by T. F. Walsh
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in. I just wanted to see if I could learn a little about you from your house, your things.”
“You were going through my things?” His voice growled, even deeper than before.
“No! I didn’t mean it that way.” She scowled in frustration, started to reach out to him and stopped herself.
“Sam. I miss my best friend. Where did you go?” They both knew she didn’t mean here, in this farmhouse in backwoods Vermont.
“You didn’t need me. Neither did Holt. You had each other. You didn’t seem to notice I was gone until he died.”
Wynter sucked in a hiss through her teeth, like she’d been hit in the stomach. She flinched, noting the look of satisfaction on Sam’s face. He’s trying to push me away again. This is deliberate. Instead of feeling anger or hurt, Wynter felt a deep sense of sadness—for Sam.
Again, she forced herself to remain still, when her whole being wanted to go to him, comfort him. She pasted on a cheerful smile and stood up straight.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I came into your room without asking first. I promise to do a better job of staying out of your hair.”
She sidestepped past him through the doorway, her hand brushing against his at the last moment. Her eyes flew wide. The only way she could describe what she felt was an awareness. That one brief touch had her seeing Sam as a man. A grown up, virile man. Oh, this was not good.
Willing her racing heart to calm down, Wynter slunk back into the room that held her belongings. She shut the door and leaned back, her head banging softly against the wood.
She needed to get used to the fact that Sam had changed. Where once her old friend had been supportive, always willing to lend an ear, this new Sam was surly and reclusive. Her old Sam had been skinny, all knees, elbows, and harsh angles. Now he was . . . No. She refused to go there.
Wynter had not come here looking to hook up. She’d come to the man she’d once thought of as a brother. Only this Sam felt nothing like a brother to her. Oh, this was not good. Again, she was reminded of how disastrous her impulsive decision to change her plane ticket had been. Now she was trapped in Nowhere, Vermont, with raging hormones and a man who had no business looking so damned hot in plaid flannel and a thermal undershirt. No, this was not good.
• • •
The room was exactly as he remembered it. Walls painted a light lavender, the trim a snappy white. The gauzy curtains had been drawn for the night. A patchwork quilt, his mother’s pride and joy, covered the bed where they slept.
A relentless blaring from the alarm clock on his father’s side of the bed had drawn Sam into his parents’ room, once he’d snuck back into the house that fateful morning. The sound was jarring and yet neither bundle beneath the quilt stirred.
Hand trembling, knowing a fear that came from deep in his bowels, Sam reached out to cup his mother’s shoulder. She wouldn’t wake up. Why wouldn’t she wake up?
He sat up with a start, soaked in a cold sweat, panting and disoriented. It had been years since he’d had this dream, no, this nightmare. He sat up, lowered his head into his cupped hands and struggled to slow his racing heart. His jaw hardened and his eyes narrowed. She’d brought the nightmares back. It was Wynter’s fault.
Swinging his legs out of bed, he stuffed them into a pair of sweats and headed for the doorway, intent on a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich. To hell with the fact that it was—he glanced back at the digital clock on the nightstand—two-thirty in the morning. Peanut butter was his comfort food.
Sam slipped quietly down the hall, resentful that he now had to be respectful of his new houseguest. The immature part of his brain, the part that had never grown up, wanted to whistle past her door, jump down the stairs, whoop and holler and wake the dead. He settled for slamming the fridge and cupboard doors. He grumbled while he slapped the peanut butter spread onto a slice of wheat bread.
He heard a slight sound and his head snapped up, his eyes focused on the doorway. Wynter stepped into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. Aw, crap! Now he felt like a jerk for waking her up. He plated the sandwich and held it out to her.
“Ah, no, thanks. I’m not hungry . . . just desperately thirsty.” Her smile was shy.
“I’m sorry I woke you up. I needed a snack.” She didn’t need to know about his nightmares.
“Oh, you didn’t wake me. I don’t get much sleep lately. I think it’s the body’s way of preparing itself for the sleepless months ahead.” She giggled softly, rubbing her belly.
Sam took down another glass from the cupboard and filled it with milk. This she gladly accepted. She pulled out a stool and sat at the kitchen island, groaning as she took the first sip. Sam had to stifle his own groan as his body reacted, all too easily, to that sultry sound. He stuffed his sandwich into his mouth, his mind desperately searching for a safer topic to latch onto.
“You kept tabs.” Wynter interrupted his racing thoughts, setting down her glass of milk and fixing Sam with a challenging stare. “You knew about Holt and me.”
“I never asked. Pauline just couldn’t keep it to herself.” His sister, a die-hard romantic, had heard it through the grapevine and figured he’d want to know that his two best friends had found happiness together. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
“It wasn’t like we were sneaking around in high school.” She reached down and began to twist the terry cloth belt that held her skimpy robe together.
“After what happened, and you leaving us . . . We just sort of took comfort in each other.”
“Like you wouldn’t have fallen into bed with each other eventually?” He knew he was being hurtful, but he couldn’t help it. He hurt too.
“I missed you, Sam! Holt missed you too. He knew how upset I was that you just cut me—cut us—out of your life like that. I leaned on him. One thing led to another.” She pushed her glass away and slipped off the stool, hugging her arms tightly around herself.
It was his fault. He had pushed Wynter into the arms of his best friend. He had no one else to blame. Oh, things just got better and better. Sam watched her for a moment. She was grieving and he’d been a prick to attack a relationship that had been cut down in its prime, with Holt’s death.
“I’m sorry. He was your husband. He was a good man. You deserved to have forever together.”
The hysterical laugh that burbled from her throat caught Sam by surprise. She wouldn’t look at him. He’d pushed her past her limits. She was tired, fragile. He tossed his mostly untouched sandwich on his plate and skirted the counter.
“Wynter, I’m sorry. If I could bring him back for you I would.” Sam paused, unsure how to ask the next question. “How long ago did he . . . Um, how long ago was it?”
Eyes studying the floor tiles, Wynter took her time answering. Her fingers still fiddled with the ties on her ratty bathrobe. She finally met his gaze, her jaw trembling slightly.
“It wasn’t too long after we’d found out we were expecting. Maybe three weeks or so? It seems so long ago, and yet I still find myself turning to tell him something and remembering he’s not there.” She sounded so lost.
“God, Wyn.”
He folded her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin and rocked side to side. Don’t cry, please don’t cry. She shook her head back and forth, pushing against his chest with her fists before crumbling against him. She whispered his name before wrapping her arms around his waist and hanging on tight.
She smelled of vanilla, warm and heady. He buried his nose in her hair and breathed deeply. His Wynter. She was back in his life. He could say he didn’t know how much he had missed her until she’d shown up on his porch, but that wasn’t true. Missing Wynter had been the cruelest torture Sam had ever had to endure.
Losing his parents had been bad enough. But they were gone, and they couldn’t come back. Wynter was alive and she’d moved on. Growing up, he’d always thought they’d share all of life’s milestones together. And now here she was, in his arms agai
n, but carrying another man’s child.
Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, Sam held her, memorizing the moment to replay later in his mind. His body was betraying him and he couldn’t let her see, or feel, how she affected him. With all the willpower he possessed, he extracted himself from their embrace. Again, she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed.
“You’re cold. You should get back to bed. Get some rest.” He reached out to rub some warmth back into her arm, thought better of it, and dropped his hand.
Wynter smiled gently. “Thanks for keeping me company for a bit. I hope you can get back to sleep for a few more hours.” Wiggling her fingers, she turned and padded from the room.
He watched her go, the hem of her short robe swishing as she walked. He was a perv! Sam plowed his hands through his hair in frustration. Angry with his behavior, his feelings, he tugged at the locks until it hurt, cursing himself for being such a dick. Wynter was a widow. A pregnant widow. Get your mind out of the friggin’ gutter, jerk! He chastised himself. Holt had been his friend too. He couldn’t betray a friend by hitting on his wife, even if she had been a widow for the better part of six months.
He’d passed up the chance to make Wynter his own a long time ago. He couldn’t blame his friend for snatching up the best thing that had ever happened to either of them. She had come to him as a friend and he needed to respect that, his feelings for Wynter be damned.
Chapter 3
“Where are you? What on Earth do you think you’re doing? See? This is exactly why you need to come home. Thirty years old and you go jetting off to who-knows-where without a second thought, and this close to your due date.”
Wynter held the phone away from her ear. She had no trouble hearing her mother’s shrill tirade, nonetheless. She rolled her eyes, certain her mother could somehow see that through their cell phone connection.
Dropping onto the window seat in the bedroom, she tried to hold it together. She pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache starting to bloom over her right eye. In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have let all thirty-seven (yes, there were that many!) of her mother’s phone calls go to voicemail yesterday. It only made having to make that one return call this much harder.
“How do you expect to raise a baby when you are this irresponsible? You can’t. That’s why you need to come home.”
“I do want to go home, Mom. That’s what I’ve always wanted. But you don’t live in Scallop Shores anymore. You live in Florida. That’s not home.”
“How dare you sass me, young lady? Burt, she’s sassing me again.” Her mother hadn’t even bothered to cover the phone as she dragged Wynter’s dad into the conversation.
There was a brief pause and then he came on the line.
“Wynter Elise Allen, you give your mother the respect she deserves!”
“Grayson.” She reminded her father of the married name she’d had for almost ten years.
“What? You know damned well what I meant.” He mumbled a brief rant about ungrateful daughters that she wasn’t sure was meant for her ears.
“Where are you? We’ll come pick you up and take you home.”
“What? No! You can’t do that.” Panic had her raising her voice unintentionally.
Visions from her childhood made Wynter’s heart race, and chilled her blood. She remembered every moment she’d ever spent locked in her bedroom for daring to have an opinion of her own, or the times she’d been locked in there for something one of her brothers did. They didn’t have parents; they had prison wardens. And the bitch of it was, they were basically good kids. They hadn’t deserved to be treated so harshly. At least that was what the therapist (Holt had insisted she see one after they’d started college and she was safely away from her parents’ influence) had explained to her. She was mortified when Sam loomed in the doorway, watching her closely as he gauged the situation.
“Young lady, we know what’s best for your baby. You are coming with us so we can take care of her.”
“Like hell!”
She was an adult now. Years of therapy had taught her to stand up for herself. However, it couldn’t stop the scared little girl from wanting to run and hide. Her eyes focused on Sam. She was torn between wanting to shield him from this unpleasant exchange and wanting him to step in and rescue her.
Apparently she looked more terrified than in control of the situation. His features hardened and he stalked into the bedroom. He held a hand out for her cell phone. Wynter shook her head, determined not to cry. He nodded, though he looked stern, as he sat down beside her, taking her hand in support.
“You aren’t ready for this, Wynnie. We know what’s best for you. We’re going to come get you. Just tell us where you are.” There it was again. That tone. Like he was speaking to a petulant child. Like someone speaking to an inmate at an asylum, in an attempt to keep them from raging out of control.
“Daddy, I was married for eight years before I decided I was finally ready for a baby. Just because she’s not going to have a father anymore, doesn’t mean I am any less fit to be her mother. You and Mom need to back off.”
“We’re only trying to help you.”
“And I don’t need your kind of help.” She tried to say it nicely, but he just wasn’t making this very easy.
“I still think we should come get you. I can track this call, you know.”
Fear zinged through her as Wynter considered this. He was bluffing. Please, God, let him be bluffing.
“Whether you find me or not makes no difference. I am not moving to Florida with you and that’s non-negotiable.” But please don’t find me.
Sam squeezed her hand, ready to step in at any moment, she was sure. Again, she shook her head and frowned into the phone.
“We did not raise you to speak to us like this, young lady. Clearly Holt Grayson was a very bad influence on you.”
“How dare you speak of my late husband that way? Holt was a good man. He loved me. He gave me a good life.”
Sam dropped Wynter’s hand and stood up to pace the room. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Then he would want you to be with your family. He’d want you to be with people who care about you.” Again, that wheedling tone.
“Holt would want me to make my own decisions, Daddy. And I think he’d be happy with the one I’ve already made. So, I wish you and Mom the best. I’ll bring the baby by to visit, once we get settled and have a little money put aside.”
“We’ll look for you. We will find you.” Her father’s voice held a razor-sharp edge.
“You go ahead and try, Daddy. But know that I am not going anywhere with you, and neither is my daughter.” Squeezing her eyes shut, Wynter held her fear at bay—just barely.
“Wynter, listen to me—”
She pressed the ‘end call’ button and tossed the phone on the cushion beside her. Sam turned to look at her, his expression one of pity.
“Don’t.”
“Hey, you don’t need this from them right now.”
“Tell me about it.”
Now that it was over, she trembled so hard her teeth rattled. She held a hand up when Sam started toward her. He stayed where he was.
“So it sounds like Burt and Gloria Allen haven’t changed much?”
“They mellowed a bit when they moved to Pensacola, if you can believe it. They weren’t quite so in-our-faces when they actually got lives of their own.” She grinned slightly. “Dad loves his golf game and Mom was busy organizing book clubs and bridge games.”
“But they see an opportunity to control one of their children and they swoop in.” He shook his head. “You’d think they would have learned their lesson with Grant. Is he speaking to them yet?”
“Nope. They really blew it there. Mom and Dad managed to push their oldest son away, permanently, when they tried to control his life. It’s sad, really.”
“I’m sorry you’re going through this.” He meant it, but he knew letting Wynter stay with him was basically asking for trouble
. “And Holt’s parents? Do they know about the baby?”
She nodded but looked away. “I was never very close with them, and Bob’s health took a turn for the worse after Holt . . . ” Wynter broke off, her voice thick with emotion. “I couldn’t impose on them.”
Damn it. Sam paused, stepped closer and waited until she looked him in the eye.
“You were right to come here, given a choice between me or your parents. If it’s hard on me to see you again, that’s my own damned problem. I’ll get over it.”
“Thank you, Sam. But I didn’t really think things through very well. I was just looking for a place to stay while I saved up a little money.” Wynter turned miserably to the window. “But my plan to use the local bus system doesn’t seem to be a viable option out here.”
“Yeah, I’m kinda out in the sticks, huh?”
“Hey, when you want to hide away from the world, you do it up proper.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“I’ll figure something out.” She lifted a brow and Sam threw his hands up in mock defense.
“So, does this little girl have a name yet?”
“Holt wanted to name her Sara.”
“Sara. That’s a pretty name.” Sam smiled.
Her little girl chose that moment to do some sort of gymnastic flip, ending with a sharp kick to Wynter’s ribcage. What would you name me, Mommy? It’s you and me now, after all. Or at least that was how Wynter chose to interpret her daughter’s wishes.
Wynter had been settling all her life, letting others take care of her, letting them make decisions she should have taken part in. It was time to take her life back, and the life of her unborn baby girl. She smiled softly and rubbed the spot where she knew her daughter’s foot rested.
“It’s pretty, but I’ve always liked Charlotte.”
“Charlotte. It’s classy.”
A much softer thump against her palm told Wynter that Charlotte approved of her name.
She continued to rub softly at her belly, gazing out at the magical wonderland that was Vermont after a beautiful snowstorm. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, now that her original plans weren’t going to work out. But she felt like she’d been given a reprieve and she refused to worry about it today. Tomorrow was soon enough to freak out about her financial future.