LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I see.” Her brain was still shrieking, “No!”

      “Have you tried the Swedish bakery?”

      “They’re closed. In fact, everyone is closed. You’re our only hope.”

      Jill blinked. “So you called everyone else first?”

      “Well...”

      “Never mind.” She made a face, but the lady couldn’t see it. She took a deep breath. “Madeline, I’m afraid we just can’t...”

      Suddenly she was aware that Connor had grabbed her upper arm and was shaking her gently.

      “Say ‘yes,’” he hissed at her intensely.

      “What?” she mouthed back, covering the receiver with her hand. “Why?”

      “Say ‘yes.’ Never ever say ‘no.’”

      He meant it. She groaned.

      “You’re trying to build up a reputation,” he whispered close to her ear. “You need to be the go-to person, the one they can always depend on. If you want to build your business up, you have to go the extra mile.”

      He was right. She knew he was right. But she was so tired. She really didn’t want to do this.

      “Say ‘yes’,” he insisted.

      She was too limp to fight it. Uncovering the mouthpiece, she sighed and handed the phone to him. “You do it,” she said.

      She turned around and looked at the mess they would have to wade through to get this done. Everything in her rebelled.

      “You realize how many they need, don’t you?” she asked when Connor hung up.

      “Yes. We can do it.”

      “Can we? What makes you think you can say that?”

      “I’ve seen you work. And I’m here to help you.”

      She winced. “How long do we have?”

      “One hour.”

      Her mouth dropped open but no sound came out.

      “Okay,” Connor said quickly, hoping to forestall any forecasts of doom. “Think fast. What do you make that cooks in less than an hour?”

      She shrugged. She felt like a wrung-out rag. “Cookies.”

      “Then we make cookies.”

      She frowned. “But that’s not special.”

      “It is the way we make them.” He looked at her expectantly. “What’ll we do?”

      She looked at him and she had to smile, shaking her head. She knew he was as beat as she was, but the call for desserts seemed to have given him new life. “You’re the one who made the promises. You tell me.”

      “Come on. What’s your signature cookie?”

      She closed her eyes. “I’m too tired to think.”

      “Me, too,” he agreed stoutly. “So we’ll go on instinct instead of brainpower.”

      She began to laugh. This was all so ridiculous. They’d just produced more baked product than she’d ever done before in one day, and now they were going to do more? Impossible.

      “Cookies?” he coaxed.

      “I guess.”

      They made cookies. Pecan lace cookies with a touch of cardamom, pressed together like sandwiches with mocha butter cream filling between them. Chocolate ganache on the base. A touch of white butter cream around the edges, like a lacy frill.

      Connor used the mixer while Jill prepped the pans and got the chocolate ready to melt. Just as the first pan went into the oven, they heard the sound of giggling from the next room.

      Jill looked at Connor. “Oh, no.”

      He nodded. “They climbed out again. We should have known they would.” He looked at her. There was no time to spare and she was the chef. “I’ll take care of them,” he told her. “You just keep baking.”

      It took a couple of minutes to catch the boys and carry them back up, and all the while, he was racking his brain to think of some way to keep them in their beds. There was only one idea that just might work, but he knew instinctively that Jill wasn’t going to like it. They didn’t have much choice. He was going to have to do it and deal with the consequences later.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      BY THE TIME Connor got back to the kitchen, Jill had at least sixty cookies cooling and was beginning assembly of the desserts.

      “I don’t hear the boys,” she said. “What did you do?”

      “Don’t worry. I took care of it.”

      She stopped and looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You didn’t tie them up or anything like that, did you?”

      “No, nothing like that. I’d show you, but right now, we’ve got to hurry with this stuff.”

      She gave him a penetrating glance, but she was in the middle of the drizzle across the top of each confection and her attention got diverted.

      “What do you think?” she asked him.

      Connor looked the sample over with a critical eye.

      “I don’t know. It still needs something. Something to make it look special.”

      They both stared for a long sixty seconds.

      “I know,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of buttercream left. Get your decorating thingamajig.”

      “Why?”

      “I’ve seen the flowers you can make with butter cream frosting. You’re going to make one hundred and two rose buds.”

      “Oh.” She looked at the clock. “Do you really think we can get them out in time?”

      “I know we can.” He grinned at her, then swooped in and kissed her hard on her pretty mouth. “We can do anything. We already have.”

      He took her breath away, but she stayed calm. At least outwardly. She stared at him for a few seconds, still feeling that kiss. Why was he doing things guaranteed to send her into a tailspin if she didn’t hold herself together?

      But she went back to work and she kept control and the job got finished. And at the end, they stared at each other.

      “We did it.”

      “We did, didn’t we?”

      “But the delivery...”

      “Quick. We’re five minutes late.”

      He piled the desserts in boxes and headed for the door. Just before he disappeared, he called back, “Better check on the twins.”

      She was already on her way. There wasn’t a sound as she climbed the stairs. When she opened the door, nothing moved. But somehow everything looked a little wrong. In the dark, she couldn’t quite figure out what it was and she hated to turn on the light, but she had to. And what she saw left her speechless.

      “What?”

      One crib stood empty. The other had been turned upside down. The mattress was on the ground, but the rest of the crib was above it like a cage. And on the mattress, her two little boys were sound asleep.

      Her first impulse was to wake them up and rescue them, but then she realized they were probably better off where they were. After all, how was she going to get them to stay in their cribs without the bars?

      She went back down, not sure what to do. She started cleaning up the kitchen, but then

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