Page 20 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Twenty

The next morning, Betsy Houston arrived at nine a.m. sharp, exactly twenty-four hours after she’d made her offer, her pink coat vibrant against the gray December morning as Eliza unlocked the front door.

The woman swept inside, bringing a wave of perfume that smelled of anise and amber.

“Good morning,” Eliza said.

Betsy snapped open the briefcase, pulled out a sheaf of paper, and dropped it on the table. “Give us your signature, and by next Christmas, Maggie’s Old-Fashioned Yuletide Cookies will be in every Sweet Delights across the country.”

Maggie’s Old-Fashioned. It sounded wrong on Betsy’s lips, like hearing strangers use a family nickname.

Betsy spread the contract across the table. “Initial here, here, and here. Full signature on page twelve.”

Eliza scanned the type. Non-compete clause. Exclusive rights in perpetuity. All variations and derivatives. Prohibition against disclosure of the original recipe.

Fifty thousand dollars. Enough to pay off the loan. Enough to buy quiet nights without collectors calling.

Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “If I sign… does that mean I can’t sell the cookies here? Not at all?”

“That’s correct.” Betsy tapped the clause with her pen. “Exclusive means exclusive. Sweet Delights would be the only source. But think how many more people will get to taste them with nationwide distribution, possibly international.”

Eliza set the pen down. Nationwide. International. But not Evergreen Springs. Not her bakery.

“Our New Jersey facility can run twelve thousand units a day.” She pulled out her phone, swiped to a mockup. “See? Vintage packaging. We’ve even recreated an 1878 streetscape.”

The screen showed a painted storefront with gas lamps and snow, nostalgia polished to a sheen. Maggie’s cookies, stripped of Maggie, dressed up in someone else’s history.

Eliza’s stomach turned. “That’s not Maggie’s history. That’s theater.”

For a heartbeat, Betsy’s mask slipped, revealing something tired beneath. “It’s branding, marketing, business. My quarterly bonus depends on securing authentic recipes. Your cookies could save my job, too.” Her smile returned, sharper than ever. “But yes. It’s not personal.”

“It’s my family’s legacy. That’s as personal as it gets.”

“A legacy worth fifty thousand dollars.” Betsy clicked her pen, gold trim flashing, and set it on the contract.

Eliza picked up the pen. It felt heavy, the weight of six generations. She thought of Wyatt’s hands on the rolling pin, his voice when he told her she didn’t have to do it alone. But he wasn’t here, was he?

She flipped to page twelve, stared at the place where Betsy had put an X for her to sign.

The back door slammed open.

“Eliza! I’ve got the solution!” Tessa burst in. She froze at the sight of Betsy, the contract, and the pen in Eliza’s hand. “Oh hell no.”

“This is a private business meeting.” Betsy’s upper lip curled.

“This is my best friend about to wreck her life.” Tessa tore off her mittens, yanked an envelope from her coat, and slapped it on the table.

“I sold my horse trailer. Three thousand dollars, cash. It’s not enough yet to pay off that forty-thousand dollar balloon loan, but it’s a start.

And yes, the 15th deadline is just a week away, but I texted everyone . They’re all coming to help.”

Betsy laughed. “Three thousand dollars is your seed money for a 40K loan due in a week? That’s like bailing the Titanic with a teacup.”

“It says we’re not letting corporate America run Eliza out of business.” Tessa squared her shoulders.

The door opened again, letting in a swirl of cold. It was Megan. She pulled an envelope from her purse. “Two thousand. My Christmas bonus. I was saving for Mom’s headstone, but she loved Foster’s. She would tell me this matters more.”

Betsy flinched.

Fiona followed with Jamie at her side. She set down a check. “Fifteen hundred. From Jamie’s education fund. We’ll rebuild it. Some things can’t be replaced once they’re gone.”

Then Carl Wykoski arrived, quiet as snowfall, carrying a battered coffee can. He set it down. “Eight hundred and forty-three dollars. I was saving for a new computer, but Eliza gave me free coffee every morning after Martha died, wouldn’t take a dime.”

Tom the mailman slipped through next. “Four hundred. Was for Sophie’s birthday. Taylor Swift tickets. She said Foster’s mattered more.” His voice caught. “Kid’s not even ten yet and she understands better than most adults.”

Eliza’s throat closed. Every envelope on the table felt heavier than Betsy’s pen.

And then the kitchen swelled. Neighbors pressed in, breath fogging the windows, coats brushing chairs. Reverend Jones with a check from the church fund. Mrs. Yancy with bills tucked in a Christmas card.

The table disappeared beneath cash, checks, cans, jars. An avalanche of sacrifice.

“Stop,” Betsy said. “This is touching, but let’s be real. Even if every person in town emptied their pockets, you won’t reach forty thousand. You’re choosing sentiment over survival.”

She was right. Eliza saw it in the faces around her. Hope lit their eyes, but the math loomed dark behind it. This money wasn’t even half of what she needed.

“Miss Foster,” Betsy said, “I can have fifty thousand in your account by nine tomorrow morning. Guaranteed. These people keep their savings. You keep your bakery. Everyone wins.”

The room held its breath. A coin rolled off the table, circled, and fell flat.

Eliza stared at the piles of offerings. Not enough to save the bakery, but everything to the people who brought it.

She thought of Maggie stepping off the train with nothing but recipes. Gram feeding families through the Depression. Wyatt telling her some things mattered more than money.

She picked up the pen. The room leaned forward. Someone coughed. Jamie clutched his mother’s hand.

Eliza drew a hard black line through the signature space. Then another. And another, until the contract was a tangle of slashes, unreadable, unusable.

“Foster’s might die,” she said, handing the pen back to Betsy. “But at least Maggie’s cookies stay where they belong. In Evergreen Springs.”

Betsy’s expression tightened. She gathered the ruined contract, smoothed the bent corners. “I understand. For what it’s worth, I respect your conviction. But conviction won’t pay the bank.”

“No, but we’ll find a way,” Tessa said. “That’s what we do in this town. We look out of one another.”

Betsy slid the papers back into her briefcase, clipped it shut, and adjusted her coat. “If you change your mind, you have my number.” She paused at the door and met Eliza’s gaze. “I just hope you don’t regret this.”

* * *

For a moment, the kitchen was silent. Then applause erupted, cheers and tears filling the room.

Eliza stood in the center, the weight settling again. They won the moment, but not the war. Even if she kept every penny, this was nowhere near forty thousand.

“Thank you, everyone,” she said. “Thank you so much. But keep your money. Fix your roofs. Buy your kids presents. Pay for headstones.”

“No way,” Tessa shot back. “This money’s yours.”

“For a bakery that’s closing? I can’t take it knowing it won’t save anything.”

Carl adjusted his glasses. “It already saved something. It saved Maggie’s Yuletide cookies from becoming just another Sweet Delights corporate recipe.”

“We still have a week,” Tessa said. “Don’t count us out yet.”

One by one, they hugged her and refused to take their money back. The kitchen emptied until only her closest friends remained.

“You did the right thing,” Megan said.

“The right thing that leaves me homeless,” Eliza sighed.

“But with your soul intact,” Fiona said.

“You were brilliant,” Tessa bounced on her toes and then stilled, nerves flickering under the grin.

“We should celebrate.” Fiona tried for a bright smile but didn’t quite get there. “You stood up to her. That matters.”

“Does it?” Eliza picked up a twenty from Sophie’s birthday fund and smoothed it flat. “The bakery still closes. The bank still forecloses. The only difference is now I refused the one option that could have paid the bill.”

Her gaze drifted to Maggie Foster’s recipe box. The carved lid worn soft by six generations of hands. Inside lay the Yuletide Cookie card, fragile and water-stained at the edges.

Betsy wanted the recipe. Wanted to own it. Exclusive rights. A vault. A trademark. Ownership of Maggie’s legacy.

Wyatt’s voice echoed in her head. What he’d said to Betsy Houston. That ain’t just a cookie you’re tryin’ to buy.

“Eliza?” Tessa waved a hand in front of her face. “Where did you go?”

“Betsy said something.” Eliza lifted the lid on the recipe box and eased out the card. Maggie’s faded handwriting, the margin note:

Two hearts. Worth the trouble.

“She said Sweet Delights would own the recipe into perpetuity if signed the contract.”

“And now they won’t,” Megan said.

“Everyone has given to me; now it’s my turn to give to them. If I give away this recipe, it can never be exclusive.” Eliza reached for Gram’s stationery, the one with wheat stalks in the corners. She pulled a blue Bic from the drawer.

Fiona leaned in. “What are you doing?”

“Setting it free.”

Eliza copied the recipe. Butter, flour, eggs, molasses, candied ginger, orange peel, the exact balance of ingredients. Then she wrote the process in full, every small choice Maggie noted.

Her friends gathered close and read as she wrote.

“You’re giving it away?” Jamie asked.

“I’m giving it back to the town.” Eliza kept writing. “Maggie did not bake those first cookies to get rich. She baked from her heart.”

At the bottom, she scrawled:

From the kitchen of Maggie Hart Foster, 1878. Given to Evergreen Springs with love. May you find someone to make these with. Takes two hearts, worth the effort.

She signed,

Eliza Foster, last of the Foster bakers. December 8th, 2025.

“Take a picture of it,” Eliza said to Megan. “And post it on social media before I post it in the window where everyone who passes by can see.”

Megan snapped it with her phone, thumbs already flying. “Posted to the Evergreen Springs board. NextDoor. Community Facebook. Give it ten minutes.”

A few comments appeared almost at once.

My great-grandmother used to talk about these.

I want to try this with my kids this weekend.

Can someone bring copies to the church rummage sale?

Fiona stood with her hands in her pockets, watching Eliza post the recipe in the window. “Do you know what you just did?”

Eliza said, “Yes. I can’t sell it to Sweet Delights now, I’ve made the secret recipe public.”

“More than that,” Megan said. “If just one family bakes this at Christmas, Foster’s lives.”

A small group started to appear on the sidewalk outside to read the recipe. Word traveled fast in small towns.

People took photos, copied ingredients into small notebooks, and called friends to come see. Someone began to read the recipe aloud so those behind could hear.

Eliza expected to feel a hollow place letting out the secret family recipe. Instead, she felt light as air. Now Maggie’s recipe belonged to everyone. It belonged to Evergreen Springs.

A boy pressed his nose to the glass. “Mom, can we make these?”

“They sound complicated,” she said.

“It says two people. We’re two people.”

The mother smiled and ruffled his hair. “We can try.”

The crowd shifted to reveal Betsy Houston at the edge, her pink coat bright.

Eliza’s eyes met the other woman’s through the glass. Then Betsy shook her head and turned away.

“She knows it,” Tessa said, coming up behind Eliza. “She cannot trademark what the town already holds. She cannot take what is shared.”

“Wow,” Megan said, looking up from her phone.

“Three hundred shares in five minutes. People are planning cookie parties.” She scrolled.

“Someone wants to start a Yuletide Cookie bake-off next year as a fundraiser.” Her eyes widened.

“They want to call it the Jean Foster Memorial Baking Scholarship.”

“After Gram,” Eliza said.

“Yes,” Fiona said. “Her memory is alive. So is Foster’s. It just changed shape.”

Eliza thought of Wyatt. He would be proud of her. Letting the townsfolk give to her, and then giving back to them.

“I miss you, Wyatt,” she whispered. “I hope you’re happy and safe where you are.”