“Shawna Lee told me you accepted her brownie recipe for the cookbook.”

“That’s right. The person who tested it thought her brownies were really good.”

“But you had the power to veto it and you didn’t.”

Hannah hoped Mike would never find out hw close she’d come to relegating Shawna Lee’s recipe to the circular file. As the “author” of the Lake Eden potluck cookbook and the head of the cookbook committee, Hannah had the power to accept or reject as she saw fit. The only thing that had stopped her in Shawna Lee’s case was the fear that someone might find out and accuse her of being petty. “Of course I didn’t use my veto. Why would I veto a perfectly good recipe?”

Mike chuckled, and Hannah felt her toes tingle. It was an intimate chuckle, one that should be heard up close and personal, not transmitted over telephone wires. “Have you tasted those brownies yet?”

“Not yet.” Hannah’s eyebrows began to knit, but she stopped in mid-frown. The magazine she’d paged through in the supermarket line had warned that frowns caused wrinkles in women over thirty, and she’d passed the three decade mark a couple of months ago.

“They’re the best brownies I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve tasted a lot. I told Shawna Lee she should call them hot brownies.”

“Hot brownies?”

“Yeah. Hot as in ‘terrific’ not hot from the stove. You know what I mean?”

“I get it.”

“Anyway, they’re definitely hot, and if I work it just right, I might be able to talk her into letting you add them to your menu, especially if you call them Shawna Lee’s Brownies. What do you think about that?”

“Impressive,” Hannah said, envisioning the anvil she’d like to impress into the top of Mike’s head. Bake Shawna Lee’s brownies for her shop? Not a chance!

Five minutes later, Hannah was still sitting at her kitchen table, staring down into her half-filled and rapidly cooling coffee mug. Hot brownies. The best Mike had ever tasted. The slow burn she’d started to do when Mike had first uttered those words had grown into a sizable conflagration. If Mike liked hot brownies so much, she’d give him hot brownies. They wouldn’t be “hot” as in “terrific.” And they wouldn’t be “hot” from the stove. Her brownies would be “hot” as in “five-alarm-chili-hot” and she could hardly wait to hear Mike yowl when he bit into one!

<2>

“Hi, Hannah,” Lisa Herman called out as she came in the back door at The Cookie Jar. “It’s really snowing out there. I had to brush off the whole top of the … what’s that?”

Hannah glanced up at her young partner and started to laugh. Lisa looked absolutely horrified at the sight of the box of brownie mix Hannah had just upended into her bowl. “It’s brownie mix.”

“I can see that. But why are you using it?”

“Mike called me this morning and he told me all about Shawna Lee Quinn’s brownies. He said they were hot as in terrific. I thought about it after I hung up and I decided I should make him some of my hot brownies.”