On Sunday afternoon, Cal found himself exactly where he had been two weeks earlier: trying to run Winnie Briggs out of his system.
His feet pounded the pavement in an especially strenuous pace, crushing the crisp leaves that the afternoon winds had blown from the trees. But he wasn’t heading toward his mom’s house like usual, because that would mean running toward Winnie, too.
After last night, he needed some space. Not because she presented a problem. Hell, to be honest, it was because she didn’t. Instead, she presented the kind of temptation that filled Cal with anxiety. He felt the urge to physically escape whatever powerful hold the woman seemed to have over him.
Geographic distance didn’t seem to be helping much, though. Despite his labored breathing and screaming muscles, his double-crossing mind happily floated back to the night before, to memories of cake and cream and the soft heat of Winnie’s divine breasts under his tongue. Memories of the warm suction of her mouth that foreshadowed the deep pleasures her body could offer.
Jesus, he hadn’t restricted himself to such heavy petting since high school, yet somehow, with that woman, it had turned him on beyond measure. He wasn’t accustomed to waiting for what he wanted, and doing so heightened the hell out of every minute.
After Winnie left last night, Cal had done a little homework of his own, needing to take his pleasure from his own hand. As he’d stroked himself, it was only Winnie his mind could imagine. Her plush lips moaning. The feel of her tongue on his fingers. Her eyes flashing with pleasure. Her hungry hands. The taste of chocolate on her skin.
The orgasm that ripped violently through him had left him shaking with its intensity. Frankly the power of what they were conjuring scared the hell out of him.
He needed space from her energy—from that damned pull she seemed to have on him, and punishing his body for its fixation on her on this run seemed like the best solution. So cloudy was his own mind, however, that he didn’t notice the actual clouds gathering above him. A few fat sprinkles of rain on his face and arms shook him from his daydreams and he realized a downpour was imminent.
Shit.
He’d run at least four miles from home by now, so he braced himself for complete saturation. Except that he suddenly realized where he actually was—less than two blocks from Carter’s place.
He sprinted the remaining distance in the quickening rain, taking shelteron Carter’s porch before the worst of the downpour began. Carter must have heard him sprint up the steps, because the front door swung wide open.
“Well, look what the storm washed up,” Carter said with a laugh, opening the door to let his soggy friend step in and get relief from the downpour.
“Happen to have a spare towel?” Cal asked as rain dripped off his hair and lashes onto his cheeks. Carter dashed to the hallway closet and grabbed a hand towel to toss to his friend.
“Looks like it should blow over soon enough, anyway,” Carter offered while Cal dried off, glancing out the front door before closing it behind them. Having grown up in the Midwest, both men were accustomed to the sweeping thunderstorms that could start and stop in less time than it took to pop up a bowl of popcorn. “Come in. I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Thanks, man,” Cal said, scanning the home that his friend had lived in since moving back to town and joining the Bloomsburo police force seven years earlier. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Cal noticed the model car kit in progress on the kitchen table, and he had to smile. Carter had been tinkering with those kits for as long as Cal could remember, though he could attest that Carter’s skills had improved greatly from those early attempts back in elementary school. Today he was damn near professional at it. Cal had always lacked the patience, not to mention the fine motor skills, to join in his friend’s hobby.
He glanced around Carter’s house, taking in the familiar-yet-unfamiliar space. There had been a time when Cal wiled away hours here, but that was before. Before Carter had lost everything. Before fucking Wyatt had twisted all of their worlds into something ugly and broken.
He tried not to notice the feminine touches that still lingered in every room of the house. He tried not to think of the room upstairs that was supposed to be the nursery.
Cal wasn’t proud, and he knew it didn’t make him a great friend, but only a freak rainstorm four miles into a run could get him back inside Carter’s house. There were too many ghosts here, even if those ghosts were probably why Carter himself chose to stay.
But here he was. And for better or for worse, the shit-eating look on his friend’s face shook Cal from his depressing train of thought.
“So,” Carter started vaguely, and Cal’s brain caught up. The last time he’d seen Carter had been at the Guiding Star meeting, sitting next to Winnie and flirting openly with her just to piss him off.
“So,” Cal countered, refusing to give an inch.
“How’s Winnie?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Cal asked, his temper flaring much faster than usual. Other than his mother, there was no one who could see through Cal’s bullshit quite as quickly or as thoroughly as his oldest friend. It never failed to piss Cal off, given his preference for opacity.
“It’s an honest question. I saw the glares you were shooting me at the meeting on Thursday. I’m not an idiot.”
Cal scoffed.
“If you want to pretend there’s nothing between you and Winnie, then fine, I’ll pretend, too.”
Cal ruffled his hand through his wet hair. “Jesus, Carter. I don’t know.”
Carter stood quietly, waiting for his friend to elaborate.
“There’s a thing,” Cal begrudgingly relented.
“A thing?”
“Yes. We…well, we’re feeling things out.”
“Literally?”
Cal glared at Carter, but his non-answer was as good as a confirmation and only made his friend’s grin grow that much wider.
“No shit,” Carter said, his tone coming off as partly shocked, partly impressed.
“It’s nothing I planned. It’s the opposite of what I planned,” Cal confessed. “I just… well, I couldn’t help myself. And she’s happy to participate.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem? Only that we’re professional associates. That my meddling mother is her landlady. That…” He trailed off, lost in his thoughts.
“What?”
Cal sighed deeply. “It’s just… it’s stronger than usual, my attraction to her. Not just physically, either. It’s not good. I shouldn’t have started this.”
Carter assessed him in that haughty way he had. Granted, the man had survived an unfathomable personal loss, but Cal didn’t appreciate the sense of moral authority he came out the other side with. It was as if Carter’s own experience with loss and grief gave him the right to issue out carpe-diem style life advice to everyone in his midst.
“Have you ever wondered, just once in your life, what would happen if you could get your head out of your own ass?” Carter asked.
Cal stood up from his stool, testosterone surging defensively through his veins.
“Carter—” he started before his friend cut him off. If anyone understood Cal’s legacy, understood just what a selfish bastard Cal’s father had been, it should be Carter.
“No, man, I’m serious,” his typically cool-headed friend shouted. “You’re so used to playing the victim, I’m not sure you’d recognize happiness if it walked up and slapped you across the face. Winnie’s a hell of a catch. She’s adorable. Funny. Smart. Professional. And I’m just sitting here wondering why you’re wracking your brain to find every possible reason not to give her a chance.”
“It’s not like that—”
“It is, Cal,” his friend countered, “and don’t tell me it isn’t, because I know you better than you know yourself.”
Cal scowled.
“You ever consider actually giving someone a chance? If anyone ever deserved a fair shake it’s Winnie.”
“I know she does, damn it. She has nothing to do with it. It’s me.”
You couldn’t grow up with a father like Cal’s, with the memories of his spectacularly selfish failures as a husband and a dad, and not decide then and there to keep your distance from sweet and lovely women like Winnie Briggs. He would stay single forever before he’d accept that fate.
Carter shook his head.
“You just keep telling yourself that, man.”
Cal began his way to the door, feeling recuperated, resentful, full of testosterone and more than ready to get out of this space.
“Looks like the storm has passed.”
“Cal—” Carter called out after him, but he was already out the door. He ignored his friend. He ignored his pleading eyes, and his damned frustrating rationality. He ignored his heightened perspective on what it was to have loved and lost.
“Thanks for the water, man,” he yelled behind him on the way out the door.
And just like that, Carter joined Winnie on the list of people Cal was trying to run out of his brain.
~-~-~-~-~-~-
“So, where is Corey again?” Winnie asked about Evie’s husband, pulling a warm slice of pizza out of one of the two boxes she brought to her friend’s house for dinner Sunday evening.
Before Evie could answer, a tiny set of footsteps pattering through the dining room toward where the women sat at the kitchen counter.
“I want to be with Winnie!” Ella, Evie’s five-year-old daughter, cried, her special blankie trailing behind her as she ran straight into Winnie's embrace. They’d only met a few times, but Ella was already deeply enchanted with Winnie, and the feeling was mutual. Winnie knew that the little girl’s fieriness made Evie’s life hard now, but she also knew it would serve her well down the road.
Winnie gave her a squeeze, taking in her wild, curly blonde hair and her Strawberry Shortcake dress. She was like a little Princess Merida in the flesh.
“Ella, you’re supposed to be having a picnic with the boys,” Evie sighed, glancing across the house to the family room where a blanket was spread on the floor and her two-year-old twins were destroying their respective slices of pizza in front of the TV. Evie had already confessed to Winnie that the boys skipped their nap today, meaning they were even touchier, and she even more exhausted, than normal. (Hence why Winnie offered to show up with pizza in hand.)
“Are you two having a girl’s night?” Ella asked, her lips turning into a well-rehearsed pout as she spied the chocolate on the coffee table. Winnie couldn’t engage with Ella without remembering her own little brother. Born into the family as a complete surprise when she was 9, Johnny had been like her very own baby doll.
“Maybe,” Winnie offered.
“Well, I’m a girl!” she offered, her hands shooting dramatically onto her hips.
“You’re a little girl. This girl’s night is only for big girls.”
“That’s not fair!”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. How about if I come and watch ten minutes of your show, only if you promise that after that you’ll stay put and help watch your little brothers?” Winnie asked.
“Okay!” she cried, delightedly sprinting back to the family room.
When Winnie returned ten minutes later, she was glad to see Evie halfway through her first glass of wine and enjoying the dinner she didn’t have to cook.
“You’re amazing. Thanks for handling that,” Evie said gratefully.
“Um, no. You’re amazing because you handle that every other night of the year.”
Evie just rolled her eyes.
“What will truly be amazing is if I survive these years, that’s for sure.”
“So, where is Corey?” Winnie asked again. She tried to keep her tone neutral, she really did, even if the man seemed like bad news. Evie didn’t like to talk much about her husband or her marriage, but the clues Winnie had picked up during their various conversations did not paint the guy in a very positive light.
“Every fall he has these home shows he goes to all over the Midwest,” she explained about her husband, who helped run the family business, Finnegan Building Company, in town. “He’s usually gone Friday through Monday, at least a few weekends a month.”
So, he’s gone the only time of the week he actually has to spend with his family, Winnie silently observed. But she wouldn’t trash talk him. Not yet. At least not out loud.
“That’s got to be hard.”
“It helps when friends come over and deliver pizza and wine.”
“Well, I am always available for such support services,” Winnie laughed.
“Plus, I usually try to book some extra shifts at Dewey’s. For everything else you could say about Betty Jean, she’s happy to watch the kids for me any time I ask. I know she really enjoys it.”
“That really is great.”
“Enough about my pathetic existence. Why did you call an emergency girls’ night? What happened?”
“I did a very good thing that is likely to end up being a very bad thing,” Winnie said, her cheeks flushing as she thought back to the night before. God, had it only been last night that Cal’s hands and mouth had explored her so body so thoroughly?
Well, her upper body at least. Thoughts of him lowering his explorations to her bottom half made her fingers tremble. She’d probably be rendered speechless by the time they rounded third base.
“Spill it now and if you leave out a single torrid detail this friendship is officially over,” Evie demanded, refilling her glass of wine and settling in for a sexy, voyeuristic story, which lasted almost as long in the re-telling as it did in the actual moment.
Winnie was a storyteller by trade, after all, but rarely did she have such extraordinary source material.
“You are officially my new hero,” Evie concluded after Winnie finished the play-by-play, a dopey, pleased look on her face. “That man has never opened up the gates for someone around here. If word gets out about this, some women are going to be very displeased with you—women who’ve been trying to wear that man down for a decade. Then you waltz into town and seal the deal in two weeks, you saucy minx!”
Winnie snorted.
“One, I did not seal the deal. Though I hope to,” she said with a wink. “And two, word cannot get out. That’s part of the deal. So this conversation between us tonight never happened, alright?”
Evie nodded eagerly.
“I can’t remember the last time I had a juicy secret to keep,” Evie said. “This is so much fun. I’m loving being able to live vicariously through you.”
Winnie smiled, but before she could respond, she heard a cry of despair from the family room. Evie sighed as they both realized that the kids had likely entered the time-to-go-to-bed-before-someone-gets-hurt phase of the evening.
“That’s probably my cue to get out of your hair so you can wrangle your beasts into their beds,” Winnie said, standing and picking up their dirty plates. Evie shoulders slumped, but she looked much more relaxed and content than she had when Winnie arrived. “I’d offer to stay and help, but something tells me that it would only make it harder for you.”
“Yeah,” Evie sighed, “it’s probably time to stop pretending that I have no human lives I’m responsible for.” She met Winnie at the sink and gave her a huge hug.
“Thank you for dinner. And grown-up conversation. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.”
Winnie was surprised at the tears filling the woman’s eyes, but grateful for the bond that had already formed between them. As much as she missed Bree with every fiber of her being, it was so comforting to be growing a new friendship with someone right in town.
After giving each of the pizza-covered kiddos a hug and a kiss, Winnie made her way to her car and drove the short route home to the She Shed. Getting out of the car, she felt full of contentment after her conversation with Evie. Humming quietly to herself, she didn’t pay much attention to her surroundings as she walked up to the porch. That is until she heard some giggling in the flower bushes in front of the cottage.
She stopped in her tracks, momentarily convinced that she’d lost her mind. She took one more step toward the door before she heard another bout of laughter, this time louder. She turned on her heel and walked quietly over to the noisy bush, where she discovered two tiny fairies peaking from beneath the blooms.
Twin fairies, with matching pairs of sparkling wings on their backs and identical manes of curly, strawberry blond hair, a clear gift from their grandmother’s DNA.
Cal’s nieces.
She glanced quickly over to Rhonda’s house, suddenly remembering that it was Sunday and thus all of the Spencers would be gathered for their weekly family dinner. While she could see figures moving inside through Rhonda’s windows now glowing in the twilight sky, luckily no one seemed to notice her out in the yard yet.
Well, except the fairies. She turned her gaze back to her visitors and her heart skipped a beat when she noticed the matching friendship bracelets both girls wore—the same bracelets Cal had been twirling between his fingers at that first football game.
“I didn’t know this was a fairy garden,” Winnie said, her eyes widening in wonder as she glanced at the girls.
More giggles.
“We’re not real fairies,” said the one on the left.
“We just like to pretend,” her sister elaborated.
“I like to pretend, too,” Winnie confided. “I’m Winnie, by the way. I live in the cottage now. Do you visit here often?”
“That’s our nana’s cottage,” the sister on the left said once more. She clearly seemed to do most of the speaking for the pair. “No one would tell us about you so we wanted to catch you for ourselves.”
“Ahh,” Winnie said. “Now you know I’m real. If you’re not fairies, who are you?”
“I’m Mary,” the talkative one said, before answering for her sister, too. “That’s my sister Lulu. We love to play in our nana’s gardens.”
“I don’t blame you. They’re so beautiful. And they feel a little magic.”
“Yes!” the quieter girl agreed excitedly, before dropping her gaze shyly to the ground.
“Nana is about to serve up cake,” Mary explained, looking back to the house. “You should come over and have some. She makes the best cake in the world.”
“No, that’s not true,” Lulu countered. “Uncle Cal’s chocolate cake is probably the best in the world.”
A crimson blush rushed to Winnie’s cheeks as her brain made the erotic connection between Cal and chocolate cake—memories that felt too naughty to even think about in the presence of innocent children. She needed to hide herself away in the She Shed before she was forced to face the man in front of his family.
“Oh, I hate to miss out on dessert, but I have some work I need to do,” Winnie offered as the girls stood up, preparing to make their way back to the house. “Thank you for the offer, though. I’ll have to take a rain check.”
The girls nodded, prancing their way back through the gardens, the sunset sending soft rays of light bouncing off their sparkly wings. She laughed as she heard one say to the other, “What’s a rain check?”
Winnie wasn’t convinced that the girls weren’t at least part fairy, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that now. She rushed up the stairs, into the cottage, and shut the door behind her, her heart beating wildly, as if she were fleeing from a crime scene.
She turned around and peeked through a tiny crack in her kitchen blinds, watching the girls bound their way up the deck steps toward a sliding glass door leading into Rhonda’s house. The door opened and Cal’s unmistakable frame filled the space. Though she was too far away to see their expressions in the darkening night, she could see the girls tugging on his arms excitedly and pointing back toward Winnie’s cottage.
Winnie could feel his gaze directed at her, even if she couldn’t read his expression from the distance. How would he react to learning that his nieces were just as meddling as his mother?
She’d have to wait to find out. He affectionately tousled both girls’ hair, and then closed the door behind him, separating them once more neatly into their two separate worlds. His night would be spent with his warm, loving family—sharing food and laughter. And she’d be here in the cottage on her own.
Her heart squeezed in a way that it had almost every single day since her parents’ accident. That squeeze that reminded her of the irreplaceable things her life was missing.
Tears threatened. That familiar wave of self-pity and melancholy wanted to wash over her, but she took a deep breath, poured a big glass of wine, and pushed the urge aside. She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She had a story to edit before going into the office tomorrow. And for the millionth quiet, lonely night, work once more served as the dam that held back a tidal wave of grief.