The thermometer mounted outside the kitchen window of The Cookie Jar had hovered around the minus ten mark when she’d left to deliver her cookies. From the way her cheeks stung from the cold, she was willing to bet that it had fallen another couple of degrees since then. Not to mention wind chill. She didn’t even want to think about wind chill. Anyone who’d grown up in cold country knew that it was the apparent temperature felt on exposed skin due to the wind. The degree depended on both air temperature and wind speed, and Hannah was willing to bet that an actual ten below on the thermometer easily translated to twenty below when it came to the exposed skin of her neck! Hannah had just left Luanne at Elf Headquarters, and she was headed to the Crazy Elf Cookie Shop to deliver her wares. They’d stopped at the toy shop so Luanne could talk to Courtney and tell her the bad news about the trial balance, but the elf who was manning the register had told them that Courtney had an appointment to have her hair done and she wouldn’t be back for at least thirty minutes, perhaps longer.
