Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The kitchen at Sugar Pine Sweets smelled like Christmas had exploded in the best possible way—cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, and chocolate all competing for dominance in the warm air. Jade wiped flour from her cheek and surveyed the growing army of cookies lined up on every available surface.
Three days. They had three full days until the tree lighting ceremony on Sunday evening.
“That’s the last batch of gingerbread,” Mabel announced, sliding a tray from the oven with practiced ease.
The cookies were perfect—golden brown, the edges just crisp enough, each one shaped like a cheerful Christmas tree.
“Should we do another round of sugar cookies, or move on to the snickerdoodles?”
“Snickerdoodles,” Jade decided, checking her spreadsheet. Because, of course, she had a spreadsheet. Color-coded, cross-referenced with the station locations and estimated foot traffic. “We need variety at each booth, and the snickerdoodles will hold up better if they sit for a day.”
Felicity burst through the back door in a flurry of cold air and shopping bags, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright with triumph.
“I come bearing supplies!” she announced, dumping her haul onto the only clear section of counter.
“A carton of paper plates—Christmas themed, naturally. Matching napkins. And look at these!”
She pulled out a sleeve of Christmas-themed paper mugs complete with handles, each one festooned with snowflakes, reindeer, or cheerful holiday sayings. “Estate sale at the church. I traded a decorated wreath for all of it.”
Jade’s throat tightened. “Fee, you didn’t have to—”
“Hush. I’m a professional decorator, remember? I need documentation of my commercial work. You’re doing me a favor by letting me show off some commercial decor.”
“I found the thermoses in the storage closet,” Mabel added, gesturing to a row of oversized insulated containers. “They’re old, but they’re clean and will keep cocoa hot for hours. I’ve already tested them.”
Jade looked around at the organized chaos of her makeshift production line—cookies cooling on racks, ingredients measured and ready, supplies donated and borrowed and scrounged from every possible source. It should have felt desperate. Instead, it felt like possibility.
“Okay,” she said, pulling out her notebook. “Brice is setting up the booths tomorrow morning, right? Three locations—one at the pond, one at the gazebo, one in front of the church?”
“That’s what he said when I saw him at the hardware store,” Felicity confirmed. “He’s getting them spiffed up tonight in his workshop. Simple but sturdy, he promised. Weatherproof and wind-resistant.”
“Perfect.” Jade made a note. “So early Sunday we stock them. Cookies in airtight containers, cocoa mix and supplies at each location. I’ll need to prep the signs with prices and—”
“Speaking of which,” Mabel interrupted gently, “have you thought about what to charge? I know we need revenue, but it is Christmas...”
Jade had thought about it. Had agonized over it, actually, trying to balance their desperate need for income against the community goodwill that was maybe the only thing keeping them afloat right now.
“Two dollars for cocoa, three dollars for a cookie and cocoa combo,” she said. “That’s less than the coffee shop charges, and all the cookies are homemade. Plus, if someone can’t pay, we’re not turning them away.”
“You have a good heart, pumpkin,” Mabel said, squeezing her shoulder.
“I have a desperate heart,” Jade corrected, but she was smiling. “Every dollar counts, but so does every person who leaves happy and tells their friends about us.”
Felicity was arranging cookies on a display platter, photographing them from different angles. “These are going to look incredible in the booths. Especially with the garland, mistletoe and fairy lights I’m stringing up. Very ‘small-town Christmas magic.’”
“Have you talked to Leo about the final sleigh route?” Mabel asked, pulling another batch from the oven. “I know you two mapped it out, but is it finalized?”
Jade’s hands stilled on the dough she was rolling. She and Leo hadn’t spoken since their fight. Hadn’t even seen each other, though she’d caught herself looking toward the reindeer farm more times than she cared to admit.
“The route’s fine,” she said, focusing very hard on cutting out perfect circles. “We worked out all the timing during the trial run. As long as he starts at six and keeps to fifteen-minute rides, people will have plenty of time to visit all three stations between runs.”
“But you should probably confirm with him,” Mabel pressed gently. “Make sure he knows where the booths will be, coordinate the—”
“He knows the plan,” Jade cut in, her voice sharper than intended. “We spent hours on it. It’s all documented. He doesn’t need me to hold his hand through the logistics.”
The kitchen went quiet except for the hum of the oven and the clink of cooling racks.
“Honey,” Mabel said softly, “what happened between you two?”
Jade pressed the cookie cutter down with unnecessary force. “Nothing happened. We had a professional disagreement about the bakery’s future. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Felicity repeated, her tone making it clear she didn’t believe a word of it. “Right. That’s why you’ve been avoiding his name like it’s cursed, and why you flinched when Mabel mentioned talking to him.”
“I didn’t flinch.”
“You absolutely flinched.” Felicity set down her phone and crossed her arms. “Jade, we’re your friends. You can tell us what happened.”
Jade transferred cookies to a baking sheet with mechanical precision. She could feel both women watching her, waiting.
“He thinks I’m going to leave,” she said finally, the words coming out flat. “He thinks I came back here to play small-town baker until something better comes along. That I’m just looking for an excuse to run.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Felicity said immediately. “You’ve been working yourself to exhaustion for this place.”
“Apparently, that doesn’t matter.” Jade lined up another row of cookies, keeping her hands busy so they wouldn’t shake. “The moment I admitted we might have to sell, he took it as proof that I never really cared. That I was always going to bail.”
Mabel made a soft sound of understanding. “Oh, pumpkin. Leo’s been hurt before. His sister-in-law—”
“I know about Lisa,” Jade interrupted. “And I’m sorry she left, truly. But I’m not her. And I’m tired of being punished for other people’s choices.”
She slid the baking sheet into the oven with more force than necessary, then turned to face them both.
“But you know what? It doesn’t matter. We’re not selling. We’re making this festival spectacular, and we’re going to show this whole town what Sugar Pine Sweets can do. With or without Leo Carter’s belief in us.”
The fierce determination in her voice seemed to satisfy them both. Mabel smiled and went back to her mixing bowl. Felicity picked up her phone to capture another angle of the cookie display.
But inside, beneath the determination and the anger and the sheer stubborn refusal to give up, there was a Leo-shaped ache that Jade was working very hard to ignore.
“So tomorrow,” she said, focusing on the practical, the manageable, “we do a final inventory and prep. Saturday we bake fresh batches of everything. Sunday—”
“Sunday we knock their Christmas socks off,” Felicity finished.
“I like that plan,” Mabel said.
Jade pulled out her color-coded timeline, making notes about Friday’s tasks.
“Jade?” Mabel’s voice pulled her back to the present. “You’re frowning at that spreadsheet like it insulted your mother.”
“Just thinking through contingencies,” Jade lied, forcing her expression to smooth. “Making sure we’re covered if anything goes wrong.”
“Nothing’s going wrong,” Felicity declared with the confidence of someone who’d clearly never tried to organize a town festival while nursing a broken heart. “This is going to be perfect. Trust me.”
She gathered her bags and headed for the door. "I need to get home and finish the signage for the booths. Text me if you need anything!"
The door jingled shut behind her, leaving Jade and Mabel alone in the warm kitchen. The silence felt heavier without Felicity's brightness to fill it.
"Come on," Mabel said gently. "Let's keep baking. We still need those sugar cookies for tomorrow."
Jade nodded, grateful for the distraction. They fell back into their rhythm—measuring, mixing, rolling. The repetitive motions were soothing, gave her something to focus on besides the Leo-shaped hole in her chest and the impossible electrical bills looming over Monday.
It was past midnight when Mabel reached for the drawer where they kept the cookie cutters.
"I need the tree cutter," she said, rummaging through the jumbled collection of stars, bells, and gingerbread men. "I know it's in here somewhere."
She pulled out an old tin box from the back of the drawer. "Maybe it's—oh!"
The box popped open, and recipe cards scattered across the flour-dusted counter. Old ones, the paper yellowed and brittle, the handwriting elegant and precise.
"Oh dear," Mabel said, carefully gathering them up. "I forgot those were in there. That's your great-grandmother's box. I moved it years ago to make room for the newer cutters."
Jade set down her rolling pin and helped collect the cards, her fingers gentle on the fragile paper. Most were familiar recipes—Mabel still made them. But one made her stop.
Eleanor's Champion Fruitcake - Holiday Bake-Off Winner, 1928.
"Mabel," she said slowly. "Is this the recipe? The one from the plaque?"
Mabel wiped her hands on her apron and came to look. Her face softened with memory. "Yes. I tried making it every Christmas for years. Never could get it right—always too dense. Eleanor had instincts I just don't have." She touched the card gently, as if it might crumble. "Eventually I gave up."
Jade studied the card with her food critic's eye, trained to deconstruct recipes and understand techniques.
The instructions were detailed, methodical.
Ten fruits—candied ginger, rum-soaked cherries, dried apricots, dates, figs, golden raisins, currants, candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, and. ..
She squinted at the last line. "What's this word? There's something smudged here."
Mabel leaned in, adjusting her glasses. "I never could make that out. I always assumed it was just an ink blot. Why? Is it important?"
"It's the tenth fruit," Jade said, tracing the smudge with one finger. "The recipe says ten-fruit fruitcake, but I can only read nine. This smudge might be the secret ingredient—the thing that made Eleanor's version special."
They stood there, staring at the illegible mark, so close to an answer but not quite there.
"Well," Mabel said finally, a hint of sadness in her voice, "I suppose that mystery died with Eleanor." She patted Jade's shoulder. "Come on, let's get these cookies finished. We can puzzle over old recipes another time."
But Jade kept the card, propping it against the flour canister where she could see it while they worked. The elegant handwriting, the careful measurements, the smudged secret at the end. Her great-grandmother's prize-winning recipe, the one that had hung on the wall in a frame for nearly a century.
She thought about the plaque, about Eleanor's name engraved in brass, about legacy and history and the weight of family expectations.
She set the card carefully aside and picked up her cookie cutter, pressing it into the dough with renewed determination. They had a festival to prepare for. Everything else could wait.