by M. Robinson
But I preened under Thel’s approval…
….then showed up to my supposed assignation with Dante looking like a desperate idiot.
Dante was waiting for me under the bleachers, all right. Along with Shelby Summers, her cheerleader friends, and the team’s star running back, Sawyer Grant.
They all fell out laughing as soon as I showed up. But no one laughed harder than Shelby, who’d apparently orchestrated the whole thing, down to writing the note herself.
“I told you she’d fall for it,” she’d crowed in the Virginian accent she’d already affected, even though she’d only moved here recently, just like me. “And look at what she’s wearing! Did you really think he liked you?”
“Tell the truth. You borrowed that outfit from Mouth, didn’t you?” Sawyer guessed.
Sawyer was my cousin-sisters’ worst enemy. He was the most handsome boy at Greenlee High, but so ugly inside, it didn’t matter. Mouth was what he called Thel. He called my other half-sister, Stork, even though her name was Willa. Sawyer had been bullying Willa and Thel ever since our birth mother sued his father for ownership rights of the house she and her ancestors had lived in since the 1800s.
And judging by how hard he was laughing, he got just as much joy from making my life miserable too.
“Sawyer! What the hell are you doing?”
Sawyer abruptly cut off cackling after an ice-cold voice asked that question behind me. As if God himself had commanded him to stop.
No, not God…but close.
I turned around to find, not a boy, but a man with broad shoulders and heavy muscles towering over me. He was blonder than Sawyer, but he had the same eyes. Almost green, almost brown, but not quite either—the color of river running over moss. However, his gaze didn’t glitter with meanness like Sawyer’s.
“What are you doing, picking on this girl?” he asked his brother.
“C’mon, Josh. It was just a joke….” Sawyer began to say.
“A joke at an innocent girl’s expense. That’s not how a Grant should act. That’s not how anyone should act.”
Everyone just stared up at him. Including me. We were young, dumb high schoolers, and he was a huge, heroic Navy SEAL. Maybe I’m projecting, but I think we were all too in awe to speak.
Josh looked down at me without ogling my breasts.
“I apologize for my brother,” he told me, his voice tight and serious.
Forget Dante.
The Love….
The Love hit me in a flurry, soft and overwhelming. It was like getting caught in a flower storm. I didn’t know whether to run for cover or gather it in my arms.
Somewhere in the distance, Sawyer muttered, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed.”
“None of you should have,” Josh decreed, his river-moss eyes swung away from me and he re-pinned all my persecutors under his cold gaze.
The high schoolers who’d laughed so boldly before were now mighty interested in their feet. I couldn’t tell if they were too guilty to look at me or too scared to look at Josh.
Either way, Josh gave them one last glare before telling his younger brother, “Come on.”
And then they left.
It was just a minute—maybe, two.
But I’d fallen in utter, helpless, all-consuming love. With Josh. Josh Grant.
Even back then, I knew it would become a problem.
* * *
I was right about that. I’d spent over sixteen years pining for Josh and pretending that my relationships never worked out because I was just too career-oriented—when the truth was no guy I dated ever passed the Josh Grant test.
I’d let him go, though. No more Google searches. No more Christmas cards. Last year, I’d even moved to Texas to work closely with my favorite client on her upcoming biography. That should have been the end of it.
But bitter bile rose in my throat when I found him in my mom’s Celebrity magazine having an intimate conversation with the same female who’d orchestrated that prank. How could he? With Shelby of all people.
It didn’t matter that he had no idea who I was. An ugly sense of betrayal filled my chest.
“Neisham, you requested an audience?”
I looked up to see my mother peering at me from over her readers. Aunt Sharon, who stood at her right, shot me a guilty look—probably because I’d arrived from Texas over two hours ago and Mom was just now emerging from her office to see me.
I snapped the magazine closed, then stood up like I always did when she entered a room.
Mom wasn’t royalty—pretty much everyone knew about her poor roots, growing up in Tennessee. And her Wikipedia page led with the story of how she wrote her first bestselling novel in under a week after getting an eviction notice tacked to her door.
But she carried herself like a queen. Everyone from presidents to her one and only daughter stood at attention whenever she came into a room.
“Hi, Mom, I’m having some problems with this project I’m working on for Senator Rustanov, and I was hoping I could—”
“This is why you’ve come with groceries?” My mother cut me off before I could complete my request, her eyes scanning the suitcase and tote bags at my feet. “You wish to use my writing cabin for one of your little speeches?”
I worked to keep my face neutral. I knew Mom was annoyed-verging-on-disappointed about how I’d chosen to direct my talents. But did she have to say “little speeches” in the same tone of voice she used to talk about ant infestations?
“Not for a speech, actually,” I answered. “It’s for a book—”
Again, she cut me off. “You know how I feel about that word—actually. It is a crutch for people who can’t be bothered with specificity and coherence.”
“I am one of those people,” I reminded her. “I’m terrible at specificity—especially when speaking extemporaneously. But I promise to cross out all the actuallys in Senator Rustanov’s book if you let me have the cabin until Christmas—”
“Is that why you’ve come here then after choosing to spend so many of your holidays with your clueless half-sisters in Virginia?” she asked. “So that you might dedicate your sadly underused talents to an entire book about a politico?”
“Well…. Yes,” I answered carefully after a few awkward beats.
My mother was technically shorter than I am, but she somehow managed to look down her nose at me as she issued a cold, “I see.”
Sharon leaned over to Mom to point out, “Senator Rustanov’s that black woman from Texas—the one with the fine Russian billionaire husband. You like her.”
“Oh, you mean, the one meant to run for president.” Mom’s eyes lit up with the recognition of a name she—forgive me—actually recognized from the world outside the ones she created for her books. “I do like her, don’t I?”
Her expression softened, but then she narrowed her eyes at me. “You still have not found a mate worthy of you as your half-sisters have managed to do.”
“No, not yet,” I agreed, biting down on my back teeth.
“You’re 33rd birthday is fast approaching—”
This time, I interrupted her. “I’m aware, Mom. May I use the writing cabin until Christmas or not?”
Mom gave me another haughty look before decreeing, “You may.”
Then she instructed Sharon, “Make sure to give her the latest albums for my cabin collection.”
And with that, Mom swept out of the room in her colorful muumuu.
“Welcome home?” Sharon said with a wince as she helped me walk the groceries and Mom’s latest vinyl record purchases down to the shed where we stored the canoes for rowing back and forth across the Connecticut River—the famous waterway that flowed along the New Hampshire-Vermont state line. Mom’s former farmhouse, which had been refurbished with local woods to look like a luxury ski chalet, sat on the Vermont side of the river. In total contrast, her humble one-room writing cabin sat on the New Hampshire side.
Snow had begun fluttering down since my arri
val two hours ago. But lucky for me, the river appeared calm. I wouldn’t have to fight the currents to row myself, my groceries, and my mom’s stack of records across it. Speaking of which…
“So, she still hasn’t started the last book in her fae cycle,” I guessed.
“Nope, she sure ain’t,” Sharon said, her voice a lot more frank and Tennessee, now that my mom wasn’t there to correct her grammar and use of colloquial language.
“Aunt Minerva keeps sending me potions to put in her breakfast. They have labels like Joy, Clarity, Wish Fulfillment—no telling what’s inside. Nothing the FDA would truck with, I’m sure. At first, I was like, I’m not going to drug her. Plus, she’s still writing, just not the tenth book. But she’s been crankier than usual lately. I’ve got half a mind to put one of them vials in her oatmeal just to mellow her out.”
I was still chuckling as I rowed across the river.
Technically, I could have taken my car to the little cabin in the woods. But that would have required driving nearly sixty miles back south to the only bridge over the Connecticut River in these parts, then driving back up the New Hampshire side of the state to get to the cabin.
Besides, paddling across the river reminded me of my summer and holiday visitations during my youth, when I made sandwiches for Mom’s lunch and dinner and would row them over. Sometimes, I’d leave them like offerings at my mother’s back door when she didn’t answer my soft knock. But sometimes, she’d let me in, and we’d eat them together while she told me about what she’d written that day.
I tied the boat to the dock just like I did back then, but this time instead of leaving sandwiches at the back door, I schlepped my suitcase, the records, and all the groceries I’d bought up the hill to the cabin and walked right on through the back door.
My mother never bothered with locking the place up. Even if it wasn’t located in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire, it wasn’t like there was much in the one-room cabin to steal.
Just a bed, a little table, a few milk crates filled with records, and a 90s-era Brother WP-80 word processor. The vintage typing machine sat on top of a desk with one chair, which was the only designated sitting surface in the entire place.
My mother had become an aggressively solitary writer for her fae series. And she’d made it abundantly clear that no one else was invited to hang out in her writing cabin for too long—even children who’d made her lunch had to sit on the floor or eat standing up.
But she hadn’t returned to her fan-favorite series for over a decade now. Everything in the cabin was covered in a thick layer of dust.
I threw open the windows to clear out the musty smell of disuse. Then I opened one of the many cartons stacked beside her desk, which contained the A5 paper Mom preferred over the standard letter-size.
I put a clean piece into the word processor, just as I’d seen Mom do before stepping away from her Brother WP-80 to eat lunch. Then I took all the linens off the bed and brought them outside to shake off all the dust.
The generator was going by the time I got back, so the old Dometic refrigerator was humming, and the cabin was warm-adjacent, if not exactly cozy. It could maybe get there after I closed the windows and lit a fire underneath the wood-burning stove Mom used to warm the place. However, there were only two little logs in the wood bin. Probably left over from the last time Mom was here—sometime during the aughts.
I’d spotted a couple of fallen trees in the cabin’s backyard, and I could probably source some firewood from them. But how exactly did one go about chopping wood again? Should I, like, find an ax and go at them like a lumberjack?
I fretted my still cold hands. Maybe this whole writing cabin idea hadn’t been so great after all.
But I’d spent months embedded with Eva and her family, interviewing them all for this book, and the “prove you can do this” proposal chapters were due to her by Christmas night. If I didn’t meet the deadline, Eva might decide she’d wasted her time on me and go with someone else to write her seminal biography.
A gust of cold wind blew through the cabin, chilling me to the bone even worse than the thought of letting my favorite speech client down. I closed all the windows again—then frowned at the snow swirling outside in a way that wasn’t so romantic now.
Weird, the weather report had assured me the days before Christmas would be mild with no snow in the forecast. But I’d been visiting the Northeast long enough to recognize the signs of an incoming storm.
Maybe I should row back across the lake just to be safe.
However, when I looked out the back window, I found the formerly placid river raging past the house. My arms were still tired from the first trip, and I doubted I could tackle a second, much rougher one.
But that was okay. I had enough wood to power the stove for at least one meal—I hoped. Either way, I had brought plenty of cold food. I could survive out here. All I had to do was wait for the river to calm. Then I could row back across the river to get my rental car, which had things like complimentary Wi-Fi and a dependable source of heat.
With that hopeful thought, I focused on making a fire to warm up the cabin. And that’s when I realized I’d forgotten any kind of lighter.
Just as my heart sank, a knock sounded on my door.
Sharon!
I was about ready to weep with gratitude when I opened the door.
But it wasn’t Sharon standing there.
My voice dried out, and my heart came to a dead stop.
It was Josh. Josh Grant, the man I’d vowed to stop loving by this Christmas.
Chapter Four
Josh. Josh Grant
Josh. Josh Grant. The man I had been trying like hell to stop loving from afar for years was here. Standing on the doorstep of my mother’s cabin.
His blond hair was all politician now, parted and gelled back. He also had more brow and eye creases than when I’d seen him last. But he was still all soldier underneath the dark grey suit he’d paired with a dark blue peacoat—same strong jawline, same heavy muscles, same upright posture, same cool and steady gaze.
“You probably don’t remember me, Ms. Winters,” he said, his voice stiff and polite. “We only met once under less-than-ideal circumstances. But I’m Josh Grant. Sawyer Grant’s brother.”
I didn’t know what blew my mind more. That Josh Grant remembered meeting me or that he thought I could possibly forget meeting him.
I finally managed to push words out of my mouth. “Yes, I know who you are. You’re Representative Josh Grant.”
“Oh…good. You remember, too.” He gave me a polite smile. Then after a few too many awkward seconds of me just gaping up at him, he asked, “May I come in?”
Still in a daze, I opened the door wider so that he could come all the way inside—then concentrated on not fainting when he walked past me, smelling of some luxurious pine-scented soap.
He scanned the small cabin as soon as he stepped through the door.
“This is nice,” he said as I closed the door. “Small. Quiet. Whoever decided on the window placement did a good job. You’ve got sightlines from every direction.”
“Oh…I never noticed the sightlines before,” I said out loud as I mind-screamed, What are you doing here? What in the world are you doing here?!
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” he said, turning to face me fully. Maybe he had ESP. “I’d hope to swing by in a more casual manner when you visited my sister-in-law this year. But then she told me you’d decided to come to this cabin instead. So I got your number and the cabin address and decided to come up here to have a conversation.”
“Have a conversation,” I repeated. My heart beat so loud in my ears, I could barely hear the words coming out of my own mouth. “A conversation about what?”
He looked to the side, then back at me. “I think it’s obvious.”
All the blood rushed out of my body. He knew. As careful as I’d been to make sure those cards never traced back to me, he’d somehow figured
out it was m—
“I need a speechwriter,” he said, interrupting my panic spiral.
“You….you need a speechwriter,” I repeated. Confusion replaced the fear and shock.
“Yes, I plan to run for Senate in the next election, and with Virginia increasingly voting for candidates from the other side of the aisle, it will be an uphill battle. So, I need a speechwriter who’s managed to help another candidate in a similar situation fight the same battle.”
I nodded. His logic made sense, even if Eva Rustanov wasn’t in the same party as him. She’d managed to flip one of her state’s two Senate seats, and Josh wanted to do the same thing. So here he was on my doorstep—because he needed a speechwriter, not because of the cards.
My wildly beating heart calmed…. a little.
“Sorry for showing up unannounced like this. I tried to call first, but your phone kept going directly to voicemail.”
“No reception,” I explained, pushing each word out carefully through the white noise that had filled my head. “I usually deal with the campaign manager first, anyway.”
“We can skip that campaign manager part,” Josh assured me. “My dad and I had already decided to hire you, based on the work you did for Senator Rustanov. We couldn’t believe our luck when my sister-in-law told us you were related.”
“You saw one of my Eva Rustanov speeches?” I asked.
“Try all of them,” Josh answered with an admiring grin. “Heck, I would have voted for her based on the words you put in her mouth.”
His praise washed over me like a warm spring wind. But I had to let him know, “That wasn’t all me. I just made her clear so that others could understand how lucky they’d be if they voted for her.”
“Made her clear?” he asked.
“That’s what I do,” I explained. “I talk with candidates, and they make me understand why they’d be the best person for the job. Then I make others—like, a mass audience of others—understand why my clients would be perfect for the job. I hope that makes sense.”
“Perfect sense,” he answered with a firm nod. “So the next step in the process would be for us to sit down and have that talk.”