Temptation Trails (The Haven Brothers #3)

“Sounds good, brodentical.” Logan picked up a cookie and took a bite. “A little crispy, but these aren’t bad.”

“You can take some with you, if you want. I can’t do anything with them.”

“Yeah, some of these are salvageable. My boys will eat them.”

“That’s a silver lining, I guess.” I grabbed a box for him. “That was quite the response time. I think the alarm had been going off for all of thirty seconds when you walked in the door.”

“We were driving right by,” Logan said. “Must be your lucky day.”

I laughed weakly. “Yeah. Lucky.”

He picked through the still-hot cookies, holding them with the tips of his fingers, and put half a dozen or so in a box. “Thanks for these. And I’m glad your bakery isn’t on fire.”

“Me too.”

“See ya, Owen.”

“Bye, Logan.”

He left out the back door and shut it behind him.

“Well, that was an adventure.” I pulled out my hair tie and redid my low ponytail. “Looks like I have more cookies to bake. And four cakes to decorate.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Let’s go help Beth do damage control with the people who were in line. We’ll give them a free cookie. Then we’ll get baking.”

Owen followed me to the front where the line was re-forming as people came back inside. The evacuation hadn’t lasted long, but I knew how quickly customers’ patience could wear thin. I put on my best smile and had Owen pass out free cookies from what we had left in the case to the people who were waiting. That seemed to help.

I also made a mental note to drop off treats at the fire station.

Once we got through the line, the pastry case was pretty decimated. I decided to abandon peanut butter cookies for the day—didn’t want to test my bad luck on those again—and focus on our best sellers. Chocolate chip and sugar cookies.

Owen and I got to work in the kitchen. I had him fetch ingredients—he was amazed by the size of the sacks of flour and sugar—and made sure to sprinkle a pinch of flour on the counter before I got started.

“What did you do that for?” he asked.

“It’s something I picked up from my aunt. I always sprinkle a little flour before I start a new batch of anything. For good luck. And trust me, I need it.”

“Did you forget before you started the peanut butter cookies?”

I paused, trying to remember. “That’s a good question. But I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t work very well, did it?”

I turned on the large stand mixer. “I guess a pinch of flour isn’t enough to counteract my bad luck. I have a lot of that.”

“It was kind of weird that the fire department was right outside. If there’d been a real fire, that would have been lucky. But there wasn’t, so it was sort of the opposite.”

“Yes,” I said vehemently. I liked this kid. “That’s exactly it. First, we missed the timers. Then, the smoke alarm went off when there wasn’t even that much smoke. Then, the fire department was right outside, so it turned into a whole thing when it was nothing more than some burnt cookies.”

“Definitely sus.”

Nodding, I poured the chocolate chips into the mixer and let them incorporate into the dough. When they were mixed in, I turned it off and dumped the dough onto the island work surface.

“Do you want to do this?” I grabbed a cookie scoop and held it up.

“Sure. What do I do?”