When Cal woke up early Monday, he had exactly two items on his morning agenda: get Winnie Briggs off of his brain and start to finalize some of the planning details around Bloomsburo Days, the town’s annual three-day festival that his office organized.
Before 8 a.m., however, one paper delivery and two phone calls suggested that both goals were unlikely to be met.
Of course, he’d already been failing miserably on the not-thinking-about-Winnie front. Cal loved nothing more than being in complete control of his life, and everything about Winnie Briggs screamed “unexpected.” Not to mention disruptive. Even his long run home yesterday afternoon hadn’t been enough to fade the effects of his strange encounter with her.
Maybe it was the fact that Winnie, with her ample breasts, had crashed into his body out of the blue. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman in longer than he’d ever publicly admit. But he couldn’t shake this bodily awareness of Winnie, not last night at his own house, and certainly not this morning when he opened his front door and found her face plastered across the front of his morning newspaper.
During yesterday’s interrogation at his mother’s shed, he hadn’t bothered to ask what work brought Winnie to town. He naïvely assumed that this woman would be a minor hassle in his life. As long as she paid her rent on time and didn’t create problems for his mom, he welcomed the opportunity to never think about her again.
But when the newspaper announced that Winnie Briggs would be taking over as editor-in-chief of The Bloom, he knew that this would prove impossible. Granted, Winnie’s predecessor at the paper had been fairly worthless, but Cal worked intimately with the local media in order to promote the Chamber’s initiatives.
And doing anything intimately with Winnie filled Cal with dread.
Not because she wasn’t attractive. Hell, if he was honest, it was because she was. Sure, she looked cute and mussed in her rainbow-hued loungewear yesterday, but this morning at the newspaper office? All polished and professional?
He didn’t want to think about it. About how the soft mint green of her sweater clung to her ample chest. About the way her hips flared beneath her flouncy skirt. About the effect her dark hair had on him, tumbling down over her shoulders like a rowdy invitation to play.
About how she was the first interesting thing to drop into his predictable life in years.
Damn it all, he didn’t need this right now, yet here she was.
But it wasn’t just the newspaper announcement that had kept Winnie on the forefront of Cal’s mind prior to his arrival at The Bloom Times’ office. He’d started his day with a very early phone call to his mother. He’d woken her up, which pleased him, given that he still felt considerably irritated with the woman.
“Anything you want to tell me about the She Shed, Ma?” he’d asked, his voice tempered just enough to let her know that the question was rhetorical. A brief pause on her end —a rare phenomenon when talking to his chatty mother—indicated that she knew what he knew.
“I’ve rented it.”
“I figured that out.”
Another pause lingered as he waited for her to explain herself. He loved his mother endlessly, but no one could press a man’s buttons like the woman who created him.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Charles Calhoun Spencer.”
Up, up, up ticked his blood pressure, and not just because she used the full name he despised.
“It is my job to keep you safe, Ma, and how am I supposed to do that when you go off and do something boneheaded like this without so much as warning me?”
“Boneheaded?” she cried in disbelief. “What a thing to say about your only mother. It is not your job to keep me safe, Cal. That’s a role you gave to yourself without my request.”
He chose not to rise to that old, familiar bait. As the oldest and only son of a crummy father, and with three little sisters following in his footsteps, it sure as hell was his job to watch out for his family.
“What do you even know about this woman?” he asked.
“What woman?”
“Winnie Briggs.”
“You met Winnie?”
He hated the eagerness he heard in his mother’s voice.
“I did.” He wouldn’t give his mother an extra centimeter as far as the woman was concerned, let alone an inch.
He could practically hear his mother’s gears turning in the silence. He knew her better than anyone else on earth, and he felt certain that she was thinking very carefully about how to proceed with this conversation. Surely she’d already crafted an elaborate plan for introducing Cal and Winnie, and now she had to think about how her matchmaking could best proceed given this unexpected start.
“Well, what’d you think of her?” she asked in a tone that might have come off as neutral to an outsider. But Cal knew his mother far too well to fall for it.
“I thought she was breaking and entering, so I threatened to call the police on her,” he said. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“I…well…” Rhonda sputtered. “You threatened to call the police on her? Cal, that wasn’t very hospitable. You probably scared the poor thing half to death.”
That twinge of guilt flickered through his gut for the hundredth time whenever he pictured that panicked look on Winnie’s face. He forced it away.
“And what did she say in response?”
“Oh, she made me feel guilty and put me in my place.”
“Good girl,” his mother said and he could hear the smile in her voice.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he growled, losing patience. “What do you know about this woman?”
“I trust her,” his mom said.
He scoffed.
“Based on what?”
“I talked to her and I sensed that she was a good person. It was a gut instinct.”
“Jesus, Mom. Your gut? This is a legally binding relationship. By the look of things, you invested some serious money in that cottage. You can’t just let a stranger into a part of your home.”
“Actually, I can,” she said, her voice getting testy. “People do it all the time. Every day.”
“You’re not people. You’re my mom and I worry about you.”
“Cal,” she said, her tone softening in that maternal way she had.
“She filled out an application,” she continued, the bite dissolving from her voice. “We talked on the phone multiple times. She submitted three references, all of whom raved about her. And I ran a criminal background check. I talked to Jenna at the law firm in town before I started any of this, and followed all the steps she recommended.”
Cal sighed. Of course she did. He knew his mother was a smart woman, but it frustrated him when she cut him out of the conversation. How was he supposed to be a resource to her when she refused to keep him in the loop?
“That’s good,” he managed.
“Now, you answer my question,” his mother countered. “What did you think of Winnie?”
Mostly that I don’t want to think about her.
“I did answer that. I thought she was a trespasser.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Cal sighed.
“Ma, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” she asked innocently. She wasn’t fooling anyone.
“You know exactly what. Don’t let your imagination run wild. Don’t forget who you’re dealing with.”
“Who I’m dealing with? You mean my young, professionally accomplished son who’s so handsome that he causes fender benders?”
“That happened once, Mom,” Cal groaned, annoyed at the memory of the mortifying incident. Getting catcalled in the middle of a busy intersection in the center of town a few years back, and then having that cat caller crash her car into the truck in front of her at a stop sign was not his proudest moment.
Naturally it was one of his mother’s favorite stories to bring up.
“Or maybe I’m dealing with the son who is so popular that every unattached woman in town has tried to get a date with him, yet he has politely refused every one of them?”
Oh, how tired he was of going down this road. Why did all of his sisters have to partner up so young? Why did he have to be the only one of the four siblings left to receive the full force of his mother’s meddling?
He was barely thirty for Pete’s sake. He was hardly an old…well, whatever the male version of an old maid was. He dated a little bit in high school, and a bit more in college. But never women from Bloomsburo. His Friday nights were far more likely to be spent playing pool with Carter and some of the guys at the bar downtown than wining and dining a woman.
“I do go on dates, Ma, just not with people from around here,” he said, stretching the truth. Sure he’d done some online dating over the years, hooking up with the occasional woman when the right chemistry presented itself. He was a healthy man after all, amply supplied with physical needs. But none of it had ever grown into anything serious. He never brought anyone home to meet the family.
And he definitely never let these dates or one-night stands happen within the borders of Bloomsburo, because everyone knew everyone in the tightknit town where gossip spread faster than the flu in February.
For as much as he loved the place, the familiarity of his hometown could be suffocating at times.
“Well, you’re in luck. Winnie’s not from around here.”
It wasn’t home.
He suddenly remembered Winnie’s description of Chicago, the city she’d just left. Just why had she shown up at his mother’s doorstep?
And why the hell was he so curious about her story?
“Don’t meddle,” he warned his mother, finally getting to the true purpose of the conversation. “If you care about her, steer her away from me. You of all women should know that Spencer men are best to be avoided.”
His mother sighed. Her late husband, Cal’s father, was never a topic she enjoyed talking about with the son who despised him.
“I can’t do this Cal. Not today.”
“Please respect my boundaries, Mom.”
“I hope you respect the irony in that statement, given the fact that you called me at seven o’clock in the morning to tell me you didn’t approve of a decision that I made for myself as a fifty-five-year-old woman. You’re not exactly the king of respecting boundaries yourself.”
He couldn’t come up with an argument against that one.
“I’ve got to get to work, Ma. We’ll talk soon.”
“I love you, Cal. I do appreciate you watching out for me.”
And despite the occasional frustration she caused in his life, he couldn’t help but return the sentiment.
But the whole conversation had started his day on a sour note. When his phone rang a short time later, at 7:45 on the nose, he knew it could only be Betty Jean Finnegan. The two had negotiated that time as the earliest possible time she could contact him on a weekday for community-related business. Today’s call was to inform him of the ‘emergency’ meeting she was organizing later that morning, which brought him back to his current situation, following Winnie Briggs down the narrow hallway of the newspaper office and trying – and failing – not to notice just how the sway of her curvy hips caused the pleats of her skirt to dance around temptingly. It brought to mind many things, none of which should be spoken in a professional context. Her sheer proximity made him feel like a green boy back in the middle school hallways, lusting after a pretty girl walking by. And this realization also reminded him that it had been unnaturally long since he took comfort with a woman. He suddenly felt like a thirsty man in a desert, and Winnie looked a lot like an oasis.
But, oasis or not, she was a professional associate now, so it was time to convince himself that her temptation was just a mirage. As they rounded the corner into the back office, Betty Jean pulled a seat right next to Winnie’s workspace, but he maintained his distance in a chair on the other side of the small room.
“Now, what’s going on here? Are you both here for the same reason?” Winnie asked, pulling out a notebook and clearly trying to gather her bearings, all the while avoiding eye contact with him. He took some comfort in the fact that she seemed rattled, too, though it probably had more to do with Betty Jean than him.
“I called everyone here,” Betty Jean explained, before her tone frosted over. “Well, everyone who bothered to show up.”
Defensiveness rose in Cal’s chest, a common reaction when your best friend was the police chief in a small town where petty critiques were common place.
“Chief Conrad has a lot on his plate. I told him I’d inform him if there was anything pressing he needed to know,” he offered, trying to keep his tone neutral.
“Well it is pressing, and I’ll expect you to tell him so,” Betty Jean said, desperation cracking her typically polished veneer.
He caught a flicker of a smile on Winnie’s face as she observed their exchange. Her gaze met his quickly, sending a spark across the room that seemed to strike him directly in his underutilized parts, but her attention flickered back to Betty Jean just as quickly.
“So, what exactly is pressing, Betty Jean? You’ll have to forgive me. It’s my first morning on the job and I’m far from up to speed.”
Betty Jean cleared her throat, a sound Cal had long ago translated to mean that the woman was attempting to swallow back a sharp comment. He gave her credit for at least attempting civility with a newcomer.
“Well, plain and simple, there’s been a pancake dinner sabotage,” Betty Jean pronounced.
He hadn’t known Winnie long, but he would guess that she was biting her inner cheek in an attempt not to snicker at Betty Jean’s silly declaration. Surely this was just the kind of exciting story she had left Chicago to pursue.
Which brought back the question that had been circling in his mind for the last 18 hours: Just why had the woman left such a fantastic city? When he was younger, Cal himself had often dreamed of bolting Bloomsburo, and Chicago was one of his all-time favorite places to visit. Heading to the state university a few hours away for four years had been as close to an escape as he’d managed, though. His deep sense of responsibility toward his mother and sisters and nieces rendered any more ambitious adventures purely imaginary.
“Do you think you could elaborate a bit?” Winnie asked politely, interrupting his rumination.
“Yes, a flapjack fiasco deserves our utmost attention,” Cal offered, unable to help himself.
“This is no laughing matter, Cal Spencer,” Betty Jean huffed, even as Winnie finally relented the full wattage of her pretty smile, rewarding his orneriness. Such rewards could be addictive.
“Someone altered the sign at Hudson Dentistry,” Betty Jean elaborated.
Winnie looked to Cal for clarification.
“Dr. Hudson offers up the big sign outside of his office to community groups for advertising their upcoming events,” he elaborated. She nodded and took a few more notes.
“I personally oversaw the creation of the lettering for the pancake dinner sign, after numerous calls to Dr. Hudson’s office to discuss the precise wording,” Betty Jean continued. Cal could imagine her oversight perfectly, given how often she offered it to him at the Chamber. “It clearly stated that the start time was tonight at 4 p.m. But when I drove by the sign last night, I saw that the start time was listed at 7 p.m.”
“It was probably an honest mistake,” Cal offered.
“I might be willing to overlook it, too,” Betty Jean said, pulling a notebook out of her designer shoulder bag and opening it to a page of scrawled notes, “had it been an isolated incident. But it wasn’t.”
Cal’s eyebrow quirked. “Okay, let’s hear your other evidence.”
“The ‘for sale’ sign in Doris Duvall’s yard was moved to Hattie Henson’s yard. I saw it with my own two eyes on my morning walk.”
“What time do you wake up?” he asked, truly astonished. The woman seemed to get more done before breakfast than most people did in a full work day. She didn’t dignify the question with a response.
“Was there more?” Winnie asked.
“Yes. The chalkboard sidewalk sign over at Happy Grounds was completely erased.”
Cal looked over to Winnie, and whispered “downtown coffee shop.”
“And the bulletin board at the senior center has been completely cleared of all of the posters and flyers,” Betty Jean continued, “even the Bloomsburo Day signs.”
Okay, Cal had to admit that this last part caught his attention, as he’d posted those flyers there himself last week. But still, as far as crime and vandalism went, this seemed far from serious.
“Betty Jean, I’m sure it’s just a few kids trying to pull off some harmless prank,” he offered.
“Well, you’d know about that, now wouldn’t you?”
Lord, the memory of people in this town. You toilet paper a few local businesses during homecoming one time in high school, and it hangs around your neck for the rest of your life.
“So you believe that these incidents are connected?” Winnie asked, maintaining more professionalism than the other two of them combined.
“Yes,” Betty Jean replied.
“There’s nothing Carter can do about any of this,” Cal explained. No laws were broken. He doubted that any of the incidents even merited a formal police report.
“Well, what am I supposed to do in the mean time?” Betty Jean asked desperately. “Our pancake dinner fundraiser is tonight, and now the entire town is being told that the event doesn’t even begin until after it’s supposed to end! Who knows how many people saw that misinformation.”
He sighed. Betty Jean could be a royal pain, but she was deeply devoted to this town and raised a hell of a lot of money for it. He didn’t like to think about her event getting ruined due to a petty prank.
“Has the paper been advertising the event?” Winnie asked, and Cal inwardly winced, predicting the reaction that the question would induce from Betty Jean.
“No, the paper has not been advertising the event,” Betty Jean cried, anger coloring her cheeks even beyond her heavily applied blush. Well, so much for her forced civility, though it was nice for the three full minutes it lasted. “The Bloom hasn’t been doing anything worth mentioning for more than a month, thanks to that useless former editor and the good-for-nothing, out-of-town publisher who can’t even bother to return a phone call.”
He watched Winnie’s jaw literally drop.
“You make calls to my out-of-state publisher?” Winnie asked in disbelief.
“Only when necessary,” Betty Jean said smugly. “Someone has to stop this ship from sinking.”
Defensiveness flared in Cal’s heart once more, as natural as thirst or hunger.
“Take your claws out, Betty Jean,” he said, his cool voice hiding the annoyance simmering beneath his skin. “Winnie isn’t to blame for the newspaper’s past problems. She’s the solution to them.”
His eyes made the mistake of meeting Winnie’s across the room and the gratitude he saw there simultaneously tied his stomach in a knot and spurred him on.
“It’s her first morning on the job. Give her some time to prove herself. She has stronger credentials than any editor that’s worked here in my lifetime. She needs our support, not our scorn.”
Betty Jean sighed dramatically, but didn’t argue back. He took that as a win.
“Now, about the pancake dinner. The fastest way to fix the issue is going to be online,” said Cal. “I’ll put up a correction on the Chamber homepage this morning, and we can both link to it on our respective e-mail groups.”
“I could post a correction on the newspaper’s social media feeds,” Winnie offered before adding with a laugh, “that is, as soon as I figure out what the passwords are.”
He smiled her way, impressed with her calm in the face of Betty Jean’s intensity. The woman really was going to be an asset to the newspaper and the community.
“And I guess I could activate the Blooming Lady phone tree,” Betty Jean added. “Not everyone in this town uses computers and smart phones the way you kids do.”
He and Winnie shared an amused glance.
“So I’ll talk to some of the affected establishments and see if there’s any larger story here,” Winnie offered, before turning to Cal. “Will you have Chief Conrad contact me if anything else comes up on his end?”
Cal nodded, though the thought of his childhood friend calling Winnie shot a strange sensation through his veins, something closer to jealousy than he cared to admit. Not because Carter and Winnie were two single, attractive adults. No, it was just because he hadn’t yet fully come to terms with the fact that this woman was now a part of his professional circle.
Right.
“So are we square, Betty Jean?” Cal asked, standing in an attempt to force the meeting to an end. He glanced at his phone and saw that it was already after nine. The pile of work on his desk at the Chamber could only be growing at this point, and he needed some space from the weird things Winnie did to his brain and body.
“I suppose,” Betty Jean said. “Winnie, can I get your cell phone number, just in case something comes up?”
Winnie shot Cal an uncertain look. Clearly this was not a line she was accustomed to crossing.
“I’ve found that resistance is futile,” he admitted. “If she doesn’t have your phone number, she’s more likely to come knocking on your door.”
Her brow raised.
“The door of your home, not your office,” he clarified. Winnie reluctantly jotted down a number on a Post-it note and passed it to Betty Jean.
“Well, I’ve got my work cut out for me today, as do both of you,” Betty Jean said as she marched out of the office like a velour whirlwind. This left the two of them suddenly alone and facing each other once more. He watched Winnie nervously twist a finger around a curl at her collar bone.
“So, the woman breaking and entering on my mom’s property turns out to be the new editor of the newspaper, huh?” he asked.
“Guilty.”
“That seals our fate then.”
Her eyes widened with concern. “Does it?”
“Oh, yes. There’ll be no staying invisible now, Briggs. You’ve moved into a little fishbowl of a town, one that doesn’t get restocked often. As the newest, most sparkly fish, everyone’s going to be watching you closely.”
He watched her take a deep breath and straighten her shoulders a bit.
“I’m a journalist, which for better or for worse makes me pretty used to being in the public eye.”
“Well, good.”
Her eyes softened just a bit.
“Are you concerned about any of this?” she asked, glimpsing briefly down at her notes from the ‘emergency’ meeting.
“No,” he answered, and it was mostly true. “It’s worth looking into. Even if it’s just a few teen pranks, it’d be best to put an end to it. I’ll give Carter a heads up, you’ll talk to some of the business owners, and Betty Jean will do what she does best.”
“Which is…”
“Put the fear of God in people, especially those who try to come between her and her pancake dinners.”
Winnie snorted. For the second time in as many days he wondered how the sound managed to be adorable.
“Okay then, I guess that’s that,” she said. “Now it’s time for me to figure out where everything is in my office, who’s who in town, and what exactly I’m supposed to be doing as the editor of this paper.”
“Should make for a nice, light work day, then.”
She laughed again, and damn if he didn’t love the sound. His feet suddenly felt rooted to the ground and he fought the urge to continue their banter, just as an excuse to stay in her presence for a few more minutes.
That very awareness proved to be the wake-up call he needed. He had to shake this woman from his system, fast.
“Until next time, then,” he said with a smile and made his way to the hallway. And even if he chose to ignore it, the notion that there would be a next time with Winnie Briggs was enough to put a spring in his step as he made his way out