She didn’t quite meet Darlene’s eyes as she handed her the dumbbells for a second set of lunges. “It’s… complicated.” She’d never shared or even hinted at the situation to Darlene. Their personal trainer/client relationship had morphed into a nice working friendship, but there was a fine line she didn’t want to cross. “You don’t want to hear about my crazy personal life while you’re paying for a workout.” She kept her tone light as she watched Darlene’s form and counted out the reps by tapping her fingers against her pants.
“I’m giving you permission to dish,” Darlene said, sweat running down her face, her breathing labored as she stepped forward into another lunge. “It’ll take my mind off how much today’s workout totally sucks.”
“Keep reminding yourself these sucky workouts are what helped you look so amazing in your bridesmaid dress last weekend.”
“True. I did look pretty amazing. Colton showed me just how amazing several times that night.” She giggled.
Francie forced a grin, jealous of her friend. Not just for the great sex—which she’d so desperately wanted last night—but for the good and normal marriage. “Okay, one more on that leg, then fifteen seconds of rest before you do the other leg.”
“Fifteen whole seconds? Gee, thanks for being so generous,” Darlene said as she completed the last rep, then set down the dumbbells.
Someone out in the free weights room grunted loud enough to turn several heads in the area. Then he grunted again. And again. Francie and Darlene looked at each other with raised brows. “Is he having sex out there or working out?” Darlene muttered.
They giggled at that. Inside, Francie groaned and shook thoughts of naked Dylan, naked Dylan, naked Dylan out of her mind. Checking the clock on the wall, she picked up the dumbbells and handed them over. “Okay. Other leg.”
Darlene lowered into the first lunge of the set. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“What’s said at Gym Everest stays at Gym Everest, right?”
“Of course.”
Francie glanced around to make sure no one was within hearing distance. The room they were in was empty except for them. “Ours is what you’d call a, um, marriage of practicality,” she finally said, for lack of a better term.
“Seriously? Is that like a marriage of convenience?” Darlene stopped mid lunge to gawk at her. “Like you read in romance novels?”
“No! Well, I don’t know. I don’t read them.”
“For shame,” Darlene tsked tsked under her breath. “I’m totally addicted. Marriage of convenience is a common trope in romance novels—one of my favorites to read, actually—where the hero and heroine marry for reasons other than love. Like, he needs a wife to collect an inheritance, or she needs a husband to get her family off her back. So, they don’t marry for love, but of course they fall in love with each other by the end and get their happy ending.” She’d stopped lunging to talk.
Francie motioned with her hand. “Keep going.” So her life was a romance novel. Interesting. Except hers may not have the requisite happy ending.
Darlene made a face at her, but did what she was told. “So? Why did you guys get married if not for love?”
Francie’s face heated up, and she wiped her sweaty palms on her yoga pants. She’d never talked about this with anyone. “I had a surprise pregnancy, and we had no intentions of getting married or even necessarily staying together long term. I mean, an unplanned pregnancy shouldn’t force us into a decision like that, right?” She thought of her parents. It’s the reason they’d married, she’d learned after her dad had skipped out on them. “Then he found out he was being deployed to Afghanistan. He asked me to marry him in case something happened to him over there, you know? He wanted us to be taken care of.”
Darlene stopped lunging again. “That’s so romantic.”
Francie motioned for her to keep working out. “Romance has nothing to do with it. He was just being practical.”
Darlene finished the set then handed the dumbbells back to Francie. “Still, you guys obviously liked each other enough to make babies together.” She rested her hands on her knees and took some deep breaths.
Francie shrugged. “Physical attraction is so not one of our problems.” After Darlene caught her breath and took a few sips of water, Francie directed her to the next exercise.
“So now that he’s home, you’re just going to… what? Split up?” Darlene dropped into a wall sit.
Francie glanced at the clock on the wall over Darlene’s head to start timing. “I don’t know. He’s in for three more years. It’s possible that he could be deployed again.” She shrugged. “So he’ll just go back to Fairchild, and the girls and I will stay here, and eventually we’ll just… go our separate ways.” She shrugged again. “He doesn’t want to talk about it until after Christmas, after he’s had a few days to decompress.”
Darlene dipped her chin and stared at Francie, slack jawed. “So for now you’re married but not ‘married.’” She did the finger quotes.
“Basically.”
“And does married but not married include having sex?”
A giggle burst from Francie’s lips. “Um, TMI?”
Darlene grinned. “From the way your face is turning all kinds of red, I’ll assume the answer is yes.” She pounded her thighs with her fists. “How much longer?”
“Thirty more seconds.”
Darlene groaned and Francie grinned. She loved her job.
“And in the meantime, what happens if one of you meets someone you actually want to ‘marry’ marry?” Darlene did the finger quotes again. “Then what?”
My heart would break! Francie shrugged. “Won’t be a problem for me.” Because there would never be anyone other than Dylan she wanted to marry. For real or for convenience.
Darlene slapped her in the side. “Oh, my God. You love him, don’t you?”
Francie jotted down some notes on her clipboard about the workout. “As soon as he learned I was pregnant, he joined the military—obviously, to distance himself from the situation. Then he was in boot camp, then various training schools. After he learned he was being deployed and we got married, we were only together a couple of weeks before he shipped out.”
“You so didn’t answer my question.”
Francie shrugged, wishing she’d never brought any of this up. “It doesn’t really matter how I feel because I know how he feels.”
“You sure about that?” Darlene rubbed her thighs that had to be burning by now. “This is the longest thirty seconds ever.”
“Yeah, I added some time.”
“You are such a bitch,” Darlene gritted out.
She’d been called worse by her clients, Francie thought with a grin. She only pushed them as hard as they could be pushed. “Ten more seconds.” At Darlene’s skeptical expression, she said, “For real this time.”
“You didn’t answer my question. How do you know he doesn’t love you?”
Francie let out a long breath. “He’s never told me or given me any indication that he does or that he wants to make our marriage the real thing.”
“Have you given him any indication that you want it to be real?”
“Time.”
Darlene slid to the ground, her thighs probably a rubbery mess. “That felt like an hour.”
“Nope. Just two minutes.”
“I just did a two-minute wall sit?” She looked pleased with herself, as she should. Wall sits were brutal, but they created killer-looking thighs. “You keep ignoring the big questions.”
Because I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
“Okay, fine,” Darlene said when she didn’t answer. “I’ll just ask you one more question, something to think about.”
Oh, great.
“What if he’s at home thinking the same thing about you? What if he’s waiting to see how you feel before he tells you how he feels?”
Well, he’d have a long wait. Because she’d never tell him first. Her dad’s face flashed in her mind.
Been there, done that, have the skid marks on my heart to prove it.
* * * *
Dylan did the driving on the 100-mile trip from Boise to Winter Lake, the little mountain town where he grew up and where his mom, stepdad, sisters and brother still lived. Francie figured he was probably better driving in snowy conditions than she was.
It’s only three days, she told herself over and over. She could do almost anything for just three days.
They’d timed their drive during the girls’ nap time, and before they’d even left Ada County, both were sound asleep. Dylan wasn’t much of a talker as he drove which was fine by Francie. She’d just use the silence to remember what he looked like naked last night, and what his hands had felt like on her bare skin. She fantasized about what would’ve happened if they hadn’t been interrupted.
She’d mentally worked her way down to his tongue in her belly button, when he asked, “So what was with your night time visit to my bed last night?”
Crap. Had he read her mind? Had she fantasized out loud? Her skin heated up and she stared straight ahead at the winding two-lane road in front of them. Snow-covered hills hugged the landscape on both sides of the highway. The farther out of Boise they got, the more snow blanketed the ground, and the bigger the snowflakes. They splatted onto the windshield, heavy enough to have the wipers on midspeed.
“It was my patriotic duty, remember?” She kept her tone light. “I… just thought you might want that after hanging around sweaty, dirty soldiers for nine months.”
“So there was no, ah, deeper reason than that?”
She blinked and peered out the window, thinking of Darlene’s comment this morning. She shrugged the shoulder closer to him. “Well… I’m tired of having sex with something that requires batteries.”
It was a moment before he laughed. “Okay. Fair enough.”
“But we shouldn’t have done anything,” she said.
“If I remember correctly, we didn’t actually do anything.”
Well, they’d done just enough that her body hadn’t stopped tingling all day. It didn’t help that all she could think about today was what they’d almost done last night. And what he’d almost done to her. His tongue had been in her belly button and was moving lower. She crossed her legs to ease the ache between them. “Seriously. It’s probably a good thing we were interrupted. We don’t need to make this situation between us any more confusing than it already is. So don’t expect a repeat performance from last night.”
“Well, holy shit, I hope not,” he said, and they both laughed.
Chapter Three
Francie woke up when Dylan touched her leg.
“You missed the prettiest part of the drive,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
She glanced at the clock on the dash. Four p.m. The sun was getting low in the sky, long shadows of trees crossing the highway in front of the car. “I didn’t realize I was so tired.” Probably because she hadn’t slept a wink last night, knowing her half-naked husband was just two toddler bodies away from her in the same bed, and because the girls kept kicking off the blankets. She’d woken up shivering and practically rolling off the mattress several times throughout the night.
She blinked the nap from her eyes and scooted up in her seat. They were just approaching the city limits. A carved wooden sign on the right said, Welcome to Winter Lake, Idaho, pop. 3200. “So why is the town called Winter Lake when that’s not the name of the lake?” She pointed to Payette Lake in the distance.
“Benjamin Winter was one of the original settlers of the town.”
“So, being a man, of course he had to name the town after himself.”
Dylan chuckled as they turned onto Main Street and drove through town. “Of course. You know men and our big,” he paused, “egos.”
She loved his sense of humor and had to laugh at that, even though now she was thinking about his big—
“Mommy! Look Kissmuss tee!” Molly said in an awestruck voice from the backseat. The girls were just waking up, too, after having slept the whole way here. Which meant they’d be up all night. That was okay—Dylan’s family would probably be thrilled with the extra time with them.
Francie turned around to see Molly pointing at the huge Christmas tree in the town square. “Wow! Do you see that, Macy? It’s the biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen!” she said in an ooh-and-awe voice for the girls’ benefit. Macy clapped her hands and grinned. To Dylan, Francie asked, “I assume the tree lights come on at dusk?” Which should be any time now.
He nodded and drove through town. “Then tomorrow night on Christmas Eve there’s always a ceremony to put the star on the top. The queen of the Winter Lake Festival gets that honor—which will be my sister Katie Jo this year. She’ll go up in a bucket truck and put the star on the tree, then the town will shut down until the day after Christmas.”
“Ooh, that sounds fun. I assume we’re going since your sister will be front and center?”
He grinned. “Of course. We go every year. Maguire family tradition. And beforehand, we go into the shops and pick out a special Christmas ornament to hang on our tree at home after the ceremony.”
She didn’t know his family well, but what she knew of them, she liked. They seemed like the perfect all-American family. She’d enjoy being a part of it for a few days.
Francie had never been up here this time of year. The little town lived up to its name, looking like a winter wonderland, with snow tipping the branches of the tree-lined streets, and twinkling white Christmas lights on every roof and around every window, even though it wasn’t yet dark outside. Inside the brightly lit shops and restaurants were poinsettias, Christmas trees and other festive decorations. Snow-capped hills across and around the lake wrapped the mountain town like giant, comforting arms.
Main Street looked like it ran right into the lake, but it split into a T right before the shoreline. Dylan turned right onto the aptly named Shoreline Drive.
“This is so beautiful,” she said in a hushed voice, enchanted by the beautiful landscape. “Girls, look at the big lake.”
The girls craned their necks to see out the windows. “Go swimming?” Macy asked.
Dylan chuckled softly and glanced into the rearview mirror. “Oh, sweet girl, it’s way too cold to swim in the winter.”
Macy’s face scrunched up into a pout and she glared at the back of his head.
Francie bit back a grin.
“What did I say?” he muttered.
“You said ‘no.’ Bad daddy.” She slapped him lightly on the arm.
The lights and busyness of the town gave way to a more rural landscape, with a couple of newer looking and exclusive neighborhoods interspersed with acres of forest and the occasional house or cabin. The road climbed gently and Dylan slowed his driving as more snow blanketed the pavement.
“We’re almost at Grandma and Grandpa’s house,” he said into the silent car. “Grandma told me she made gingerbread cookies today and she really needs your help putting frosting on them. Do you girls think you could help her?”
Macy’s eyes widened and she clapped her chubby hands. “Cookies and fosting!”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, glancing at Francie. Her heart flip-flopped at his relieved and happy expression that Macy had spoken to him. After travelling slowly along the snowy road a few miles, they turned into the woods, onto a driveway that looked recently plowed. Dylan had told her stories about how he and his siblings had fought every year over who got to drive the tractor to remove snow from the driveway. His parents had bought this house before Dylan, the oldest, was born. Even after his dad died and later after his mom remarried, they’d resisted moving and making a killing in the booming real estate market up here, as young urban professionals snapped up homes to use as vacation rental property.
Snow drifts a few feet high flanked the long gravel driveway leading through the trees. After about a hundred yards, the trees opened up into a clearing with a large lodge-style home that
was brightly lit up in Christmas cheer, with peekaboo views of the lake beyond. Francesca felt like she’d driven straight into a picture postcard.
Dylan parked the CRV in front of the house and turned off the engine.
“Gamma house?” Molly asked with wide eyes, staring at the big house with all the lights. Even Macy clapped her hands with glee. This would be the perfect setting for a heartwarming Christmas movie. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a happy-ending, feel-good movie, but real life.
But Dylan’s mom would enjoy spending a few days with her family, and that was what this visit was all about.
“Brr!” Francie rubbed her hands together as they climbed out of the car.
“I love this weather,” Dylan said, taking a lungful of crisp mountain air, then fogged the air in front of him as he exhaled. “Sure beats the hundred-plus degree heat in Afghanistan.” He stretched his back out.
Francie did the same. They’d been in the car for more than two hours. “Wow!” she said, taking in the decorated house. “They went all out, didn’t they?” Colorful lights hung off every line of the roof and wrapped around the covered porch. Smaller trees and shrubs in the front yard were also brightly lit. A painted sleigh and reindeer lined the front yard, and a lit-up Santa Claus perched on the roof next to the chimney.
Dylan shook his head. “My stepdad did it again,” he said as they opened the back doors and unhooked the girls from their seats.
“What do you mean?” She met his eyes over the car seats.
“Going overboard with the decorations.”
She helped Macy out of her seat and set her down on the snowy gravel driveway. “I think it looks great.”
Romancing the Holidays: Twelve Christmas Romances - Benefits Breast Cancer Research Page 36