She let herself have it for one breath. Just his hand in hers. Warm. Rough. Steady. Then she picked up the drive and slid it into her pocket, and the warmth went with the moment, because she understood what he had already said out loud.
Once Harker had this, the quiet mornings were over. No more two cups of coffee nobody mentioned. No more six-thirty rhythm in a shed that smelled like camp stove and salt.
Whatever happened next would happen fast, and it would happen to everyone. To Elaine. To the expo. To the thing she and Evan had only just stopped pretending wasn’t real.
“Today,” she said again. Less a plan now than a held breath.
He pushed open the shed door.
The morning came in hard and bright off the water, and they walked out into it.
Chapter twenty-six
A Good Batch
MargotsawLou’stextat nine forty-five and headed for the kitchen before she finished reading it.
Kitchen. Need two more hands. Promo deadline.
She found him at the prep island surrounded by three sheet pans of cooled sugar cookies and an industrial-sized piping bag that looked like it required upper-body strength and a building permit.
“Elaine wants promo photos for the gala press release by eleven. Decorated cookies. Christmas-themed. ‘Showcasing resort hospitality.’” He blew out a tired breath. “I need them done in an hour. I’ve got one hand.”
“What happened to your hand?” She eyed his bandaged right hand.
“Mixer incident. It’s fine. The burn is small.” He held up his right palm. “I can pipe but I can’t hold the pan still and pipe at the same time.”
She washed her hands. “What do I do?”
“Hold the pan. Don’t talk. And if somebody shows up, act like you know what you’re doing.”
Someone showed up four minutes later. Evan, with a screwdriver tucked behind his ear, stopped in the kitchen doorway at the sight of Lou’s piping setup and the cookies and Margot in an apron she’d found on the hook by the sink.
Lou pointed at him. “Good. You’re helping.”
“I’m fixing the pantry shelf.”
“The shelf can wait. You have two working hands. Put them to work here.”
Evan looked at the cookies. Looked at Margot. She shrugged. He came in and washed his hands.
Lou directed them with calm precision and the occasional blunt correction.
“You’re piping, not painting a fence. Less pressure. You’re flooding the surface, not drawing a line.” He watched Evan’s first attempt at a Christmas tree. “Better. See how the green fills the edges? That’s what you want.”
“I work with ropes,” Evan said. “Not frosting.”
“Rope, frosting, same principle. Even tension. Consistent pull. The medium changes, the physics don’t.” Lou moved to the next pan. “Margot, hold that steady. You’re letting the pan drift and the line is following you.”
She pressed her palm flat on the metal and the pan stopped moving. Evan’s piping hand tracked steadily across the star cookie and the red icing settled into a clean, even coat.
“There,” Lou said. “When you work together it’s better.”
Margot didn’t look at Evan, sensed him looking at her.
They fell into a rhythm. She held and steadied while he piped. Lou moved between the pans, adding detail work, gold sugar on the tree tips, silver on the stars. The kitchen smelled like butter and vanilla and the green icing that had gotten on Margot’s cuff somewhere around cookie number twelve.
“How did you get into baking?” she asked Lou.
