The Mechanic’s Secret Santa (Christmas in Alpine Valley #8)

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

MEG

“What are you doing here?” Piper scolds when she catches me in the kitchen, not so discreetly rolling out sugar cookie dough about the time I should be frosting my last cookie. Any other day, and no one would question me working late.

“It’s a special order.”

“No one else can make sugar cookies?” Piper challenges.

Truth be told, anyone else could take care of this order. Including Piper who mostly does marketing. Or Addison when she comes in for her nightshift. Hell, even Brooklyn who’s so bad in a kitchen that I keep her strictly on deliveries, could handle rolling dough and operating cookie cutters. I won’t bake these until early tomorrow morning so they’re as fresh as they can be for the VFW Christmas party.

But I was in desperate need of a night off from my fake relationship.

For the past couple of days, Aaron has been more than convincing with his axis tilting fake kisses, sensual touches, and schmoozing of my mom.

I feel like I’m living in a Hallmark movie, except the thoughts I’ve been having about him are anything but G-rated. I wonder how upset Wilma would be to learn that I’m having such naughty thoughts about the man whose name I drew. There wasn’t a rule forbidding fraternization, but it still feels like a gray area.

Every little touch has my body tingling with a want that I can’t seem to satisfy on my own. In the middle of such an attempt in the wee hours of this morning, my faithful Clit Master lost its charge. Being around Aaron tonight would be disastrous. I know his flirting is anything but fake. But as long as I keep pretending that it is, I still have some control over my stupid feelings.

“What are you doing here?” I ask Piper, hopeful to deflect what I’m not ready to dissect any more than I already have. It’s making my head hurt. “It’s after seven.”

“Hiding,” she says with a heavy sigh, dropping onto a stool.

“From?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She props her elbows on the edge of the prep table. “Why aren’t you out with Aaron? I thought you two had another date planned tonight.”

“I might have cancelled,” I mumble.

“Did your mom sign over the deed?”

“No, not yet.”

“Then why did you cancel?”

“It’s…complicated.”

“I’d drink to that.” She lifts her head and scans the room. “You don’t have any alcohol here, do you?”

“Had to get rid of it while my mom is in town. Though she seems to have picked up drinking social cocktails, I doubt she’d approved of our bakery nightcaps.” I ball up some sugar cookie dough and offer it instead.

Piper pops the dough in her mouth and lets out a happy, satisfied moan. “God, you really are the best baker. You tell your mom about the expansion yet?”

“No!” I realize I may have shouted that and add in a quieter tone, “I don’t plan to until it’s up and running—successfully.”

“For the record,” Piper says, “I think she’d approve.”

“Thanks. I just?—”

“Meg, there’s a delivery guy here,” Tara, one of my high schoolers who mans the register on nights and weekends, announces from the doorway.

“Delivery guy?” I’m not expecting any deliveries for two more days. And certainly not one so late in the day.

“He’s kind of a jerk,” she says, dropping her voice. “Says he’s not bringing all the boxes inside.”

Boxes. Shit !

“What’s wrong?” Piper asks.

“He’s not supposed to bring them here .”

I rush out to the front in time to see the taillights of a delivery truck disappearing down Main Street. Several stacks of boxes are piled on the sidewalk, collecting a dusting of freshly fallen snow.

“What are all these?” Piper asks, brushing away the snow and revealing a new logo only my designer—Piper—has seen at all. But I never told her what I had already done with said logo. “Are these for?—”

“You can’t say a word .”

She uses her fingers to zip her lips and throw away the key.

“Help me load them into the bakery truck?” I softly plead as I search the streets for a trace of Mom’s car. She’s out with her old book club tonight, but I forget where they were going. All I remember is that my date with Aaron seemed unnecessary because the odds of us getting spotted were low.

Low, but not zero.

“I’ll pull the truck around,” she says, rushing back inside.

Together, the two of us work to stuff the truck full. The last two boxes take up temporary residence in the passenger seat. Because Brooklyn will need the truck in the morning, and I can’t risk Mom walking by the truck and seeing a new logo painted on all sides of the boxes in the front seat, I have no choice but to move them now.

“I can help you,” Piper offers as I climb into the driver’s seat of the truck. “Part of that whole hiding thing.”

Though Piper and Becky Sue know about the expansion, I haven’t shown either of them the inside of the new location yet. I was saving that for a Christmas surprise. I’ve caught Becky Sue trying to peek through the paper-covered windows on more than one occasion.

“If you really want to help, I need those sugar cookies cut out and on pans.”

“I got it covered.”

“Thanks, Piper!”

The second location is on the opposite end of downtown, six blocks from the main store. It was once an old furniture store that was converted into a restaurant. The last few years, several different types of businesses have taken up temporary residence. None of them needed the commercial kitchen or loading dock. But no one decided to remodel those into something else, either.

I back up to a loading door and hop out of the truck to unlock the main door beside it. The garage door needs to be replaced—something a small business loan could definitely help me achieve—but for now, it opens manually if given enough muscling into submission.

Unfortunately, I seem a little short on strength tonight because it takes me an embarrassingly long time to wrestle the door open a mere three feet.

“It’ll have to do.”

I hurry to open the back of the truck, desperate to get these boxes inside before I’m caught. But the latch won’t open.

“That’s weird.”

It’s now that I notice the truck is no longer running.

But when I try to open the driver’s side door and find it locked too, my heart sinks clear into my toes.

I nearly fall on my ass running to the passenger’s side door only to discover it’s locked as well. Through the quickly frosting window, I notice the keys dangling from the ignition. Mocking me. No matter how many times I try to yank open any of the doors, it’s no use. I’m locked out.

A loud bang causes me to jump and nearly slip on a patch of ice. I catch myself on the side mirror and regain my footing. My heart pounds as I round the truck and discover the garage door I muscled open is now closed.

A chatter of laughter down the street causes my throat to close up. What if Mom is having dinner just down the street and walks by? I’m so close to having the bakery be all mine. I can’t risk her—or anyone else that might tell her—catching me here.

My desperation leads me to make a very stupid decision.

I text Aaron.