Until Winter Breaks

by Elana Johnson

  The thought of Desi, of her life two thousand miles away in Boston, almost overwhelmed Millie. Desi had been the first one to show up at Millie’s house when Brady hadn’t come home. The first to tell her she could move past his death. She had been the one to call every Sunday just to chat.

  Mille certainly had a lot to tell her this week, and Sunday was still two days away.

  “Do you like it?” Jared’s soft voice startled her.

  Mille realized she’d been standing on the sidewalk, staring at the lavender door. She tugged her gaze away from it and toward him. “You did this?”

  “Surprise.” He grinned so fast it came and went before Millie could blink. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s perfect,” she said through a too-narrow throat. “How did you know purple is my favorite color?” She squinted. “Did Sadie tell you?”

  Jared glanced at the door as he half-chuckled, half-sighed, and it sounded like exasperation rode on his breath. “Lucky guess,” he said. “Though it will make my shopping trip tonight easier.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and locked his eyes on hers. “I meant what I said in my text. This is not a rebound.” He gestured between them.

  “What is it, then?”

  “Honestly?” He took a couple of steps toward the door he’d painted. “I’m not sure yet.” He opened the door for her and it didn’t squeal the way it usually did.

  Another brick in Millie’s wall disintegrated. She stepped past him, forcing herself to watch where she was walking instead of staring at Jared. “Does your shopping trip include me?” she asked, taking in her shop. It seemed like he’d stuck to the roof today, as the dried mud, droopy molding, and stale wall color remained.

  “If you want it to,” he said. “But I’m serious about going to Arcata. Taylor’s is great and all, but we need a Home Depot.”

  “I’ll buy dinner.” Millie turned to face him, ready to step into the unknown. “You can drive my car. Deal?” She stuck out her hand.

  He took it, giving it a single pump before twisting his hand and threading his fingers through hers. He stared at their joined limbs, a range of emotions parading across his face. He looked at her, gently brought her closer, and swept his arms around her.

  With her cheek resting on his chest he whispered, “Deal.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jared had a hard time working once Millie showed up. It was almost like her perfume clouded his senses all the way from the sewing room. Or her voice as she spoke on the phone permeated the plywood between them as he finished fixing the roof, and the memory of her mouth against his rendered him unable to move.

  He shook himself, nailed the last shingle in place, and shimmied down the ladder. After folding it and putting it away, he loitered outside the back door of her shop. A constant hum emanated through the gap, a sign that Millie worked at the sewing machine. Jared entered and moved down the hall, leaning in the doorway to watch her work.

  She masterfully matched two rough edges together and ran them through the machine. Her movements were careful, unrushed, but also precise and sure. She flipped the fabric, examined it, and reached for another piece.

  “Hey,” she said when she caught him staring.

  “That’s not a sewing machine.” He sauntered into the room, stopping only when he reached her side.

  “It’s called a surger,” Millie said, feeding the matched pieces under the needle. “It’s the best investment I’ve ever made.”

  Jared couldn’t look away as the fabric trimmed from the edge, as the seemingly long piece zipped through the machine in only seconds. “It’s fast.”

  “Much faster than my sewing machine,” Millie agreed. “Leaves a smooth edge.” She tapped one of the large spools of thread on the top. “I don’t have to rethread it every other second.”

  “What are you making?”

  She shrugged, her shoulders settling lower than they’d started. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Her glance, quick as it was, could’ve withered daisies. “It’s my slow season. I don’t have any orders to fill. So I just sew.”

  Jared swayed away from her. “Something for yourself?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Probably another skirt. They’re the easiest.”

  “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who goes for easy.”

  “Glad you’ve got that worked out,” she said, shooting him a smile. A real smile. A sexy smile.

  Jared fell back a couple of steps, not wanting to push her farther than she was willing to go. Her words from that morning had punched him right in the lungs, and he didn’t need a repeat of that here.

  “Well, I’m gonna go get cleaned up out front. We can start painting tomorrow if you find the colors you like tonight.” He headed for the door, not sure he could stay in the same space as her without kissing her.

  “Not the colors I like,” she said, causing him to turn. “You’re the interior decorator. You’re picking.”

  A slow smile spread his lips. “Well, you’ll have to tell me what you want to do with the space then.” He waved toward the door.

  “Right now?”

  “Right now, sweetheart.”

  She considered her surger for a moment before standing and stretching her back. Jared could watch her arch like that for a good long while, and he spun away.

  * * *

  They left the shop at four-thirty with rough sketches in hand and a ninety-minute drive on the horizon. Millie kept the topic of conversation on him during the drive, but he didn’t mind. He told her about his life in Denver: How he loved the hike in the Rocky Mountains in the summer, visiting ghost towns, and watching the snow fall in the winter.

  She asked about his job, and the familiar ache of injustice stole his reply for a few seconds.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “You just said you didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore, and—”

  “When did I say that?”

  “Yesterday, when you offered to renovate my shop.”

  Jared didn’t remember saying it, but he didn’t doubt her. Hearing someone else say it only solidified the idea that he needed to reinvent himself now that he was back in his childhood town.

  “I do need a new career,” he said. “Does Redwood Bay need a handy man?” He thought of the salary he’d left behind at Hawkins, Cloward, and Sinister. Becoming almost anything else would be a significant cut.

  Not that it mattered. He could afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Redwood Bay. The town hadn’t grown in the fifteen years he’d been gone. Real estate was definitely out as a career choice.

  “I don’t know,” Millie said. “Is that really what you want to do?”

  “I like working with my hands.” He always had, which was why he’d put up with so much at his father’s wood shop before finally running way. The smell of freshly cut lumber filled his nostrils; the warbling of his father’s old radio assaulted his ears; the rough texture of unsanded wood in his hand pricked his fingers.

  “Jared?” Millie’s voice came through the film surrounding Jared.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, hoping to tighten his grip on his memories the same way. “What about you? Have you always wanted to own a dress shop?”

  * * *

  Millie froze at the question, wishing she could divert it back to Jared. Something had happened in Denver with his job, but he’d gone into a deep place when she’d asked. She couldn’t see him working at a desk, wearing a power suit, wielding his sharp tongue in court. He belonged in jeans and a tool belt. Or maybe she just thought so because that was all she’d seen—and she liked the view.

  “I’ve always loved sewing,” she said carefully. She didn’t want to explain everything behind why she’d moved to Redwood Bay. Not yet. In her admittedly limited experience, once a man knew she’d been married before—and not divorced, but widowed—they got scared. Millie shouldn’t compare Jared to the only other man she’d allowed into her life in
the past six years, but she couldn’t help it.

  “When I moved here I had the opportunity to open the shop, so I did.”

  “Where did you live before moving here?”

  “Seattle. My family still lives there. Well, my parents and younger brother do. They own an insurance firm. Joel runs it now. My sister, Desi, lives in Boston with her husband. He’s doing his residency there, and she’s a nanny.”

  Surface details, she told herself. Meaningless facts. It didn’t matter that Desi couldn’t have kids of her own. Didn’t matter that Joel hated the insurance gig and would do anything to get out—if only he could without hurting their father and destroying everything her parents had built.

  Jared surely had phantoms in his closet too. The fact that Sophie had hardly spoken of him in all the years Millie had known her testified to that.

  “So clear up the rumors about you and girls,” she said, injecting a lighthearted tone into the conversation.

  “Oh boy.” He groaned, but it came with an accompanying grin. “Tell me what you’ve heard and I’ll set you straight.”

  “Something about kissing a different girl every day for a month….”

  * * *

  That one’s true still burned, boiled, singed, seared in Millie’s ears. He had kissed a different girl every day for a month. A “summer dare” he’d called it. No matter what the label was, he’d kissed more girls in that single summer than she’d kissed boys in her whole lifetime.

  As the outskirts of Arcata came into view, Millie couldn’t help the discouragement diffusing through her. She and Jared couldn’t be more opposite. No wonder he rubbed her the wrong way. He kissed perfect strangers like it was no big deal! On a dare!

  “You like burgers?” he asked as they waited at a stoplight.

  She nodded, her arms folded across her chest like she didn’t have skin keeping her insides contained. A flash of Sadie entered her mind. She’d tell Millie to relax. Have fun. Who cares who he kissed fifteen years ago?

  The fight left Millie, and she unclenched her arms. He’d denied that he’d left a girlfriend in Redwood Bay, let alone three of them. He’d said he didn’t like who he was back then, and he’d figured out how to be someone else in Denver.

  Millie understood that. No one would recognize her in Seattle. If she ever went home to visit, that is.

  Dinner passed with burgers and fries, easy conversation about what they needed to find at Home Depot, and a casual brushing of their fingers as they walked back to her car. He didn’t latch on, so she did.

  She didn’t miss his raised eyebrows, but she didn’t comment either. He held her door, pushed the cart at the store, asked her questions before making decisions on paint color, trim, molding, electrical outlets.

  Jared Newton was the picture-perfect example of a gentleman. No wonder he could get girls to kiss him after only a few hours together. Millie wanted to experience a lip lock with him more than she wanted to reopen her shop, sew, or even breathe.

  The conversation lulled on the way back to Redwood Bay, but Millie’s mind swiveled sixty times a second. First toward him. Then away. Her heart th-thumped as her blood pu-pumped harder and harder.

  By the time he pulled into her driveway and cut the engine, she thought she might snap. “Thanks,” she said, getting out of the intimate space. “We can unload on Monday, right?”

  “Right,” he said as he joined her. They headed toward her porch, where her automatic light kicked on as they climbed the steps. “I can’t wait to get started,” he said, drawing her into a hug. “Ten o’clock, Monday morning?”

  “Like clockwork,” she said, which solicited a chuckle from deep inside his chest.

  “’Night, Mills.” He released her, backed away, melted into the darkness beyond the light. Millie waited until his silhouette entered his house before releasing her breath.

  Oh, he was definitely trou-ble, and she was in deep already.

  Chapter Eight

  On Sunday afternoon, Jared loaded his saddlebags with the fresh sourdough he’d purchased that morning and headed up the coast. Polly lived just outside of town, in a modern two-story home with a fire pit in the overgrown backyard.

  The sound of a lawnmower buzzed from beyond the fence as he parked behind Tripp’s truck. He found his cousin pushing the mower, trying to tame the jungle Polly had allowed to grow. Brown grass, undergrowth, and weeds choked the space, and Jared’s fingers twitched at the possibility of landscaping the space into something she could manage on her own.

  Or maybe he could manage it for her.

  “Jared.”

  He turned to find Polly leaning against a pillar on her porch, a sisterly smile gracing her features. Her dust-colored hair, sparkling hazel eyes, and familiar freckles brought him a sense of childhood comfort. She looked the same as she had as a teen, though she’d rounded in all the ways a woman should.

  He saw his mother when he looked at Polly, and a familiar clutch in his chest reminded him that he really ought to call her more often.

  “Polly.” He moved away from the back gate, stepped next to her, and engulfed her in a hug. “It’s been too long.”

  “You’ve been in town almost a week, and still haven’t come to see me.”

  That gully of guilt rose a notch. “I’ve been busy.” Though if she’d seen what he did yesterday, she’d disagree. Jared needed a job, and fast. He liked to relax as much as the next working stiff, but hours and hours without something useful to occupy the time made him cranky.

  He’d motorcycled up the coast yesterday in an attempt to keep himself from marching next door and advancing his relationship with Millie. She seemed content to stay home most of the time. Jared didn’t understand how she did it.

  “Busy at the dress shop,” Polly said, pulling Jared away from thoughts of his boring life. “I’ve seen you on the roof. My shop’s right next door.”

  Regret shot through Jared. “I haven’t seen you there.”

  Polly glanced around her front yard, which looked like the storm had dropped all the debris in this one spot. “By the time I get home, I guess my green thumb is tired.”

  “I could help you,” Jared offered. “I’ve got nothing else to do.”

  “That’s not how I hear it.” Polly turned her head as the lawn mower died. “Tripp must be done.” She jumped down from the porch and moved toward the back gate.

  Jared followed her, a thread of anxiety pulling through his gut. “What do you mean, ‘that’s not how you hear it’?”

  She gave him a glance over her shoulder. “Lucy says you’re renovating the dress shop. Picked out new paint, new trim, new everything.” She said everything like she meant more than home improvement items.

  “Yeah,” Jared said, choosing to ignore the everything. At least for now. “But that’ll only take a couple of weeks. I can work on your yard in the evenings and on weekends. Maintain it after that.”

  Polly stopped in the middle of a patch of weeds Tripp hadn’t been able to tame. “I suppose it does need a firm hand….” She met his eye. “I can’t pay you much.”

  “Whatever you can afford.” He lifted the sourdough. “Where do you want this?”

  “The table.” She headed toward the patio, where a picnic table bore the weight of more food than the three of them could eat in a lifetime.

  Jared managed to find a bare spot to put his bread, not that it was needed among the fruit tarts, potato salad, baked beans, and chocolate chip cookies.

  “Polly, did you cook all this?” he asked as Tripp emerged from the shed.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans before shaking Jared’s hand. “You made it.”

  “I made it,” Jared confirmed. “Need help with anything?”

  Tripp cast a dark look at his sister. “Everything, cousin. Polly volunteered her yard, but forgot to mention that she hasn’t actually used it since 1997.”

  Polly laughed, a light twinkling sound that reminded Jared of Millie’s laugh. By the time she finished, bo
th Jared and Tripp wore smiles.

  “Come on,” she said. “Help me clear out the fire pit so we can get the burgers going. I swear I don’t remember putting flower pots in there….”

  * * *

  Jared enjoyed the few hours at Polly’s house, though by the time he left, his patience had been stretched thin. She made too many references to Millie, and too many inferences about why Jared was really helping at the dress shop. Too many raised eyebrows as she waited for him to explain his presence. Too many exchanged glances with Tripp when Jared gave short answers about his involvement there.

  It was hard to explain something he didn’t understand himself.

  Tripp’s preferred topics of conversation—boat construction and fishing—didn’t alleviate any of Jared’s anxiety. If anything, he left more upset with himself for how he’d handled things with his father fifteen years ago, and hyper-aware of the mistakes he was still making with his mother.

  He sighed as he rumbled into his driveway. He killed the engine, but stayed seated on his bike as he dialed his mom. No time like the present to start the reinvention process.

  “Jared.” His mother sounded equally surprised and pleased.

  “Hey, Mom.” He wasn’t quite sure what else to say. “How are you?”

  “Good, good. Mostly cleaned up from the storm last week.”

  Jared’s shoulders slumped; his heart wilted. He should’ve known his mother needed help after the storm. Instead, he’d been gallivanting from here to Arcata, helping a woman who barely tolerated him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve come and helped.”