Cal woke up slowly, and in phases.
First, his body. Unrecognizable contentment weighed down on his relaxed muscles. He felt rested in a way he hardly recognized, so long had it been. It felt as if he’d let go of something that had long been troubling him.
Then, his mind awoke. His eyes opened sleepily, seeing an unfamiliar bookcase. He noticed the soft play of morning light on someone else’s lace curtains.
He wasn’t at home. Finally, his mind caught up to where he was, and how he’d arrived in this particular cottage on this particular morning.
Winnie.
Memories flooded over him. Kissing tears off her cheeks. Stroking her breasts against his jaw. The taste of her climax on his lips. The unspeakable pleasure of making love to her.
His heart caught at that last thought, because it dawned on him how last night had been a first for him. Yeah, he’d had sex before. Good sex. He’d screwed women. Fucked them, quick and hard and to the satisfaction of everyone involved. But nothing like what he experienced last night with Winnie.
The acts of last night hadn’t involved any elaborate techniques; rather, the magic of what happened between Cal and Winnie originated solely from the chemistry of their two bodies.
He suddenly, and forcefully, craved more magic. It felt as if a pin had been pulled from him, activating something new. Something desperate and insatiable. Physical desire anchored to something sweeter, more caring. His fingers twitched from their emptiness. His mouth watered and his cock hardened.
Rolling over with a smile, he prepared to see Winnie’s soft, sleeping body next to him. She’d be so warm. So sweet in her morning state. He might not take it slow this morning. He might devour her rough and fast like she’d wanted it last night before he’d worked so deliberately to slow down the process and savor every minute of it.
But instead of seeing a mass of mussed brown curls on her pillow, all he saw was a folded piece of paper on the otherwise empty side of the bed. His eyes flickered up to the rest of the cottage. Its quiet emptiness made him scowl. Damn his deep, contented sleep. Winnie had slipped out.
He sighed as he grabbed the paper. Maybe she’d run out for coffee and donuts and would return in a few minutes. Maybe she’d walk back through that door, ready to ease his aching morning hardness with her curvy offerings. There could be no better start to a Saturday morning than kissing trails of powdered sugar off of Winnie’s soft skin.
Unfortunately, her note quickly shot that fantasy straight to hell.
“Shit,” he growled as he scanned the message a second, and then third time.
Had to take off early for a work thing. Will text you later. Lock up please? -W
Winnie’s message was curt and dismissive and he easily read everything it communicated between the lines. She didn’t want to talk about last night and now she wanted him out of here. Her morning, unlike his, had been marked by neither an overwhelming sense of satisfaction from the night before, nor an unshakeable need to reenact its highlights.
That was a hell of a thing to contemplate.
When he’d followed Winnie home last night and knocked on her door, he had no idea how the evening might unfold. All he knew was that her eyes at the bonfire had expressed such sadness and vulnerability that he had no choice but to find his way to her side. He would have gladly stayed up all night talking to her, holding her, letting her cry into his arms.
But one look at her at the door of the She Shed, and he’d known what she needed. Her body craved his touch and his strength, and he more than gladly complied.
It had been a consensual and mutual, he knew that then and he knew it now. But in the harsher clarity of morning light, he realized he had broken several tenets of Winnie’s relationship agreement. The love words he whispered into her neck, her breasts…technically forbidden, yes, but they were involuntary. The woman was sweet and lovely and gorgeous and to ask him to deny those truths as he explored her body wasn’t reasonable.
He’d also slept over, another broken rule. Another honest, happy accident. It had happened so naturally. After the sheer tidal wave of pleasure he experienced with Winnie’s luscious body, not a word was shared between them. He had nestled in behind her, one arm draped over her so his hand could rest gently against her soft stomach. His pelvis hitched up against the sweetest fullness of her bottom. The front of his knees tucked into the back of hers. His face burrowed into the warm and fragrant nest of her hair.
He might not remember falling asleep, but he sure as hell remembered the last thought that flickered through his pleasure-drowsy mind, because it was a thought he’d never had before.
This is it.
It freaked the hell out of him at first. If his genetics revealed one truth it was that he was not the settling kind.
He should run. He should protect Winnie from the heartbreak he would unleash upon her.
And yet… a deep, abiding since of rightness filled his body and his heart. The challenge of it, of being enough for a woman like her, overrode every insecure, doubtful instinct that bubbled up in his consciousness.
There had been a moment in his father’s life where the man decided he wasn’t enough for his wife, for his kids. Instead of fighting to become a better person for them, instead of turning to them for comfort and connection, he fled. He did everything possible to resist the love and the foundation right in front of his face.
All of Cal’s life he’d wanted to prove that he was a different kind of man than his father. It looked like he’d finally found his chance.
No trumpets blaring, no cupid’s arrows or dizzying love-at-first sight spells. Just the unfaltering realization that his body and his mind and his heart had all somehow arrived at the unanimous conclusion that life was immeasurably better with Winnie at his side. More importantly, he knew deep in his bones that he wanted her to feel the same way about him.
It wasn’t just the sex. That had been amazing, but it was just one piece of why he’d fallen for her. It was her heart, how it worked to unravel his complex past. It was the humor with which she approached her work, and the challenging characters she encountered there. It was her warmth and ease with his mother, his nieces, with him. Her tenderness and humor.
He didn’t know if he could be a better man than his father. Couldn’t know that. But damn it, for the first time in his life, he felt ready to try. To be more than he ever thought he could be. He loved nothing more than a challenge.
Yet here he was, waking up alone. For all that Winnie had made him feel in his body and his heart, clearly things had not been properly reciprocated.
“Shit,” he growled, getting up and finding his clothes in a pile on the floor. Putting them back on, he could still smell the bonfire on them. He sighed loudly. As if the morning couldn’t get worse, he now had to do the walk of shame through his own mother’s back yard.
Glancing at a clock on the wall, it was later than he thought. His mother would be up by now. She’d have already noticed his car still in her driveway. Then again, she’d probably known pretty well what was going to happen when Cal had made his way to the cottage the night before. The jig was up.
And damn it, it wasn’t a walk of shame. Frustration at Winnie swelled in his chest for having made him feel that way. What they’d shared had been sweet and powerful and pleasurable and mutual, and she owed him more than a hasty note on the bed afterward. But then again, hadn’t he set the precedent earlier in the week for running out when things got tense?
He stomped his way out of her cottage and through the shared yard, making sure to avoid looking up into his mother’s back kitchen window lest he find her concerned face there. With each step, an unrecognizable ache deep in his core twisted and grew. He hopped into his car, slammed the door shut, and began the short drive back home.
All these years, Cal had told himself that there could be no fate worse than settling down. He’d convinced himself that feeling deep affection for a woman would bring out the worst in him. That he’d only bring her the type of misery that he’d seen his mother experience at the hands of his father.
For so many years, he couldn’t fathom a fate worse than that. What a blow to the heart to figure out what trumped it: the realization that his deep affection might not be mutual.
~-~-~-~-~-~-
Winnie didn’t have a plan when she crept out of her own cottage at dawn. She hadn’t even realized she’d fallen asleep until she woke up to find Cal’s gorgeous, sleeping face just inches from hers. In the peace of sleep, he looked so sweet, so non-threatening. He appeared almost childlike, the way his criminally long lashes fringed his contented eyes while he slept.
The sight of him there, the memory of what they shared, had filled her with such an overwhelming mesh of anxiety and pleasure that she simply had to flee. She pulled on a mismatched outfit, slipped into her flip-flops, and drove Fiona the Ford out into the yellow-and-blue streaked dawn of the early September morning with no destination in mind.
Ninety minutes later, after countless rambling twists and turns, she finally pulled into a mall parking lot in a town she’d never heard of, though her GPS told her she was more than an hour away from Bloomsburo. It had been her first big trip out with Fiona the Ford since she’d arrived in town.
How was it possible that so much could change in a month?
She put the car into park and took her hands from the wheel, marveling at how they still slightly shook.
This. This was the moment she had known would be inevitable since the very first minute she saw Cal Spencer. From that day she’d made the choice to let his sexiness and charm ease their way into her life and onto her body. It was always going to be a deal with the devil. For however good it felt in the short run, and by God had it all felt better than her wildest imagination could have conjured, she knew that it would come at a price.
She’d hardly slept the night before. She’d noticed the second Cal had fallen asleep, his arms and his legs growing heavier where their weight cradled her body affectionately. She’d noticed his breathing growing deeper, with the occasional deep, contented rumble in his chest. That heavy-bodied ease with which men slept.
That was the moment, spooned up against the most sensual, most stunning man she’d ever known, that she’d let herself imagine, just for a minute, what it could be like. Her want for him, her lust for all that a life with him could offer, surrounded her until she nearly drowned in it—that vision of what her world might be like if Cal was her home.
Certainly there’d be nights of pleasure like she’d just experienced. Endless hours of his hands and mouth upon her, his hardness inside of her. His body collapsed in satisfaction next to her as they drifted off to sleep. But it wasn’t merely the promise of physical pleasure she envisioned. She could picture long weekend trips to wineries and B&Bs and wooden cabins surrounded by the crisp rustling of brilliant fall foliage. She could picture them snowed in at his cozy house, curled up for days at a time on his comfy sectional couch, binge watching entire seasons of their favorite TV shows while they ate the cookies he’d baked for her. The happy chaos of holidays with his big family. She could picture them walking down Main Street, holding hands in public like a real couple, stopping to greet the familiar community characters that colored both of their professional lives.
Her traitorous, masochistic brain could even picture him in a perfectly cut suit at the front of a quaint, rural church. In a hospital room, gazing adoringly at a newborn bundled in soft blankets.
Her eyes blurred again, correcting her earlier assumption that she’d already wrenched every final tear from her body.
Hope. The emotion that helped her realize that things had to end with Cal immediately. Hoping was the one thing she couldn’t allow herself to do given what she’d already lost in her lifetime. In hindsight, it was now clear to Winnie that an aversion to hope had been the only explanation for why she’d stayed with Anthony for as long as she had. She stayed with him not because she could see their picture perfect life together, but because she couldn’t. She couldn’t get lost in the possibilities of a long and happy life with him. She couldn’t force her brain to consider the kind of husband or father he’d be. That’s why she took comfort in the mediocrity of their relationship. Why she put up with his digs and his controlling ways and the suspicions of infidelity that ultimately proved to be true. If she didn’t even bother to dream of where it could go, she couldn’t be crushed by that dream’s failure to manifest.
Cal was a lot of things—sexy, confident, kind, professional—but he wasn’t a living Ken doll, ready and willing to help the new girl in town construct her happily ever after. He was the kind of man who took what he wanted from life. Though it was clear that their casual ground rules pleased him, it was now evident that Winnie couldn’t possibly keep up the charade that a physical, no-strings-attached tryst could be enough for her. Not given the white picket scenarios that her heart and mind had traitorously conjured.
No matter what fun they’d had these past weeks, the truth was that eventually, a man like Cal Spencer would be on the lookout for another adventure, and even the thought of him making another woman feel how he made her feel, physically and emotionally, left her distraught. Heartbroken. She took small comfort in the familiarity of those feelings, a dull silver lining along the edges of her monstrous pain.
She was being selfish. A coward. She knew it this morning when she fled her and Cal’s shared bed, and she knew it now, but this was likely her last chance to control how this ended, and to end it before she grew even more attached. He had so much to offer her, and he was such a good man, but she couldn’t lose herself in him. Already it felt so easy to hitch her star to his, to hinge her happiness on his contributions to her day-to-day life. But it made her feel too vulnerable. Too exposed. So even though it took every ounce of courage to walk away from that delicious, naked body sprawled across her bed, it was ultimately an act of self-preservation.
Winnie first.
And now it was time to close the deal. He deserved a phone call or a face-to-face conversation, but her voice would reveal too many truths that she prayed he’d never learn.
With trembling fingers, she typed the words that would seal her fate, sending a mortal blow to the hope that had so audaciously bloomed.
Our deal was that I could call it off at any time. I’ve got to do that now. I’m sorry. :(
She pushed ‘send’ and contemplated throwing up. The nausea only amplified when those dots indicating his response appeared instantly. For better or for worse, there would be no waiting on his reply.
Was it something I did? Are you okay?
The guilt and concern in his response gutted her. Was it something you did? she thought to herself with a bitter laugh. Yeah, you made the mistake of doing everything right, you bastard.
No, just need some space. Will be fine.
In a year or two, she silently amended. One minute later, her phone registered the arrival of what would likely be the last text message she’d ever receive from Cal Spencer. It consisted of only three little words. Not those three words, but they somehow managed to be just as devastating.
I’ll miss you.
Winnie took little comfort in the fact that the feeling was mutual.
~-~-~-~-~-~-
On one level Cal was aware of the Sunday dinner conversation swirling around his mother’s kitchen island, but he was so lost in his thoughts that he may as well have been alone in his house across town. He heard snippets of his sisters’ talking points: PTA meetings and new movie releases and the latest news about the royal baby, but he hadn’t said three words all night.
Grateful to be on lead cooking duty tonight, he busied his hands mashing potatoes and steaming vegetables and checking on the roast in the crockpot, but his mind was still trying to process where he’d gone wrong with Winnie.
On Friday evening she had seemed so grateful for his presence. She seemed as enchanted as he was by the powerful connection of their bodies. Yet somehow, between falling asleep with the woman in his arms and waking up the next morning, she’d rejected him. Rejected the connection that damn near vibrated between them and had him contemplating the one word that he never even knew existed in his vocabulary: forever.
Her text hadn’t made any sense. If he could just talk to her—just sit with her and stroke her face and tell her what he was feeling—things would be different. But clearly she didn’t want that. She didn’t even have the courage to call him to break it off with him over the phone. He didn’t know how to interpret that, because if there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that Winnie Briggs possessed courage in spades.
It just didn’t add up, and he felt sick about the way that his disconnection from her corresponded exactly to the moment he’d finally figured out what she’d meant to him.
He didn’t have a damn clue how to proceed. How did you give a woman space when what you really wanted to do was give her everything you had and more?
“I think those are good and mashed, sweetie,” his mom said as she walked up behind Cal and put her hand gently on his. He looked down and realized that, lost in his own thoughts, he had pulverized the potatoes.
“This will all keep warm,” she said, handing him a glass of red wine. “You come with me for a few.”
Rhonda led Cal out to the rockers on her front porch. The twilight sky was a lovely shade of purple, and the calmness of the space stood in contrast to the chaos of Cal’s mind.
He and his mom sat side by side on wooden rocking chairs.
“Please talk to me, honey,” his mom said quietly. “I’m worried about you.”
Cal sighed. He didn’t want to have the conversation, even though he knew he needed it. If he couldn’t talk to his mom about what was troubling him, who could he talk to? He didn’t want to betray Winnie’s confidence, yet somehow he knew that his mother had been onto their connection from the very beginning. He’d never understand it, but mothers had that sort of sixth sense.
“It’s Winnie,” he managed. His palms felt sweaty and his pulse raced. Why was it so damn hard to talk about his feelings?
“I figured,” she said. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
He felt his mother’s concerned gaze on his. She stayed quiet, though. She knew from years of experience that the best way to get her son to talk was to keep her own mouth shut and give him time.
“We’d been getting to know each other,” he said, staring down at the glass in his hand.
“That’s wonderful, honey.”
“It was,” he said, sure his eyes were filled with angst he didn’t even bother to conceal.
“When I went over there after the bonfire…” He trailed off.
“I figured,” she said, squeezing his hand affectionately, not requiring him to finish that sentence. He had the most sex-positive mother on earth. There was no need to be ashamed of his adult behavior, but that didn’t mean he necessarily wanted to go into details.
“I thought it was a really amazing night. I thought she felt the same way, too, but yesterday she texted me and told me she needed some space.”
He heard his mom sigh next to him.
“And how does that make you feel?” she asked quietly.
“Angry. Sad. Confused. Mostly sad.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, running her back across his shoulder, a gesture of comfort she’d done thousands of times before.
“I don’t understand it,” he said, “but it’s probably in her best interest.” He sensed his mother tense next to him, knowing this was not a path she liked to go down.
“Cal, you have to let go of those old stories you believe about yourself.”
It was his turn to stay silent.
“Do you think I’m a stupid woman?” she asked, the emotion in her voice forcing his eyes to meet hers.
“Of course not,” he said, taken aback. His respect for his mother was boundless, and she knew it.
“Well, let me tell you something, son. If I had this whole life to do over, I would choose your father again. In a damn heartbeat.”
Cal’s jaw clenched. How his mother could speak fondly of his father after all he’d put them through, he’d never understand.
“And you know what, you do remind me of him.”
“Huh,” he said bitterly. “So then you understand why it’s best if Winnie keeps her distance.”
“The biggest problem with your dad in the early days was his looks. Maybe it’s just my nostalgic recollection, but he may have even been more handsome than you are now, which is saying something.”
She laughed lightly and Cal silently cursed his handsome face. Every time he looked in the mirror he saw the spitting image of his dad. Even his first name, Charles, was another hand-me-down from the man he’d rather not think about.
“I worried, at first, about dating him, because he was so good looking,” his mother continued nostalgically. “Girls were always throwing themselves at him. He could have had his pick of anyone. That can be really intimidating to a woman.”
Cal stayed quiet, letting his mother speak her peace, and trying not to think about his dad’s later decision to take those other women up on their offers, even when he was still married to Cal’s mom.
“But he was so kind. And I found that combination to be so attractive. He could have been a jerk. He could have been a cad. But he was a good man. And he proved it over and over again as each of you precious children joined our family.”
He heard his mother’s voice crack at the fond memories. He squeezed her hand. Even if he didn’t understand it, he knew his mom still missed his father every single day.
“He was a loving dad. I know you try to block out everything that happened before Rosie’s diagnosis, but surely you still have some memories of those happy moments tucked away in that stubborn mind somewhere.”
He did, even if he generally refused to let them out. Even if he vowed never to admit it.
“There was nothing that made him happier than being with me, with you kids. Providing for us. It’s what he lived for. I see so much of him in you when you watch out for your sisters, and wrestle with your nieces, and humor your doddering old mother.”
An involuntary laugh slipped from Cal’s lips.
“Life got hard, Cal, and no, he didn’t make the best decisions that last year,” she said, her voice full of emotion as she remembered the events leading up to his death. “But that doesn’t erase everything that came before it. That doesn’t change who he was, or the love and commitment he was capable of.”
Cal let out a long sigh.
“Whenever you decide to give away your heart, you need to know that it’s not going to be a perfectly smooth road for the two of you,” she continued. “You’ll make mistakes. So will she. But hopefully you’ll grow together, learn from one another, and be all the stronger for it.”
Cal considered that for a moment.
“She won’t hurt us, Cal,” his mom said quietly, finally putting her finger on the heart of the issue for Cal. “You don’t have to keep up that boundary anymore, between our family and the rest of your life. We’re on solid ground now. And what we have is worth sharing with those who are special to us.”
On a rational level, he knew his mother was right. It had just been a really, really long time since he’d allowed himself to be rational about his personal life.
“Winnie adores you, and if she tells you otherwise, she’s lying,” she said plainly. He took comfort in her assessment, even if it made his heart constrict. “She’s terrified of what you could mean to her. And I’d guess that feeling is at least in part mutual.”
He sighed in agreement.
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
He shot his mom an annoyed glance. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you going to do to earn her trust?”
Resentment flared in his chest. “I didn’t do anything to lose her trust. Why should I—?” he started, but she cut him off midsentence.
“Cal Spencer, I love you more than life itself, but you’ve not had to work for much in this life.”
He shook his head in disbelief. Only his mother would pick this particular moment to lecture him about his work ethic, which, for the record, was outstanding.
“You’re tall, athletic, intelligent, handsome as sin, and twice as charming.”
He rolled his eyes.
“The world tends to unfold for you. Women beat down your door. Friends seek you out. You’ve landed every job you’ve ever applied for. The good life’s been handed to you, kid. You haven’t been asked to work for much.”
Okay, now she was going too far. The woman pushed his buttons just to get a rise out of him. And damn it, it worked.
“Haven’t been asked to work for much?” he repeated incredulously. “What about stepping up at seventeen to become the man of the family when my asshole father lost all ability to function as an adult?”
His mother’s eyes flashed, and he suddenly remembered exactly from whom he got his obstinate streak.
“Yes, Cal. You grew up faster than I would have liked. But you didn’t have to earn our love. You always had us—me and your sisters. We would have loved you no matter what you did or didn’t do. You stepped in, you took such care with the girls, you—” Her voice cracked, which made his heart do the same. “You probably saved my life those years. You were the reason I got through.”
He squeezed her hand, hating to see that old pain reliving itself across his mother’s face.
“But you weren’t scared of us, and we weren’t scared of you,” she continued. “In her young life, Winnie has lost more than most people can fathom. And her last boyfriend cheated on her and humiliated her, dissolving whatever sense of confidence and security she had built up.”
Cal’s heart stopped, remembering the story Winnie had told him weeks ago about how she ended up in Bloomsburo. He’d been so caught up in enjoying her that he’d forgotten how mistreated she’d been in the recent past. Defensiveness swelled through his chest. A defensiveness he hadn’t known since caring for his younger sisters all those years ago. Not to mention a flood of shame as he realized just how close he was to becoming one more asshole who took Winnie Briggs for granted.
He raked his hands through his hair, his mind whirring with new possibilities.
“You do not come across as the safe and steady rebound, Cal,” Rhonda continued, “especially the way you were carrying on in private as if you were ashamed of her.”
He shot her daggers. “That’s not how it was, Ma.”
“Well how was it then?”
And damn it, he wished he had a better answer.
“The rest of the world knows that you’re handsome and charming and persuasive,” she said. “That’s surface stuff that you couldn’t hide if you tried. You’ve got to show her what only your family truly knows. That you’re protective. Proud. Loyal. That when you choose to love, it’s for life.”
He blinked away some moisture in his eyes.
“She’s worth it, Cal,” his mother said. “Worth the fear and the vulnerability.”
He sighed deeply, the anger dissipating, replaced with astonishment at how his mom managed to hit the nail on the head every single time.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” she asked.
He thought for a minute.
She might not choose me.
I’d be without her after learning what life could be like with her.
Put another way, he’d be in the exact same spot he was in right now. Which meant he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Ideas whizzed through his mind faster than he could process them. How could he begin the work of giving away a heart he’d kept under lock for more than a decade?
It would take time and thought, which meant it would have to wait until after Bloomsburo Days. Starting Tuesday he’d be working fourteen-hour days through the weekend. But before he could give any more thought to his strategy for winning Winnie, his sister Haven stuck her head out of the sliding glass door, her playful attitude dissolving the intense mood on the front porch.
“Hey, chef boy, are we ever going to eat? The girls are starving.”
“So what you’re saying is that you are starving,” he said lightly.
“Well, yeah, but I thought I could inspire you into action more quickly if it was for your sweet nieces instead of your pesky sister.”
“You know me well. I’ll be right in.”
Haven tucked back inside and Cal leaned over and gave his mom a kiss on the cheek.
“You’re a wise woman.”
“So you’ll work for it?” she said, her voice full of a hope she didn’t even bother to temper.
“I’ll take it under consideration.”
“Because I take it personally, you know, when you sell yourself short. I raised a good person. I want someone to appreciate him. I want someone to come home with you for Sunday dinner and tell me what a fine job I did raising this handsome man, thanking me and praising me profusely. Especially after I went to the hard work of hand-delivering the perfect woman to you.”
He grabbed her cheek affectionately.
“You’re a meddler and a narcissist,” he said with a grin, before helping his mom up and walking arm-in-arm back into the boisterous kitchen.
He might not know yet how he was going to try to win Winnie’s trust, but even the knowledge that he was going to fight for her made him feel lighter and the long days ahead seem more bearable.