Page 15 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Fifteen

Seven-thirty on a Saturday morning meant the square was filling fast for the Showcase.

Vendors called out greetings, their breath making white puffs in the December air.

The courthouse clock tower cast its shadow across the striped tents that had sprouted overnight like mushrooms after rain.

The brass quartet was warming up near the gazebo, fighting against the wind that funneled between Main and Cedar.

Sweet Delights had scored the corner spot where foot traffic naturally converged from three directions, because of course they did.

Their setup looked like something from a cooking show, six pristine ovens in perfect formation, professional heat lamps creating a bubble of warmth.

Employees in matching pink scarves were already handing out free hot chocolate in branded cups, the sweet smell drifting across the square.

Foster’s Bakeshop booth sat tucked against the south wall of the square, right where the wind hit hardest. The striped canopy above her head strained against its ropes with each gust, canvas snapping like sails.

Dead center sat Maggie Foster’s antique cast-iron oven, black and stubborn as an old dog that refused to move from its favorite spot. Ice crystals had formed overnight on its door, creating fern patterns.

She ran her hand over the cutting board’s scarred surface, feeling the history beneath her palm.

Each mark told a story. Maggie’s determined chopping from 1878, the deep grooves from walnuts for that first Foster’s Christmas.

Her great-grandmother’s careful work during the Depression when every ingredient had to count, Gram’s energetic mincing from the seventies, and her own enthusiastic nine-year-old attempts that had resulted in more mess than cookies when she’d been convinced that chopping faster meant better results.

This board had seen every Foster’s hope and failure. But today was the last showcase.

On December 15th, the bakery would be no more.

The recipe card lay flat on the wood, water-stained and fragile enough that she worried the wind might tear it.

Takes two hearts. Worth the trouble.

Just like Sam and Maggie. The story every Foster grew up hearing. The tale of how their ancestors’ mail-order marriage became a true love story because of these cookies.

By the stove, Wyatt coaxed the kindling as if he had all the time in the world. Nothing about him seemed hurried or nervous, unlike Eliza, with anxiety carving a deep hole in her belly. No man outside her family had ever stood this solid beside her.

He knelt in the cold, blackening his hands for her dream, and her heart melted.

She wanted more than fire in that stove. She wanted him to keep choosing her, here, now, the way he was choosing to stay at the matchbox until it sparked.

“Got it!” Wyatt straightened, pride in his eyes for the tiny flame in the firebox.

“You’re amazing.” She clasped her hands and bestowed upon this handsome, sweet man her biggest smile. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you, Eliza,” he said, his voice husky, and his eyelids lowering as he took her in.

A family paused at their booth, slowing their trek toward Sweet Delights.

Everything about them screamed money, from the father’s designer parka to the mother’s fresh salon highlights that probably cost more than Eliza’s monthly utilities.

Their kids wore matching scarves that looked hand-knit by someone who charged triple digits for the privilege.

“Is it supposed to smoke like that?” The father frowned at the wisps escaping from the oven door.

Eliza pulled up what she called her customer smile. Bright enough to seem genuine, not so bright it looked maniacal. “Old stoves take a few minutes to get going. We’ll have fresh cookies soon.”

But the mother was already herding her family toward Sweet Delights, her hand on the small of her daughter’s back. “Look, honey, they have hot chocolate, and it’s warm over there.”

Another family lost to corporate convenience. Each rejection felt personal, like they were walking away from six generations of Foster women, from love stories baked into cookies, from everything that mattered.

Harsh laughter caught her attention. Two guys in Sweet Delights caps stood near the coffee truck, pointing at her booth like it was the punchline to a joke.

“That thing even work? Looks ready for the scrap heap.”

“Just like the bakery,” his buddy added, loud enough to carry. “Heard they’re going under. About time. That place has been circling the drain since the old lady died.”

Wyatt straightened to his full height. Soot marked his jaw where he’d wiped his face with the back of his hand. His palms were black from working the fire. He placed one palm on the oven door, like it was something precious.

“This stove,” he said, raising his voice, “witnessed the night true love was born in Foster’s Bakeshop.”

The mockers stopped mid-laugh. Others drifted closer, pulled by something in his tone that promised a story worth hearing.

“It was December 1878. Maggie Hart had come from St. Louis three months earlier to marry Sam Foster, a man she’d never met. Mail-order bride, they called it, though that makes it sound simpler than it was.” Wyatt patted the oven.

“That must have been weird for her,” someone said.

Wyatt nodded. “Maggie was ready to leave. Her husband was a kind man, but a total stranger. She had her trunk half-packed. She was homesick for city life, for her family, for anything familiar. Sam was the town doctor, a quiet man who didn’t know how to say what he felt.

They’d been living like polite strangers in that tiny apartment above the bakery. ”

The apartment where Eliza now lived. She would have to move soon. And she had no idea where she would go. For the first time, she understood the stark loneliness Maggie must have felt.

The square went quiet around them. Even the brass quartet stopped playing, their instruments hanging loose in their hands. A few women exchanged glances. Many knew the feeling of being lonely in their own home.

“The town’s first-ever Christmas dance was scheduled the next day.

Maggie wanted to contribute something special, something that would make her feel like she belonged.

She created her own original recipe. The Yuletide Cookie.

” His voice rose and feel the narrative, spelling a compelling story.

“Complicated recipe. It called for two people to make it work properly, but she was too proud to ask Sam for help, and he was too uncertain to offer.”

More people gathered, forming a half-circle around their booth. Eliza’s throat clogged with feeling. The way he spoke, like he’d watched it happen, like he’d been standing in the corner of that kitchen in 1878.

And then, with a start, Eliza realized that in Wyatt’s timeline, Sam and Maggie’s love story was happening right this very minute.

There was no way he could know this. He was either guessing or making the whole thing up.

“Sam found her at midnight in the bakery kitchen. Third batch ruined, tears on her cheeks. Any other man might have told her to come to bed, to forget it. But Sam Foster rolled up his sleeves and said, ‘Show me what to do.’”

Wyatt’s eyes found Eliza’s, and his smile landed right in the middle of her heart.

“They worked until dawn. Batch after batch, getting closer each time. Sam’s hands steadying the bowl while she mixed. Maggie guiding while he rolled the dough thin enough to see through. Their two hearts learning to beat in rhythm.”

A soft murmur ran through the crowd.

Wyatt paused for a beat before continuing. “By the time the sun came up, Sam and Maggie had three dozen perfect Yuletide cookies and something even more important. They had each other. A true love match. Maggie unpacked her trunk that day and never thought about leaving again.”

He paused in his narration to crouch at the firebox, and this time, when he adjusted the damper, the fire caught properly. Orange light danced across his face, transforming him into something timeless.

Mesmerized, no one moved.

He stood, dusting his hands on his jeans, leaving black streaks.

“Every year after that, Sam and Maggie made these cookies together. Even when he had to leave for medical emergencies, babies don’t wait for convenient times, he came back, sometimes in the middle of the night, to help her finish.

They vowed to each other to always have Yuletide cookies for Christmas. ”

The crowd had swelled to sixty, maybe seventy. People abandoned their path to Sweet Delights, drawn by a love story that mattered more than free samples.

Eliza picked up the story, filling in with what she knew from family legend.

“Sam and Maggie kept that vow. Year after year, those cookies came from this stove. Folks counted on it, the way you count on Christmas morning showing up right on time. They baked these cookies every year until they passed within a week of each other in 1918.”

“And these are the cookies we’re baking today,” Wyatt finished. “Stay for our live demonstration of how the Yuletide cookies were created.”

She picked up the lemon and began grating, the bright oils bursting into the morning air. Her wrist protested, but she kept going. Sam and Maggie had done this. Her great-great-grandparents. Her great-grandparents. Gram and Grampa Edgar. Her parents. Every Foster love story started with baking.

Wyatt measured flour, and though he didn’t look at her, she felt his presence like the stove’s heat. When she reached for the honey, he already had it, warmed in his hands, and ready.

“Like Sam and Maggie,” someone in the crowd murmured.

They worked the dough together. She folded; he braced the bowl. He pressed; she guided the edges. Their movements fell into the same rhythm Maggie and Sam had found that December night, the dance that saved a marriage.

“Thinner,” Wyatt murmured near her ear, his breath warm against her neck. “Thin enough to read the grain of the wood through it. That’s what Sam learned that night.”

She leaned into the rolling pin, putting her weight behind it, and she could feel them, all the Foster women who’d stood here, all the Foster men who’d loved them enough to stand beside them.

Such generational devotion was a rare and precious thing.

The dough stretched translucent, fragile as new love, strong as kept promises.

The filling bubbled dark in the copper pot.

“Sam nearly burned the first batch of filling,” Wyatt said, talking to the crowd but looking at Eliza.

“Too busy watching Maggie to watch the pot. She laughed, the first real laugh he’d heard from her.

That’s when he knew he’d spend the rest of his life trying to make her laugh again. ”

“Now,” Eliza said.

His eyes met hers, and they moved as one person with four hands. He tipped the pot while she spread the hot filling. Their fingers met at the seam, pressing together to seal the dough.

“That’s it,” someone said. “That’s exactly it.”

The crowd pressed closer. Eighty people now, maybe more. Even the Sweet Delights regional manager, Betsy Houston, stood watching from across the square.

While the cookies baked, Eliza made the glaze, adding almond extract. “Maggie’s secret weapon. She learned the technique from her grandmother in St. Louis, brought it here, and made it part of Foster’s Bakeshop forever.”

The smell that drifted from the oven was pure history. Every Foster wedding, every Christmas morning, every love story that had started with flour and ended with forever.

“Oh my gosh.” An older woman in the crowd pressed her hand to her chest. “My parents. They made these together every year until Dad died. Mom never made them again; she said they didn’t taste right with just one pair of hands.”

When Wyatt pulled out the tray, the cookies gleamed like amber jewelry. Eliza brushed on the glaze, then sifted powdered sugar that caught on the breeze and drifted down like snow, like blessings, like all the December mornings that had come before.

The applause started with Carl, the librarian, and spread outward in waves. The whole square erupted, the sound creating a deep sense of pride, love, and belonging in Eliza’s chest.

One cookie remained on the rack. Eliza picked it up, the heat soaking through her palm, and broke it perfectly down the middle. She offered half to Wyatt.

“Like Sam and Maggie,” she said to him, only him.

“Like Sam and Maggie,” he agreed.

They chewed at the same moment. The taste was everything. Dark and bright, sweet and complex, the whole love story of Foster’s Bakeshop in one perfect bite.

“To love stories,” she whispered.

His gaze never left her face. “To the ones still being written.”