Bake This! (A 300 Moons Novella)

C
opyright
© 2016 by 13th Story Press
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

1
3th Story Press
PO Box 506
Swarthmore
, PA 19081

[email protected]

C
over design
2016 by Sylvia Frost

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P
acked with steamy shifters
, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!

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S
exy Will Harkness
has always been a lone wolf. When a beautiful witch stumbles into his path, can he resist the holiday magic?

Tess Lane has just completed a magical task that consumed her every waking moment for years. Though she longs for a way to use her special skills in the regular world, Tess’s magic comes with a price that makes sharing it with others all but impossible. The unbelievably gorgeous guy she meets when visiting her sister’s new family for the holidays certainly makes her wish otherwise. If only she could stop breaking things long enough to get to know him better.

Will Harkness has always been a lone wolf. Surrounded by a large and loving foster family, Will skirts the edges of the madcap career success his siblings have enjoyed, preferring to live a quiet life filled with simple pleasures. But when his brother Derek’s wife brings her voluptuous but accident-prone little sister home for the holidays, Will’s feelings suddenly get complicated.

When the two are thrown together with the mission of baking two hundred apple pies during an epic blizzard, Tess can hardly resist the pull of her magic. Will the shadow waiting in the snow snuff them out for good? Or will these two loners learn to open their hearts?

Bake This!
is a steamy and light-hearted holiday romance that may be read alone. (But fans of the 300 Moons series will enjoy a chance to catch up with Derek, Johnny, Darcy and their mates!)

F
or my family
.

You make every day a holiday.

S
ome people said
Kate Harkness was a witch.

Others said she was an angel.

But to the very special group of foundlings in her care, she was just Mom.

Mom, with a long ponytail of frizzy yellow hair, smiling so hard that her sunburnt cheeks nearly covered her eyes. Mom, pushing a wheelbarrow or driving the pick-up truck that pulled the hayride at Harkness Farms. Mom, laying down the law when you messed up, and making you want to cry with pride when you had earned her gruff praise.

Any mom will tell you her children are special, but the kids who came to live at Harkness Farms weren’t exactly your run of the mill orphans. Kate’s children all possessed special gifts. Unique abilities, you might say. Each one had the unlikely power to shift into the form of an animal or magical creature.

And it was precisely because of these blessings that the children found their way to Kate Harkness. Most shifters didn’t have the power to change until adolescence. But rarely, a child would come into their gift early. And sometimes, this was just too much for even a shifter family to handle.

But not too much for Kate.

Bear. Wolf. Tiger. Dog. Butterfly. Dragon. It didn’t matter.

She made room in her home and her heart for them all.

To help them, every precocious young shifter brought to Harkness Farms was paid a visit by Gloria Cortez, a witch of no little renown, on the night of their arrival. Although Mrs. Cortez’s role in their everyday lives wasn’t as evident as Kate’s, it was no less important.

The tiny woman would cradle the child in her warm arms and whisper a sweet song, though none could ever remember the words.

“Three hundred moons, Kate,” she would say with a crinkly-eyed smile, handing the child off again.

“And then what, Gloria?” some of the children heard their Mom whisper one night, when they had snuck downstairs to witness the welcome ceremony of a new sibling.

“And then we wait,” Mrs. Cortez replied. “Magic always has a price. We’ll find it out soon enough.”

The children all believed that Mrs. Cortez had somehow given them the power to control their animals, to live a normal life among the rest of the world. But whenever they tried to ask Mom about it, she told them they would know well enough when they were older, and set them to work on one farm chore or another.

Eventually, they stopped asking. And the song was all but forgotten.

But now is a significant time for the first group of children who came into the care of Kate Harkness all those years ago. The 300th moon is finally upon them. Some memories refuse to stay forgotten forever.

And some prices won’t remain unpaid.

T
ess Lane shivered
and fought the urge to use her magic to stoke the dwindling flames in the fireplace.

She was curled up in an armchair, just outside the ring of toasty warmth the fire still provided. Below her, on the rag rug at the hearth, most of the other adults in the house lounged under throw blankets, roasting marshmallows, leaning on each other and talking about old times, as siblings will often do when reunited after a long time apart.

The only one missing was Kate Harkness, the foster mom to most of this gang of young adults, as well as the little ones already upstairs in bed.

Kate was in the kitchen, banging around with pots and pans and generally creating the atmosphere of down-to-earth comfort as the spicy scent of gingerbread filled the old farmhouse with the sweet feeling of the holidays.

Normally, Tess would have been happiest joining her hostess, rummaging around in the kitchen and being helpful.

But tonight she was feeling a bit sheepish.

Always one to tinker, Tess had volunteered to tune up the well pump that served the irrigation system for the farm’s plant nursery.

Her own sister, Hedda, who had married into the Harkness clan, had tried to stop her. But Tess had been convinced she was going to win the family’s approval by finessing the crotchety old pump back into prime working condition.

Instead, she had blown the motor.

Any other time, she might have used her magic to fix it. But she wasn’t at the top of a lonely mountain with no one around but her sisters anymore.

There was a price to be paid for using magic, and Tess certainly didn’t want to pay it among strangers.

Instead, she’d put in a call to a local repairman to replace the pump motor, and hoped that no one had noticed it was blown yet. It was winter, after all, and the pump was not in use. The whole thing made her feel positively sick with guilt and embarrassment.

But she couldn’t let any of that show. Lane women were nothing if not stoic. So she tried to put on her happy face, even though she wasn’t really feeling it.

She certainly wasn’t in the mood to fall in love, despite Hedda’s attempts to set her up with her husband’s best friend.

As if reading her sister’s mind, Hedda caught Tess’s eye and nodded unsubtly toward the handsome golden-haired man on the floor at her feet. His hair glowed in the firelight, and his strong jawline made him look like a young king.

His name was Ethan Chambers, and he was “perfect” for Tess, according to Hedda. He was an engineer, and Tess liked to tinker. He was very attractive, and Tess had been so long without a man she was afraid she might have forgotten how all her parts worked.

Well, that didn’t make them perfect for each other. But it did make her willing to
try.

Her sister Hedda’s hand was twined with the hand of her new husband, Derek.

While Tess had never had much luck dating, men had always thrown themselves at Hedda’s feet. Derek had been no exception. So naturally Hedda couldn’t begin to understand why Tess would be shy to start a conversation with Ethan.

Problem was, Tess wasn’t exactly a conversationalist. As a matter of fact, she preferred to stay in the background. If everyone else sat on the floor, Tess would sit in a chair. If everyone else sat on a chair, Tess would stand. If everyone else were standing, Tess would be up in her room, packing a bag.

She glanced at the stairs, wondering when she could just call it a night, and she accidentally caught the eye of one of Derek’s foster brothers, Will.

Wow. And Tess had thought she set herself apart.

Will was not only standing, he was half out of the room, leaning against the threshold, like a cowboy on a cigarette billboard. He was younger than the others by a few years, with warm brown skin that reminded her of the cattails that grew along the banks of Copper Creek.

His hazel eyes flashed, and she felt a sudden spark between them, as if he had reached out and run a long finger down her spine.

She smiled at him, her go-to reaction whenever she felt nervous, then looked away quickly.

Surely there was something around here for her to
do
.

She turned her attention back to the conversation at the hearth.

“Why did you give away two gallons of cider?” Hedda was asking Derek.

“Well, the cash register was jammed, so what could I do?” Derek laughed.

A broken cash register. Perfect.

“Which cash register?” Tess asked, already on her feet.

The room went still for a moment.

She realized that she had shot through the lazy, quiet mood with the bullet-like sharpness of her question.

“Um, register two, Tess,” Derek said politely. “But you don’t need to worry about it. We’ll get to it in the morning.”

“Oh, I’ll get it. No worries,” Tess chirped, ignoring her sister’s pleading glance.

She slipped out of the room into the kitchen so as not to bump into Will in the threshold that led to the front door.

The Harkness kitchen was warm and fragrant. Kate was pulling a tray of gingerbread people out of the oven as Tess ran out the back door without so much as a word.

She crossed the yard under the big sycamore trees until she reached the old octagonal barn. It had been retrofitted as a store on the bottom with storage above. She grabbed a key from under the mat and opened the door.

“Hey, wait up,” a deep voice said from behind her.

Tess nearly jumped out of her shoes.

She turned to see Will, hazel eyes dancing playfully in his tawny face.

“What-what are you doing?” she asked.

“Just wanted to see if I could lend a hand,” he offered.

“Oh,” she replied, looking up at him dumbfounded and hoping she wasn’t admiring him as openly as she felt like she was.

“What are
you
doing?” he asked patiently.

“I was going to fix the cash register,” she explained, turning and heading inside.

She heard his footsteps behind her, and instead of slowing down to chat she found herself speeding up, her shoes drumming the wide pine plank floors.

The whole place smelled like paradise - a mix of the fresh fruits and spices the farm stocked all year, as well as the yeasty note of the fresh bread that was baked every single morning. They also sold an eclectic assortment of toys, books, gardening equipment and local artwork.

The barn was practically a magical place. Tess had been in heaven from the first moment she stepped inside. It felt like a cross between a Tasha Tudor story and Santa’s workshop.

She headed to the center and the cashier’s station.

Though she had never worked on a cash register before, she felt very sure that she could easily repair one. After all, it was a simple machine - a drawer with springs and rollers, and buttons that operated them.

“You’re pretty handy, huh?” Will asked, leaning against the counter.

Tess smiled, and noticed his big hands gripping the butcher block - the kind of hands that could chop wood all day and never get tired.

“I like to fix things,” she agreed.

“Wow, that’s great,” he said. “I’ve never been much for that stuff.”

Tess studied the cash register for a moment, then powered it up.

When the lights flashed on, she pushed the sale button.

Nothing happened.

She pushed the open drawer button.

Nothing.

“I usually use a screwdriver on it, myself,” Will offered.

Tess shuddered at the idea of prying the pristine metal drawer open with a screwdriver.

“I think it’s a bad wire on the drawer lock,” Tess murmured.

Will raised his eyebrows, and watched as she examined the back of the machine.

She tried not to think about his eyes on her, when she bent to probe the wire. It seemed to be intact, but you could never tell.

It was an older machine, so the wire didn’t just unplug. She gingerly unwound and unthreaded it from the base.

She licked her finger and touched the wire.

She was rewarded with a light shock.

“Oh,” Will said sympathetically.

So it wasn’t a bad wire, then.

Tess quickly reconnected it, then went back to the front of the machine to see if she could figure out if the rollers were bad.

But now the lights weren’t on.

Crap.

She must have somehow interfered with the power cord when she was fussing with the wire for the drawers.

She went back to the wiring. Everything looked fine. But the power was still out.

“I think you might have knocked this out,” Will said diplomatically, and pointed at the plug for the machine, which must have pulled out of the wall socket as she was working.

She bent to plug it in just as he did.

Their hands touched, and she felt a spark she swore was almost as strong as the one she’d gotten from the cash register.

She jumped up quickly, banging her head on the counter on the way up.

“Are you okay?” Will asked kindly as he straightened.

“Sure, yeah,” she said, trying not to notice the warmth shimmering in the inches between them.

The lights were back on the register, but she was at a loss as to how to check the rollers when the stupid thing was still jammed shut.

“Here’s what I normally do,” Will said, sliding a long flat screwdriver out from under the counter and slipping it across the top of the drawer.

There was a muted pop and then the drawer sailed open.

“I think it was just one of the bill depressors,” he said. “It must have popped up.”

Oh.

“Let’s try opening it the usual way to be sure,” Tess suggested.

They closed the drawer.

Then she rang up a sale.

The drawer popped open with a merry ding. Everything was just as it should be.

Except the puff of smoke from behind the machine as the rubber sleeve that covered the wire on the drawer lock began to melt.

“Oh, no.” She dove under the counter to unplug the machine.

Unfortunately, Will had the same instinct.

Tess found herself tangled up with the big guy.

“We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” he laughed, the deep sound filling the barn.

Tess scrambled up, nearly banging her head again, and feeling her cheeks flush. She was completely mortified at having broken something else, and something as important as a cash register to boot. She knew there was no way to use magic to fix it without causing a calamity. Overwhelmed and embarrassed, Tess dashed out of the barn and back to the house as fast as she could.

She fled through the kitchen and dining room, into the center hall and up the stairs to the third floor room she was staying in during her visit.

She dove into bed without even taking her clothes off, wishing she never had to come out again.