Page 3 of His Big Holiday Firefighter (Bigger Is Best #2)

CHAPTER THREE

The next morning, sitting at the back of the shop, I sorted through a box of my grandmother’s recipe cards.

I’d arrived early, after a fitful night’s sleep in my bed at the Pine Ridge Inn.

I told myself it was to prep the space properly, but I found myself drawn to the familiar handwriting—Chinese characters mixed with English notes, decades of baking wisdom recorded in fading ink.

Each card was worn at the edges from years of use, some spotted with butter stains or dusted with permanent traces of flour.

“Add more ginger when moon is full,” I read aloud, smiling despite myself. “Cardamom cookies need happy thoughts to bake properly.”

Nai Nai had always insisted certain recipes only worked under specific conditions.

I’d dismissed it as superstition once I got to culinary school.

But holding these cards in the quiet morning light, I wondered if I’d been too quick to choose technical precision over whatever magic she had woven into her baking.

The bell chimed, and I quickly tucked the cards away.

Noah stood in the doorway that separated the front of the shop from the kitchen.

Silhouetted by the morning sun, his firefighter’s jacket was thrown over one arm and a paper bag was in his other hand.

The winter light caught his hair, turning it to burnished copper, and I had to remind myself to breathe.

“You’re early.” I tried to make my voice sound professional rather than caught off-guard by how good he looked in a simple henley and well-worn jeans.

“Brought breakfast.” Noah held up the bag, his smile warm enough to chase away the morning chill. “Mrs. Wu’s morning buns. She still makes them every day, even though they’re not as good as—” He stopped, looking apologetic. “Sorry. I know it must be weird, hearing about your grandmother from...”

“No, it’s...” I accepted the bag, our fingers brushing. “Thank you.”

I placed the food on the desk, out of the way.

We set up the rest of his supplies in a comfortable silence.

The equipment found natural homes on the counters as if it had always belonged there.

I tried not to notice how domestic it felt, or how easily Noah seemed to fit into the space.

Even his ancient KitchenAid looked right at home, its scratched surface somehow perfect against the worn wooden countertops of Lee’s Family Bakery.

Noah rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were powerful and marked with a few small scars that I definitely wasn’t staring at. “So, what are we making today?”

I pulled out my notebook. “I thought we could try something traditional with a twist. My grandmother had this orange-cardamom shortbread?—”

“The one with the brown butter?” His eyes lit up with recognition. “She used to make those at Christmas. Said the secret was browning the butter exactly three and a half minutes.”

I stared at him, something between jealousy and regret twisting in my chest. “She never shared that recipe with anyone.”

Noah’s cheeks pinked, making his freckles stand out.

“She, uh, used to let me help sometimes. After my mom got sick. Said I had good instincts for butter.” He shrugged, a nervous gesture that shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was.

“I think she just knew I needed somewhere to be that wasn’t a hospital room. ”

Something warm and uncomfortable flooded through me.

I pictured Noah here in this kitchen with my grandmother, Nai Nai Lee, learning her secrets while I’d been busy building a career across the country.

It wasn’t jealousy. It was guilt. I should have been the one by her side, learning the cherished baking secrets she held so dear.

“Here,” I snapped, pulling out ingredients with more force than necessary. “Show me your technique.”

Noah quirked an eyebrow at the mild double entendre.

How was I ever going to survive working with this burly firefighter? He undoubtedly had plenty of techniques I was more than willing to explore, but I couldn’t fixate on that now.

He moved to the stove with a surprising grace for someone his size, handling the butter with confident ease. His hands were steady and sure, and I found myself watching them instead of the skillet.

“The key is listening.” Noah's eyes focused on the melting butter. “There’s this moment when the sound changes, just before—” He tilted the pan slightly, the golden liquid swirling. “The bubbling gets quieter, and you can smell when it’s ready. Like toasted hazelnuts, but lighter. There.”

He pulled the pan off the heat at exactly the right moment. The butter was perfectly browned and fragrantly nutty. I leaned in despite myself, our shoulders touching as I inhaled the aroma.

“Perfect,” I admitted.

His answering smile was almost shy. “I had an excellent teacher.”

We fell into a rhythm after that, moving around each other in the kitchen like we’d done it for years. His self-taught methods were unorthodox but effective, and I learned a few new tricks even as I shared my own technical expertise.

“No, like this,” I said, reaching around him to adjust his grip on the rolling pin.

“You want to keep the pressure even.” His back was warm against my chest, and I could feel the slight catch in his breath.

The position brought us close enough that I could see the dusting of flour in his hair, could sense the solid strength of him.

“Show me again?” His voice was low, almost husky.

I swallowed hard, hyper-aware of everywhere we touched. “You just?—”

The shrill tone of an emergency alert cut through the moment like a knife. Noah stiffened, already reaching for his phone, and I felt the loss of contact like a physical chill.

“Structure fire on Maple.” His expression shifted to professional focus with impressive speed. “I have to?—”

I stepped back from him. “Go. Of course.”

He was already moving, shrugging into his jacket with practiced efficiency. He paused at the door, snow swirling around him like he was stepping into another world entirely. “James, I?—”

“Be careful,” I said, the words carrying more weight than I’d intended.

Noah’s smile was quick but warm, softening his now-serious expression. “Save me some cookies.”

Then he was gone, leaving me alone in a kitchen that suddenly felt too big and too quiet. Another pan of butter was browning on the stove, filling the air with its nutty warmth, but all I could think about was the way my hands still tingled where they’d touched his.

I finished the shortbread alone, each step seeming somehow incomplete. When I finally pulled the perfectly golden cookies from the oven, I found myself waiting for approval from someone who wasn’t there.

My phone buzzed. The real estate agent again, with another interested buyer. I stared at the message, then at the cookies cooling on the rack. They were technically perfect, exactly the way I’d been trained to make them. Even spacing, uniform color, precise edges.

So why did they feel like they were missing something essential?

The answer came in a memory of Nai Nai’s voice, gentle but firm. “Baking isn’t about perfection, little dumpling. It’s about love. And love is never perfect—that’s what makes it beautiful.”

Outside, sirens wailed in the distance. I moved to the window at the front of the shop, searching the snowy street as if I could somehow see all the way to Maple.

The sky was darkening with more snow, and somewhere out there, Noah was doing his actual job—the important one that had nothing to do with cookies or Christmas competitions.

“He’ll be fine,” I told myself firmly, turning back to the kitchen and my cooling cookies. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. Just a few more days.”

But as I began cleaning up, I couldn’t help noticing how empty the bakery felt with only one person in it, or how the silence seemed to echo with all the things I was trying not to feel.

The recipe cards caught my eye again, and I picked up the one for orange-cardamom shortbread.

At the bottom, in my grandmother’s careful hand, was a note I’d missed before.

Remember: cookies baked alone are just food. Cookies baked with love are magic.

I set the card down carefully, trying to ignore the way my hands shook slightly. I just had to get through the next few days without doing anything stupid, like falling for a small-town firefighter who knew my grandmother’s recipes better than I did.

But as I wrapped up Noah’s share of the cookies, carefully placing them in one of Nai Nai’s old tins, I had a sinking feeling it might already be too late.