Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Leo was supposed to be checking Comet's harness, but his attention kept drifting to the bakery's back door, barely fifty yards away across the fence line.
Through the bright new window lighting—when had she fixed that?
—he could see Jade moving around inside, apparently wrestling with something under the kitchen sink.
"She's been at it all morning," Brice observed, following Leo's gaze as he approached with a bucket of feed. "Saw her carrying in what looked like a pipe wrench around eight."
"Plumbing," Leo muttered, giving Comet's harness a perhaps unnecessarily thorough inspection. "That's... better than electrical work, I guess."
"You guess?"
"Less chance of burning down the town.” Leo moved on to checking Vixen's bridle, though she was perfectly content and didn't need checking. "Someone should keep an eye on the situation. Make sure she doesn't flood Main Street or something."
Brice's eyebrows rose slightly. "Someone."
"Someone with experience. Who knows about old plumbing." Leo was aware he was overexplaining, but couldn't seem to stop. "Those buildings are from the 1920s. The pipes are probably original. One wrong move with a wrench and you've got a geyser."
"Uh-huh." Brice leaned against the fence post, clearly enjoying this. "And you're volunteering to be this... someone?"
"I'm just saying someone should check on them occasionally. As a neighbor. A responsible neighbor."
"Right. Neighborly concern." Brice's grin was infuriating. "Nothing to do with the fact that you've been staring at that bakery like a lovesick teenager for the past three days."
Leo shot him a warning look. "I have not been—"
"Uncle Leo! Uncle Leo!" His niece, Lila, came barreling around the barn, her backpack bouncing and her cheeks pink from the cold. "Can we go see Miss Mabel? Please? I smell cookies, and she promised to teach me how to make the swirl pattern in the icing!"
Leo's stomach did something complicated.
Lila and Mabel had been close since she was tiny—Mabel had been like a grandmother to her, always ready with fresh cookies and patient lessons in decorating techniques.
Before Jade came back, Leo had encouraged the relationship.
Mabel was good for Lila, and Lila brightened Mabel's days.
But now...
"Not today, kiddo," he said, his voice coming out rougher than he intended. "Maybe later."
"But she's probably making hot cocoa," Lila protested, her lower lip starting to tremble in a way that usually demolished his resolve. "The good kind with the real whipped cream. And I want to see if the display case lights are really as bright as they look from here."
They were bright. Leo had noticed them immediately yesterday morning—the whole front of the bakery looked more inviting, more alive.
He'd seen Mrs. Henderson go in around lunchtime, and old Mr. Peters had stopped by with his granddaughter after school.
More customers in two days than Mabel had probably seen all month.
"Maybe tomorrow," he said, hating the disappointment in Lila's eyes but unable to offer more.
"Why not today?" she pressed. "You take me over there all the time. Miss Mabel says I'm her best student, and she's working on a new recipe for Christmas trees that—"
"I said maybe tomorrow." The words came out sharper than he meant them to, and Lila's face crumpled.
Brice, who had been loading feed into the back of his truck, glanced over at the bakery where they could see Jade working under the kitchen sink. "Looks like she's got the hang of basic repairs," he observed. "Haven't seen any sparks this afternoon.”
"Yet," Leo muttered, but he had to admit the lack of electrical emergencies was promising.
He tried to focus on the task at hand, checking the leather straps and metal buckles with methodical precision. But his eyes kept drifting back to the bakery window, where he could see Jade working on something in the kitchen, probably the sink as he knew it was under the window.
Focus, he told himself, moving to Snowflake’s harness. You have work to do.
But watching her push a strand of hair out of her face with the back of her wrist brought back a sudden, vivid memory of her doing the exact same thing in Mr. Peterson's physics class.
She'd been bent over their bridge project, trying to calculate the stress load on the popsicle stick joints, her brow furrowed in concentration.
When she'd pushed her hair back just like that, he'd lost his train of thought completely.
He'd been seventeen and hopeless, stealing glances at her across the lab table while pretending to understand anything about structural engineering.
The bridge had collapsed spectacularly during testing—forty-seven pounds before complete failure—but he'd been too distracted by the way she bit her lip when she was thinking to care much about their grade.
Leo shook his head, trying to dispel the memory.
That was a long time ago. They were different people now.
She was a woman who'd built a life in Boston, who'd seen the world beyond Frost Pine Ridge's borders.
He was still here, still taking care of the same reindeer, still living the same small-town life she'd been so eager to escape.
Through the window, he saw her get back down on the floor and disappear under the sink again. A few minutes later, the sound of running water drifted across the yard—steady, strong water that suggested she'd actually succeeded.
Despite everything, despite his determination to keep his distance, Leo found himself smiling.
Some things, apparently, never changed.