Chapter 19
FOUND RECIPE
MABEL
I’m really not a crier. Scratch that. I try not to be a public crier. But in the last few weeks, I’ve rained down tears in front of Jonas the snowboarder-slash-banker and now my sexy hockey-playing business partner, whose leg I also just humped.
No wonder my mother is always trying to give me life advice.
Clearly, I need it.
I can hear her stern, commanding tone: Don’t cry at work because people see it as a sign of weakness.
Oops.
I take five, head to the restroom, clean up my face, and wash my hands. I don’t want to touch the letters with paint-streaked fingers.
Once I’m done, I take some calming breaths, will my heart to stop racing, then attempt not to run back into the bakery. It’s not every day you stumble across a stash of decades-old letters.
Even though I want to gobble them up, I also know how to follow orders.
Grandma’s rules to slow down exist for a reason.
When I was seven, I once ate a dozen or so cookies at her house, and I had the worst stomachache.
Then, of course, there’s what happened to the llamas who got into the sugar cookies.
Best not to rush headfirst into anything. And besides, this gift of letters from the past—I haven’t even begun reading but I already know I won’t want it to end. If I savor each one, I can enjoy them more.
When I return to the bakery area, I sit cross-legged on the floor with the stack of letters and do what I should—I take my time. I pick up the stack. I flip through it. I imagine what this stack of letters and cards might become if I follow a recipe.
Because that’s really what this is. It’s my grandmother’s recipe for…something. I don’t know what, I don’t know how, but it’s clear she had a plan.
I doubt Corbin was in her plan though. How could she have known he’d be my business partner? But somehow, it feels right having him here for whatever comes next.
Because he just made you come.
I silence that very naughty voice in my head. I mean, sure, the man has a way with his thigh. But he also has a steady presence and an air of patience as he joins me on the cool, concrete floor, stretching his legs out in front of him. Maybe she knew somehow that I’d need that.
As I undo the satiny lilac ribbon, I focus on opening the stack carefully, on figuring out what ingredients Grandma left me in this surprise recipe, on taking time to consider each one.
“I have no idea if these are her letters or someone else’s,” I say, feeling like I’m opening the door to an escape room, unsure of what the puzzle is, but eager to solve it.
“Did she ever mention anything about letters? From a friend? A lover? A relative?”
I shake my head as I fiddle with the corner of the first sheet of paper. “No. She sent me postcards. I sent some back to her. It was our thing.”
“Maybe this is your thing now,” he offers.
“Or our thing,” I suggest. I don’t want to be a greedy little pig. The letters might have been saved for me, but he discovered them. Only, I don’t want to imply I think we are a thing, so I backpedal. “Our thing at Afternoon Delight.”
His gaze strays to the garage windows, covered by brown paper as we work, but a section’s peeled back, a sliver of a pane letting the sun filter through. “It is afternoon.”
It is.
And it’s time.
I look down at the first letter, searching for clues. There’s no envelope, no postmark. Just a fragile sheet of paper from the past, folded in thirds. “What if it’s…?”
I trail off, afraid to say what I truly want—my grandmother’s guidance.
Her support. Her words, directing me through whatever happens next in my life.
I don’t get that from my own parents. It’s not really my brother’s place to do it.
Grandma was always the one with the gentle hand and the willing ear.
“What if it’s…what?” Corbin prompts.
I shake my head. I’m not ready to let on how much I need someone to lean on, because that someone I leaned on is gone.
“What if it’s nothing?” I say instead. That feels safer.
“It’s not nothing,” he says with the certainty I wish I felt.
I run my finger over the paper once more.
My chest tightens with the wish for something magical in here. For the transformation of flour and sugar and butter into something that melts on your tongue. With that delicious possibility dancing in front of me, I unfold the first page and scan the handwritten note and the date.
“Corbin,” I whisper, “it’s from seventy years ago.”
His smile is full of wonder. “Yeah?”
“Yes. And it says...”
Dear friend,
Can I call you that? I’m pretty sure I can. Because that’s what you were to me today. A friend when I needed it most. I walked into the firehouse, nervous and excited and stoic, determined not to show my nerves. A woman in a man’s workplace. I expected cold shoulders and stony faces.
There were fewer than I’d anticipated.
And then there was…you.
You walked straight up to me, shook my hand, and said, “It’s nice to meet you. I’ll show you around.”
For that, I thank you. You did show me around. You did make me feel comfortable. You did make me feel like this could be my place too.
I’m really looking forward to working with you.
Thank you for being a friend.
My best,
Your new friend,
Harriet
My heart slams uncomfortably hard against my chest. This is a window into another time. A movie where the heroine wanders up the creaky steps to the attic and discovers a long-lost photograph.
“This is the start of a love story,” I say, then catch myself. I don’t want him to think I mean anything but what’s on this ink and paper. “I mean, historically speaking. For them. Seventy years ago.”
Corbin’s brow furrows. “How do you know? It says friend.”
“Harriet’s my great-grandmother. She worked here. She met her husband here. But that’s all I ever knew about them.”
“Wow,” he says, drawing a big breath as if he’s taking this all in, trying to figure out what to do with this information. “She was brave. A woman firefighter back then? That took guts.”
“It did. And he was so kind to her. He made the new person feel welcome,” I say, proud of the man I didn’t even know.
“That’s what you have to do when you get a new teammate,” he says, then holds up a hand, like he’s making a correction. “But we don’t send letters to the new guy in the locker room. Or discover love letters at rinks.”
A laugh bursts from me. “I don’t write letters to other bakers. Well, I usually work alone.” Except, I don’t any longer. “Until now.”
He looks around at the bakery we’re building with something like pride in his eyes.
Maybe wonder too. This is a man who can fly down the ice, shoot a black disc past fearsome goalies, get slammed against the boards, and do it better than most other elite athletes.
But he seems proud of this little bakery, which we haven’t even finished yet.
“Pretty wild that we’re building a business in the same spot where your great-grandparents met in another century. ”
But I’m also painfully, awkwardly aware that we’re sitting in a space where someone in my family fell in love.
That isn’t happening here. One leg hump does not a romance make.
“At least we know this place has a history of people getting along,” I say, making light of it.
Otherwise, he might think I want more, and that’s too risky.
“Good thing for business partners,” he says with a tight nod.
It says we’re resetting again. It’s a relief that he feels the same way. I barely know how to manage my own desire for him, let alone his for me.
“I told you it had good bones. I guess it has good vibes too.” Even if I like magic, I won’t let myself get carried away in magical thoughts.
This is just family history I’m reading.
It doesn’t mean anything about this place, or Corbin and me.
Besides, it’s not like my grandmother’s playing matchmaker from the great beyond.
But when it comes to these letters, I’m not sure I want to go it alone. I want to talk about them with someone. To figure them out. To enjoy them. And that’s when I can see the recipe come together.
Take one letter for each milestone. Make a cup of tea. Have a treat. And read them as a team.
“Corbin, what if we take our time with these? Treat them like rewards? For each thing we accomplish at the bakery—getting through opening day, landing our first wedding cake order, getting a great review—we get to read one. What do you think? Do you want to? Read these all with me?”
“As if I’d let you read them alone,” he says with a smirk.
“Really? I don’t want to pressure you,” I say. “I mean, they’re love letters. Or they will be.”
He scowls. “You think because I’m a hockey player I can’t handle a love letter?”
No, I think it’s because you said you can’t stop thinking about me, can’t stop wanting me, and that’s messing with your head.
Or maybe that was just the heat of the moment talking. “I didn’t want to presume,” I say, a little coolly.
He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Look, if you’re asking if it was on my bucket list to find your great-grandmother’s love letters and read them with you, then of course it wasn’t. But you found them—”
“You found them.”
He stares at me sternly. “This isn’t a hockey game. This isn’t a finders-keepers situation. And I’m not some douchebag twentysomething who thinks romance can be found on a reality dating show where everyone is acting.”
“I’m not entirely sure what that has to do with love letters, but keep going,” I say, both amused by the insult to Dax—since I love insults to my ex—but also intrigued by this train of thought.
Looking away, he rubs his jaw, something he does when he’s weighing something. When he returns his gaze to me, and the letter in my hand, he says, “Look, maybe I see a little of myself in this guy.”
“The firefighter? Because you like to help?” I ask, thinking of how he rescued me at the romance fair, then rescued me again when I needed an investor.
“Maybe,” he says with a shrug. That’s as close as I’ll get to an admission for now. “But if I found something like this, whether it was recipes, or letters, or a journal from my mom, I’d want someone to read them with me.”
My throat tightens, but then that annoying doubt creeps up again. He said someone. He didn’t say me.
“It’s been two years since she died,” he continues.
“Of Parkinson’s complications. It was…rough.
Really rough. Some nights, I look up her old emails to me where she’d tell me about her day.
” He exhales as if this admission costs him something.
“And I don’t think I’m finding anything she left behind.
There are no letters. So, I think what I’m trying to say is”—he stops, holds my gaze with such vulnerability in his emerald eyes—“I’d really like to do this too. ”
My throat catches. It’s happening again. Stupid tears. Annoying emotions. Doing my best to swallow them, I offer a smile, and I say, “Let’s do this then.”
“Let’s do it,” he confirms. Then he lifts his brow and glances around the space. “But we also need to do that.” He points at the mural. “Open a bakery. And incidentally, we need to put a smash cake on the menu.”
Those words echo in a whole new way. He was supportive of me that day at the romance fair. He was helpful. He stood up for me.
That’s what I needed then. And I hope that whatever he needs, I can give to him. Or maybe the letters can.
“And monkey bread too, Mister Ten Out of Ten,” I say, and we’re returning to friends, to business partners, to two people trying to realize their dreams together.
With a plan in place, we tuck the letters away in the jar, put the jar on the shelf, then return to the mural.
When it’s done, it feels like he painted my chest and I rode his leg in another lifetime. But we need to talk about it.
“Corbin, are we just forgetting about earlier?” I wave a hand breezily toward the wall. The scene of the leg hump. “Like we forgot about the kiss in the trailer?”
His eyes darken, perhaps from the memory. But quickly, he nods. A decisive gesture. “We have to. I have to. It’s the only way. I want this to be a success. You get that, right?”
I do. More than before. I understand the things he’s been sharing in bits and pieces about his family, his mother, and her dreams. And the things Charlotte has shared. This—our bakery—matters.
“I do,” I say.
He steps closer to me, like he’s going to cup my shoulders. Like he did that day in the trailer. But instead, he tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear, and that’s even better than a shoulder squeeze since he lingers, his finger brushing the shell.
I shiver.
“I meant everything I said earlier. How much I think about you. It’s ridiculous. But I’ve got to do a better job resisting you.” He lets go of me, stands, and smooths his hands down his shirt. “You have my word that I will.”
I wasn’t looking for promises, but I know—I really know—I should take his offer.
Because this isn’t a love story like in the letters.
This is my messy, real life, and I don’t have the good fortune to look back at it with rose-colored glasses while I’m living it.