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“Keep your voice down,” I said. “Don’t give my kids any ideas, I’m begging you.”
He smiled and ducked his head. “Anyway, I had a bunch of ideas for how to handle the animal stuff, ethically, you know? But it’s pointless if I can’t get a grant. I won’t get approved for a loan if my only income right now is as a part-time Santa.”
“I used to work for a nonprofit in Boston,” I said. “I got roped into writing a bunch of grant proposals. I could take a look at it.”
His jaw dropped. “Really?”
“Yeah. Once you get the hang of them, they’re not as awful as they seem.”
“Wow.” He blinked, and then laughed. “Seriously? Fran, that would be amazing.”
My face heated under the sheer wattage of his smile. “It’s no big deal,” I said, and it really wasn’t. I hadn’t written a grant proposal in about ten years, but I hadn’t been lying about doing a bunch of them in the past. I was pretty sure I could tick whatever boxes the Christmas Valley Business Association needed. I turned around to hide my blush. “Shoot. Did I forget the cinnamon? Nope, here it is.”
“Shoot?”
“My language is like a cross between June Cleaver and a drunken sailor these days,” I said. “Which is an improvement on just the drunken sailor. I’m a work in progress.”
Cass came and stood beside me. “It’s weird,” he said. “But it fits you. The dad thing.”
“Thanks.”
For a moment we stood there in silence, the sort of silence that had previously led us to smashing our faces together, but then Cass cleared his throat. “So, um, cookies?”
“Yes! Cookies!” I waved at the ingredients like a showcase model onThe Price is Right. “Ada! Em!”
The girls came running, Noelle with them.
“No,” I said, guarding the ingredients. “Wash your hands first. Use soap. And don’t pet the dog again until after we’ve got the cookies in the oven.”
“Bathroom’s down that way,” Cass said, and pointed.
The girls and Noelle took off.
Cass glanced at the ingredients. “I thought you said the dough was already made?”
“Right. Well. We, um…ate a lot of that dough. So we thought maybe we could make more cookies? Here?”
We hadn’t eatenthatmuch dough. There was still plenty left at our house that I was saving for a rainy, self-loathing day. Butmakingcookies as opposed to merely baking them meant spending more time at Cass’s house.
Cass stared at me for a very, very long time.
“So what do we need to make cookies?” he asked finally. “I don’t exactly have a lot of kitchen gadgets or anything.”
“All we need is a bowl and a wooden spoon,” I said. “But if you have a mixer, that would be even better.”
“Like a hand mixer?”
“You don’t have one, do you?”
“I do not.”
“That’s okay. We can do it the old-fashioned way. You have a cookie sheet, right?”
“Yeah. It came with the oven.”
Ada and Em came rushing back into the kitchen and showed me their clean hands.
“Looking great,” I said, and reached into my bag for the last and most important item: our matching aprons. “I refuse to be ashamed.”
