She didn’t let him answer. “Other people have stories. Places. Times. Things they do. Crazy things.” She looked down at him pitifully now. She’d never been like those other people. Maybe that was the problem.
“What do you want, Catherine?” he asked plainly. “Don’t beat around the bush.”
“Punny,” she sulked.
“I’m serious. Is there something you want? Or need?”
“Isn’t there something you want?” she challenged, unwilling to answer... because she didn’t know what she wanted. She just knew that Tara was driving her nuts and making her feel like she was some kind of sexual sap who didn’t know how to let go or get off or anything.
“I have what I want,” Fynn said plainly.
“A likely answer from a man who hates confrontation,” she grumbled.
“That’s not fair,” he countered.
“You know you hate to fight or bicker or have any kind of words at all.”
“You’re trying to instigate something.”
“I just asked a simple question.”
“But why did you ask?”
“Forget it,” she said brusquely.
Now it was his turn to sit up. “Every time you get a bug up your ass, you do this.”
“That’s a pretty picture,” she snapped.
“You search for something rather than coming right out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“If you want to know, just ask me.”
She stared at him, holding his gaze, wondering who would blink first. He didn’t. She groaned. “Are you happy with our sex life?”
“See? Was that so bad?” he challenged. “And the answer is yes, other than the amount of it, which could always be more.”
“More of the same?”
“You act like the same is something distasteful, wrinkling your nose like that.”
She hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it.
“You aren’t going to sway me with your little subliminal tricks, you know. Sex is like bacon. I love bacon. Love it. I don’t need different cuts of bacon or flavors injected in my bacon, I just like pure and unadulterated bacon. That’s how I feel about you.”
Catherine felt her heart warming, her defenses melting, her fears dissipating. She cocked her head to the side, grabbed his shirt and pulled him to her, letting her blouse fall down off her shoulders. “So I’m not turkey bacon?” she joked lightly. “Bacon’s boring and bland cousin once-removed?”
“No, you’re the real deal.”
She squeezed him tighter.
“And further, I happen to like bed sex. At-home sex. I like to think of it as comfortable, we-have-all-the-time-in-the-world sex,” Fynn said, the vibration of his words traveling from her ear through her body to her nether regions. “I think sex is private and should be; danger is overrated and short-lived. Oh, and next time Tara gets in your head about our sex life, tell her to take a fucking hike.”
“How did you know it—”
“Isn’t it always Tara?”
Sunday, December 10th
-33-
“You’re up bright and early on a Sunday morning,” her mother pointed out, beating her to the kitchen as she had every day since arriving. She was sitting at the table, mug before her, gazing out at the sprawling backyard that was a pristine sheet of snow all over again. Just a light dusting, enough to fill in the bottoms of paw prints and footsteps that had exposed the yellowed grass underneath from Magnus and Cara carousing about.
“I thought it would be nice to get a head start on the day,” Catherine said tightly, wishing she could do so alone. Especially this of all mornings, when her mother was probably chomping at the bit to go to church, seeing as how she’d raised her daughter that way. Elizabeth Hemmings was active in church groups and church events and genuinely enjoyed her Sunday mornings there, while Catherine Marie used to drag her feet about getting ready, complain about having to wear a dress, scuff her best shoes getting out of the car and almost always nod off in the pew.
Since the moment her parents had arrived in town, her mother had pointed out every church they passed by, admiring their architecture or land or the beautiful front doors, and she otherwise talked church by using them as landmarks, noting that something was a few blocks from this church or just past that one, a not-so-subtle dig into her daughter’s spiritual tendencies. Because people like Elizabeth Hemmings knew not to discuss politics or religion; just lay on some guilt.
“I made you a pot of decaf, by the way,” her mother said.
“You didn’t have to do that. Everyone else likes their caffeine.”
“I picked up an insulated carafe yesterday and planned to give it to you for Christmas, but I thought that now is the time to actually get some use out of it. Soon enough you will be able to join us regular coffee drinkers again. Anyway, I made a pot of each. Yours is right over there—”
—Four miles from the closest church. The one with the beautiful arched stained glass. Catherine almost chuckled to herself at the thought as her eyes followed her mother’s gesture toward the brushed stainless carafe next to the coffeemaker.
“It should still be nice and hot,” she added.
For eight and a half months Catherine had not only suffered from caffeine withdrawal, but from the joy of coffee at all. She occasionally ordered a decaf out, and once or twice made some instant, but she’d refused to spend the money on a single-cup coffeemaker and had never even thought of such a simple solution. But then again, she was not Elizabeth Hemmings. “Now that makes my morning,” she said with a smile that jumped to her mother’s face as well. “And considering what they say about limiting caffeine while you’re nursing, I think it is going to come in handy for a while.”
“So you’re going to nurse?” her mother asked, surprised.
“I’m planning to. Georgia and Lacey both did. And Drew did with all of hers too. It seems only natural. And frugal. Why buy the cow when you can milk it for free,” she joked as she poured herself a mug. “You know, living on our one income, like we are.” Touché, mother.
“I really wish I had nursed all of you, but it wasn’t popular back at the time.”
“You did with Josephine.”
She nodded. “People were coming back around then. And it really was a wonderful bonding experience.” Her gaze slipped faraway, her fingers caressing the handle of her mug like she was stroking baby-fine hair.
Catherine doctored her coffee, giving her mother a few moments. After she got it just right, she waddled to the table and set her mug down, lowering herself carefully into the closest chair. “I feel like my hips are going to fall out of their sockets.”
Her mother turned her attention back to the present. “I remember that feeling. It’s the final stretch.”
“Only a week left.”
“Hopefully. I can’t believe how far you’ve come so quickly—”
Wait a second, back up, hopefully? What’s that supposed to—
“You know, a year ago I never would have guessed I would be sitting in my daughter’s kitchen expecting yet another grandchild.”
“I bet you figured Lacey and Connor would have five before I had one.” Slightly bitter.
“You and I both know that Lacey would never have five kids.” Taking the safe route across Lacey’s career-driven path rather than down Catherine’s admittedly longstanding single and hopeless avenue.
“I guess not.”
“I don’t know that they even plan to have a second.”
Catherine shook her head. She and Lacey were closer than they used to be (she admittedly wouldn’t have had a wedding to speak of without her sister-in-law’s help during those last crazy days when everything was falling apart), but they were still a world away when it came to their hopes, dreams, and daily lives. They got along well, but they weren’t exactly girlfriends, which was probably good because she needed to maintain just enough distance that she could still side with Connor if they ever broke up—bros
before hoes.
“How is Georgia doing these days?” her mother asked, a fitting question, lumping Georgia into a discussion about Lacey. Ever since the two had had their daughters within weeks of each other, they had become close—close enough that Elizabeth Hemmings should probably be asking her daughter-in-law this question. As far as Catherine knew, the four of them double-dated sometimes in a weird and sort of icky, almost incestuous way. Georgia was like her sister and Connor was for better or worse her brother and Lacey and Thomas were like two sides of the same coin. Maybe they were into swapping—a thought that made her throw up a little in her mouth.
“Fine, I guess.” Noncommittal.
“Living this far away from each other must be hard after all the years you were so close.” She could feel her mom searching with her eyes and her words—Elizabeth Hemmings had missed her true calling as a psychologist.
“It’s not so bad.” And it wasn’t, actually. They both had their own lives. Very different lives. Georgia Love was a stuck-up Mommystein from the Sophie Watts School of Perfection. She should have known this would happen. The house. The status. All of it had gone straight to Georgia’s head even before Catherine moved out here and married Fynn and started plowing forward on her own way to happily ever after.
“How about Nell? She’s just about a year old now, right? Do you think they’re going to have another?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t she have trouble conceiving?”
What is this, twenty questions? “Kind of,” Catherine shrugged. She remembered her friend drowning her sorrows over it, acting like it was so hard having sex all the time—something that at that point in her life Catherine hadn’t been having at all, so admittedly she was less than sympathetic. In fact, she would have traded places with Georgia in a moment because her husband, Thomas Love, was no slouch. And an orgasm or more a day was nothing to complain about. What she wouldn’t have given to have something so hard to do.
“The Lord continues to work in mysterious ways,” her mother sighed. “Sometimes what you want most seems out of reach, while for others who don’t seem to want it at all, it’s just suddenly right there.”
She let the words sink in, turning them, trying to find the jab within them. The pointed lesson. And there it was: jealousy. All around. Her thoughts about Georgia. Maybe Georgia’s thoughts about her. Could that be, though? Here she was, falling into her future like she was deaf, dumb, and blind to the risks, and she was happy. Not unlike Tara, she realized. And then there was Georgia, who had pre-thought and pre-planned and signed a prenup and she was—what exactly?
“You have been so blessed, Catherine. Truly. Deeply.”
“I know,” she choked out.
“Even though I worry about your unorthodox ways and your tendency to leap well before you look, now I know you will be alright. Shortcuts terrify me,” she said grimly. “I like things to be safe and sure and straightforward. I like to be in control. You know that. But now that I’ve seen all of this with my own eyes, I realize that Fynn will take care of you and love you for who you are… And I know that you never would have met him if you were like me. You’re simply… unafraid.”
“Mom, I’m terrified! I don’t know the first thing about what I’m doing!”
Elizabeth Hemmings shook her head, denying her. “You are right where you belong, doing exactly what you should be doing. With Fynn. With Cara—”
“And Eve.”
Her mother’s eyes widened.
“It’s a girl.”
“But I thought you didn’t know,” she whispered.
Catherine saw the gleam of unshed tears in her eyes. “We weren’t intending to find out, but then—” She stopped, not wanting to share the particulars since it was neither here nor there at this point. That was between her and Fynn and she’d made it up to him last night.
“I can’t believe it’s a little girl. If I had been guessing—” But she waved it off, reached her hand across the table. “You are going to be a wonderful mother.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you already are. Cara adores you. She relies on you. You were meant to be in her life and she in yours. In just a few short months you’ve become her… everything. I know because she knows.”
Floored. If not for the fact that every movement was difficult right now, she probably would have fallen out of her chair—but for the grace of the law of inertia.
A buzzing sound shattered the moment and Catherine labored up to check her phone that she’d left charging on the counter in the kitchen the night before.
Tara: Can we talk?
She texted back: Busy right now.
Tara: Have time later?
Catherine: ?
Not the nicest response, but true. She definitely didn’t have time if this was just going to be a continuation of everything they’d argued about yesterday. She had more important things to do than try to reason with the unreasonable.
“Who’s that?” her mother asked, nodding toward the phone.
“It’s nothing. Just Tara.”
“Just Tara?” A pointed repeat. “Does she need you for something? Because your father and I don’t mind watching Cara if—”
“It’s truly nothing.”
-34-
“Where are we going?” Cara asked from the backseat.
“It’s a surprise,” Catherine answered.
“What kind of surprise?”
“The good kind,” Fynn assured her.
“Should I close my eyes?”
“I don’t know if it’s that good,” Catherine chuckled. They were actually leading Cara to her interrogation, hoping to get at the information she had so far refused to give up. If there was anyone who could get her to talk, they figured it was Santa himself.
They’d left her parents back at the house, where her mother was content to spend time wrapping gifts in her own wrapping paper and using her own tags and bows and scissors and tape that she’d picked up as if her daughter lived a life void of such things. And her father was happy not having to do anything for a change.
Catherine gazed lovingly at Fynn’s strong profile, then glanced over her shoulder at Cara strapped in the back. Just a happy little family out for a drive. It was an overcast day, allowing for the Christmas lights decorating houses and buildings around town to shine in spite of the hour, creating a magical scene that renewed her hope for the home stretch toward the holidays and Eve’s arrival—the final push, pardon the pun.
“The mall,” Cara breathed in awe as it came into view.
“Said like a true woman,” Fynn sighed.
As they pulled into the massive parking lot, it seemed that everyone had gotten the memo about the mall’s extended hours. The lot was already full and it wasn’t even noon.
“I’d hoped this would be relatively painless at this hour,” Catherine grumbled.
“Life is real, not ideal,” Cara said sadly.
“What the—” Catherine stopped herself. Obviously Cara was spending way too much time with Gramma Lizzy these days. In fact, she was so enamored with her that she might just try to hide in her luggage and fly back to Chesterton to live.
“Ooh, can I go on the rides? And play on the jungle gym? Oh, and get a cinnamon bun as big as my head? That’s how Pop-Pop says they measure them here.”
Catherine smirked. All of that was well and good with her. The former two requests sounded like perfect jobs for Fynn while she shopped for Cara, after they figured out what she wanted, that is. Then they could meet back up for the last stop…. As big as your head, you say? Score!
“Hold on little lady, all in good time.” Fynn copped a cowboy drawl. “First we have to giddyup to the North Pole.”
“The North Pole?” Her eyes were trained on the building, calculating just how that was going to happen.
“Well, not the real one, but this one is built by elves each year,” he clarified. At least by workers dressed as elves. Someone somewhere al
ong the way must have realized that it added to the authenticity of Santa’s Village.
“Oh, I know all about mall Santas,” Cara said, as if she’d been around the block more than a few times.
“You do?” Fynn prodded.
“Yup. They aren’t real.”
“Not real, you say,” he nodded, taking it in.
“Well, they all look different for one. And there is one in every mall everywhere all across the world. Santa might be made of magic, but he can’t be all those places at once.”
“I guess not.”
“So he hires all these people to help him out.”
“Oh!” Fynn said, like now it made all the sense in the world.
“So do you want to go and see him?” Catherine offered.
Cara shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt just in case my letter got lost.”
“Smart girl, cover all your bases,” Fynn agreed, hopping out of the car to get the show on the road.
By the time they reached the entrance, Catherine’s feet were frozen ice blocks in her little flats that were less shoe and more cardboard sole strapped on with a thin canvas skin. She hadn’t been thinking about the trek through the frozen tundra of the parking lot when she slipped them on, rather the journey through the climate-controlled mall and how much her feet tended to sweat in normal conditions these days—another of those wacky side effects of pregnancy, she guessed.
The smell of the mall rushed out as they stepped inside. A familiar smell. One that hadn’t changed in all the time she’d been shopping in malls since she was a kid herself. It was a soothing scent. Calming. Like home away from home.
A very busy home.
The place was bustling with people. Any mall at Christmastime was busy, but this was the Mall of America. A mall on steroids. Not just a shopping destination but a tourist destination.
They made their way to Santa’s Village, where a line wrapped and wound around candy cane posts that marked off a zigzagging pathway lined in red velvet ribbon meant to keep them in check, then grew further still, stretching down the length of several store fronts, where they added themselves to the queue.
2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Page 20