by Jess Vonn
“I could keep reading, but I probably don’t have to,” he said. “The reviews go on like this for about seven pages until you get back to the honest reviews.”
“Please don’t read any more,” Poppy pleaded. “My heart can’t take it. Plus I’ve read them all about a dozen times already anyway.”
“Did you have any unpleasant incidents with customers in the last few weeks?” Winnie asked, wondering if a new enemy might be taking his or her revenge in cyber space.
“Not that I recall. This is a peaceful place. People come here to unwind and escape the chaos of the rest of their lives.”
“To curl up in the bathroom with their bunny slippers, some pastries and a good book for a little ‘me’ time,” Cal teased mildly, his face finally cracking in to a small grin aimed Winnie’s way.
Winnie couldn’t help but lean her shoulder into his as a reaction against his teasing. It felt good to be joking with Cal again, even if the circumstances weren’t the best.
“It’s not a place of confrontation,” Poppy said. “I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think if I’ve created any new enemies lately.”
“Are there any other business owners in the surrounding community that you’ve had a disagreement with?” Cal asked.
Poppy thought for a moment, but eventually lifted her arms in defeat. “Not that I can think of. You know how it is. There’s not really any competition for this sort of venue. Not in a fairly wide radius.”
Cal nodded. “Well, I guess we knew this was always a risk when we went online,” he relented.
“Yes. You did brace us for this possibility.”
“But I don’t think this is a fluke. Someone is trolling your site,” he said. “They’re trying to send a message. And it wouldn’t be someone local. Either all of our businesses survive or none of them do. No one can afford to screw someone else over, or they go down with the ship, too.”
“Where do we go from here?” Poppy asked.
“Well, I’ll go back to the office and call Howl. Surely this is not the first time someone has tried to sabotage someone else’s business with bad reviews. There has to be some precedent for dealing with these situations.”
Poppy nodded.
“Have you talked to Chief Conrad?” Winnie asked.
“No. You two were the first I thought of.”
“Winnie's right though,” Cal said. “Carter would want a heads-up about the situation. If someone is angry at you, or wants to hurt your business, they may try to make a move in the real world, not just online.”
“Oh my,” Poppy said quietly, her elegant hand grasping at throat. “I’ll call him next.”
“And how can I help?” Winnie asked.
“I’m not sure,” Poppy admitted. “It just felt right to bring local media into the loop.”
The reviews seemed suspicious, and if Winnie thought there was a story here, she’d run it. But she didn’t think they were quite there yet.
“It may be best if we don’t go public with this right now,” Cal suggested. “That might only drive people to the review site, and we can’t delete negative reviews ourselves. That defeats the site’s mission of honest reviewing. But if I do some digging with Howl, figure out where these negative reviews are coming from, they may be willing to remove them, and the whole thing could blow over before anyone’s noticed.”
“That’s true,” Winnie agreed. “Local customers know your true reputation, and they wouldn’t be going on Howl to check you out. At worst, this could cost you a few new out-of-town customers. But I’m sure Cal will get it all straightened out before anything serious happens.”
Poppy nodded, resigned.
“Well, I’ve got some calls to make,” Cal said, standing. “Will you be okay, Poppy?”
Her face was grim, but she nodded again.
“Call me if anything else comes up,” he offered, leaning in and giving her a hug.
“Thank you, sweetie,” she said. Her genuine affection for Cal was evident.
“Same here,” said Winnie. “Once we have enough to make a story out of it, I’ll run it on the front page.”
“Thanks, dear,” Poppy said, reaching to shake Winnie’s hand once more. “And it was great to meet you, despite the circumstances.”
Winnie and Cal wound their way back to the front of the shop, where smiling, relaxed customers proved just how off-base those online reviews were. As they made their way out onto the sidewalk, it was time for them to go their separate ways.
“So do you think this is connected to the other stuff happening around town?” Winnie asked.
He sighed in response.
“I think we need to start taking everything more seriously,” he said. Winnie nodded, even as a nervous wave fluttered through her stomach.
“Well, good luck unraveling the Howl stuff,” Winnie said, looking into Cal’s face, which was now full of defeat.
“Thanks.” He turned to start his walk up Main Street. Winnie surprised herself by reaching for his hand.
“Cal?” she called. He stopped, and let his hand be held by Winnie. His skin felt so warm, so right, against her own. Her urge to comfort him was irrepressible. As irrepressible as her urge to pleasure him had been days before.
He turned and looked at her once more.
“This isn’t your fault,” she said firmly.
His eyes dropped down to the ground in disagreement.
“It’s not,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze, not giving a damn who might drive by and see. “You’re doing wonderful things for these businesses. You can’t let some online trolls get you down.”
He nodded in compliance, not agreement, and then let go of her hand, treading back up the street to his office. Winnie watched him walk away for a while, his hands shoved dejectedly in his pockets, before turning and making her way back down the hill to her own office.
She thought it was a flirty, charming Cal that would torture her the most, but it turned out that a forlorn Cal was even worse. She was determined to help get to the bottom of the case. Sure, she wanted to ease his mind and help Poppy’s business, but she had her own motivations, too: bringing Cal back to all his lovely, flirtatious glory.
By the time she’d walked back to her office, she’d hatched a plan to investigate the situation. She called in a favor to one of the data analysts who worked at her previous newspaper, a woman who was an absolute whiz when it came to aggregating and investigating online information, even when it seemed difficult to trace. With any luck, Winnie would have some useful information in a matter of days.
Chapter 20
“Just set everything there on the buffet, sweetie,” his mother called out when Cal walked into her kitchen with bags full of food for the equinox party. One by one he added his contributions—butternut squash soup, cider-braised chicken, and apple scones with maple butter—to the spread before tucking his extra bags away in the mudroom.
Yeah, he’d probably made too much, but carving out a few hours in his kitchen at the end of this hectic week had been an act of self-preservation. Between Bloomsburo Days looming, the absurd fee-hike approved by the city council, the dust-up with Winnie, and the Howl review crisis, it had been a hell of a week, so he welcomed the opportunity Friday afternoon to go into his kitchen, blast his favorite music, and cook away the stress. His mom never asked him to bring anything to her Equinox party, but knowing his sisters’ complete disinterest in cooking, it always felt important to him to contribute something.
Plus, he just enjoyed it. Other than running, cooking was his go-to stress reliever. In fact, he enjoyed it even more than usual because now, as he moved between the sink and the stove and the island, as he scanned over his own kitchen table, he could picture Winnie Briggs there, whisking satiny batter and licking sweet cream from her fingers.
Winnie.
For all the professional stresses the universe flung at him this week, perhaps the biggest annoyance was how they’d sidetracked his progress with the woman. Ha
d it really been just Monday when they’d taken that moonlight hike?
And had he really, completely, overreacted to her innocent inquiry about his dad?
He mentally kicked himself for the hundredth time since that night in Winnie’s office. She’d shown compassion, and he’d made her feel like a jerk for it.
He thought of the way she’d looked at him outside of The Teal Tea Hutch midweek. The rightness of the way she gently grasped his hand and offered him encouragement. Feeling ‘off’ with her, even for a few days, made him feel like a limb was missing, and he was ready to feel complete again. Reflecting back on his week, the only bright spots involved Winnie.
He didn’t know what to make of it all.
His mind focused back on the party, where his mother was now bustling to and fro in the kitchen. He appeared to be the first to arrive.
“What else can I do to help?” he called to his mom, who was whirring quickly between rooms.
“Hug me,” she said, stopping in her tracks, and he gladly complied. He’d surpassed six feet a decade before, but somehow he still couldn’t quite believe how small his mother was compared to him. But he’d always stop what he was doing to get a squeeze from the woman.
“It looks great in here,” he said, and it did. His mom’s house was always artsy and whimsical, but her fall decor really took the place to an enchanted level. Even though much of the evening would be spent out in the lawn, there wasn’t a corner of her house that wasn’t decked out.
“Thank you. And thank you for whatever you said to Winnie to get her to join us.”
“Ma,” he warned.
“Deny it if you want, but I know you must have encouraged her. She wouldn’t have said yes otherwise.” And he couldn’t deny it. He inwardly winced, remembering how Winnie had texted him just that morning asking if it was still okay that she came, given their mid-week tension. He hated that she had to ask, yet he felt grateful for the realization that yes, he did still truly want her to be here, with his family. That was a hell of a thing to process.
“I just told her that resisting you is pointless. You’d wear her down eventually. I merely expedited the process to spare her some hassle.”
His mom pinched at his sides, tickling him in response.
“Are the girls on their way?” he asked as his mom moved back toward the kitchen where she lifted a few Crock-Pot lids and stirred the contents, filling the room with delicious scents of cumin and tomato and onion and beef.
“Haven and Dan and the girls should be here any minute. Rosie had to work until six, so she and Spencer should arrive sometime after that,” his mother explained. “And Willa? Well, we never do know with Willa, do we?”
Punctuality was not his middle sister’s forte and they’d long ago given up on trying to fix it. Whenever she said she’d arrive, you had to factor in “Willa time” and add at least thirty minutes to her estimate. His sisters wouldn’t be the only guests, though. Some neighbors and friends would join them, too, and soon the house would be bustling.
A knock on the back door made Cal’s heart skitter. Winnie could be the only guest coming from the back yard. She was here, on his mom’s doorstep, and a line was about to be irrevocably crossed.
It seemed irrationally monumental. Save for the odd prom date arriving for pictures, Cal had never once brought a woman to his mother’s house. Sure, that wasn’t exactly what was happening here. He hadn’t invited Winnie, his mother had. And she wasn’t his girlfriend. No, she was merely the smart, sexy, kind and competent woman he couldn’t manage to stop thinking about for five minutes. Despite his attempts at resisting sentimentality and keeping it physical, he had to acknowledge that he felt more in his heart for Winnie Briggs than he’d felt for any woman before. And now she was about to enter his most sacred, inner circle.
Hell. This was about to get complicated, but if he was honest, it was excitement, not anxiety, that the milestone evoked in him. He wanted to show his family off to Winnie, and vice versa.
His mom had already rushed through the mudroom to usher her in.
“Winnie, I’m so glad you’re here. Really, I could just cry,” he heard her say, and he could tell that she was squeezing the life out of her guest as she said it.
They rounded the corner and came into view from where Cal leaned casually against the kitchen island. His heart revved at the sight of her. The woman was damn adorable. She wore a navy, button-up corduroy dress on top of a printed long-sleeved shirt and blue-and-green striped tights. Grey booties with a heel gave her a bit more height than usual. Something about the contrast between her sweet and upstanding behavior in public and her aggressive and passionate actions in private unraveled him.
What an honor it was to experience both sides of this woman.
His mind wanted to wander back to their adventures at the top (and bottom) of Cosgrove Hill, but tonight demanded more self-control than that.
His eyes made their way to her big brown ones, and he saw nervousness there. He saw that finger twirl in a curl, a dead giveaway that the woman was not at ease. He couldn’t blame her, given his overreaction to her questions about his father just days before, and his moodiness after the Teal Tea Hutch meeting. She was so worried about screwing this up. About upsetting him. And that didn’t sit right in Cal’s stomach.
“Hey, Briggs,” he said with a small wave and a smile. He forced himself not to imagine the greeting he’d prefer, which would involve more hands. Their mouths. He tried not to think of how she had bounded over to him at the bottom of that hill earlier in the week, throwing her arms around him. About how her hands excitedly worked to unbutton the front of his shirt just days before, like she had free rein over his body.
Which, frankly, at this point she did. He wondered briefly if she realized this power she held before her voice shook him out of his own thoughts.
“Hi, Cal,” she said formally, before turning her attention back to his mother. “I brought some pumpkin bread. Don’t worry. I didn’t make it. I picked it up from Dewey’s.”
His mother took the loaf with a laugh and added it to the quickly growing spread of food on the buffet.
“Rhonda, your home is stunning.”
“Thank you, hon. I love nesting. Want a tour?”
Cal was happy to see Winnie’s eyes widen in delight, diluting some of the anxiousness in them.
Rhonda linked her arm in Winnie’s.
“Sweetie,” she said to Cal on their way out of the kitchen, “Could you make up some whipped cream? We’ll want it for the pies.”
He nodded, grateful for a task to distract him. Even above the whir of the hand mixer that was frothing the heavy cream and sugar into something sweet and fluffy, he heard the women’s voices bouncing around the small house. He had to smile, imagining the stories his mother surely shared about her children’s younger days. She was so good at remembering the positive, not the hard times. Not the dark mark of his father’s contributions to those later years. He shook his head, derailing that train of thought instantly. He never liked to think about that bastard, let alone tonight of all nights. But those memories had a way of creeping into his consciousness at the most inopportune times.
The fact that his bitterness over his father could sour what was happening between him and Winnie, even for a conversation, was enough to give Cal pause. That was a hell of a lot of power he was giving to a ghost. But tonight wasn’t the night for unraveling all that old tension.
He shook the old, sad memories out of his mind just as Winnie and his mom returned to the kitchen. As he was covering up the bowl of cream and putting it in the fridge to cool, he heard the front door of the house open and the unmistakable clamor of the family’s tiniest members. The sound of it caused a lightness to rise up in his chest. He didn’t know much for sure, but he did know that being an uncle was the best damn gig in the universe.
Two sets of feet ran into the kitchen. “Hi, nana,” his nieces said in unison, stopping to embrace Rhonda. He smiled just looking a
t the girls, a collective explosion of color and glitter and sequins and ruffles and bows from their head to their toes. Cal braced himself for their inevitable launch toward him, but the preparation was premature.
Uncle Cal, it turned out, was not the main attraction.
“Winnie’s here?” Mary gasped, looking to her twin sister in disbelief. Lulu just started jumping up and down excitedly. Without haste, the girls ran toward Winnie and enveloped her in that collective little hug he knew so well. Winnie laughed in surprise. When she bent down to return the gesture, affection shining from her pretty face, Cal’s heart grew three sizes.
“My fairies!” Winnie said, and his nieces giggled in delight.
“I’m Mary, remember?” Mary said. “I’m the one who always talks first, and I’m the one who’s missing a tooth.” She bared her teeth to show her jack-o-lantern smile.
“And how can I remember you, little fairy?” Winnie asked, turning her attention to Lulu.
“I’m the quiet one, and I have the freckle on my hand,” she said softly, holding it up to prove her point. That tiny beauty mark had been the only way Cal had been able to tell the girls apart the first few months of their life. By six months old, however, their drastically different personalities made it impossible to mistake one for the other.
“Got it,” Winnie assured her.
Cal clear this throat dramatically until the attention in the room turned to him.
“So what am I, chopped liver?”
The girls giggled and ran over to him, and he hoisted one up in each arm. It wouldn’t be long before they were too big for the familiar gesture, but he’d do it for as long as he could.
Their little arms flew around his neck and each one kissed a cheek while he gave them a squeeze.
“Hi, Uncle Cal,” Lulu whispered.