chest go tight. “Please don’t drop it.”

“I’m not planning on it.”

Twenty minutes later, my truck idled in front of the resort, the defrost blasting while the wipers battled the snow. I threw a shovel, two ratchet straps, and a roll of moving blankets into the bed. Sidney hovered in the doorway like she might chain herself to the bumper to stop me.

“You should be in there running the show,” I told her. “Not out here getting frostbite.”

“You should be in there pretending to be a normal groomsman,” she shot back, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders.

“I never claimed to be normal.”

For a second her face cracked—the tension in her eyes softening, her mouth twitching like she almost smiled. Then she straightened. “Call me when you have it.”

“I will.”

I climbed in, shut the door, and eased the truck out into the white. Driving down the mountain was like trying to navigate inside of a snow globe someone wouldn’t stop shaking. The wipers thumped their slow, tired rhythm. The heater roared. My knuckles were white on the wheel.

I told myself this was about the cake. About the mission. About buying Sidney enough breathing room to keep everything else from collapsing. But the truth sat like a weight in my chest:

I’d spent ten years running toward the fight, and this was the first time I’d done it for one person.

Sidney Kincaid hadn’t asked me for a thing, and I was out here, anyway.

Lily was pacing next to her truck when I pulled off on the shoulder. Her van tilted nose-down in the ditch like it had given up. Snow had buried it halfway to the bumper.

She waved at me the second my boots hit the ground. “Thank God. I thought they were sending a tow, not—whatever you are.”

“The tow truck is stuck in Columbia Falls,” I said, shoving the shovel under the front tire. “We’re improvising.”

“I don’t think you can just—” she started, but stopped when I got the wheel to budge with one solid heave. “Oh. Okay.”

Between the shovel, four-letter words, and some creative use of the ratchet straps, I managed to winch the van far enough out of the drift to get the back doors open.

The cake didn’t look like a cake at all since each layer had its own box. Lily held her breath as she opened them one at a time. I looked over her shoulder, not really sure what I was checking for except to make sure none of them had been completely destroyed.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Lily whispered. “There are a few cracks, but I can make it work as long as you can get it there without causing any more damage.”

“I’ll do my best.”

It took both of us to move all the boxes to the back seat of my truck. Lily wedged blankets around the boxes and then buckled herself in the middle. By the time we got it loaded, I couldn’t feel my hands, and the storm had picked up. Snow hammered down in thick, sideways sheets.

The drive back was slower, every curve iced over and hiding trouble. When the lodge’s peaked roof came into view through the whiteout, my shoulders were locked tight from gripping the wheel.

Sidney was waiting at the loading dock like she’d been rooted there the entire time. The second she saw the truck, her shoulders dropped with relief. Then I opened the door. Lily crawled out, being careful not to cause any more damage to the big box that had been crushed.

Sidney let out a groan that sounded like an animal in pain. “Oh… God.”

“It’s alive,” I said. “Mostly.”

Lily grabbed one of the smaller boxes. “Show me where it needs to go. I brought extra frosting so I’ll be able to make some repairs.”

Sidney didn’t speak for a full three seconds. Then she snapped back to life. “It goes on the table by the window. I’ve got some extra greenery, and we can grab some cranberries from the bar garnish kit.”

We loaded the boxes onto a cart and wheeled it inside. Once all the boxes had been opened, Sidney and Lily stood next to each other, evaluating what was left of the cake like it was a puzzle that needed to be solved.

“We can build up the bottom layer with extra frosting and turn it so the smashed part is in the back. If we cut the light on that side and add some greenery…”

“Are you sure it won’t collapse?” I asked.

“Nothing collapses on my watch,” she said without looking up, her voice as sharp as broken glass.

And then the two of them started to move.

Lily plucked cracked sugar snowflakes off the sides and patched the cracks with frosting from a bag she pulled from her pocket.

Sidney tucked sprigs of evergreen and clusters of sugared cranberries around the edges until it looked intentional.

A server brought a strand of fairy lights from a tree in the lounge, and Sidney wove them around the base like she’d planned it that way all along.

Twenty minutes later, the wrecked cake had been revived, reimagined, and redesigned. Lily headed toward the kitchen to make sure no one threw away the boxes. Sidney stepped back, her eyes still checking for mistakes, and sugar streaked across her knuckles. “It’ll survive.”

“It looks a hell of a lot better than it did,” I said.

Her laugh came out shaky. “Don’t tell Lily that.”

“I won’t tell anyone anything.”

She looked at me then, and the tension in her eyes cracked, just for a second, letting something raw and bright show through. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” I said, awed by the lengths she’d go to for someone else’s happiness.

Watching her pour herself out for everyone else made me want to be the one who could give her the same attention.

She deserved more than stress and sleepless nights, more than carrying everyone’s happiness like it was her job to keep the whole damn world smiling.

She deserved more than she ever asked for, and I wasn’t sure what to do about how much I wanted to be the one to give it to her.