Page 31 of Forbidden to Fall

There was a pause. “Because I told you the cookies are really good?”

“Because you left out the rest.”

“You assume,” he replied.

I turned back toward him. “Is it an assumption? Look at you, standing over there with your”—my hand waved toward him generically—“broodiness and your mysterious mystique-iness.”

His brows furrowed. “My what?”

“You heard me. What percentage of your thoughts do you actually voice aloud? One? If we round up? I need feedback. Honest, liberal feedback.”

“Fine,” he said. “It’s boring.”

I blinked. “Boring.”

“The cookie. It’s delicious, but…safe.”

I took a second to digest that. “Don’t you want safe products? We want people to buy them.”

“Of course. But they can get a maple cookie at any deli in New England. It won’t be half as good as yours, but it’ll be less than half as expensive.”

The man had a point.

“Go on,” I said.

“I just think we can afford a little more risk. Make maple cookies, sure. But make them stand out a little. Put your own spin on them.”

Holding his gaze, I chewed the inside of my lip. I wasn’t used to putting spin on anything. Mrs. Keller was staunchly anti-spin. One time, I’d noticed we were running low on vanilla, so I’d picked some up at the store.

She about lost it when she saw the unfamiliar bottle in the bakery.

Apparently, she’d rubbed off on me more than I’d thought.

“Spin can be dangerous,” I said. “How much spin are we talking? Maple-pickle-cookie spin?”

He shrugged. “If you think that’d be good.”

“I don’t.”

The twinkle came back. “Then don’t do it. You’re the baker. I trust you.”

I swallowed. James trusted me. He said it so simply, like it was a given.

Did I trust myself? Trust myself to spin? Spinning made me dizzy.

“And you’ll tell me if I make something that’s awful?” I asked.

His gaze was clear. “I’ll always tell you the truth.”

I sucked in a breath, letting the words calm the anxiety that had started bubbling up. “Okay, well, I can start…spinning tomorrow. It’s getting late.”

My home pantry—aka small cupboard—was looking sad after the schedule I’d kept this week, and the busyness wouldn’t let up until after the mayor’s party. Speaking of which…I still hadn’t found an outfit for that. It was a black-tie affair, where my usual clothing fell under the whatever dough and horse snot washes out of most easily category. There was very little overlap there.

“I’ll drive you home,” James said.

I opened my mouth to say I had my own car, but…I didn’t. I’d left it at Horseshoe Holler like an idiot.

My resulting choices weren’t great: