“Then why were you hiding?”
“I wasn’t hiding,” he retorted, mouth full of cookies.
“You carried me through a storm and then I didn’t see you again. You were hiding.”
They both chewed, savoring the subtle flavors of the fresh treats.
“I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Why? I lived, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but—”
She flicked flour in his direction, failing to strike him with the white powder.
“I said I wanted an adventure, didn’t I?” A big bite of cookie melted in her mouth. “Well, I got one.”
“Listen.” Clark clapped his hands together, ridding them of cookie dust and crumbs. “I promised someone I’d try this Christmas thing out, so what do I do?”
“Wanna help me make cookies?”
They didn’t need anymore, but with three more trays of cookie dough and time to kill, Kate could think of no better option than this one.
“Is that a thing people do?” Clark raised an eyebrow; Kate almost choked.
“You’re really out of the loop, there. Go into the other room and grab another one of these ornaments, will you?”
She raised the wire star she appropriated as a cookie-cutter. It glimmered in the low winter light. Clark left for the living room.
“You got it.”
Kate dressed herself in a mothballed apron. In the next room, rustling and tinkling of ornamental bells danced in the air as Clark searched for a wire star. She continued their conversation through the door, raising her voice just enough to be heard.
“You’re telling me you never made cookies around this time of year?”
A deep, masculine chuckle. “Are you fishing for my tragic backstory?”
“Only because I think you’ll bite.”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
He returned with the star in tow. Kate took her place at the long kitchen island, which looked like a tiny winter wonderland. Flour covered the surface like perfect snowcapped mountains.
“You’re admitting there is a tragic backstory.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Mr. Woodward, Clark’s uncle, was one of the kindest men Kate ever knew. As much as she liked to tease Clark about what he called his tragic backstory, she had a hard time believing she was opening up old wounds by asking after it. How could a man as good as Mr. Woodward allow someone as close to him as a nephew endure a miserable life? Kate assumed Clark had some kind of stigma associated with Christmas—maybe a girlfriend dumped him around the season or he was allergic to pine or something—but those were all easily solvable problems. If she could replace the sad memories with beautiful ones, maybe she could take away the lonely emptiness in his eyes. “I was thinking if I knew, maybe I could help.”
Clark didn’t speak right away. He went into a cabinet and found an apron of his own. As he pulled it over his head and rolled up the sleeves of his blue collared shirt, Kate stopped herself from breathing too loud. She’d thought he was handsome since she met him, but this was something else. The clash of the domestic apron with his strong, exposed forearms, his willingness to open up and be sensitive around her… Her cheeks flushed, and it had nothing to do with the blazing oven. When Clark returned, he spoke again.
“I haven’t had a real Christmas since I was nine years old. If I ever did make cookies, it was so long ago it’s impossible to remember if I did.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He clearly thought that would be the end of it. Holding up the star ornament, he stared at Kate through its negative space like a rich man assessing a stranger through a monocle. “Now, what do I do with this?”
On the marble countertops before them, Kate set up their station. A frozen pad of cookie dough waited on the floured countertop and a greased cookie sheet waited for the cut-out cookies. She demonstrated the method, every so often glancing at Clark to gauge his reaction.
“You just sprinkle some flour on it and press it in. Like so.”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated over the preparations, suddenly skittish. “I don’t want to ruin it.”
“You can’t ruin it. Just press in…” She demonstrated again, “And pull it out.”
Clark breathed in deep, as though he were diffusing a bomb instead of cutting out cookies. It was a cute image, in a way. He’d been out of practice in having fun for so long, he couldn’t even take something as simple as cutting out cookies any less seriously than negotiating a huge business deal. He laid the makeshift cookie-cutter into the dough, pulled it out, and fumbled to pick the newly made star up. There weren’t many ways to mess up using a cookie-cutter, so Clark’s clumsy attempt came out fairly neat. Two of the star’s points were lopsided and inconsistent with the rest. Clark deflated.
“I messed up the ends. What do I do now?”
“Just put it on the tray and try again with another one,” Kate said, obviously.
“But—”
“Not everything’s a disaster, Clark. You can always try again.”
“I can’t—”
He stopped himself short, hesitating to finish his thought. Like a starving man given a bite of food only to have it taken away, Kate longed to hear it completed. What couldn’t he do? And why couldn’t he do it? She reminded herself to be grateful. For most of the day, he’d been as emotionally distant as he possibly could be. This was one of the first glimpses she got of his full emotional range. Even if his disappointment seemed silly to her, at least he was showing her some feeling. He could have kept himself closed off and private, deflecting her every attempt to get close to him. But he didn’t. He was letting her see him for the first time. Kate stepped behind him, reaching her arms under his to better help him.
She didn’t want to think about how good he smelled. Like an oaken whiskey barrel or a
