Pumpkin and Spice Page 7

  Joy is a happy little cookie baker in her happy little Cookie Cottage. Every holiday season, she brings sweet confections and Christmas cheer from one end of the city to the other. One, day, she gets a surprise visit from a health inspector who turns her life, her livelihood and her heart, upside down.

  Brady is an overworked health code inspector who receives a suspicious complaint about a local cookie baker. When he goes to investigate, he finds himself face to face with the former classmate whom he had an earth-shattering crush on twenty years ago. The old flames of attraction are still there, but there’s just one problem. His ethics are going to force him to close her shop until further notice.

  Take a bite out of this sweet and saucy holiday romance! It’s chock full of Christmas cheer and possessive alpha hotness!

  Chapter One

  Joy

  It is shaping up to be the perfect Black Friday.

  Donning my gingerbread man apron, I have my entire day all planned out.

  I've been up all night -- not waiting in line for Target to open -- but puttering away in my cute little white outbuilding behind my home on Chicago's northwest side.

  Nicknamed the Cookie Cottage, it is where I spend most of my time between September and Saint Patrick's Day. Here is where I make people happy in my small way during the holidays. I bake cookies, pies, cakes and everything in between.

  After I graduated with honors from culinary school, my proud Papa surprised me by rehabbing the old wood shed and installing a small but workable commercial kitchen, complete with stainless steel appliances.

  I had started the business out with old family recipes that came over on the boat with my immigrant grandparents, recipes which were were a huge hit in the neighborhood. After a year, my baked goods had a following. After two years, I was breaking even. And by the third year, I had a waiting list for Christmas cookie party trays.

  After six years, my parents moved to a retirement village and rented the house out to me, where I plan to stay until I have enough money to buy it from them.

  So this is why, on this pre-dawn Black Friday morning, I am surrounded by rolls and rolls of cookie dough and unbaked pie crusts ready to freeze. Not to mention a full stove, where I'm cooking down last summer's raspberries, plums, apricots and grapes to make the jam for the traditional filled Polish kolaczki cookies.

  The pungent aromas of cooking fruit and butter and sugar is so overwhelming, I open the window to let some of the heat out.

  "Please don't wake up on my account, Frank," I mutter to myself as I prop the window open.

  Frank is my new neighbor. One day after moving here, he wandered right in to the Cookie Cottage while I was busy making my famous maple pecan cookies. He was raving about the aroma. Well, of course he was.

  But what he didn't seem to understand, and still doesn't, is that the Cookie Cottage is not a storefront kind of business, where anyone can just wander in off the street to buy things. I work by appointment, and people only come here to pick up their orders.

  One mistake was forgivable.

  After his second visit the next day, his hulking frame taking up a third of the space in the cottage, I started locking the door.

  I have an inkling why he keeps coming back, and it isn't the smell of my cookies.

  And now that my best friend, Maxine, is in the middle of an amazing whirlwind romance with our old high school classmate, my standards for a dating candidate have become even more stringent.

  Sure, I'm 38 year old and in the middle of a severe dating spell, but so what? No reason to settle for the first doofus who trespasses on my business and won't take no for an answer.

  Thinking about Frank is making my skin crawl. I go and make sure the door is locked.

  On my way back to the stove, five huge stock pots bubbling away, I let out a scream. At the open window, at 6 a.m. is Frank's face. He is illuminated by the lights inside and he looks extra pasty and menacing, even with a smarmy smile.

  "Hey good lookin! Whatcha got cookin!"

  Barf.

  "Jeez, Frank. It's 6 o'clock in the morning. What are you doing?" I say, trying to sound not frightened.

  He laughs, completely oblivious to the fact that he's just scared the piss out of me.

  "Oh, I was just lying in my bed, having really nice dreams about my favorite cookie baker, and waking up to delicious smells. What can I say, you are the pied piper and I am but a hopeless devotee."

  I sigh as I make a show of getting back to work, stirring the pots of bubbling fruit and sugar vigorously. "If you'd like to place an order, please do so on my Facebook page. Now please, I'm trying to work."

  "Well, excuse me, I'm just trying to make small talk."

  I shake my head.

  "By scaring the shit out of me at 6 a.m. in the dark? Stick to sleeping," I say.

  "Actually I decided to take my morning passagiatta. Care to join me?" He's serious.

  "Frank. Obviously, I am working," I reply, rolling my eyes.

  "Oh, come on. You work from home, who are you reporting to? You can take a break whenever you want!"

  It is that kind of attitude that makes my blood boil. "I answer to my customers. The Polish Community Center's Christmas Party is in two weeks and they placed the biggest order I've ever had. And as you can see, I'm getting ready to make about six dozen quarts of jam to prepare for that order. So if there's nothing else…”

  I really want to cuss him out and tell him to beat it. But I do have to choose my words carefully. He's a high-powered attorney with a lot of business and government connections.

  "Nothing else, sorry to bother you. Just wanted to check and make sure there still wasn't a ring on that finger of yours. Talk to you soon, cookie lady. And please let me know if there's anything -- anything at all -- I could do for you and your... quaint little business. As an alderman-elect, I could be very useful to you,” he says, and the words spill out like they have oil all over them.

  And with that, he strolls off. I know what he meant by that. He's looking for a bribe, for some kind of special treatment. So strange. This is the Cookie Cottage, not a construction company making a bid on a city project.

  I huff and go over to he window to shut it and lock it. Then I turn on the stove's fan full blast and drag out my box fan to cool me off while I work.

  "What a slime ball," I spit out as I put in my earbuds and start listening to my favorite relaxing music. Dean Martin and Christmas songs: the perfect remedy.

  Soon enough my mood shifts as I think about Maxine and her new beau. He is such a nice guy. And he's crazy about Max. He probably always was.

  As I start to pour the finished fruit jam into sterilized jars, I continue to hope that somewhere in the city of Chicago waits some decent guy for me. Glancing at the window, thinking I might have seen Frank walk by again, I hope this mystery man surfaces sooner rather than later.

  Brady

  I sit at my desk at the city health department and stare balefully at the stacks of paperwork.

  This is not how I imagined I would be spending my life at 38 on Black Friday. I had imagined myself married with kids by now, maybe taking some young crazy band of children out for pizza and movies while their smokin' hot mother spends the day shopping with her gal pals.

  Instead, after sixteen, I'm still the low man on the totem pole in my department, which oversees and updates health inspections for the food establishments. And, we're completely backed up. So, to get the boss's attention, I have taken it upon myself to come in to work the day after Thanksgiving and tackle the log jam of work.

  It's not that I don't like the job. It suits my fastidious personality enough. But it's not exciting enough to offset my seriously lame personal life.

  I've dated different women on and off since college. I was married for about three months in my late twenties. I’m still not sure why we did it, other than we thought that twenty-eight was the age to marry. We split amicably enough, but even that was so gut-wrenching that I’ve shied awa
y from anything serious ever since. I work late hours and and sometimes weekends, by choice, to keep myself busy.

  I sip my stale coffee and pull off my necktie.

  I don't even know why I wore a tie in the first place. There is literally nobody else in the office. "Should have volunteered to babysit my niece," I mutter.

  I reach over and slide the first sheet of paper off the top of the stack. I stare at it for half a minute before giving up and dialing up my sister. Maybe they could meet up for lunch and I could take Sophie out to a movie for the afternoon. Nobody would ever even notice I was gone. As I dial up my sister on my cell, I realize my desk phone is ringing.

  I answer it and the man on the other end announces himself as the alderman-elect Frank ... something.

  "What can I do for you," I say politely.

  Frank continues, "I've received a complaint bout possible contaminants in some baked goods at a business in my neighborhood," he says.

  "That's very serious," I say. "What business? What kind of contamination?"

  I take down the information and tell the alderman-elect I’ll look into it.

  After I get off the phone, I stare at the paper. "The Cookie Cottage." I check the address. It's on the northwest side, on a little side street north of Milwaukee Avenue. Pretty close to where I grew up, actually.

  When the data search on my computer turns up The Cookie Cottage, the name of the proprietor pops out at me. "Joy Mazer."

  Oh. Shit. Is it … her?

  I really wish I hadn't answered that phone today.