It was after eleven by the time Cal pulled into his driveway with Winnie in the passenger seat of his car. The medic had checked her over thoroughly. A concussion was unlikely, but he’d said she’d likely experience head pain for a few days. Carter had met them there, taking their statements in the back of the ambulance, and by the time he’d finished, Winnie claimed that the symptoms of shock were mostly gone. Now she just felt dazed and exhausted.
“Cal…your house?” Winnie said hesitantly.
“I said I wasn’t leaving your side tonight. I’ll sleep in the guest room.”
He helped her out of the car, up his front steps and into the peaceful darkness of his living room.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, wanting more than anything to make her comfortable.
She shook her head.
“Just tired. The only thing I really want is the one thing I can’t have. A bath.”
“Why can’t you have a bath?”
“Have you seen the bathroom in my cottage?” He suddenly remembered the harsh plastic lining of the narrowest stand-up shower he’d ever seen.
“Take one here.”
She blinked at him, not following.
“I’ve got a whirlpool tub in the master bathroom.”
And just like that, he watched her anxious face soften with longing. He wished he had inspired it, but if his luxury tub excited the woman, brought her some sort of peace, he’d take it. Visions of Winnie’s buoyant breasts covered in water and soapy bubbles floated through his mind but he quickly regained control. Tonight wasn’t about that.
“I couldn’t possibly…” Winnie whispered unconvincingly.
“Winnie, I brought you here to make sure you were comfortable tonight.”
“It’s just…” she hesitated. He gently pulled her hand and led her upstairs to a part of his house she’d never seen. They made their way to his master bedroom and she paused at the threshold, her eyes widened with an unreadable emotion. They passed the tufted frame of his king-sized bed on their way to the door leading into the bathroom. When she took in the size of the Jacuzzi tub, the gorgeous stone work that surrounded it, and the ambient lighting that Cal had turned on to showcase it, she gasped.
“Oh, my.” For the second time in as many minutes he was envious of his damn bathroom.
“Let me draw it for you, and then I’ll give you some privacy, okay?”
She nodded her consent, leaning against the door frame while he turned on the water.
“My gel soap works pretty well as bubble bath, if you’re into that kind of thing,” he offered. She nodded with a small smile and he added a few squeezes of it into the faucet’s strong stream.
When the tub was full of hot water and fragrant bubbles, he turned off the faucet and showed Winnie the controls on the side—one slider for the front jets, another for the back jets, and a third for the lights.
He set out a fluffy towel and washcloth, some shampoo, and an unopened travel toothbrush and toothpaste.
“Take your time,” he said, walking through the door. “I’m going to go grab a robe you can put on when you’re done.”
She nodded and he closed the door behind him. He tried to keep his thoughts gentlemanly. Tried not to think about her undressing. Tried not to think about the water slipping temptingly over every inch of her body.
He found the robe he was looking for in the guest room closet, made his way back to the door and knocked gently. When he cracked open the door, he saw that her eyes were closed and her face looked peaceful as she rested beneath the bubbles, which was a marked improvement.
“I’ll just set this here,” he said, looking at the hamper where he placed the soft, white terrycloth robe. He closed the door quickly behind himself and willed himself to get a grip. Winnie had a lot of needs tonight, and his body needed to remember that right now, they had little to do with him. As for tomorrow, or next week, or next month? Only time would tell.
He paced the house, emptying the dishwasher, changing into a soft T-shirt and flannel pants, checking his emails on his phone to make sure there were no Bloomsburo Days-related emergencies to address, though anything that came up at this point would be pittance compared to what the day had already brought.
He could hear through the ceiling that Winnie was draining the tub, and he slowly made his way back to the bedroom where he found her standing near the edge of his bed wrapped up in the robe he’d provided. Her cheeks were flushed a healthy pink, and her hair fell down her chest, heavier and longer and darker from its wetness.
“Better?” he asked, shoving his hands in the pockets of his flannel pants.
“Much.”
“Is there anything else you need?”
She shook her head no, the sadness—her quietness—nearly killing him.
“Okay, well you can just crash in here,” he said, turning down the duvet for her and clicking on the lamp on the bedside table.
“I’ll be in the guest room just down the hall if you need me,” he continued, forcing himself to walk away from this woman in his bed. The woman he wanted to hold more than anything in the world.
“You sure you aren’t hungry?” he asked, turning back to her once more in a last-ditch effort to delay the inevitable. Not to mention that his need to feed the woman was damn near pathological.
She shook her head once more and he slowly walked out of the room, turning out the overhead light and half closing the door behind him. He stood in the hall for minutes, unsure what to do with himself. He couldn’t go to sleep. Not like this. Not with his mind reeling from the events of the day. Not with the woman he needed like oxygen just a few feet away, tucked into the bed he’d never shared with another.
The memory of the evening’s events suddenly hit him like a bullet train. He’d been so busy making sure Winnie was okay that he hadn’t even fully processed what had happened. Suddenly the image of that gun pointed at Winnie’s throat burned into his mind, and panic gripped his chest once more.
He’d never known such fear. Any lingering doubts about what he felt for Winnie had disappeared in an instant. That minute, the longest of his life, when his mind considered the possibility of a world without Winnie, had been devastating. He didn’t want to know a tomorrow without her light in his life.
With her courage and quick thinking, she may have saved his life. Had he even thanked her?
He walked quietly back toward his bedroom door, debating whether or not to knock, when the sound of her soft sobs floated from his bed.
“Winnie,” he called, opening the door and seeing her crumpled in her robe in a pile on top of the sheets. He crawled up onto his bed in record time, pulling her into his arms.
“Shhh,” he comforted her, hating the feel of her body shaking with distress in his arms. “Winnie, what is it?”
“You’re not even mine to lose,” she cried, hugging him tighter as her warm tears wetted his T-shirt.
“What are you talking about?”
She sniffled and her face looked up at his, looking splotchy and vulnerable in the soft light from the night stand.
“Everyone’s okay now, Winn,” he whispered, rubbing his hands in circles on her back and instinctively rocking her in his arms.
“He was going to shoot you, Cal. He pointed his gun at you, and he threatened you, and I’ve never been more terrified in my life,” she said between sobs. “I couldn’t survive it if something happened to you…”
She grasped at his shoulders.
“The most ridiculous part is that you’re not even mine to lose.”
Desire and defensiveness shot through his chest with startling force.
“Like hell I’m not.”
Her sobbing stopped in an instant, replaced by a look of shock in her deep brown eyes.
“What?”
He wiped her tears away with the back of his hand before putting his fingers to her lips. Tracing them down the smooth line of her neck. Pressing them under her robe to where he could feel her heart pulse.
“I’m absolutely yours.”
She shook her head no. He dared her to challenge him on this front. She might reject him, but she wouldn’t deny what he felt and neither would he. Not for another minute.
“This was just supposed to be physical,” he continued. “And my God, what a start that was. The pleasures you can draw from my body have haunted me from the beginning.” He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips, coaxing a soft whimper from deep in her throat.
“You’re so gorgeous, Winnie. But you turned out to be so much more,” he said, brushing his hand against her cheek. “You are so determined. Considerate. Talented. So damn goofy that I can’t help but laugh every time I’m with you. Each time you leave my side, I feel like you take half of me with you. It’s only when you’re right next to me that I feel whole again.”
His lips met hers in a deep, sensual connection. The earth suddenly felt as if it was back on its axis as their tongues glided together. As if every wrong had been righted and things were back to the natural, beautiful order that this woman had revealed to him.
He felt her breath hitch in her gorgeous neck.
“I can’t…” she whispered.
“What, love?”
“I can’t lose myself to you. I’m not in your league, Cal. I know it.”
“Don’t,” he said in warning. He wouldn’t accept this from her. Not now. His entire life had been spent listening to this kind of nonsense. Women suggesting that his handsomeness rendered him incapable of commitment. Of mutual attraction. Of basic decency. Hell, he’d told himself the same stories at times. But he wouldn’t stand for it now, though. Not with Winnie.
“Cal, don’t you think you might get bored with me before long?” she offered, vulnerability radiating through her. “You could have any woman you want.”
He grabbed her chin, and oriented her face to focus her directly into his eyes, lest there be any doubt. He wouldn’t stand for it.
“Winnie, I’m not going to lie. A fair number of women have had access to my body, and no, I didn’t have to twist any arms in the process. But they only had my body. None of them had my heart. I didn’t know I was capable of giving it to someone until you literally crashed into my life.”
She snorted, a sobby sort of snort. Still adorable.
“When I thought I’d lost you after our first night together, that was gutting,” he said, his lips pressing against her temple. Her cheek. Her neck, where her pulse throbbed. “But at least you weren’t in danger then. Not like tonight. That prospect, of any harm coming to you, even for a second? That’s when I knew I was ready to stop pretending like you don’t mean the world to me.”
She hugged him close.
“I’m sorry I ran out on you,” she confessed into his shoulder, her voice shaky. “The time with your family, followed by a night with you. It overwhelmed me. It let me start to imagine it.”
“Imagine what?” he asked, gently massaging her scalp with his clever fingers.
“Our life together. Being a part of your family.”
“It was that horrifying of a prospect, huh? Being stuck with me and my family? I know my mom is meddling, but…”
She laughed, sending a fresh set of tears down her cheeks and onto his t-shirt.
“I didn’t run because I was scared of it. I was scared by how much I wanted it. How good it could be. How easily I could get lost in it. How awful it would be to have it taken away from me,” she said, a sob catching in her throat at all of those deep memories of loss. “Losing you would be one thing. But losing your family, after I’d fallen even more in love with them, that was just too much to imagine.”
He rocked her gently in his embrace as the tears worked their way out.
“You make me a better man, Winnie,” he said into her hair. “The aftermath of what my dad did messed with my mind for a long time. I couldn’t ever let myself be like him, and the surest way to do that was to keep women away. To never even toy with a serious relationship.”
“Hence, our deal.”
“Hence, our deal,” he repeated. “I chalk that deal up as one of the biggest failures of my life.”
Her head snapped up in surprise.
“I had one job, and that was to give you physical pleasure while keeping my heart out of it. But the truth was, you’d stolen it before we’d even negotiated the terms of our agreement. Your hand’s been on it since that first afternoon on your porch, in those damned adorable unicorn leggings.”
She laughed, a beautiful sound.
“Winnie, I will never be perfect, but I want to be your lover,” he said, his soft words electric. He kissed her forehead. “I want to be your best friend.”
Cal’s gaze locked into hers with a newfound intensity.
“I want you to be your home, Winnie. And I want you to be mine. So the only question left is—will you have me?”
Her body answered swiftly. She climbed up on top of him, straddling him while she hugged his head into her chest where her robe gaped open.
“Yes,” she said, his new favorite word. The only word he wanted to hear from Winnie Briggs’s lips from this day forward. “God, Cal, how is this real?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll fight for us as hard as I’ve fought for anything in my life. For your happiness.”
“Deal,” she said with a small laugh, but her wet eyes showed the depth of her joy at their reconnection.
He kissed her slower then, sensuously. He tried to convey the depth of his convictions through his mouth.
Her hands busied themselves around her waist and then suddenly, mercifully, her robe fell in a heap around her knees where she straddled him.
“My happiness starts like this,” she ordered, grabbing his hands and pressing them against her breasts—soft and fragrant from her bath.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, feasting on the full slopes before him. His tongue found her nipple and the pressure he yielded there made her moan breathlessly.
“Cal,” she said breathlessly.
“Mmm,” he said, moving his attention to the other breast. Another suckle. Another moan.
“Do we need new ground rules?” she managed between her gasps of pleasure.
His eyes made their way up to hers.
“I suppose we do,” he said, his hands rubbing down her ribs and around her back until her perfect ass filled them. He squeezed her hungrily. A naked, writhing Winnie on top of him made it very difficult to think, but he tried his best.
“I get to wine and dine you whenever the hell I want,” he said. “I’m tired of not dating you.”
She smiled in agreement, running her hands tentatively across the tops her own bare breasts. He watched her hands hungrily, with complete approval.
Jesus.
“Terms of endearment are back on the table,” she insisted, plucking at her own nipples. His cock rose that much harder, which didn’t go unnoticed by her. She rocked her hips in slow circles, beckoning his throbbing arousal through the thin material of his pajama bottoms. “Is that okay with you, babe?” she asked, her eyes like fire.
“That’s more than okay,” he said. Jesus, no one could combine affectionate and sexy like Winnie Briggs. No one. He’d be her baby. Her honey. Her sweetie. She could call him whatever the hell she wanted as long as he got to keep touching her and watching her touch herself.
“Anything else?” she asked, her hips working more intentionally now as she continued to cup her own breasts in her hands. It was evident on her face that his hardness tormented her sweet spot.
“Sleepovers?” he asked. He knew where he stood on the matter, but he wanted to hear her thoughts first. His thumb made its way to her clit and his heart thrilled, watching her face absorb the pleasure of his stroke.
“Umm,” she said, leaning forward and grabbing the headboard behind Cal so she had more leverage. She rubbed harder against him, her breasts now jostling dangerously close to his face. “I…” She couldn’t form a thought beneath his touch, and he fucking loved it.
“I think the answer you’re looking for is that we should have sleepovers as often as possible,” he finished for her.
“God, yes,” she cried, answering his question and reacting to his body all at once. Her hips moved with desperation now and he was more than ready to get his pants off.
“Cal, can we stop talking now? Please?” she panted. “Your mouth is needed elsewhere.”
He grinned as she took her weight off him for just enough time for him to slip off his pants and shirt. She straddled him once more, her aroused sex hovering centimeters above his aching dick. The distance might damn well kill him.
“Shit, I don’t have a condom up here,” he growled. He never brought women home, so his own bedroom wasn’t well-stocked for sexual adventures. He wanted nothing less than to wrench himself from Winnie’s naked body to go on a scavenger hunt through his house while he was rock hard.
Winnie’s eyes softened with shyness.
“I’m on the pill and clean as a whistle,” she offered shyly. “I trust you are, too.” Shit. Just when he thought he couldn’t grow harder, she had to go and say something like that. He got himself tested on a regular basis, yet he’d never taken a woman without a condom. That was just the deal a man made with himself when he avoided the monogamy of committed relationships. He’d fantasized about it plenty, though. And the thought of experiencing such a first with Winnie, well that was too good to be true.
“Winnie, are you sure?” he asked, his mind frenzied at the thought of the act he’d imagined so many times.
“I want to feel all of you,” she begged, her sex writhing above him. “Now.”
He sat up straighter against the headboard, grabbed Winnie’s hips and slowly, slowly pulled her down until inch by inch the unfathomable warmth and wetness of her sex drew him in. Christ, he didn’t think he could feel more for her. More connection. More intimacy. More desire. Yet here it was, this unsheathed melding of their bodies unraveling him beyond what he could have ever imagined.
“God, Winnie,” he cried out at the connection, right as a moan tore from Winnie’s throat. She threw her head back in pleasure and her hand slipped down to stroke her own clit as he thrust into her again with more force.
“Yes,” she purred, gazing down at him with affection and heat and need. “Cal… please,” she muttered incoherently.
Quickly they found their rhythm with Winnie on top, slow and steady at first then faster, with more need, with more affection and desperation. Winnie’s breasts quaked each time their hips crashed together and she put her hands behind her neck, riding him like she’d trained for it. She came first, her cries of pleasure serving as the final straw for him. His own release barreled quickly behind hers and with one final thrust his orgasm surged within her, leaving Cal dizzy with the singular satisfaction of coming deep into her warm depths. Nothing had ever felt so right.
Seconds later, she collapsed next to him on the bed, panting and breathless with a silly grin animating her face. He scooped her into the cradle of his body, feeling her warmth, her softness, feeling just how perfectly they fit together. And just like that, those three words popped into his head once more. This is it.
Physical and emotional satisfaction, mixed with the lingering exhaustion from the eventful day and a staggering orgasm, resulted in a deep drowsiness overcoming him. He was nearly asleep when her voice roused him again.
“One more new ground rule?” she whispered into his chest.
“Mmmm?” he replied sleepily.
“I get unlimited access to that bathtub.”
He chuckled softly. “Deal. As long as you’re open to company in there from time to time.” He kissed her forehead.
“You drive a hard bargain,” she said sleepily into his chest. “But I accept your terms.”
Content that all major guidelines had been addressed, the pair fell into the deepest of sleep.
~-~-~-~-~-~-
Winnie woke up face down in the soft depths of Cal’s king sized bed and she briefly wondered how she could ever force herself to leave it.
The bed, like everything about the man, was pure sensual pleasure. Now that she had been given the green light with his body, Winnie tried to imagine a future that didn’t involve the two of them naked, but it was next to impossible. They’d never leave this bed again. They’d lose their jobs. They’d starve to death. But oh, what a way to go.
She sleepily reached over to his side of the bed, wanting to feel his skin. His warmth. She wanted to reenact the naughty dreams of the man that had flooded her mind all night.
All month, to be more accurate.
But she felt only empty sheets next to her.
She sat up and her heart leapt to her throat when she saw the folded up piece of paper on Cal’s pillow.
He wouldn’t possibly…
She opened the note anxiously and laughed in relief when she read the message written in his sexy scrawl.
I promise I haven’t fled -- I’m just making you breakfast downstairs. I put the special section from the newspaper on the night stand if you want to take a peek. Looks awesome!
Right. It was Friday. Winnie had officially lost all sense of time and place. She picked up her robe off the floor where it had been hastily abandoned the night before, wrapped it around herself, and grabbed the Bloomsburo Days special section off the stand.
Unfolding it, her heart sang. It looked fantastic, she had to admit. Well designed. Nice photos. And the color printing looked vibrant and sharp. She noticed no glaring typos in the headlines she skimmed, which was a comfort.
She leafed casually through the pages, taking special interest in the advertisements—the only part of the section she hadn’t seen yet. She merely left space for them—the production staff at the printers actually plugged them into the pages.
They looked pretty good. She didn’t notice any obvious errors or distorted photos. All in all, she had a lot to feel proud of. Hopefully her publisher would be pleased. She closed the section and tossed it on the bed, when suddenly an image on the back page caught her attention.
She grabbed it for a closer look and her jaw dropped open.
The back full-page ad had been the last-minute request that Danny J. McDonald the Intern had sent over from the Chamber of Commerce. Four huge sprinkle-covered donuts that looked just like the ones on Winnie’s phone case covered the top of the page. Below them a message was written in a huge, quirky purple typeface.
Donuts are sweet
And so are you,
But there is one little thing
I ‘donut’ want to do—
Pretend that I’m not in love with you.
Wanting, more than anything, to be yours, Winnie.
Cal Spencer
She read it again and again, her head shaking in disbelief. Her hands trembling. She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so she did both. She was still crying when she reached the bottom of the stairs, where the tantalizing smell of bacon greeted her. Making her way to the kitchen, she headed straight for Cal, putting her arms around his waist where he stood and worked at the stove in those sexy plaid pajama pants and a soft grey T-shirt. His hair, rumpled from sex and sleep, stuck out in irresistible swirls.
“Morning, beautiful,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel before turning around and facing her. “Winnie, what is it?” he asked spotting her tears.
She held up the back page of the special section and a nervous excitement washed over his handsome face.
“Do you mean it?” she asked, her voice trembling.
The grin that transformed his expression was the most glorious thing she’d ever seen.
“Hell yes, I meant every word. And I’m ready for the world to know what I feel about you.”
Winnie looked at the ad again, then hugged it to her chest in disbelief.
“You prepared this ad days ago.”
“I did. Right after you dumped me.”
Winnie rolled her eyes. “I thought it was just pity sex that first time.”
He shook his head.
“And then this morning I worried that maybe it was just near-death-experience sex.”
He laughed. “Is that a thing?”
“I don’t know. You’re the sex-pert.”
“Now that’s a term of endearment I could get behind,” he said, pulling Winnie in for an embrace. But his eyes turned uncharacteristically serious.
“The truth of it, Winnie, is that I’ve fallen in love with you. The sex is just a bonus. I don’t know if I’ll be the perfect man. I don’t know if I can overcome whatever shortcomings defined my father…”
Winnie, wondering if her heart could actually burst, leaned up and kissed him.
“But just in case you were on the fence about your feelings for me,” Cal said, “I ran out and picked these up this morning.”
He reached behind himself to grab a bakery box from the counter. Opening it, Winnie saw a half dozen pretty pink-frosted donuts covered in the most dazzling rainbow sprinkles.
“You fight dirty, Cal Spencer,” she teased, running her hands over his chest. “If I tried my hardest, I might be able to resist you. But when you’re wielding bacon and donuts? Well, game over. I’m yours.”
“Lucky me,” he said, pulling her in for a deep kiss.
“Mmmm, lucky us,” she said, looking up into his eyes as she clutched at his mussed hair. She finally concluded that morning-after Cal was the sexiest Cal of all. “I’m not going to be the perfect woman,” she admitted.
“And I know I’ll never be the perfect man…” he offered with a kiss to Winnie’s jaw line. A nip at her ear.
“But I love you,” she whispered. The deepest truth she’d ever known. He answered with his mouth. His hands. His body. Even bacon and donuts could wait when Cal Spencer was on the menu. And that was saying something.