Baby It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren Page A

time to add to the pile in the mudroom. A dusky memory of her mother, rolling out pie crust, cutting off a piece for her to make her own pie, dusted with cinnamon and sugar.
    Dottie pulled back the eyelet curtain and stared outside. The snow pummeled the window, thick, bulky flakes, and she could barely discern the fir tree outside her window, weighted with the burden of snow. Somewhere, in all that whiteness, her giant white pine lay toppled, but she couldn’t make it out. Small mercies, perhaps.
    In a different time, she might have been beguiled by the magic of the season, of a Christmas season blizzard. A white, merry Christmas, with a houseful of friends and family making memories.
    But who did she have to make memories for?
    She let the curtain fall. Gordy needed to stop singing or she’d throw him out into a snowbank on his britches.
    She opened the bathroom door, and the aroma of breakfast rushed up at her. What right did the man have to invade her kitchen too? He had some nerve, that Gordy Lindholm, digging into her food stores, helping himself to her hospitality duties. But he’d always acted like what was hers belonged also to him.
    Her anger seemed a live coal in her chest as she gripped the oak railing and padded down the stairs. The fire in the hearth had died—the stoker humming in the basement. And from the kitchen the humming had switched to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
    Of all the songs to choose…
    She skidded to a halt under the arch between the rooms, her heart choking off her breath.
    Not Gordy, but Jake stood at the stove, in his undershirt and trousers, a flour cloth tied around his slim waist, holding a spatula. Humming. And making…
    “What on earth is going on in here?”
    He whirled around, his mouth open, eyes wide. “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Morgan—”
    “What are you doing?” She couldn’t shake the anger now sputtering to life inside her. Who did he think he was, to just— “You just help yourself to my kitchen?”
    He stared at her as if her tone had stripped the words from him. “Uh…I get up early…I thought…”
    She didn’t know what to make of it, or the blush on his face, the way he swallowed then finally turned back to the stove and flipped the pancake before it burned.
    She stared at her counter. No spilled flour, no broken egg in the sink, no cloud of smoke.
    He slid the pancake onto a plate.
    She stared at it—flat, and crispy. “I think you forgot the baking powder.”
    “It’s blini. It’s Russian. You serve it with jam. My housekeeper taught it to me. Takes just a couple eggs, some flour, a scant amount of sugar and salt. I used some of your powdered milk, although I cut it in half…” He stared at her, what looked like apology on his face. “I’m sorry. I was trying to help.” He stared at the blini. Back at her.
    He had such remorse on his face, she didn’t want to be angry with him. It was just…the smells, the song on his lips. The fact that she liked seeing a young man in her kitchen, stirring up mischief.
    She picked up the plate. “Jam, you said? I think I have some apple butter in the pantry.”
    He nodded like he already knew that.
    She set the plate on the table, retrieved the butter, then opened the drawer and found a couple forks, knives.
    A pot of coffee perked on the stove.
    She poured the coffee into a cup, found another, and set him a place. Then she slid onto the chair and stared at the thin pancake. It curled, crispy on the edges, but otherwise cooked to a perfect brown. “How do I eat this?”
    He turned, a smile darting up his face. “I’ll show you.” He took his own plate to the table, sat down beside her, in Nelson’s place. Spreading a thin layer of apple butter across the blini, he then folded it in half, then half again to make a triangle. When he cut it through and pierced it with his fork, it resembled a stack of flapjacks.
    He stuck the pile in his mouth and smiled at her. “Yum.”
    She buttered her blini,