by Jess Vonn
“Hey, Lulu Belle,” he whispered back.
“Aren’t you so glad Winnie’s here?” Mary cried.
His eyes met Winnie’s across the room, and unspoken words and heated memories flickered between them.
“I am,” he said. And damn it, despite those old truths he knew about himself, about what he could and couldn’t offer the woman, he was. It was as simple as that. Life was just better with Winnie Briggs near.
He put the girls down after one more squeeze and they went bounding toward the yard. Haven and her husband Dan made their way into the kitchen and the introductions continued.
“You must be Winnie,” Haven said with friendliness, extending a hand to shake. She shot her brother a sly look. “And I have to say, any woman who can ruffle my brother’s feathers is a friend of mine. So welcome.”
Cal sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, resigning himself to the reality that this was how it would be for the remainder of the evening as one by one his sisters arrived, armed with a lifetime worth of stories they’d been dying to share about their only brother.
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Despite his sisters’ endless ribbing, the night had turned out to be damn near perfect. Hours later, the neighborhood guests had all returned home and only Winnie and Cal’s immediate family remained, gathered in wooden Adirondack chairs around the low, glowing bonfire. Cal felt a contentment that he couldn’t have expected, having Winnie here with his family. Sharing in their special, ordinary moments. After his sisters got the teasing out of their system—which took a good long while—they’d all chatted comfortably throughout the evening, discussing favorite movies, favorite recipes, and plenty of Spencer childhood stories that all seemed to end with something embarrassing happening to him.
But he didn’t mind. His siblings had always bonded through teasing. There was no need to act differently just because Winnie was here. He’d just have to make her promise to never utter a word of those incriminating stories outside of this yard, lest he be forced to torture her into compliance with his favorite tactics. The ease of it—how right it felt to have Winnie here with his favorite people on earth—that was something he’d have to think long and hard about.
He was stuck in his chair now, with a sleeping niece curled into his chest. Mary was always the first of the twins to nod off. It probably had to do with all the extra energy she burned with her never-ending chit chat. Lulu was snuggling with her mom, her eyes heavy, but still awake and quietly absorbing all that was happening around her in that way she had.
He glanced over at Winnie in the chair next to him. She was curled up in a blanket now for warmth, smiling peacefully into the fire. She looked so cozy there, the warm golden light from the fire flickering over her curls and her sweet countenance. The feel of her there, with them, filled him with the deepest satisfaction.
He wished he could feel anything other than fear when those sensations came over him—sensations that suggested that Winnie wasn’t merely a fun physical distraction. Sensations that reminded him that she was kind and smart and funny and lovable as hell. Sensations that confirmed his hunch that everything was better when the woman was near. He watched her face twist into one of her big, charming laughs, responding to some story Rosie was telling. He hadn’t caught the joke, though no doubt it had been at his expense.
“How about you, Winnie, do you have any plans for the holidays?” he heard his mother ask, snapping him back into the conversation.
He looked at Winnie then, just in time to see the discomfort flicker in her eyes. For all their time together, and all their conversations, he still hadn’t learned much more about her story. Chicago wasn’t home. He’d never forgotten those words from their very first interaction, but that’s about all he knew. Even though it was part of the deal they’d made to not pry into one another’s backstories, the gaps in what he knew of her history suddenly bothered him. In the beginning, it was her body that he’d obsessed over, eager to get to know each intimate inch. But now, forcefully and without warning, he wanted to know how she came to be the woman she was today. There wasn’t a piece of her past that he wasn’t fascinated to learn more about.
“No, I have nothing much planned for the holidays. Work will keep me busy.” Her finger found its way to her hair where it began its nervous twirl. Cal didn’t like the way he could feel the shift in Winnie’s energy.
“Surely your family can come to you for Thanksgiving or Christmas though, right?” Rhonda asked, pressing ever so gently. He knew that the thought of a family not being together for a major holiday was unfathomable to her. Cal looked at his mother, hoping to signal her to back off a bit. She didn’t spare him a glance.
Winnie cleared her throat nervously, her eyes gazing down toward the ground.
“No, they can’t,” she said softly.
The group turned quiet, with Cal’s sisters shooting silent glances of concern between one another.
“Why, dear?” Rhonda asked, leaning to the edge of her chair so that the flames reflected that much brighter in her concerned eyes.
“Ma,” Cal cautioned. He didn’t want Winnie to feel uncomfortable. Not here. Not with them.
Winnie cleared her throat again and took a big breath, as if steeling herself for what she’d say next.
“It’s really just me. There’s no family to be had.”
A heavy silence fell upon the group, broken only by Rhonda’s soft whisper of heartbreak: “Oh, honey.”
No family? Processing that revelation felt like lead sinking deep into Cal’s gut. How could that be possible? A warm and fun-loving woman like Winnie didn’t just rise out of nothingness.
“My parents and my younger brother were killed in a car accident when I was finishing college,” she elaborated, her voice shaky despite her best efforts to control her emotions. Clearly this was a topic that the woman preferred to avoid, and understandably. Still Cal felt sick that he hadn’t known. Sick, irrationally, that he couldn’t travel back in time and somehow spare her the pain that now darkened her sweet brown eyes. Horrified at how he’d spoken to her earlier in the week, with his assumptions about her pain free past and her picture-perfect family, and the tears that had filled her eyes at his words.
What an ass he’d been.
“I have a few distant relatives, but they’re far flung. We don’t keep in touch much.”
“Oh, my dear Winnie,” Rhonda sighed. Cal could hear his mother’s voice crack with emotion. “How truly awful. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“You couldn’t have,” Winnie said. “It’s been five years now. It’s been awhile. You figure out how to move on. The only silver lining is that you don’t mind working through the holidays quite so much.”
Cal wanted to reach out to Winnie, wanted to hold her. To kiss her. To whisper in her ear how strong and lovely she was and how, if he had anything to say about it, she’d never again know that kind of loneliness. The thought scared the hell out of him, but for once, he put his own baggage on the back burner.
The sleeping niece on his lap made all of this impossible, though, not to mention the complication of the many people watching them right now. That didn’t do anything to lessen the need, though—that bone-deep urge to comfort the woman. To pledge himself to her.
When had this changed? When had this physical game turned into something emotional? When had Winnie Briggs wrapped his heart and his soul in a velvet bow and claimed complete ownership?
He looked at her, wanting her eyes to meet his. Wanting that silent connection they had, without any words being shared. Her gaze stayed fixed on the fire.
The mood of the night had shifted irrevocably now, and Cal hated it. Hated it for Winnie. Hated the tears he saw her fighting back. Though a few of his sisters had made some gracious attempts at small talk, the conversation never really recovered and the end of the evening loomed over them all.
“Well,” Winnie finally said with a forced laugh, sitting up in her chair. “This has been such an am
azing party, Rhonda. I can’t thank you enough for your invitation.”
Cal’s focus shifted to his mother, whose heart and mind were still trying to process the revelation Winnie had shared. But she was nothing if not gracious, and she forced herself to smile in return.
“You made it that much more special, Winnie. The fall equinox is about gratitude for abundance. You, all of you,” Rhonda said, her gaze landing on every single person sitting around the fire, “you are my abundance. And I’m grateful.”
“I second that emotion,” Haven quipped, trying to lighten the mood. He was grateful for that.
“We love you, Mom,” Rosie offered, and the rest of the group slipped into quiet conversation and the subtle shift toward departure.
“I hate to leave, but I’m afraid I’ll turn into a pumpkin soon if I don’t get home,” Winnie said, standing and folding her blanket neatly and placing it on the chair where she’d just sat. He wanted to stand. To walk her home. To hold her. But the sweet, sleeping six-year-old affixed to his chest made that an impossibility.
“Will you take some extra food, Winnie? We’ve got so much leftover,” Rhonda insisted, walking over and finally giving Winnie the hug that he knew she’d been desperate to give her for minutes.
“Maybe I can pick some up in the morning?” she asked, a compromise.
“It’ll be waiting for you,” Rhonda said, giving Winnie’s arms a warm squeeze. He saw his mom whisper something in Winnie’s ear. Saw Winnie close her eyes and hug his mother that much tighter for it.
Winnie gave Cal quick look. An apologetic, tearful look. But she didn’t say a word. She merely turned back and began the short, dark walk to her cottage in the back of the yard.
He watched her walk away, shocked at the loss he felt from her departure. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt a stronger need to be by someone’s side than he felt in this exact moment. Practicalities snapped him back to the moment, though, as he watched his sisters begin to gather up their items, put out the fire, and prepare to say their goodbyes. He gathered Mary up in his arms and carried her out to Haven’s van where he bundled her into her booster seat so smoothly that she didn’t stir once from her sleep.
He said goodnight to his sisters in the driveway, and made his way back to the kitchen to see if his mom needed help cleaning up. She shooed him out quickly, with one, unmistakable order. “Go,” she said her head gesturing toward the She Shed. There was no pretending any more. No more hiding. Not from his mother. Not from himself. Cal nodded and headed toward the only place he could possibly imagine being in this moment—Winnie’s side.
Chapter 21
By the time Winnie slipped back into the She Shed, her hands were shaking uncontrollably and the tears that she’d worked so hard to hold back had unleashed into a torrent of warmth and wetness on her cheeks.
A sob unfolded from her throat, one that had built up over the weeks of this transition to a new life in Bloomsburo. So much of these last weeks had been a denial of her loneliness, her lack of familiarity with anyone or anything in this new community.
Tonight had been among the first moments she actually felt at home here, and she’d ruined it. The night had been magical—talking and laughing and eating with the Spencers. Rhonda was so hospitable, the little fairies were so sparkly and affectionate, Cal’s sisters were delightfully merciless in their teasing of the man who seemed beyond reproach, and Cal had been a swoon-worthy uncle and a gentleman, casting only the occasional discreetly hungry glance toward Winnie to hint at their after-hours activities.
But the question about her family came up, as it always eventually did, and changed everything, like it always did. Winnie hated dropping that bomb about her tragic backstory, but it couldn’t be avoided forever. Once that sad truth was out in the open, though, everything changed. It stilted conversation. It made people uncomfortable. It resulted in friends disconnecting from her, so certain were they that their own stories about weekend trips to their parents or attending their siblings’ graduations would unravel her. So certain that keeping distance from her was the best way to protect her. Bree had been the only one to truly look past it. To accept this unfortunate part of Winnie’s life story, to witness and sit with her in her grief, and to love her unconditionally anyway.
It would always hurt. The loss Winnie experienced had been incalculable, and she suspected it would haunt her at the most inopportune parts of the rest of her life—every holiday, every birthday, her wedding day, the births of her children. She had no home base on which to land, seeking comfort or care. But she didn’t deserve the awkward, pained silence that so often resulted from sharing her story, that emotional disconnection, just because people weren’t sure how to talk about it or how to handle her. She may have a crack deep in her soul, but she wouldn’t break. She was stronger for what she had been forced to survive.
A soft knock on her front door jarred her from her sad reverie, and dread joined forces with the hurt and embarrassment flooding her. This conflicted need – to be at once connected to others and yet wanting to be alone, embraced yet safe from the pitiful stares of outsiders and the torment of being handled with kid gloves due to her losses—it never got easier to navigate.
But she couldn’t very well pretend she wasn’t home. Everyone had just watched her walk into this cottage. There was no hiding now.
She expected to find Rhonda on her step with a basket of food as an offering of comfort, so her mouth fell open in surprise when Cal’s inimitable frame filled the doorway, emitting that same virility and strength it had the first day she’d found him there. He said nothing, just looked seriously into her eyes. Looked at the tears streaking her cheeks. At the tiny tremble in her lower lip.
Winnie stepped back instinctively, ushering him in without a word and closing the door behind him. Before she had to bother coming up with the right words to convey her sorrow at how she’d screwed up, for interfering on his sacred family time and souring it with her sad story, his hands cupped her face and his mouth met hers in a kiss so deep, so sensual, that she momentarily forgot that there was anything to possibly be upset about. She grabbed his waist to steady herself with his solidness.
That kiss was a messenger, with its sweetness and passion and depth. Every sweep of his tongue communicated a level of care and affection that her brain couldn’t process. She wanted nothing more than to anchor herself to this man, to let her connection to his body, just for a fleeting moment, serve as her sole tether to this world.
His lips made their way to her cheek, covering the trail of her tears with the sweetest series of kisses. The gesture comforted her in a way that a thousand words couldn’t.
He pulled her head into his chest and filled his hands with her hair, massaging her scalp gently with his strong fingers.
“Winnie,” he sighed into her hair, and her heart seemed to stop for a full second.
Winnie.
He’d never called her by her first name before. Never referred to her as anything but Briggs, that roguish, unemotional term of address that always reminded her of the limitations of their connection. No endearments. No emotional intimacies.
Tonight, though, her name on his lips was a declaration of walls tumbling down.
The intimacy of it transformed their sweet affection into something hotter. More urgent. Her hands ran across his back, across the muscular ridges of his shoulders as she pulled herself tightly against his strength. She’d never been more grateful for anything in her life than this man’s offering of his body in this particular moment.
“Winnie,” he said again, more of a groan, and she felt him harden where his hips pressed against her. His eyes, their green flashing with untempered desire, met hers. Asking without words how to proceed. A gentleman would see if Winnie wanted to talk about what happened, what was shared. He would offer words of comfort and support. Cal Spencer knew differently, though. He knew the exact type of release Winnie needed to push away the pain.
She confirmed her consent w
ith her body, her hands, her lips. Devouring him desperately, fitfully. What little sensual grace she might normally muster dissolved away into something messier. Rougher. She wanted to be taken hard and fast and mindlessly.
Cal had other ideas, and he met her frantic need with torturously slow consideration. No matter how she grasped and pulled and scratched, he continued with heart-searing tenderness. In between his kisses and caresses, in between the work of his mouth on her heated skin, words of affection sprung softly from his lips, falling light as a feather on her skin.
Sweet Winnie…
Beautiful…
My lovely…
Each phrase clearly violated the terms of their agreement, yet one by one, as the words floated into the space between them, they seemed to stretch a taut string between his heart and hers, creating a web of soft spokes that would bind her to this man forever.
She wanted to respond in kind. Wanted to tell him how thoughtful he was. Tell him what a generous lover he was. To thank him for helping her awaken to the pleasures available to her. Thank him for offering the cradle of his body to her on this night. But she couldn’t form the words, and instead tried to communicate them with fingers, her mouth, on his body.
She began to unbutton his plaid shirt, her fingers refusing to work fast enough for her satisfaction. Eventually she finished and he shrugged it off before yanking off the T-shirt he wore beneath it. Her breath hitched at the sudden feast before her—warm skin stretched over hard muscles, and that intimate smell of his skin and spice and something distinctly Cal. She rubbed her hands over him as he returned the favor, unbuttoning the front of her jumper, pushing down her tights. Tearing off the shirt that kept her breasts hidden from him.
Bared down to her magenta bra and panties, Winnie reveled in the touch of their stomachs skin-to-skin. She gasped in shock as he lifted her up onto his hips, forcing her legs to wrap around him in support. He pressed her back up against the kitchen wall, allowing her to feel the force of his erection where his straining jeans connected with the thin cotton of her panties.