7. Making Christmas Cookies…in June
Chapter seven
Making Christmas Cookies…in June
KARA
The mansion's industrial-sized kitchen hums with life, our cook and her crew nowhere in sight. I'd planned to make the Christmas cookies in our personal kitchen, but it's not nearly big enough to accommodate my four children plus áine and her three daughters.
Mixers whir, laughter bubbles, and the scent of sugar, butter, and vanilla permeates the air.
Fitz has claimed one of the big stainless steel counters as his station, carefully rolling dough with the focus of a general plotting battle strategy.
Cormac, on the other hand, moves like a whirlwind, darting between cookie stations to "check" on everyone’s dough. Sneaking pinches of the safe-to-eat-raw dough when he thinks I’m not looking and popping it in his mouth.
His front is covered in flour, and there’s a suspicious smear of red frosting across one eyebrow. Suspicious because the frosting is still in bowls with their lids on, waiting to be used after the cookies are done and cooled enough to ice.
Mavey stands beside Sadie, shaping her dough ball with intense concentration, watching the older girl’s every move. When Sadie rolls the dough to a quarter inch thickness, Mavey does her best to do the same with hers.
Sadie sweetly offers to help when Mavey's dough ends up paper thin on one side and thick enough to make doorstops on the other.
Then, they start cutting out the cookies.
When Sadie uses a star cutter, Mavey uses a star.
When Sadie switches to the tree, Mavey does too, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth in focus.
Sorcha, my solemn little darling, sits at her own spot with a neat pile of untouched flour, a tiny ball of dough she has yet to try to roll flat and a single round cookie cutter. She wears the children's size blue latex gloves we keep just for her, but she's still hesitant to touch the dough.
"Would you like my help?" I ask her.
She looks sideways at Sadie and Masey and then back at me before nodding. Once the dough is rolled out to uniform thickness that pleases her, she presses the cutter into it with precision a two-year-old should not be capable of. Every cookie is perfectly symmetrical.
áine’s five-year-old, Joy, her own station abandoned, flits around the kitchen like Cormac without his chaotic energy and chatting a mile a minute to everyone.
"Those look so pretty. Is that an angel?" she asks Neeve, her shy ten-year-old sister.
"Yes," Neeve answers quietly but with a small smile. "I like angels."
"Me too," Joy says before skipping off toward Fitz.
Somehow, instinctively, though she includes Sorcha in her delighted babble, Joy never invades my daughter's personal space.
I glance toward áine, standing stiffly near the ovens, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She’s wearing the look of a woman trying to breathe through too much at once.
It's not every day a woman outside the mob gets railroaded into a forced marriage. I can admit that's what happened in the sunroom, but I also know it was necessary.
To protect Mick, we must know who Kenneth has gotten to with his Mick shouldn't be boss rhetoric, but keeping áine and her girls safe in the interim is also important.
I'm enough of my father's daughter to put my husband's safety ahead of the other woman's emotional comfort though. That doesn't mean I don't feel for her.
I remember what it was like to be pressured into marriage with a virtual stranger. It worked out for me and I can only hope it works out for her too.
Wraith is a good man, but is he a man who can love?
I don't know.
áine's daughters are thriving in the warmth of the kitchen, but she’s adrift and I need to do something about that.
Leaving Sorcha to her perfect circle cookies, I walk over to áine.
She meets my eyes and forces a tense smile. "The kids are having fun. But Christmas cookies?"
"We celebrate Christmas-in-July."
Her eyes ask me why and I explain. "We even put the tree up 'early' like I do in November. The mansion gets decorated for Christmas the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but we put our family tree up a week earlier."
"And you do all this to help Cormac see his value." She sighs and looks off into the distance. "We'll do just about anything to keep our kids safe and happy, won't we?"
"Yes." Including standing by while another woman is railroaded into a mob marriage.
It doesn't make me proud of myself, but I'm not ashamed either and I send a fervent wish out to the universe that áine's arranged marriage ends up as solid as mine.
"Cormac’s declared it a competition to see who can scatter the most flour across the floor," I declare lightly, moving us both away from our heavy thoughts. I hope.
"Then he’s already won," Fitz mutters dryly without looking up.
That earns him a grin from me. "Probably."
I pass áine a cookie cutter. "Come on. It’s good therapy and Joy could use some help getting her cookies started."
The other woman hesitates, then moves closer to the counter. Suddenly, Joy is there too, excited to roll out the dough with her mom.
Fitz catches my eye as he slides his tray of cookies into one of the ovens. He mouths, "Thank you," to me, pleased that Sadie and her family have been included in our Christmas-in-July cookie tradition. He's so much like Mick that sometimes I forget he has me in him too.
But right now? I see it and it warms my heart.
Mick and I were both raised with staff around us, but I want our children to experience a semblance of normalcy. Which is why my mobster hubby and I take turns making breakfast daily and our children clean their own bedrooms.
My life has never been normal, but I’ll be damned if my kids don’t get to pretend sometimes.
áine's hands tremble as she uses the spatula to move the cookies from the counter to the baking tray.
I know what it is to feel like the world around you has gone sideways, and that pretending normal is the only way to make it through anything but. So, I give her a reassuring smile and pretend not to notice her trembling hands and tight smiles.
Sadie's attention drifts now and again. Her rolling pin stills, her eyes go distant, taking on a haunted look, but then Fitz cracks a joke, or Mavey giggles, and Sadie blinks back into the present.
"This one," Mavey orders, holding out a candy cane cutter for her new friend.
Sadie smiles at my daughter and cuts out the candy can shaped cookie before Mavey does the same a second later.
áine looks at her daughter’s face and her expression crumples for just a heartbeat before she pulls herself together again. Wraith is right. She is strong.
And compassionate. Because the threat to Wraith's life moved her as surely as the threat to her own safety.
When the first batch goes into the oven, Cormac snatches one of the unbaked scraps from the counter, and rolls it into a ball. But instead of flattening it so he can cut out a cookie, he throws it at Fitz.
With eye-to-hand coordination nearly as good as his father's and older brothers, the tiny dough ball hits my oldest son on the shoulder. Fitz looks up with the wounded dignity of a twelve-year-old.
"Cormac!" I admonish, trying not to laugh.
"Don't teach our sisters bad habits," Fitz cautions his brother, sounding so adult I have to turn away to hide my laugh.
By the time the kitchen fills with the buttery, golden smell of baking cookies, everyone is dusted in flour—except Sorcha, whose clothing and face are as pristine as when she started. Joy claps her hands together, sending a flurry of powdered sugar into the air like snow.
áine actually laughs. Just once, soft and surprised, but real.
For a moment, the heaviness in the world outside this kitchen fades. There’s only light and warmth and the sound of children’s laughter echoing off polished steel.
And I think, this right here, moments like this, are why it's all worth it.
Thirty minutes later, half the cookies are baked, and the kitchen smells like Christmas traditions and peace.
Well, as close to peace as you can get with seven children in the same space. Sadie and Neeve are discussing which is prettier, the angels or the stars. If it were Fitz and Cormac, it would be an argument, but Neeve is too serene for that and Sadie is too sweet to her younger siblings.
Fitz is an amazing big brother, but he is also a twelve-year-old boy and it would worry me if he didn't argue with Cormac sometimes. I hope Sadie lets her inner kid out sometimes too.
With a lot more experience in the kitchen than me, áine supervises the baking and removal of the cookies from the cookie sheets at just the right time so they don't stick. Being in charge of this small thing seems to relax her and I'm glad for it.
Joy is licking a spoon we used to put the frosting into bags with piping tips in readiness for the cooled cookies.
Mavey has flour streaked through her hair, Sorcha is arranging the already cooled cut shapes into tidy rows that look like art installations, and Cormac’s somehow got cookie dough on the ceiling. Don’t ask. I didn’t.
Mick moves like a storm in the air, the electric current of his presence reaching me before he does. So, when I turn, I'm not even a little surprised to see him with Wraith at his shoulder.
"Da!" Mavey screeches as she runs across the kitchen toward him.
Fitz scoops her up as she passes him though and reminds her not to run so she won't hurt herself before letting her down again. Mavey and Sorcha reach my husband at the same time and he scoops them up in both arms.
We always have a full security detail around us now so Mick can hug his children and hold my hand without worrying about protecting us.
For the first years of my marriage, he never held my hand and I thought it was because he didn't want to. But it was actually because he wanted both hands free to protect me. Even inside our fortress-like home.
He's loosened up a little and I've accepted the constant presence of guards unless we are in our own apartment. Then our security is outside in the hall.
Joy pipes up, "Do you want to help us decorate the cookies, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
Mick’s mouth curves, not quite a smile but close enough. "Nah, cailín. I think I’ll just watch."
Fitz straightens from where he’s pulling a tray out of the oven under áine's close supervision. "Smells good, yeah?"
"Aye," Mick says, crossing to stand beside me. He rests a hand low on my back, a grounding touch that still makes my pulse flutter. "You’ve made a proper mess of the kitchen, mo ghrá."
I bump his side lightly. "We prefer to call it creative expression."
"Well, you've creatively expressed yourselves on every flat surface, including the floor."
"Just wait until we start frosting the cookies," I warn.
He chuckles under his breath, the sound sending familiar zings of deep contentment and pleasure sparking through my body.
Wraith's eyes are fixed on áine and her girls, like a man cataloguing every detail to keep it safe.
I'm familiar with that expression and it gives me hope for áine's future.
Because there's a yearning element to it that used to be in Mick's eyes, before he knew I loved him and he figured out he loved me.
áine glances up and catches Wraith looking. She startles, color flooding her cheeks. He doesn’t look away. Doesn’t move. Just meets her gaze with unreadable intensity until she drops her eyes back to the cookies she's removing from the baking sheet.
The buzzer goes off letting us know another batch of cookies is done. áine startles and then crosses quickly to the oven.
Wraith steps forward. "Let me." His big hands barely fit in the bright red oven mitts Fitz hands him.
"Thank you," she murmurs as Wraith sets the hot cookie sheet onto the wire trivets.
Wraith nods his head in silent acknowledgement of her gratitude.
Mick’s hand tightens on my hip. "How long will decorating the cookies take?"
"Long enough we should probably feed the children dinner first. I had to promise we'd order in to get our cook and her staff to vacate the kitchen for us."
"You'll stay for dinner," Mick says to áine, instead of asking.
"We get to eat here?" Joy erupts before her mother can answer the non question. "In the castle?"
"It's not a castle, sweetie," Sadie tells her sister.
"It's big enough," Joy disagrees.
"May we eat here, mom?" Neeve asks in her quiet voice.
Sadie looks sheepishly at her mom. "Fitz said I should, so I already told gran we'd be here for dinner when we picked up Neeve and Joy. She's going to Bingo with Mrs. Washington."
Apparently, if Fitz says it, it must be true.
Mamo joins us for dinner, delighted by the additional children at the table. Zoey and Fiona are there too, both doing their best to avoid the other's eyes.
It looks like the talk about setting a wedding date didn't go well, so I invite them to join us decorating Christmas cookies after dinner. Being surrounded by a bunch of kids hyped up on sugar won't allow either of them to wallow.
Zoey declines my invitation, but Fiona quickly accepts, as hungry for normal family moments as I am.
Mamo tells Neeve she would appreciate the girl picking out and setting aside a few cookies for her tea tomorrow. "Kieran will bring you up to deliver them to my rooms."
Does mamo already know about the upcoming wedding between Neeve's mom and Wraith? I wouldn't put it past her.
"Let’s see who decorated the prettiest cookies," I say later, surveying the wonderful anarchy still ruling in the industrial kitchen.
Mavey immediately holds up one shaped like a crooked reindeer. "Mine has sparkles!"
"And three eyes," Fitz mutters.
"Reindeers can have three eyes if they want," Joy declares loyally.
After everyone offers their best cookie for consideration, it is agreed that Neeve's angel decorated with royal icing like a painting is the winner.
It warms my heart when all the children vote for someone else and not their own cookies, with three of them picking Neeve's cookie, two picking Sadie's star that glitters with yellow sugar crystals over yellow frosting and Sorcha unsurprisingly voting for Mavey's misshapen reindeer.
It's such a feel good moment, I look to Mick to share it with him and find his eyes on me, the expression in them a reflection of my emotions. Because he loves me, he experiences joy when I do.
And that is one of the headiest feelings in the world. To know I can give happiness to a man who is aware of so few emotions independently.
For one perfect moment, we bask together in that enjoyment with our family.