by Dana Pratola
“I’ll be here when you’re ready,” Darryl assured him. “And then I’ll talk to Josh about it. Not gonna just leave him hangin’.”
“I appreciate that.”
With the tub installed and the building complete except for some aesthetic add-ons, Cal left the guys to it and walked to the house, looking forward to keeping Winsome occupied while Carla and her assistant set up the treehouse.
This weekend, weather permitting, they would start the branch off from the driveway to the candle shop and then Winsome would be ready to go. He had to admit he was looking forward to seeing her start off in her venture, but not knowing exactly what that entailed, he hoped she still had time for him.
CHAPTER 16
Propped on his right elbow, facing her, Cal ran a finger lightly down Winsome’s throat, between her breasts and down her torso to circle her belly button. She giggled and grabbed his hand, moving it to her hip as she rolled to face him. She was ticklish. He loved knowing that about her.
“You know, I wasn’t going to let you take me to bed today,” she said, looking up at him with amused eyes.
He smirked. “I believe it was you who took me to bed.”
Her brows arched regally, looking like a royal, surprised her statement was being questioned. Of course, he had been nuzzling her neck and backing her toward the bedroom, but she had gone willingly, laughing that delicious laugh low in her throat, that he was powerless to resist. And technically, she’d gotten to the bed first.
“You lured me with your feminine wiles,” he said.
When she blinked those thick, mink lashes, he leaned over and gave her a smacking kiss on the lips. The fact that she had no clue what he was talking about made his heart flip over in his chest. She was every bit as innocent and straightforward as he hadn’t believed it possible for a woman to be. Not since he’d been jaded by past relationships, anyway.
He filed that revelation away to ponder later, and returned to contemplating Winsome, the soft smile curving her full lips, her hair fanned across the pillow like sea spray exploding over the jetty. Her eyes lit with that strange fire he couldn’t escape, the one that made him think such poetic, out of character thoughts to begin with.
“But why weren’t you going to take me to bed?” he asked, tucking a cord of hair behind her ear.
“You look drained,” she told him.
“I am. For the moment. Give me half an hour and I’ll be back to full operating capacity,” he answered with a chuckle.
“I don’t mean that,” she said with a giggle, slapping him lightly on the arm. “I mean you’ve been looking a little tired. When we’re not in bed,” she clarified. “I probably should have noticed before. You’ve been working so hard at your job, then for me every day. It’s taking a toll.”
“Thanks for noticing how crappy I look,” he teased. “But it’s almost over.”
“And on top of it we’ve been….”
He enjoyed her unease with just coming out and using the brash, dirty term. It was refreshing and endearing. But he wondered what she did call it, at least in her head. Having sex? Fooling around? Screwing? He suddenly wanted to know.
“Been what?” he asked, knowing she’d expected him to fill in the blank and accept what she’d said, though she hadn’t fully said it.
“You know…this,” she said, moving her index finger between them.
He watched the color creep into her cheeks and he wanted to roll on top of her and have her again, but she wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her clear response.
“Sleeping together,” she said, finally.
“Ah, but we haven’t been sleeping. Sleeping would mean I was resting, and there would be no need for this conversation.”
She quirked her lips, catching on to what he was trying to make her say. “Okay, what do you call it?” she asked.
“Making love,” he answered, without hesitation. “I call it making love.”
She smiled. “So do I.”
“Then why didn’t you say it?”
She gave a delicate shrug. He didn’t want to pressure her, but damn, he wanted to hear the words.
“I’ve only recently started calling it that,” he said. “Since I met you.”
That fire in her eyes ignited, and she shifted closer so that her breasts were pressed against his chest as they faced each other, her slender arm atop his forearm and bicep, her small fingers caressing his shoulder.
“Me too.”
She started to dip her head, to rest it on his chest, but he needed to see her face right now. He used his thumb to lift her head.
“I love you, Winsome,” he said, clearly, so that there was no misunderstanding.
Her next words confirmed everything he’d felt, all he’d hoped for.
“I love you, too, Caleb. So much, I can’t even….”
He didn’t need her to express it further. Those three words were all he needed. He took her mouth with a calm kind of madness, pressing his lips to hers, then easing them apart and tasting her slowly, thoroughly, mirroring the way he wanted to take her body. But with each stroke of his tongue over hers, each glide of her warm fingers over his already heated skin, his mild hunger was all too quickly becoming a powerful craving, snapping and clawing for relief. It was not the tone he wanted to set when they’d just declared their love for each other.
Using all the control at his immediate disposal, he broke the kiss off gradually and leaned back, giving his desire some room to cool.
“We don’t want to get into that again,” he said. Her eyes told him that she very much did, so he tried a smile, which felt strained under the circumstances. “You need to save your strength for the rest of the night.”
She relented, albeit reluctantly.
“I still feel bad with you being so exhausted,” she said, obviously thinking he meant for her to save her strength for more love-making later.
He didn’t correct her by telling her he wanted her to reserve her excitement for the treehouse reveal, which he planned to spring on her as soon as Carla left. This way was better and kept his cover longer. He would spy out the window as soon as he got a chance and see if Carla was gone already, but he wasn’t quite ready to leave this room anyway.
“Well, I feel great,” he said. “Though I could use some caffeine.”
“You do love your caffeine,” she said, smiling.
“And you love your herbal tea. You don’t like coffee?”
“It’s okay, I just never took to it. My mother used to give me tea when I was a little girl. And, I guess because I don’t like having something in my system making me feel a certain way.”
“You never talk about your mother,” he said. Or any member of her family.
It was as if he had depressed the STOP button on an invisible timepiece. All action in the room ceased. Winsome looked at him, unblinking for several drawn-out seconds and he didn’t think she was breathing. He remained still, waiting for her to resume normal function.
Finally, she shrugged. “She’s alive,” she said.
“Is that good or bad?” Her tone didn’t give a clue either way.
“Makes no difference to me.”
He didn’t know if that was true or not, but certainly there had been a time when it hadn’t been. What had happened, that was so bad, that a girl of Winsome’s sweet, forgiving disposition, couldn’t forgive it?
Winsome cleared her throat. “Actually, the last time I saw her she was somewhere between living and dead.” When Cal tilted his head, confused, she sat up. “She’s a drug addict. Heroin.”
He hadn’t been expecting that, but where Winsome was concerned, he shouldn’t be all that surprised that other parts of her life had been as bad as her latter abuse. What surprised him was how amazing she’d turned out.
“All your life?”
“Yeah—well, most of it. Any memory I have of her after six or seven, she was high. I remember she broke her leg skiing and she was n
ever right after that. She got hooked on the pain pills. Pretty soon she started snorting them, then when that wasn’t enough, she moved on to shooting up and smoking whatever she could, until she finally fell in long, lasting love with heroin. It’s hard to remember before then, when she wasn’t high or waiting to get high. Those in-between times were shaky. Awful, actually.”
“I didn’t mean to drag up painful memories,” he said, still glad for every detail he learned about her. And he could now understand why Winsome had avoided her meds, even through the pain she’d suffered. “I can’t imagine living like that. I’m sorry.”
“Well, she isn’t. She hasn’t once tried to get clean, not in all the time I was growing up, or now, as far as I know. Hasn’t apologized for choosing drugs over me, or for abandoning me to my grandparents.”
“It had to be better than living with her.”
“I suppose. Sure. But that’s not something a child should have to know, that’s it’s better somewhere else than with mom.”
It was the first time he’d ever heard her sound remotely bitter, but he couldn’t judge her for it. Being tortured by some horse’s ass of a man was one thing, but playing second to a drug for a mother’s affection might be a worse abuse as far as he was concerned.
“What about your dad? Where was he?”
“I have no idea.” She flipped a portion of hair behind her back. “He was never mentioned by my mom or my grandparents, so I don’t even know if he knows about me, or if he’s dead, or what.”
Cal nodded. “So…Woodbead….”
She lifted a shoulder. “My great grandmother’s name was Woodbead. She was Lenape, from Delaware. What about your family?” she asked, suddenly.
He hadn’t considered talking about her family would bring his up. Should’ve known.
“Okay, short and sweet, my parents separated when I was ten, but didn’t get divorced until I was thirteen, so my father could get remarried. I floated around between them until the papers were filed, then I was suddenly a hot commodity to them. I was more or less like that greatest hits CD a divorcing couple fights over just so the other can’t have it, but neither really wants, or intends to listen to. But Aunt Ruth stepped in and basically told them she was taking me and if they didn’t like it they could call the authorities. They didn’t.”
She reached over and rubbed his thigh with a small pout. “I’m sorry our parents sucked.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, me too. But we get what we get and we try not to suck with our kids.”
The mention of kids had them both shifting uncomfortably. As a matter of fact, for all he knew, she could be carrying his child right now. She’d told him she was on the pill and he used condoms most of the time, but there had been a few times they’d missed—like the time in the kitchen.
“Hey, how about we get dressed and make a bite to eat?” he asked.
“Great idea, I’m starved.”
CHAPTER 17
“Close your eyes.”
“Caleb, I’ve seen it already.”
“Not like this you haven’t.”
Winsome shrugged and closed her eyes. Just to be sure she couldn’t see, he covered her eyes with his hand. She giggled as he pressed his chest against her back and nudged her forward.
“Keep them closed,” he told her.
She heard the screen door open.
“Step.”
She did, over where she knew the saddle of the doorway to be, and he walked behind her out onto the porch. She grabbed his forearms.
“Don’t let me fall,” she said.
“I won’t,” he said, moving her forward. “Step.”
She pushed her foot forward, trying to curl her toes down to feel the edge. “Don’t let me fall.”
“I won’t, you’re fine.”
She went down the steps without incident, and then he was behind her again, his heat against her side and back dispelling the chill in the air as they began the cautious walk.
“Are we going to the treehouse? It’s not supposed to be done for a couple more days, right?”
“I lied.”
Winsome’s body vibrated with excitement and she moved faster. No wonder he’d kept all the blinds facing the treehouse closed for the last several hours.
“Are you cold?” he asked. “You’re shivering.”
“No. Excited.”
He chuckled, a deep rumble that seeped in her ear and trickled through her entire body until she was full of him. The smell of early evening damp earth rose up to meet her, and she took it all in, not wanting to forget a single detail, like the feel of his hands on her skin and his energy beside her. Or the sound of their shoes crunching on the hard-packed earth, louder against the silence since she’d heard the last vehicle drive off about ten minutes ago.
“Step.”
Winsome lifted her foot and stepped onto what she knew to be the ramp. She couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the rail, not for security as much as the enjoyment of feeling it under her palm, knowing that Caleb had a part in creating it, just as he had everything else.
“How do you feel about girls crying?” she asked, already feeling emotion well up in the back of her throat.
“You haven’t even seen it yet.”
“Yeah, but I know me. I’m a blubberer.”
“Don’t cry,” he ordered.
She giggled. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise a few tears won’t get away from me.”
They stopped at the top and he removed his hand and stepped back. She kept her eyes closed another few seconds, long enough to register the anticipation, the pounding of her heart, and the smells of wood and paint.
When she opened her eyes, she gasped. It was like something out of a fairytale, or one of those design shows on TV. The two-story section was painted a gray-green, the trim the reddish-brown copper color of a penny. She could see from out here that sheer white curtains hung in the upstairs window. She loved white curtains, always had, and couldn’t wait until it was warm enough to open the windows wide and watch them billowing in the mild breeze.
The penny-color trim continued on the rest of the house, which was stained clear to showcase the wood’s natural beauty. It was the perfect blend of elegance and make-believe, a sophisticated fairytale. If Snow White owned a townhouse, this was what it would look like.
“It’s beautiful.” She ran a hand down a shingle.
“Red cedar,” Caleb said. “Over here I thought we’d put a sign with the name of the business, as soon as you come up with one,” he said, pointing to the space over a bench, between a window and the front door.
She sat on the bench. “It fits here perfectly,” she said, in awe. “Did you build it?”
“No, that’s Cole’s work.”
She slid her butt over the polished wood seat of the four-foot masterpiece. “I’ll have to thank him. All of them. Maybe I could make them din—”
Caleb was already shaking his head. “Word’s probably already out about your cooking ability.”
“You mean lack of,” she corrected, smiling. When he quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head, she laughed.
His face sobered and he stretched out his arm, placing his hand on the doorknob. “Ready to see the inside?”
Winsome was so ready. And so not ready. She stood and squared her shoulders. “As I’ll ever be.”
She walked under the stained-glass transom of the front door, but had to stop to take in the door itself. Rustic, but polished to a high sheen, with a twelve by twelve-inch square window, etched with a lighted candle.
“Wow.” She touched a fingertip to the tiny white flame. “Just, wow.”
Caleb twisted the oval-shaped knob and pushed the door open, standing back to allow her entry ahead of him.
While the outside had caused her to gasp, there was no such sound this time. No sound at all with the air caught in a deadly ball in the center of her chest. She tried to suck more in, but there was nowhere for it to go, like being trapped between stee
l doors in a submarine.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked.
She shook her head, opened her mouth, but still nothing.
“Winsome.” He took her by the shoulders and made her look into his worry-filled eyes. “Breathe.”
She wanted to say she couldn’t, but only shook her head. Since getting air in was impossible, she forced herself to release what she was already holding, with a sudden expulsion that succeeded in breaking the airlock. She drew in as much air as she could in one gulp, slapping a hand to her chest.
“So…you like it…right?” Caleb asked, stooping to catch her gaze.
Winsome threw her arms around his neck and clung.
“No crying,” he said, stroking her hair.
But she heard the smile in his voice and looked up to give him one of assurance. “It’s the most amazing….” She wagged her head and looked around, disengaging from his neck. “It’s like a real house. I don’t even know where to look first.”
“Here.”
Caleb leaned back and opened a door. Winsome glanced up at his smirking face before peeking in. The wax melter was against one wall with a low stool pulled up to it. There was a long table with two stools and a rack on the wall above, loaded with crafting tools.
“How did…?”
“You’re dream list,” he said, looking around with her.
Yes. The list of all the things she’d like to have to start a business. It looked like he got everything on it, and then some. There were waxes, molds, color blocks, jars, bottles of oils and scents, wicks, dippers, hangers, pouring pots, and more that she would take time to discover when she wasn’t so overwhelmed.
“There’s a lot more to your craft than I knew,” Caleb said. “So, I tried to get some of everything.”
Winsome’s heart turned to hot wax. She loved him all the more for recognizing it for the craft it was, instead of viewing it as an indulgent hobby.
“The sliding door at the back of your workspace opens to look out over the pond,” he told her, pointing to the spot. “In case you want to catch the view or the breeze while you work. Not that you need to, the place is fully heated and cooled. And the deck goes around, so when you have clients come up, they don’t have to go through your personal space.”