A Season of You

by Emma Douglas

  “Definitely,” Mina said. She glanced around the kitchen. A binder lay in the middle of the counter, neatly labeled THANKSGIVING. That would be Lou’s work. It was a little scary just how organized her stepmom could be. And Faith had apparently already started following instructions, as rows of ingredients and utensils were laid out on either side of the binder.

  “So, do I get a cookie before we begin or do I have to earn them?” The air was scented with sugar and butter and spice and other good things. Which meant the cookies were close even though she couldn’t see any from where she stood. Her mouth watered. A cookie or three wasn’t the same as eating a whole pie after all.

  “Seeing as Mom isn’t here, knock yourself out. They’re in the pantry.”

  “How will I know which ones I’m allowed to eat?” Mina asked, pivoting on her heel to make a beeline for the pantry.

  “Lou stashed the good ones somewhere else. I don’t even know where they are. So you’re safe.”

  Faith sounded amused. Often the case. The lights in the big walk-in pantry came on as Mina opened the door. They illuminated the shelves like spotlights, making it easy to spot the big plastic container filled with cookies sitting smack-bang in the middle of one of the shelves. “Anything else you need from in here?” she called back to Faith as she snagged a small pile of cookies.

  “Nope, I ticked everything off my list earlier.”

  Typical. Everyone thought Faith was the easygoing wild child, but she was an inveterate list maker. Of course, she was the one who’d stepped up to run the business side of Harper Inc. when Grey had gotten ill. Stepped up or rather been dumped with it. Zach had avoided in his usual fashion—having ditched his musical partnership with Faith to play with another band—and Mina had still been in school when Grey had been diagnosed. In Faith’s position, she’d be making lists too.

  Lou was also a big fan of lists. Though she took it to a whole other level—as evidenced by the binder waiting for her and Faith back in the kitchen. Maybe it was hereditary to a degree?

  Emmy had never really stuck around long enough for Mina to find out what her views on lists were. These days their relationship was mostly fond distance. And didn’t involve Emmy passing on any maternal information, like her favorite organizational systems.

  Thank God for Lou. Without her, the three of them—Zach, Faith, and Mina—would have grown up wild. Left to the tender care of whatever nanny or tutor or random caretaker Grey managed to put in place when he was between wives or girlfriends. He loved them, but they’d only ever held part of his attention.

  “Are you eating all the cookies at once?” Faith yelled from beyond the pantry and Mina started, almost dropping the pile of cookies in her hand. Enough pondering the weirdness that was her family and how she’d been raised. Time to be more like the one person who’d held it all together—Lou—and make a serious dent in the preparation for tomorrow.

  She backed out of the pantry and returned to Faith, passing her half the cookies. “Here. Pre-pie sustenance.”

  “Thanks. Do you want coffee?”

  “No. Still meant to be limiting the caffeine.” Though it was tempting to pour half a gallon of coffee down her throat. Kissing Will, it seemed, hadn’t improved her insomnia. No, she’d just added another layer to her three a.m. angst. Eventually she’d given in and risen from her bed to go and work on Will’s portrait some more. She’d taken the sketch and reworked it on fresh paper, adding color with her paints. Somehow, despite the fact she was painting the man who had turned her into a crazy person, she’d managed to lose herself in the familiar rhythm of the art for a couple of hours until she’d emerged blinking to see the first hint of dawn lightening the black sky over the ocean. She’d crawled back to bed for an hour or two—taking one of Callie’s stronger painkillers to help bomb her brain and the renewed ache in her shoulder into submission—but she was still feeling worse for wear.

  But no coffee. Instead, she was turning to sugar. She bit into a cookie with a snap, taking a moment to appreciate Lou’s genius, closing her eyes to let the flavors roll over her tongue before she devoured it and another in a few more bites, all without opening her eyes.

  When she opened them again, Faith was watching her, expression somewhat quizzical.

  “What?” Mina asked.

  “Nothing,” Faith said.

  “I know that expression.”

  “It’s just”—Faith hesitated—“it’s nice to see you eat. Are you feeling better?”

  “My head is okay,” Mina said. Though she knew that wasn’t exactly what her sister was asking. But today wasn’t a day she wanted to talk about Adam. Not when she’d kissed Will last night. Not when she suspected that not even Lou’s cookies were going to drive the feel of that kiss out her memory. “Don’t fuss.”

  She said the words by rote. She’d said them so often after the darkness of the first six months or so after Adam’s death, when suddenly Faith and Lou’s near constant checking in on her had felt smothering rather than necessary, that she wasn’t even sure she knew what she meant by them anymore. She’d said them regularly, though less often, in the years since then. And really, Faith and Lou had been remarkably restrained. She knew they worried about her. Knew she’d lost too much weight and that all they wanted was to feed her and love her and take all the pain away. But nobody could. So they’d bitten their tongues and sat on their hands and given her space.

  And she’d felt awkward and guilty about chasing them away.

  Really, grief sucked. Which was hardly news to anyone but also one of the things that you never really understood until you were in the middle of it. It sucked and it made you half crazy, and now when she was starting to feel like she was emerging from the crazy, here was Will, which was a whole different level of crazy. But not one that she could talk about with Faith. Faith would be all for the idea of Mina dating anyone, let alone Will.

  Both as a sign of Mina coming back to life and because she was still in that goofy ridiculously happy stage of her relationship with Caleb and wanted to spread the love cooties around.

  “I’m fine,” she said a little more gently. “Really. Now, where do you want to start?”

  “I thought you could do apples and I’ll do pumpkin?” Faith said. “Pumpkin skins are tough. You might mess up your shoulder again.”

  Doubtful that she’d do anything worse to it than she had by drawing for hours yesterday and earlier that morning. But she was happy to leave the pumpkins to Faith. As much as she liked pumpkin pie, she’d never liked scooping the mushy seedy guts of them out. Not for Halloween as a kid and not now for Lou’s pies. Lou, who refused to use pumpkin from a can since they’d spent a Thanksgiving in Australia and their hostess had made pumpkin pie completely from scratch, even though it was clear she thought Americans were odd for eating pumpkin for dessert.

  “Apple duty is fine with me,” Mina said. Though, eyeing the two big bowls of apples sitting on the counter, the peeler set neatly beside them, she wasn’t sure peeling all of them would be any easier on her shoulder than wrangling pumpkins. But so far the painkiller was holding, so she’d worry about that later.

  She pulled out a stool and took a seat near the apples, pulling the first bowl closer to her. Faith pushed over a second, empty, bowl.

  “Peels in there. Slices go in this one,” she said as she pushed yet another bowl across the counter.

  Mina nodded and reached for the first apple.

  “So how did the meeting go yesterday?” Faith asked as she settled to her own task, picking up a wickedly sharp-looking knife and studying the pumpkin as though seeking the best place to make the first cut.

  The meeting. Will. No. Don’t think about Will. “It was okay,” Mina said carefully. She wasn’t going to blush. No blushing allowed. She focused on the apple, trying to peel it in one unbroken strip. Someone had once told her that if you could do that and then toss it on the ground, it would form the initial of the man you’d marry. It had never worked. She’d yet
to see an apple peel that formed an A. “Seems like they’re putting a lot of effort into the festival.”

  The peel coiled onto the cutting board and for a moment the swoops looked vaguely like a cursive W. She scooped it up and tossed them into the waiting bowl with perhaps a little more force than was strictly necessary and picked up a knife to start slicing the apple.

  “Who was there?” Faith asked curiously.

  “The usual types,” Mina said. She reeled off a list of names.

  “Not Will?” Faith said.

  Mina’s hand jerked, and she barely missed chopping off her finger. She heard Faith snort. Damn.

  “How did you know Will was going to be there?”

  “He mentioned it,” Faith said. “I notice you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t think you were all that interested in what Will Fraser does,” Mina said, eyes locked on her apple.

  “No, but I’m at least slightly interested in what you do when Will is around,” Faith said. There was a meaty thunk as she apparently sliced through the pumpkin successfully. “You were pretty cagey when I asked if he liked the cookies.”

  “I told you, he liked them,” Mina said, focusing on slicing the apple as though her life depended on it.

  “You know, if you want me to believe that you aren’t even a teeny bit interested in Will Fraser, then you probably should look me in the eye when you talk about him instead of staring at that apple like it’s the most fascinating thing you’ve ever seen.”

  Mina lifted her head reluctantly. “Will was at the meeting. He’s an interested business owner. Happy now?”

  Faith pointed the knife at her. “No. I know you, lil’ sis. And you’re being weird about Will.”

  “I am not ‘weird’ about him. I’m not anything about him.” At least, she was trying her best not to be.

  “Yes, you are. And that’s what’s weird.”

  “I think I’ve told you how I feel about Will Fraser before.”

  “I know. He owns the bar that Adam was at before his accident. I get it. You don’t like booze. He does. But that doesn’t make him a terrible person.”

  “We’ve had this conversation already.” Mina tipped apple slices into the third bowl and reached for another apple. She knew somewhere deep down it wasn’t just Will’s job that was the problem. But it was a reasonable excuse to give Faith.

  “And we’ll keep having it.”

  “Why? Why can’t you leave it alone?”

  “Because if you were truly indifferent to him, you wouldn’t get annoyed with me for talking about him.”

  “Maybe you’re just annoying,” Mina muttered. “Big sisters often are.”

  Faith stuck her tongue out but then her expression softened. “I don’t want to see you miss a chance because you’ve made some weird association between Will and Adam in your head. You’re only twenty-three. You can’t spend the rest of your life alone.”

  “Why not?” Mina said. “Wasn’t that your grand plan until you met Caleb? Footloose and fancy free?”

  “Yes. But I changed my mind.”

  “Which is fine for you. Doesn’t mean I have to change mine. Like you said, I’m twenty-three. Pretty sure that means I’m old enough to make my own decisions about my love life.”

  Faith held up her hands. “Fine. Okay. I’ll drop it.” The “for now” she didn’t say at the end of that sentence hung unspoken in the air. “I don’t want to fight during the holidays.”

  “Good,” Mina said. “So let’s make pie.

  chapter nine

  Maybe this was a terrible idea. Will eased his Mustang through the gate to the Harper estate and rolled onto the start of the drive, hands too tight on the steering wheel as he thought about seeing Mina. Maybe he should just turn Lulu around and head back to the bar. Sure, he’d have to explain to Stefan why he was acting like a complete lunatic, but he was used to his brother thinking he was weird.

  He wasn’t used to having to see Mina again for the first time after she’d kissed him and then practically kicked him out of her house. He hadn’t heard from her since Tuesday night. Radio silence. Which maybe was better than an actual message un-inviting him to Thanksgiving, but he couldn’t help thinking that basic politeness might prevent Mina from doing that. So he had no freaking idea about what sort of welcome he could expect when he walked through Faith’s big-ass front door.

  And he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to take it well if Mina gave him the cold shoulder. Not after he’d finally gotten to kiss her. Nope. He knew the taste of her now. Or, rather, had a hint of it. There’d been no tongues involved in the quick kiss that had shocked him, but it had still been hot as hell. And he wanted more.

  He couldn’t get the picture of her out of his head. Mina all wild eyes, pupils dark and cheeks flushed, pushing her mouth against his with a quick hunger that had taken him completely by surprise. But then he’d seen realization crash over her face like someone had switched the lights off.

  She’d been embarrassed. And he’d been too taken by surprise to do anything sensible like try to reassure her or talk to her and had let her kick him out. After all, hanging around after a woman asked you to leave wasn’t a good idea.

  But he wished he’d said something—anything—to … well, he didn’t know what exactly. He had no idea what she was feeling. She was a widow for chrissakes. Was he the first man she’d kissed since her husband?

  The stupid-ass, too-much-testosterone, Neanderthal part of his brain wanted that to be true. Then again that part of his brain was the part that wished there’d never been a husband to begin with.

  It wasn’t helpful in working out what the hell was going on with Mina. So here he was, driving way more slowly down Faith Harper’s long drive than was necessary and trying to figure out what the hell he was going to say to Mina when he saw her.

  “Any reason you’re driving slower than a ninety-year-old who’s lost his bifocals?” Stefan drawled from beside him.

  “It’s wet. And cold,” Will said.

  “Dude. This is California. It’s not like there’s any risk of ice on the road. And your precious car has survived more than fifty years. I don’t think it’s going to melt if it gets some mud on the paintwork.”

  “Someone might be coming in the other direction.”

  “This drive could happily fit two cars and then some,” Stefan said, sounding exasperated. “Speed it up. I’m starving.”

  Will obeyed the instruction, grateful that Stefan hadn’t made any connection between their traveling speed and Mina. Not that he had any reason to. As far as his brother was concerned, Will had gone to see Mina and taken her Tupperware back and that was it. The bar had been too busy when Will had returned for Stefan to have time to notice that Will was acting weirdly—and he’d tried his best not to act weirdly. And on Wednesday, Will had avoided Stefan by disappearing down to the distillery for a few hours during the day and then locking himself up in the office to do paperwork for the rest of the afternoon before Salt Devil opened. As Stefan regarded doing paperwork as about as pleasant as having his eyeballs poked out, Will’s ploy had worked and there’d been no brotherly grilling about Mina or anything else.

  Today, hopefully Stefan would be distracted by Lou’s cooking and be too polite to make fun of Will in front of the girl in question.

  “Any idea who’s going to be here?” Stefan asked as Will finally pulled Lulu in beside a row of cars lined up outside the Harper house. Will recognized a few of them but not all.

  “Didn’t ask,” he admitted. He’d been to a couple of parties that Caleb and Faith had thrown since Caleb had moved to Lansing, and there was no telling who might be there. He’d met a couple of rock stars and actors. And a couple of Caleb’s tennis buddies. Not to mention a poet, a married couple who taught yoga for half the year and ran a cooking school in Tuscany for the other half, and a retired Broadway singer. But the celebrities had mingled happily with the people who worked for Faith and the other Lansing residents who’d b
een invited. He’d also been to parties where it had been only locals. So he had no idea who might be sharing turkey and pie with them today. Really, he didn’t much care as long as Mina was there. Not that he was going to admit that to Stefan.

  Nerves rolled through his stomach as they walked up to the door to ring the bell. The massive wreath decorating the equally broad front door gave him something to study while they waited. Made from what looked like driftwood, fir branches, and silver and red glass balls all held together with silver ribbon, it sparkled in the weak winter sun that was attempting to break through the clouds. The whole house sparkled in fact. There were fairy lights draped across the walls and around the windows, blinking red and green and as he looked up, he spotted practically a whole herd of disturbingly real-looking reindeer and a sleigh sitting on the lowest part of the roof immediately above the door.

  Apparently Faith and Caleb were getting into the Christmas spirit early.

  He wondered why there wasn’t anyone from Harper Inc. on the festival committee. Seemed like they’d fit right in. Unlike Mina, who clearly hadn’t been into the whole thing.

  Well, Christmas was hard sometimes. Fraser family Christmases had been pretty quiet and subdued the first couple of years after their dad had died. Full of ghosts. Maybe Mina felt the same way.

  As the last chimes of the doorbell rang away, the door opened, revealing Faith. “The Fraser boys as I live and breathe,” she said with a grin and a flutter of her eyelashes. “Come on in.” She flung the door wider and stood there for a moment, spotlighted. Dressed in a little black dress and a tiny cardigan covered in gold sequins, she literally sparkled, looking like she was made of glowing gold from the blonde lights running through her brown hair to the tanned skin and the tiny gold chains running across the leather of her black boots.

  Will blinked, reminded for a moment just how pretty Faith was. Nearly as pretty as Mina, though Faith’s was a more obviously rock-chick kind-of-out-there pretty. One that he’d gotten used to through years of proximity and barely noticed anymore. But every now and then she turned it on and could command a whole room just by smiling.