Troping Through the Snow by Alexa Riley

CHAPTER 1





FROSTIE





I click through all my orders, and my anxiety rises as I read one after the other. How will I ever get these all done? It should be exciting that my small bakery is bursting at the seams and I can’t keep up with the demand. Every year, Troping gets more and more popular, especially since the town now has a small resort. But right now, I want to cry, and it’s not tears of joy.

My best friend Tinsel came up with the great idea for me to take orders online. The bakery in Westchester, a town over from ours, had been doing it. I haven’t heard the best things about it, but Tins was sure they were my competition and must be beat.

Tins even set up the website for me. It all was so easy, but that should have been a sign. When the website went live, I had no idea how many orders would come in. People are driving hours out of their way to come pick up cupcakes! I know my frosting is amazing, but this is too much!

“This can’t be real.” I grab my cell and place it next to my laptop.

My office is my bedroom, which is above my bakery. My best friend Tinsel used to live with me until she went and fell in love with her brother's best friend, who happens to be loaded and owns the resort here in Troping. Could her life be any more cliché?

“Yo.” Tinsel answers her phone on the first ring. She’s the sheriff of Troping, which is funny because if anyone is up to no good, it’s actually her. “Why are you calling? Only serial killers call. You text or snap, and snaps disappear like it never even happened.” Her voice drops. “Wait, is this a real emergency?” She sounds almost excited about the idea.

“Did you use your man’s money to place a million orders at my bakery so I would think your website is a huge success?”

“Damn,” she mutters. I knew it. My anxiety starts to fall away until she speaks again. “That would have been a good idea. You would have thought I’m a genius.”

“Tins,” I hiss into the phone. “Are these orders real?!”

“I didn’t place any orders, I swear. I come in and steal my food like a normal best friend,” she rushes to respond at the sound of my distress.

“Normal?” I roll my eyes. Tins is far from normal.

“So are you saying my website is working?” Her tone turns smug.

“I’ve got to go.” I hang up on her and go back to my orders. I should have realized she didn’t create all these because she would have come up with stupid names for them. I call her back again so she can at least put a stop to them.

“Yo.”

“You get on me about calling but you can say the word ‘yo’?”

“It’s coming back.”

“You’re so full of it.”

“I’m full of something.” She laughs at her own corny joke. “Stop it, I’m not really full. Jack! I’m on the phone. This is serious. It’s work. You’re assaulting an officer of the law.” I can hear her shuffling around. Since she and Jack became a thing, he’s never far from her. She might as well deputize him.

“I need you to turn the website off.”

“Turn it off?” she asks, confused.

“Yes, shut it down. Turn it off. Whatever it’s called. Make it go away.”

“Why?” I can picture her nose scrunched. As mischievous as Tins can be, her face always gives her away. At least to me, but we’ve been best friends forever. She can be unpredictable to most, but I can read her like a book.

“I can’t fill any more orders,” I shout into the phone, and the line goes quiet for a long moment.

“All right.” She grows serious. “I’ll turn the ordering off. We don’t need to take down the whole website.” I hear her moving around again. “I’m doing it right now.” The sounds of clicks come through the line. “I’m coming over.”

“No, I’ve got to work.” I refresh the website and see the order page is gone.

“I’ll help you,” she pushes, and I know she’s starting to worry. A worried Tinsel can be a good thing because it can put her ass into gear. Or it could be an explosion.

“I have people to help me bake. I just can’t take any more orders,” I say, and that’s the truth. You can only have so many cooks in a kitchen when it’s only so big. Plus, no one can make my frosting. I’ve tried to show some of the staff, but somehow it never comes out right unless I do it.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Go back to your man.”

“I can’t go back to him, he never leaves,” she huffs, pretending to be annoyed when we both know she’s not. No, she was annoyed and pissed when she thought Jack wasn’t obsessed with her. Little did she know.

Tinsel has been in love with Jack from the moment her brother brought him home during college. He’d been a dick, according to her, but what I saw was her giving him a hard time. The two of them sparred for years, but I knew she loved him. It was an unspoken thing between us, and I didn’t push because Tinsel gets where she needs to be on her own.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her before hanging up again. She might not live here anymore, but she comes every morning for her sugar cookie coffee and a treat.