Free The Navy SEAL's Christmas Bride by Cora Seton

it closer to his plate so he could butter a piece of toast.
    “What are you going to bet on? Monopoly or tic-tac-toe?” Mason asked.
    “I’m not into games like that.” Dan shrugged.
    “We don’t have video games,” Regan said.
    “You could bet on who’s better at washing dishes,” Ella suggested.
    “Or mopping floors, for that matter.” Regan smiled.
    “How about who’s faster at cleaning toilets?” Austin’s tone told Sarah he’d been stuck with that particular chore one too many times.
    “How about who makes better brownies?” Ella said with a smile at Sarah.
    “I’d win that hands down.” Her brownies were top notch.
    “You gonna take that sitting down?” Austin nudged Dan.
    “SEALs don’t bake.” Mason passed the plate of bacon to Regan.
    “Maybe SEALs should bake once in a while,” she said.
    “I’ll have you know SEALs are very good at baking.” Dan took the plate of bacon from Regan and helped himself to several pieces. “Game on, Metlin.”
    “How are we going to judge the winner?” she said. “No fair getting all the men to vote for you.”
    “We’ll have to have a blind taste test,” Ella said. “We can do it at Ethan and Autumn Cruz’s place tonight. People will take turns being blindfolded and eating your brownies, and they’ll say which one they like best. We’ll let Autumn tally up the votes—she doesn’t know either of you so she won’t be biased.”
    “Won’t she be upset if we take over her party like that?” It sounded rude to Sarah.
    “Are you kidding? She’ll love it. Those Cruz ranch people get up to weird stuff all the time. It’s practically joke central over there, from what I hear. We’ve only gotten to know them in the last few months, but I like Autumn a lot. You will, too.”
    “And they’ll all like my brownies,” Dan said with satisfaction.
    “Do you know how to bake brownies?” Mason asked Dan later when he caught him hiding out in the barn searching for recipes online on his phone.
    “Not a clue.”
    “Doesn’t look too hard.” Mason peered over his shoulder at the recipe Dan had pulled up. “I’m sure Regan has all the ingredients in her kitchen. She’s got everything in there.”
    Dan just nodded. He was reading the recipe over again.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Memorizing it. If Sarah sees me following a recipe she’ll know I’ve pulled a fast one.”
    “Why don’t you just ask her out? It’d be a hell of a lot simpler than whatever it is you’ve got going on.”
    “Simple isn’t necessarily best.” Dan started at the beginning again.
    “Yeah, but it isn’t necessarily the worst, either.”
    “Do you know what you’re doing?” Sarah asked later when she and Dan were alone in the kitchen. The others had moved into the living room where they’d broken out board games to pass the time.
    “Of course.” Dan picked shards of eggshell out of his batter and wiped his fingers surreptitiously on a piece of paper towel. Sarah pretended not to see. She had noticed the hesitant way he moved about the kitchen, though, as if he didn’t spend much time cooking. Too busy going on covert missions, she suspected. Not that she’d done much cooking these past few years, either. Not a lot of time for that no matter what branch of the military you joined. She’d done a fair amount in the past, though.
    “I used to work at a bakery in junior high,” she said conversationally. “Just about every afternoon after school. I came up with this recipe then—it was one of the store’s best sellers. They still carry it today.”
    “Nice.” Dan was measuring out an amount of flour that seemed out of proportion to the rest of his ingredients. When he grabbed a box of cornstarch from Regan’s cupboard, Sarah only just stopped herself from intercepting him. Cornstarch in brownies? That didn’t seem right.
    “We never named the prizes for this contest. What do I get when I win?” She turned back to her own batter.
    “If you win,