Enticing Winter

by Sherelle Green

“Oh, I didn’t know we were allowed to bring our boyfriends to this talk.”

  Winter glanced at Taheim before looking back at her mother. “So you’re in a burlesque show in Vegas and didn’t think it was important enough to tell your daughters?”

  “Girl, please,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You girls never gave a shit about what I did. Only your boring-ass daddy.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about him like that,” Winter said defensively.

  “Or what?” she said with a laugh. “I forgot how sensitive you were. Where’s Autumn and Summer?”

  “They aren’t here. Not that you really care.”

  “Oh wee, you’re even feistier than the last time I saw you,” her mother said as she pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a lighter shaped like a burlesque girl.

  “And let’s get something straight.” She waved her cigarette at Winter. “I run this show. I’m not just a dancer. I became something.”

  Winter cringed at her words, refusing to let herself go back to a time and place when she would’ve done anything to please her mom.

  “Looks like you finally lost that baby fat.”

  “I was always satisfied with my size.”

  “Give me a break, Winter,” she said with a laugh. “Who the hell wants to be fat?”

  “I was never fat, and even if I had been, not everyone is made to be a size two.”

  “Only those meant to be somebody. Having you girls may have messed up my figure, but thanks to Dr. Collins, I’m a gorgeous size six.”

  Even with the makeup, Winter could tell her mom looked slightly different, so she wasn’t surprised to learn she’d had plastic surgery. “Being pretty on the outside means nothing if you aren’t beautiful on the inside.”

  Her mom cocked an eyebrow at her as she took another puff of her cigarette. “Says the woman who’s spent her entire life in the fashion industry with bougie models.”

  “Luckily, you taught me how to deal with snobbish people at a young age.”

  Winter wasn’t sure what part of her last statement triggered her mother to look at Taheim, but when her eyes left Winter’s and landed on him, inside, she was screaming Don’t look at him! at the top of her lungs.

  “Ain’t you that guy I saw on television? The one with that clothing line.”

  Taheim wrapped his arm around Winter’s waist before responding. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You finally snagged you a rich one.” She glanced back at Taheim. “And don’t call me ma’am. That’s disrespectful.”

  Winter threw her hands in the air. “I don’t even know why I came back here to try and talk to you. You’re the most unreasonable person I know.” Winter stepped closer to her mother. “You know what? I pity you. I pity you because you’ll spend the rest of your sorry life chasing something that you will never find.”

  “Oh, my dear pretty girl,” her mother said as she stood up from the chair and walked over to them. When she reached them, she brushed her hand through Winter’s hair before Winter instinctively pushed her hand away. “Child, they’ve been saying you were my twin since the day you were born. You look like me. Talked like me until your daddy started taking you around the world, which changed how you spoke and your tone of voice.”

  She stepped even closer to Winter, but Winter refused to step back and give her the satisfaction of knowing she was getting to her. “Every time you look in the mirror, I want you to remember that I made you. I birthed you. Your sisters may have a few similarities to me, but you’re the one who’s going to turn out just like me.”

  Winter didn’t know what was worse: the fact that after all these years, her mother was still just as nasty toward her, or the fact that Taheim was there to witness it all.

  “Winter, your daddy may be a broke-ass painter, but I’m the one who spent hours teaching you how to sew and took you to those classes when you were a kid. So the next time you create one of those little lingerie outfits, just remember... I’m the one who nurtured that talent.”

  Winter looked her mom dead in the eye. “That’s the only thing you ever did for me and you never let me forget it.”

  “You damn right,” her mom said as she put out her cigarette. “Hurry back now, kids.” She waved her hands for Winter and Taheim to exit the dressing room. “You don’t want to miss the end of the show.”

  As the door slammed in their faces, Winter rushed down the hall into the nearest bathroom. Unshed tears burned her eyes, but she refused to shed one more tear over her mom.

  “Are you okay?” Taheim asked as he cracked open the bathroom door and began walking toward her.

  “I’m fine,” she said as she put up a hand to stop him from getting closer. “But I don’t want to cry over her, and if you hug me right now, I won’t be able to stop the waterworks.”

  He stopped his pursuit to her, although she could tell all he wanted to do was hold her.

  “Are you okay if we go back to the hotel?” she asked.

  Once again, he looked as if he was seconds away from pulling her into a hug, but he withheld himself.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 12

  Winter had suggested they walk back to the hotel instead of taking a taxi. Taheim didn’t mind. He knew she needed to clear her mind.

  On their walk, they stopped to watch the water dance at the Bellagio and observed street dancers performing on the sidewalk. Even with the bright Vegas lights, loud music and crowds of people, she was silent during the entire walk.

  As they neared the elevator, Taheim wasn’t sure if he should offer to walk her back to her room or just maintain the silence and give her space.

  He opted to leave the ball in her court. “If you need anything, just call.” He didn’t like seeing her so distant, and even worse, he didn’t like feeling as if he didn’t know how to help her.

  She looked up at him and searched his eyes. He wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for, but in that moment, he would have let her search for whatever she needed if it meant wiping that sad look off her face.

  “Do you think you can walk me to my room?”

  Her voice was so low that he almost didn’t hear her. “Of course.”

  As they boarded the elevator, all he wanted to do was hold her. Despite what she kept telling him, she looked as though she needed a good hug. The walk down the long hallway to her room continued in silence. A quick glance at his watch proved that it had been an hour and a half since the situation had occurred with her mom.

  Taheim watched her slip her key card in the door. “Remember what I said. Call me if you need anything.”

  “I’m not really sleepy,” she said, turning the door handle. “Do you want to chat for a while?”

  He squinted his eyes in observation. She hadn’t said anything for a while, so he doubted they would do much chatting. But seeing the pleading look in her eyes made him not care one iota if they talked the night away or if they remained silent. Even if she just needed him to sit there, he’d do just that.

  “So, how do you like your view?” he asked, trying to see if he could get her talking.

  “The view is gorgeous,” she replied as she kicked off her black heels. “At first I thought a view of the Strip would be awesome. But the minute I walked into the room and saw the mountains in the distance, I couldn’t imagine not having that view.”

  She took out a bottle of red wine from the small refrigerator and poured two glasses.

  “Same here.” He sat down on the sofa not far from the window. “The Strip is nice, but the mountains are more of an escape from reality.”

  “Speaking of reality,” she said as she handed him a glass of wine and sat next to him on the sofa, “I’m sorry you had to witness that conversation with me and my mother.”

 
“You have nothing to apologize for. You’re her daughter—your questions were all valid. I’m just sorry that she didn’t reciprocate.”

  Taking a sip of wine, she brushed off the words. “My mother hasn’t been a mother to me or my sisters in an extremely long time and it’s really embarrassing that you had to witness that.”

  “There’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about. If anything, your mom should be embarrassed.”

  “Ha! In order to be embarrassed, she’d have to feel shamed or humiliated by her behavior. But I can assure you, if there is anything I’ve learned from Sonia Madden Dupree, Miss CeCe or whatever she’s calling herself these days, it’s that nothing can embarrass her, because she doesn’t see her faults.”

  Taheim had to admit he was a bit shocked by her mother’s behavior. It wasn’t so much the way she acted but rather the way she spoke to Winter.

  “Has your mom always talked like that?”

  “If by like that you mean rudely and pretentiously, then yes, she’s basically been like that my entire life.” Winter took another sip of her wine. “In case you didn’t notice by the way my mom was looking at you, ever since she divorced my dad and her other husband and stopped seeing the boyfriend who she met while with husband number two, she hasn’t dated a man over thirty.”

  Taheim’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah. During my junior year of high school, I caught her making out with my boyfriend, who at the time was a senior. When I asked her why she did it, she said she was making sure that he knew how to handle me when I was finally ready to lose my virginity.”

  Taheim stopped drinking his wine midsip. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  She let out a forced laugh. “Nope. I’d only seen them making out, but he felt guilty and confessed the next day that they’d been having sex.”

  What the hell! He was at a loss for words, but he was sure the shocked expression splashed across his face said it all.

  “Trust me, I spent many nights waiting for someone to pinch me and tell me that it was all some twisted joke.”

  “What did your dad say about all this?”

  “I never told him about that particular incident. I couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings. A couple of months after that, it wasn’t an issue anyway, because she’d filed for a divorce. My dad spent years trying to be the businessman my mom wanted him to be. I think he found out when we were kids that my mother had only been interested in his money and the idea that being married to a Frenchman could get her further in her acting or modeling career. Once he’d informed her that one of his paintings had won a prestigious European award and that he was going to pursue his career as an artist, my mom hightailed it out of there so fast the entire day was almost a blur.”

  “Were your sisters’ relationships with your mom just as strained as yours and your dad’s?”

  “In their own ways, yes. Since I’m the oldest, I was really protective of them. To avoid what was going on, Autumn dived into her studies and Summer really spent a lot of time escaping to friends’ houses.”

  “I can’t imagine feeling like that about my mother,” Taheim said as he began running his hand up and down her arm. “And you never knew why she treated you differently?”

  The look that crossed Winter’s face made his protective instinct kick into high gear. Her relationship with her mother had already done its damage, so he couldn’t really protect her from that. But he wanted to protect her from the memories. The hurtful memories that were flittering through her mind right now.

  “As an adolescent, I was a little on the chubby side. I remember begging my dad to let me sign up for as many sports as I could. In my mind, I figured the more I exercised, the smaller I would be and the more my mother would accept me. Back then I didn’t realize that I just wasn’t meant to be a stick-skinny kid. I had thighs, a butt, breasts and curves.”

  Taheim wanted to stop her and tell her that she had the most amazing body that he’d ever seen. That her body had kept him up on more nights than he could count since they had met. No one’s definition of beautiful wouldn’t include her at the top of the list. But he didn’t say any of that. She was opening up to him in a way he somehow sensed she hadn’t with others. And for that reason alone, he needed to let her continue.

  Winter dropped her head to her glass and began running her finger over the rim. “I spent years listening to her tell me I wasn’t pretty enough, would never be beautiful like my sisters and would never turn my dream of being a designer into a reality. Until I finally realized why she didn’t love me.”

  Hearing those words made him wince. I wonder if she loves so hard because she never felt loved by her mom. It would probably have had the opposite effect on most people...but not Winter. She had a strength that he had already seen but was slowly beginning to really understand.

  “The crazy thing is, she really did introduce me to sewing and I meant what I said—it is probably the only thing in my entire life that she did for me besides bring me into this world. But she didn’t teach me to sew for my own benefit. She took me to all those workshops and classes so that I could make her clothes that she would wear for auditions and other things that she never told me about. I didn’t only learn she’d been sleeping with my boyfriend my junior year. When I came home early from school one day, I saw her dancing in one of the skimpy outfits she’d had me make for her years before I finally stopped wasting my talent on what she wanted. As I walked closer into our living room, I saw my mom doing that same shimmy I saw onstage earlier today. And the guy sitting in the chair was definitely not my father.”

  Her voice cracked a little, and just as Taheim’s hand was reaching out to touch her face, she stood up from the couch and walked out onto the balcony. His hand dropped back to his side as he thought about her words earlier that day. If you hug me, I won’t be able to stop the waterworks.

  He followed her out onto the balcony and gently ran his fingers up and down her arms, unable to resist offering her some type of comfort. After a few seconds, she began to lean back on his chest, giving him the opportunity to wrap his arms completely around her. Hugging her felt so right. So natural.

  “In case I haven’t told you, I think you’re an amazing woman.” He rested his chin atop her head. “Sometimes people in our lives hurt us in indescribable ways. In your case, your mother never showed you the type of love you needed. But that isn’t a reflection of your character. It’s a poor reflection of hers. She may never change and I’m glad you’re not holding your breath waiting on it. She doesn’t define the type of woman you are.”

  “I know,” Winter said with a sigh. “Besides, some children have parents who treat them badly and they never know why they were treated that way. At least I know.”

  She didn’t continue right away and his curiosity began eating away at him. “Why do you think she treats you the way she does?”

  “Before my parents divorced, my mom and I had the one conversation in my lifetime where I felt like we truly connected and understood each other. I felt like I was finally seeing a piece of the woman my dad fell in love with. The woman he described to my sisters and me. The woman we never had the fortune of meeting. We’d spent most of the day together and out of nowhere she began laughing so hard that she started crying. At first I didn’t understand what was going on, so I began laughing with her until suddenly, she began speaking in between her laughs. So I stopped laughing long enough to listen.”

  He felt her body tense beneath his arms. “She told me that the reason she called me fat when I was younger was that she knew that I would be prettier than her. My sisters are gorgeous, but they both have a lot of my dad’s features. As you saw tonight, I have a lot of hers. Then she told me the reason she said I’d never accomplish my dreams was that she knew I had a talent that she didn’t. And probably what hurt the most that night was when she told me th
at the real reason why she would always hate me was that the day she had me was the day her life changed for the worse. She’d just landed a part in a movie and was so stressed reading over lines that she never noticed she was pregnant until it was too late to get rid of me. When she informed the director, she lost the part.”

  Winter leaned into him even more. “I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised by what she said, but I was. I spent years trying to be the daughter I thought she wanted, needed, even. I learned that night that even if I could do everything she asked me to do, at the end of the day, she felt like I was just like her and she hated me for it. She hated me for being...me.”

  “You are nothing like that woman.” Taheim buried his face in her neck, now understanding the reason her mom had voiced those last words when they were in her dressing room. She’d say anything to try to break her daughter’s spirit. “Your mom ought to be ashamed of herself for what she put you through. Jealousy is an evil that consumes and can sometimes get the best of people. But that’s her problem, not yours.”

  He turned her around to face him. “Your mom missed out on knowing a terrific woman and having a daughter who I know somewhere in there,” he said, pointing to her heart, “still loves her because that’s the type of kindhearted person she is. But I hate to say it—she doesn’t deserve your love or your sympathy. Your mom has a lot of issues to work through and you can’t be the one to help her realize how lost she is. It’s time for you to focus on yourself.”

  He wiped away the few tears rolling down her cheeks. Frustration for what Winter had been through with her mom radiated off his body, blinding him from the chill in the air.

  “I’ll let you get some rest, but I meant what I said earlier. I’m only a phone call away if you need my help with anything.” He turned to walk back into the room, only stopping when he heard her call his name. He turned to where she still stood on the balcony.

  She looked at him over her shoulder, her hair whipping across her face in the night breeze. Even after the conversation they’d had, she still looked extremely beautiful. If you’re not careful, you could start to fall for this woman. Most people knew him for his player-like tendencies, but only those who truly knew him and his past understood why he avoided serious relationships.