That was where she was—desperately fanning at the fire alarm, oven mitts still on and tears streaming from her eyes because of the smoke—when she heard the sirens approaching.
For a moment Charlie paused her fanning, ducking slightly to look out the front window to see the fire truck pulling up outside. She cursed under her breath.
In a moment the Starlight Peak Fire Department was going to be inside the bakery. Right in time for opening.
* * *
? ? ?
“Your parents go on their first vacation in ten years and you try to burn the bakery down, huh?” Fire Chief Matthews, whom Charlie had known since she was a girl, winked at her and took a bite of the raspberry bar in front of him, washing it down with a coffee.
Charlie grimaced and shrugged. “I guess the timer is on the fritz?”
“On all three of these?” a voice asked. Charlie glanced over at a firefighter she didn’t recognize, saw him pointing at the three ovens and their timers. She had noticed him right away when they all got out of the truck, and not only because she didn’t know him. He was tall and clearly well-muscled under his uniform, good-looking in a way that made her feel off-kilter—though that could have been the concussion, too.
“Weird, huh?” Charlie said, weakly.
The firefighter raised an eyebrow and smiled behind a neatly trimmed beard that was a deep shade of amber. Then he set the first oven’s timer for ten seconds and Charlie watched as it counted down and then beeped when the seconds ended.
“Should we try the other two?” he asked, finger hovering above the timer button, and Chief Matthews chuckled.
“Come on now, Jake,” Chief Matthews said. “Don’t you think she’s having a rough enough morning without your razzing?”
Charlie extended her hand toward the new-to-her, too-handsome-for-his-own-good firefighter. “I’m Cass.”
There was a moment of silence as the firefighter and Chief Matthews stared at Charlie’s outstretched hand in confusion. Charlie realized this new-to-her firefighter was, of course, not new to Cass. She was about to try and cover her tracks, when the chief burst out laughing. “Cassie Goodwin, if you aren’t just as witty today as you were when you were five years old. Always clever, this one.” He stood up and put his helmet back on. “Jake, let’s take some of these cookies and bars back to the station house. Can you pack some up for us, Cass?”
Charlie was about to get one of the take-out boxes when Brett burst through the door.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Brett ran a hand through his hair, which somehow stayed meticulously coiffed with nary a strand out of place. Charlie did her best not to scowl, knowing her sister’s history with Brett—including what had happened the night before. Though she hadn’t been able to get a lot of detail from Cass when they met at the gas station, she had heard enough to make her blood boil. Charlie had never understood Brett Linklater’s appeal.
He was overly confident in a way that Charlie found grating—much like Austin, come to think of it. The “good old boy” sort who always acted like he was performing for a crowd. The sort Charlie had no time for. She was glad Cass had come to her senses; she couldn’t have imagined Brett as her brother-in-law. Not that Charlie was any sort of expert in the romance department: she’d been on a handful of dates in L.A., and had been in a brief relationship with a fellow chef at Souci that had fizzled out before anything got serious. Ultimately she didn’t have the time to juggle work and dating, so mostly she didn’t bother.
Brett engulfed Charlie in a stifling hug and she stiffened, her arms still by her sides.
Brett released her finally, then he pulled back and gave her a curious look. “Did you change your shampoo? You smell different.”
“Uh, yeah. Ran out, so this is a new bottle.” Charlie shrugged. It was becoming clear that swapping identities with her twin might be more complicated than she’d considered.
“Hey, what happened here?” Brett was now holding Charlie’s arm, running his fingers over the bandage on her wrist that covered her tattoo.
“Oh,” Charlie said. “A small burn from earlier.”
“You should have someone take a look at it,” Brett said. Charlie pulled her arm out of his grasp.
“No need. I know how to take care of myself.”
“My poor Cass-baby.” Brett rubbed a hand up and down her back, and Charlie tried not to shudder. It reminded her of the way Austin would rub her shoulders after long days on set—without her permission—when he was trying to disarm her, playing the part of caring, sensitive co-host. “What happened?”