“True. You warm enough?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I brought you this.” He handed her a thermos as Dan slapped the reins, jerking the horses into motion. “Caleb made it. He says you taught him how.”
Unscrewing the lid released chocolate-scented steam. She inhaled. “Heavenly.” She poured some in the lid, sipped. “This is even better than mine.”
“I imagine it’s because we ran out of milk, so he used half-and-half.”
“No wonder. I’ll have to remember that.”
The night was clear. The moon was bright and riding high. Warm as she was underneath the blankets, her face was soon near-frozen. Winding her scarf higher up on her face, she hunkered lower in the blankets. Charlie pulled her close, drew the blankets higher so only their eyes and noses peeked out.
“I guess the notion of a moonlight carriage ride on Christmas Eve is slightly more romantic in theory than it is in fact,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. This is wonderful.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His eyes were not quite green, not quite brown and staring intently into hers. Under the blanket, his warm hands worked their way under her coat to pull her closer.
“Is this okay?”
She nodded.
“Not just this.” He gave her a squeeze. “But this. You and me, this. I’m not getting this out very well.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “And yes, it’s okay. It’s better than okay.”
“You have no idea how bad I want us to work out this time, Jo. Is it too soon to say that?”
“Maybe a little.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please stop apologizing.”
“Sorry.”
“Charlie!”
They laughed softly, the sound mingling with the jingle. Johanna leaned her head against the back of the carriage seat. Her hand wormed free of the blankets. She moved the scarf from her face and pulled her mitten off with her teeth. Charlie had tugged the blanket off his face. His beard was so red, redder than his hair gone more to chestnut.
She drew him to her. Holding his face, she kissed him, not the passionate way that would lead them to bed, but the tender way of their past. Once, twice. For now, it was enough.
Charlie’s eyes stayed closed. Under the blanket, his hand jerked, but he did not pull away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m afraid to say the wrong thing, to act too fast or too slow. I don’t want to scare you off again.”
“Scare me off?” Again?
Charlie opened his eyes. “Like when we were kids,” he said. “That Labor Day, at the beach down by the lake.”
Johanna remembered. The beach, his sandy hands on her skin, their bodies sticky with sweat and the desire that led them back to their spot in the woods behind her house. Her groin twitched with the memory of almost, of should-have-been.
“I remember the day,” she said. “You broke my heart.”
“I didn’t mean to push you. I was a kid, and crazy with wanting you.”
Her hands fell slowly from his face. “You…you think you broke my heart by wanting me?”
He shook his head. “By being like all the other boys you couldn’t stand, being the guy who just wanted in your pants.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah. But our summer wasn’t about playing a part until I got sex, Jo. It was the best summer of my life. I should have told you that. I should have told you a lot of things. Instead, I was like a stag in rut. I didn’t blame you for running away, not after the initial frustration of it eased off. Then you wouldn’t speak to me and the next thing I knew, school started. The more you ignored me, the worse I felt. I practiced a million different ways to apologize, to get you to like me again. By Homecoming, I found enough courage to ask you to the school dance, but then…” He blew out a long exhale. “You know what happened next. I got roped into taking Gina to the dance instead. I don’t think I ever forgave Tim Grady for talking me into it. We got drunk, she got pregnant, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Johanna could not get her mouth and brain to cooperate. She remembered that Labor Day so clearly, right down to the intoxication of fear mingling with desire. Charlie thought all these years that he’d been a brute and scared her away, when in fact he’d been so tender. The way he touched her, the way he kissed her, said all those words he believed he should have. I love you. I want you. Forever and ever and ever. He made her want to stay in Bitterly, to get married and have children and forget all her plans to flee Bitterly and its ghosts. It was the wanting that made her run.
“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered at last, those tears always at her beck and call freeing her voice. “You didn’t push me away. I pushed you away. What I felt for you frightened me, not that you wanted to make love. I wanted to. I can’t tell you how many cold showers I’ve had to take over the years, remembering how much I wanted to.”
“You…really?”
She nodded.
He touched his forehead to hers. “What a mess we made of things,” he said, and lifted his head. “But I wouldn’t change it, Jo. Not to save either of us heartache. I got five of the best kids who ever lived out of the deal.”
“And I got the life I wanted, the life I ran away to have. Now here we are.”
“Now here we are.” He lifted the blankets up higher, shielding her from the bitter air. “I should have told you then that I loved you, Johanna. I loved you so much. I love you still. I know it seems too soon, but really, it’s over twenty years in the waiting. And if you don’t love me yet, it’s okay. I’ll wait until you do.”
Johanna snuggled closer. “You are so certain I will?”
“Pretty cert—”
She kissed the rest of his words from his mouth. Under the covers, she put her legs over his. He pulled her into his lap and even through all the snow-clothes, Johanna felt his desire. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him until they were both breathless. The same ghosts that sent her running all those years ago whispered shivers up her spine. She lifted her head to look into his eyes, her heart flipping.
“You are not the only thing I was running from back then. You aren’t the only reason I’ve stayed away from Bitterly.”
“I know.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, Charlie.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“My parents were crazy.”
“Mentally ill.”
“No,” she said. “Bat-shit crazy. They escaped from a mental institution not once but twice. We lived like little rats in New Hampshire. When the house burned and Gram came to—”
Charlie took her face in his hands and kissed her until she kissed him back. When she was calm, he pressed her head to his shoulder and whispered, “None of that matters. Only you matter. You and me. This night. This carriage. Dan pretending not to be listening to every word we say.”
“I am not.”
They laughed softly.
“I’m scared, Charlie,” she said. “And I’m really tired of being scared.”
“Then it’s time to do something about it. For now…”
Charlie tipped her face up. He kissed her slow. He kissed her long. He kissed her until the carriage stopped in front of her grandmother’s house on County Line Road. He helped her down from the carriage and walked her to the front door.
“Dan is never going to let me hear the end of this,” Charlie told her.
“Then you can tell him I saw him wipe a tear or two away and he’ll leave you be.”
“I guess this is good-night then.”
“Oh, you’re not…” She blushed. “I guess you have to get home to the kids.”
“Tomorrow is Christmas. Santa still has to put presents under the tree. Besides, I can’t make Dan drive all the way back to town alone.” He tucked a stray curl in
to her hat. “I’ll take it as a good sign that you want me to stay.”
“You didn’t see me fighting you off back on the carriage, did you?”
“I kind of had you at my mercy.”
“Oh, really?” Johanna tweaked his beard. “I thought I had you at mine.”
“You did.” He took her into his arms. “Always have. Always will.”
Jingle bells interrupted another long, slow kiss. Charlie pulled away, stole another kiss, and headed back to the carriage.
“Merry Christmas,” he called.
“Merry Christmas,” Johanna whispered. She stood on the porch until the jingle and the clomp faded into the distance. Instead of going inside, she went to the wide expanse of snow-covered ground in front of the house. When they were kids, it would have been trampled by now. Snowmen and snow-forts would have dotted the yard. Tonight, it was pristine.
Johanna tilted her head back, gazed up at the moon, and the stars like salt sprinkled on black velvet. She turned slowly this way, then that. Humming, swaying, turning like a snowflake-sylph, a shiver raced itself through her body. And then phantom arms wrapped around her. She leaned into them, smiled, and wished.
* * * *
I see desire as snowflakes. They twirl about like a windstorm, like a breeze. It lets me remember; I was young once. I felt those stirrings, that love like no other. It kept me warm in the cold, and made the worst bearable. And the worst was so very unbearable.
She twirls in the moonlight, beneath the stars, in the snow. I twirl with her. She doesn’t know. She sees no footprints mingling with hers. But she feels my arms hold her close, even if she imagines them to be his. It is me. It is me. Dancing with my girl.
Chapter 5
Eight Maids a’Milking
Christmas morning was a wind yawning across a painted sky. It was the sound of ice crystals whispering, the smell of cinnamon and butter lingering. The morning was the first of all her days ahead, and Johanna woke with a smile brought with her from dreaming.
And what dreams. Sexy dreams. Softly sensual. Sweet. Already fleeting. Johanna caught glimpses of Charlie, of summer long ago, of his kids gathered around the baking counter. She could still smell Christmas Eve’s cold air, and the way her perfumed scarf tasted when she breathed through it. When the images faded completely, the feel of them left their imprint, a photo-negative pulsing behind her eyes.
Johanna dressed quickly, combed gently through her curls that would frizz wildly at the touch of a brush. Sounds of pots and pans and sisterly quarreling told her Nina and Julietta were already up and preparing their contributions to the feast. A smile twitched at Johanna’s lips. She was not at all certain either of her sisters could cook. She recalled the one time Nina invited her to dinner at her apartment in Manhattan, a dinner that went from burned to take-out with a phone call. At least Julietta had proven competent at following a recipe when she came to help out in CC’s a couple summers ago.
Johanna had walked into the bakery more than four years ago, in need of coffee and carbs after a day on the beach. The name hooked her, the for-sale sign attached to the front window reeled her in. The desperation to do something better than wander through her life nudged whimsy into action. Within a week, she had put in an offer. Before the month was out, Johanna Coco was elbows-deep in batter, and a resident of Cape May, New Jersey. The boyfriend she’d been vacationing with got lost somewhere in the process. She couldn’t even recall his name.
Johanna stared at herself in the mirror. Grimaced. She pulled the locket from its place under her clothes, clicked it open, and looked into the faded image of her mother’s face. The curly hair. The tiny chin. The huge eyes. Even the curve of her smile. Johanna could have been looking at her own picture a decade-and-a-half-ago, but she would not see herself in her mother. If she did, she would never be able to look at herself again.
“Johanna,” Julietta called up the stairs. “Where did you put the measuring cups?”
“Hang on, I’ll be right down.”
Johanna left the melancholy in her room, sailed down the steps and into the country kitchen. It was Christmas. She was in love. There was no room for ghosts no matter what Dickens had to say on the matter. Julietta had all her ingredients for the cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, and peas with pearl onions lined up in gradient order on the counter. Every spoon she needed to stir, measure, or taste with, every bowl for mixing. The only things missing were the measuring cups that would go into the spot Julietta had left open for them.
“They’re right here.” Johanna pulled them out of a drawer and handed them to her sister.
“That’s not where Gram kept them.”
“Sorry.”
“Did you use all the butter yesterday?”
“No. It’s there in the bowl, on the counter.”
“You didn’t put it in the fridge?”
“Of course not. I always keep my butter on the counter. It’s butter.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Come on, Jules. I run a bakery. If there was something wrong with room-temperature butter, I’d know by now.”
“Well, I can’t use it.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, I can’t. Can you take me to the store?”
“On Christmas Day? Nothing’s open.”
Julietta looked from her ingredients, to the bowl of butter, to her sister.
“Leave everything the way it is. I’m going to look it up.”
“You can’t take my word for it?”
“No,” Julietta said, and took her laptop to the dining room table. The fury of her fingers on the keys had Johanna and Nina exchanging worried glances.
Johanna moved closer to her oldest sister. “This is odd, even for Julietta.”
“Not really.” Nina resumed slicing the sopressata Gunner had brought from Queens. “You know she’s very particular.”
“But this?” She pointed to the perfectly aligned ingredients and cooking utensils. “And since when is she some kind of germophobe?”
“It’s not germs. It’s something not being the way it always is. Gram didn’t keep butter on the counter. It’s as simple as it gets.”
“Or measuring cups in the drawer by the sink.” Johanna sighed. “I worry about her, Nina. What is she going to do without Gram? With all the changes? How will she cope?”
“Fine.” Julietta returned, her laptop tucked under her arm. “I’ll use the butter. But from now on, it goes back in the fridge.”
“Sure thing, commandant.”
While Julietta began assembling the sides and Nina sliced and arranged the antipasto, Johanna poured herself a glass of milk and grabbed some cookies from the massive pile on the counter.
So many cookies. So many pies. And Charlie had left without taking anything home. There was no way she and her sisters would eat it all, not even if all three of Emma and Mike’s boys ate nothing but sweets all day. Johanna wished she’d thought to send something home with Dan last night after the carriage ride…
“Well, why not?”
“Why not what?” Nina asked.
“I’m going to bring some of the baked stuff over to Charlie and the kids. I want to drop something off to Dan Greene, too, to say thanks for the carriage ride.”
“Just make sure you save a cherry pie. I’ve been trying not to dive into it since yesterday.”
Johanna rummaged around in the mudroom for the grocery boxes her grandmother preferred to bags. She loaded up with four of the eight pies, and half the cookies, she left them in the mudroom and went back inside for her coat and the keys to the Explorer.
Nina glanced up from her finished platter just as Johanna came back through the kitchen. Her sister’s eyes narrowed, focused on…
“Is that Gram’s locket?”
Oh, shit.
Both sisters were on her before she could zip up her coat.
“Where did you get it?” Nina asked. “I haven�
�t seen it in ages.”
Johanna considered lying, telling them Gram gave it to her years ago, but Julietta would know better.
“I found it in her box the other night when I couldn’t sleep.” Zipping her coat, she scooted around her hovering sisters. “I’m just wearing it,” she lied. “I missed the funeral. It makes me feel better.”
“But Gram—”
“You better not have—”
“We’ll talk when I get home.” Johanna darted into the mudroom, grabbed the box for Charlie’s family and dashed out the door. Dan would have to wait for his goodies. There was no way she was going back in where her sisters could corner her again.
The SUV didn’t turn over right away, but neither of her sisters came after her. While she let it warm up, Johanna thought about Julietta’s assembly of ingredients and hoped taking the locket from Gram’s box didn’t set her off. Her youngest sister had always been odd. Whether her particularities stemmed from a chaotic childhood, the accident, or some gene in her pool, no one could say. They made her Julietta, best-loved and strange. Johanna wouldn’t change her for anything in the world, though she often wondered if Julietta felt the same.
Johanna breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. On the seat beside her was a box full of Christmas cheer for Charlie and his kids. She breathed in their sleigh ride, breathed out her sisters’ discovery, breathed in the first kiss, breathed out Julietta’s future, breathed in all the kisses thereafter, and, smiling, backed out of the driveway.
* * * *
Pulling to a stop in front of Charlie’s house just outside of town, Johanna tried to quell the fluttering in her belly. She had no real idea how Will felt about her and his father and their almost-kiss that had, since then, multiplied. Maybe he was still upset. She hadn’t even thought to ask. At least Charlotte would be happy to see her.
And Charlie.
A thrill shuddered through her. If Will was still upset, she’d leave the goodies and head home, happy enough to have delivered what they didn’t get on Christmas Eve.
She got out of the car, reached back in to pull out the box of cookies and pies. Balancing it, she closed the car door with her butt. Shouting stopped her before she got to the front door. Charlotte, and another woman. Johanna’s heart sank.
Seeking Carolina (Bitterly Suite Book 1) Page 8