Marry-Me Christmas

“If it’s about getting me to share Grandma’s special recipe cookies with a man again—”

“No, no, it’s about that magazine he’s with. He said Food Lovers, didn’t he?”

Sam poured some coffee into a mug. “Yes. It’s huge. Everybody reads it, well, except for me. I never get time to read anything.”

Ginny made a face. “Well, I read it, or at least I used to. Years ago, Food Lovers used to just be about food, you know, recipes and things like that, but lately, it’s become more…”

“More what?” Sam prompted.

Her aunt paused a moment longer, then let out a breath. “Like those newspapers you see in the checkout stand. A lot of the stories are about the personal lives of the people who own the restaurants and the bakeries, not the food they serve. It’s kind of…intrusive.”

“What’s wrong with writing stories about the people who own the businesses?”

Ginny shrugged. “Just be careful,” she said, laying a hand on Sam’s. “I know how you guard your privacy, and your grandmother’s. I might not agree with your decision, but you’re my niece, so I support you no matter what.”

Sam drew Aunt Ginny into a hug. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you, Sam,” she said, then drew back. She glanced over the counter at Flynn MacGregor. “There’s one other thing you need to be careful of, too.”

“What’s that?”

Ginny grinned. “He’s awfully cute. That could be the kind of trouble you’ve been needing, dear niece, for a long time.”

Sam grabbed her coffee mug. “Adding a relationship into my life, as busy as it is?” She shook her head. “That would be like adding way too much yeast to a batter. In the end, you get nothing but a mess.”

CHAPTER TWO

SAM RETURNED with her coffee, Aunt Ginny’s words of wisdom still ringing in her head, and slipped into the opposite seat from Flynn MacGregor. He had a pad of paper open beside him, turned to a blank page, with a ready pen. He’d sampled the coffee, but none of the baked goods. Not so much as a crumb of Santa’s beard on the frosted sugar cookies. Nary a bite from Grandma’s special cookies—the ones he’d presumably come all this way to write about.

Sam’s spirits fell, but she didn’t let it show. Maybe he wanted to talk to her first. Or maybe he was, as Aunt Ginny had cautioned, here solely for the story behind the bakery.

Her story.

“Are you ready now?” he asked.

“Completely.”

“Good. Tell me the history of the bakery.”

Sam folded her hands on the table. “Joyful Creations was opened in 1948 by my grandmother Joy and grandfather Neil Barnett. My grandmother was an amazing cook. She made the most incredible cookies for our family every holiday. I remember one time I went over to her house, and she had ‘invent a cookie’ day. She just opened her cabinets, and she and I—”

“The bakery, Miss Barnett. Can we stick to that topic?”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Sam wanted to kick herself. Babbling again. “My grandfather thought my grandmother was so good, she should share those talents with Riverbend. So they opened the bakery.”

He jotted down the information as she talked, his pen skimming across the page in an indecipherable scrawl.

Sam leaned forward. “Are you going to be able to read that later?”

He looked up. “This? It’s my own kind of shorthand. No vowels, abbreviations only I know for certain words.”

She chuckled. “It’s like my recipes. Some of them have been handed down for generations. My grandmother never really kept precise records and some of them just say ‘pecs’ or ‘CC.’ They’re like a puzzle.”

He arched a brow. “Pecs? CC?”

“Pecans. And CC was shorthand for chocolate chips.” Sam smiled. “It took me weeks to figure out some of them, after I took over the bakery. I should have paid more attention when I was little.”

His brows knitted in confusion. “I read it was a third-generation business. What happened to the second generation?”

“My parents died in a car accident when I was in middle school. I went to live with my grandparents. Grandpa Neil died ten years ago.” Sam splayed her palms on the table and bit her lip. Flynn MacGregor didn’t need to know more than that.

“And your grandmother? Is she still alive?”

Sam hated lying. It wasn’t in her nature to do so. But now she was in a position where telling the truth opened a bucket of worms that could get out of hand. “She is, but no longer working in the bakery.”

He wrote that down. “I’d like to interview her, too.”

“You can’t.”

Flynn looked up. “Why?”

“She’s…ill.” That was all he needed to know. Joy’s privacy was her own. This reporter could keep the story focused on the present.

Nevertheless, he made a note, a little note of mmm-hmm under his breath. Sam shifted in her chair. “Don’t you want to try a cranberry orange muffin?”

“In a minute.”

“But—”

“I’m writing an article, Miss Barnett, not a review.”

She shifted some more. Maybe her unease stemmed from his presence. The airline magazine had done the interview part over the phone. The reporter had come in and bought some cookies, then found his happy ending, unbeknownst to Sam, at a different time. Talking to someone she couldn’t see, and answering a few quick questions, had been easy. This face-to-face thing was much more difficult.

More distracting. Because this reporter had a deep blue, piercing gaze.

The bell over the door jingled and a whoosh of cold air burst into the room. “Sam!”

“Mrs. Meyers, how can I help you?”

“I need more cookies. My dog ate the box I brought home. I didn’t even get a chance to feed the batch I bought to my Carl and that man is in the grumpiest of moods.” Eileen Meyers swung her gaze heavenward. “He’s hanging the Christmas lights.”

“In this weather?”

“You know my husband. The man is as stubborn as a tick on a hunting dog, Sam. There are days I wonder why I’m even buying those cookies.”

“Because they’re your husband’s favorites,” Sam reminded her. Eileen had been in the day before, plunked down her money, her love for her husband still clear, even in a marriage that had celebrated its silver anniversary, and was edging its way toward gold.

Eileen harrumphed, but a smile played at the edge of her lips. “Will you get me another dozen?”