Frost Without You

ROSALIE

I've run this inn for ten years. I know how every person in this valley takes their eggs.

Eight years ago, three weeks before my wedding, I came down at four in the morning to start the bread, and there was a note on the kitchen table, with the salt on it to hold it flat.

I got the bread in.

Now the old woman who owned this house is dead, and she's left it to two people. Me, and the man who wrote the note.

He's a famous chef from New York who hasn't been home since. We have to live under this roof and share this kitchen until midnight on Christmas Eve, or the whole place goes to the highest bidder. So I've told him where the line is. I've put it down in red tape.

I don't want anything from him. I've never wanted anything from anybody. It's the only thing I've ever been good at.

DAMIEN

I've cooked for kings. I can take a room apart without raising my voice, and I can't remember the last thing I tasted.

She looked at me like a delivery. She told me those go round the side.

I've got fifty three days. Then I sign her my half for a dollar and get on a plane, and she never has to look at me again. That's what I owe. It's a good deal more than she knows.

She has the nicest smile you ever saw. I'm the one who put it there.

She thinks she knows why I left. So does everybody. But there are four letters in a dead woman's hand, one for every Sunday of Advent, and every one of them's coming for me.

I can't tell her. I swore. So I'm going to cook.

This is the third book in The Frost Hollow Series. Reading order:

Frost Cause.

Frost for Words.

Frost Without You.