Free A Lawman in Her Stocking by Kathie DeNosky

sure hoped Abigail was right.
    “How does an omelette sound?” Brenna asked, hopefully.
    “Great.” He rubbed his hands together. “Give me a knife and I’ll dice up whatever you have for the filling.”
    “Filling?”
    “Yeah, the stuff that goes inside, like ham, cheese, peppers….” He frowned. “You have made omelettes before, haven’t you?”
    “Uh…sure,” Brenna lied. “Why don’t you relaxand watch television, or read the newspaper while I whip these up?”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course.” She had to get him out of the kitchen so she could search for her grandmother’s cookbook. “You’ve had a hard day and it won’t take long for me to get these baked.”
    He frowned. “Baked?”
    “Cooked,” she said quickly. “I meant cooked.”
    A sudden wave of panic swept through her as she watched him shrug and walk back into the living room. Her culinary skills barely included boiling water to make a cup of tea. What on earth had she been thinking when she’d offered to cook for them?
    She stood motionless for a moment as she stared at the cabinets. Then spinning into action, she searched first one cabinet, then another for Abigail’s cookbook. Where had her grandmother put the darned thing?
    When Brenna finally found the tattered book, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Omelettes,” she muttered, running her finger down the index. “Where are the recipes for omelettes?”
     
    Dylan listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen over the low volume of the television. It sounded like a small war had broken out. Pans clattered and cabinet doors banged as Brenna moved around the compact kitchen. A loud splat followed by a heartfelt damn had him rising halfway out of the chair.
    “Are you sure you don’t need help?” he called.
    “Everything’s under control.”
    Uneasy about the strange sounds coming from the kitchen, he settled back into the chair. If things were fine, why did she sound so flustered? And why was she making all that noise?
    A panicked shriek, followed closely by the screech of a smoke detector, suddenly caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand straight up, and a chill to race the length of his spine. Bolting from the chair, he collided with Brenna as she ran from the kitchen.
    “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
    “The kitchen is on fire!”
    He pushed past her and into the dense smoke that was rapidly filling the room. Flames licked at the bottom of a small skillet and a dark cloud of smoke billowed from the top of the electric range.
    “Do you have a fire extinguisher?”
    She coughed and pointed to the cabinet under the sink. “In there.”
    Dylan quickly located the red cylinder strapped to the inside of the cabinet, jerked it loose, took aim and squeezed the handle. A cloud of white vapor instantly and efficiently put out the flame.
    “Are you all right?” he asked when he turned to face her. His voice sounded more harsh than he’d intended, but the woman had scared him out of a good ten years of life.
    His concern increased when Brenna stood silently in the doorway, tears streaming down her red face. Had she suffered a burn?
    He walked over to her and searched for any signs that she’d been injured. When he found none, he took her into his arms. “How in the hell did you manage to set an electric stove on fire?”
    “I have no idea.” Obviously embarrassed to tears, she buried her face against his chest and wailed, “I don’t know the first thing about cooking.”
     
    An empty pizza box between them, Dylan and Brenna sat cross-legged on the living room floor. They’d scrubbed down the range top and washed the skillet, but an acrid scorched scent still lingered throughout the house.
    “I wish we could get the smell out of here,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
    She watched him move the box to the side, stretch his legs out in front of him, then lean back on one elbow. “That’s going to take some time. You really had the smoke rolling