Page 22 of The Gingerbread Bakery (Dream Harbor #5)

Mac laughed as they both exited the freezer, closing it behind them.

‘That image has saved me from a lot of embarrassing moments,’ he said, stooping down to rummage in some of the bottom cabinets.

Annie forced herself to not check out his ass as he did so or think about the embarrassing moments he was talking about it.

‘Bingo!’ he said, holding up a cookie sheet in one hand and a big metal bowl in the other.

‘Great! Now we just need ingredients.’

‘That one, I know.’ He got up from his crouch and opened a door beside the refrigerator, revealing a small pantry.

He pulled out flour, salt and sugar and then looked to Annie for guidance.

Lucky for him, she happened to have her gingerbread-cookie recipe memorized and his mom had a well-stocked pantry.

Before long, they had everything they needed laid out on the counter and were working side by side to measure and mix.

It was nice, peaceful even, except for when Mac’s arm would brush against hers, sending electricity tingling through her body all over again, but other than that disconcerting side effect, baking cookies with Mac was fun.

‘You’ve really never made gingerbread men before?’

‘No, my mom’s not much of a baker and my dad pretty much never comes in here unless it's to eat. I used to bake with my grandfather sometimes. Actually,’ he said, his voice suddenly dipping quieter. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

‘You two were close?’

‘Yeah, he lived with us for a bit before he…’ Mac cleared his throat, ‘before he died.’

Annie let her shoulder brush his and kept it pressed to his side. It felt like she'd done the right thing when Mac leaned back against her.

‘My grandpa was one of my first customers,’ she said.

‘You charged your grandfather for cookies? That’s pretty ruthless, Annabelle,’ he said with a smile in his voice.

‘He insisted! He loved my thumbprint cookies and told me I should sell them. So I did, and he was the first person to come to the little stand I had set up in front of our house.’ It was the first time she had felt like she was really good at something, and it was the first time she’d made someone else feel good by making them something.

She’d loved the feeling. It snowballed from there.

She begged her mother to let her bake any chance she got.

She worked hard at it, wanting to give her family and friends the best. She still did.

‘He gave me twenty dollars for that first cookie.’

‘Damn.’

‘I know, he really set my expectations for the profits I could make far too high,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Okay, now we add the most important ingredient.’

‘Love?’ Mac asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Annie shook her head in amusement. ‘No! Ginger.’

‘Right, of course that makes more sense.’

He dumped in the spice and mixed per Annie's instructions.

‘Your grandpa’s gone too?’ he asked as the dough came together.

‘Yeah, for a few years now.’

‘That sucks,’ Mac said, and oddly it was the most comforting thing anyone had said to her about the death of her grandpa. It did suck.

Annie dumped the dough out onto the counter and started rolling. ‘It does,’ she said. ‘He was one of the few people who really got me, you know?’

‘All those siblings, and your grandpa was the only one who got you?’

‘That's the thing,’ Annie said, handing Mac a cookie cutter. They were making gingerbread hearts and stars because those were the only cookie cutters they could find. ‘There’s so many of us. You kind of get pigeonholed. Like we each get our one thing that defines us, and no one really focuses on anything else.’

‘That makes sense,’ Mac said, pressing hearts into the dough. ‘What’s your one thing?’

Annie shrugged. ‘Somewhere along the line, I became the smart one, I guess. The one who was good at school. Maddie’s the athlete, Charlotte’s the baby, Brian’s the only boy. Evelyn’s the oldest, so she gets to be the leader, and Natalie is the musician, the sensitive one.’

‘Being good at school is not the worst thing.’

‘It’s not a bad thing at all, but it’s not the only thing and, I don’t know, my grandpa was the one who paid attention to the other stuff like baking.’

At least he was until Annie took over her parents’ kitchen. There was no ignoring her baking anymore. Her grandpa’s joy over her cookies had started her down this road but it was all Annie now. She was determined to be the best baker in town.

Mac nudged her shoulder and this time Annie leaned into him.

‘Okay, what now?’ Mac said, assessing all the hearts and stars filling the cookie sheet.

‘Now we bake.’ Annie slid the baking sheet into the oven while Mac grabbed a bag of potato chips from the cabinet.

‘A snack for while we wait,’ he said with a grin.

Annie joined him at the table, reaching into the bag.

‘Sour cream and onion. My favorite.’ She popped a chip into her mouth with a smile. ‘I guess we're done with the kissing part of the evening.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Well, sour cream and onion… Our breaths aren’t exactly going to be fresh after this.’

Mac grinned. ‘I would still kiss you even if your breath was a little sour-cream-and-onion-y.’

Annie scrunched up her face in disgust even as she secretly thought that was very cute of him to say.

‘What? Is sour-cream-and-onion breath a deal breaker for you, Annabelle?’ Mac teased.

‘I don't know. Probably!’ she said, although at this point, she would kiss Mac even if he had a horn growing out of his head, but he didn’t need to know that.

‘Well, what is a dealbreaker for you?’ he asked, leaning back in his chair, studying her with dark eyes under those pretty eyelashes.

She shrugged, not able to come up with anything clever under the intensity of his stare.

‘Okay, what about this?’ he said, leaning forward, really getting into it now. ‘Let’s say you really like a guy and things are going well, but then you go to the beach, and it turns out he has gross feet. Dealbreaker?’

‘Gross feet?’ Annie asked with a laugh.

‘Yeah! Like gnarled toes with weird toenails.’

‘Ugh, gross. Is this your way of telling me that you have weird feet?’

‘No way! I have very pretty feet,’ he said, plopping them in Annie's lap. ‘Go ahead, pull off a sock and find out.’ He wiggled his toes, and Annie couldn't help the giggles spilling out of her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed quite so much.

‘I am not pulling your sock off!’ she said, trying to push his feet off her.

Mac leaned forward and yanked off his sock like he was revealing a prize she had won in a very strange game show.

‘See? Very pretty.’ He wiggled his toes some more and Annie ran a finger up the arch of his foot.

Mac squealed and pulled his foot back.

‘You’re ticklish!’ Annie exclaimed like she had revealed some deep dark secret, but she liked learning new things about Mac.

‘Of course I’m ticklish on my feet! Who isn’t? And let’s just pretend I never made that noise.’

Annie shook her head, laughter bubbling out of her. ‘Oh no, I’m going to remember that high-pitch squeak for the rest of my life.’

‘Shoot.’ Mac put his head in his hands. ‘That plan really backfired.’

‘And what plan was that? To seduce me with your pretty feet?’

He looked up at her with a wicked grin. ‘That was exactly my plan,’ he said. ‘Until you foiled it with those sneaky fingers.’

Annie scoffed. ‘You were the one putting your feet in my lap! What was I supposed to do?’

Mac shook his head with a smile, grabbing more chips. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘dealbreakers?’ He asked like he really wanted to know, but what did it matter what Annie’s dealbreakers were?

‘I don’t know. I guess I would want someone who was there for me. Someone to count on.’

Neither of them brought up the fact that Mac was still planning to leave at the end of the month. The ultimate dealbreaker.

‘And they can’t cheat at board games. That would be a huge problem,’ Annie added.

‘Ooh… I guess that takes me out of the running. I’m a notorious cheater,’ Mac said, the playfulness back in his voice.

‘Well, that settles that, I guess,’ Annie said. ‘What about you? What are your dealbreakers?’

Mac shrugged. ‘Probably the foot thing.’

Annie tossed the dish towel at his head with a laugh before getting up to pull the cookies out of the oven.

Mac followed her, trying to grab a cookie straight off the tray. Annie moved it out of his reach.

‘They need to cool,’ she said. ‘You’re going to burn yourself. Not to mention they don't taste as good when they're hot.’

Mac put his hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll wait. You’re the cookie boss.’

Annie moved the cookies from the tray to the cooling rack and as soon as she was done, Mac had her pinned against the kitchen counter.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked with a breathy laugh.

‘I wanted you to know I don't have any dealbreakers with you, Annie.’ His voice was a whisper against her cheek and suddenly it didn’t matter that she was still wearing his mom’s plaid oven mitt or that maybe her breath had a hint of sour cream and onion.

All that mattered was that Mac kissed her. Immediately.

His lips met hers and Annie sighed in relief.

‘I love that little noise you make when I kiss you,’ he said, running the tip of his nose along her cheek.

‘You do?’

‘Oh yeah. You might remember that embarrassing squeal I made but I’m never going to forget your little sighs.’

It felt like they were talking about the end of all this, and Annie didn’t want to talk about that.

Not yet. So she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him again and again, sure that she would never get her fill because somehow the boy she’d thought was just a dumb jock was actually a sweet man who could make her laugh and who loved his mom and memories of baking with his grandpa and who still had a stuffed polar bear on his bed.

Everything she learned about Mac made her want to hold on to him for a little bit longer.