How Sweet It Is

by Wendy Vella

  “It’s okay, Buster. It took me three years to work things out, but I got there eventually.”

  “The world isn’t all bad, you know. Some people are worth trusting.”

  “Maybe, but I think my way is safer, and it works for me.”

  “So tomorrow you’ll go back to New York and go on living your lonely, sterile existence?”

  She stepped out of his arms. “It’s not lonely and sterile,” she said, even though she knew he was right. Compared to what she’d shared here in Howling, her life in New York did dawn long and lonely before her. Coming here had cracked the façade she’d lived behind, and she wondered if she’d changed so much that she’d never be able to rebuild it.

  “So why didn’t you go home after those people stole from you?”

  “I’ve already had this conversation with Macy,” she said calmly. “I’m not having it with you as well.”

  “I want you to tell me.”

  “So, what’s the deal with Jessica?” Willow said.

  “Who?”

  “I heard her name mentioned in connection with you, and seeing as you’re asking me personal stuff, I thought maybe I’d reciprocate.”

  He started moving to the music again, hands on her hips, guiding her steps along with his once more. “She was my ex.”

  “What happened?” Willow wanted to bury her nose in that dip at the base of his throat and inhale. He’d be warm and a bit sweaty and he’d taste and smell delicious.

  “She wasn’t after the same thing I was, so I cut and ran.”

  “After she broke your heart?”

  He didn’t show that he was agitated by her question, but he was. Willow knew that because she’d spent so many hours watching him. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes had narrowed. He used to get angry with patrons in his café, but he’d never let it show, but she’d seen the small signs.

  “You ever had your heart broken, New York?”

  “Yes,” she added. “But not in the usual way.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Willow shrugged but didn’t meet his eyes, and they fell silent. She watched Ethan pull Annabelle against his chest, and she wrapped her arms around his waist. It was intimate, and clearly they loved each other very much. She found Jake and Branna also on the dance floor, doing the same.

  “So you’re leaving tomorrow or the day after?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “We’d better make the most of it, then.”

  “Most of wh—”

  He placed a soft kiss on her lips before pulling her in to his chest for a slow dance. Willow did nothing to stop him. Instead, she leaned against the solid wall of muscle and sighed. It was slow and sensual, and she felt every movement of his body as it brushed hers. By the time the music stopped, they were both aroused.

  “Thank you for teaching me to dance,” she said, stepping out of his arms.

  “Anytime.” His eyes showed no emotion.

  “I need to get back to the table, to make sure Amelia’s not dancing on it,” she said before she headed off the dance floor.

  “Sure. I need to see a friend first. I’ll catch up with you soon.”

  Willow nodded and walked back to the others. Amelia wasn’t dancing on the table, but she was perched on Newman’s knee explaining in detail the benefits of hops for sleeplessness and anxiety.

  “Hey, Willow.” Jade came to her side and looped an arm around her waist. It was a gesture they had often exchanged before she left home, but this was the first time they’d shared it in many years.

  “Why is Amelia sitting on Newman’s lap?”

  “They’re just talking. No harm done.”

  Willow looked at the faces in the booth. They all seemed relaxed, so maybe it was okay.

  “Will you talk to me for a while?” Jade asked, leading her away from the table to two empty chairs.

  She couldn’t find a reason not to, so Willow nodded and sat.

  “You want a drink?”

  “No, thank you.” Willow wondered why her sister was looking at her so intently. They’d been close once. Jade was her other half. They were different as night and day, but they’d been sisters for sixteen years.

  “I’m going to have a baby,” Jade said so low that only Willow could hear.

  Willow wasn’t sure why she was shocked, but she was. She knew nothing about her sister, other than what had been in the few emails they’d shared, and she realized that she still thought of Jade as sixteen years old.

  “Who’s the father?”

  Willow was relieved to see the soft smile on her twin’s face, which suggested she cared a lot for the man.

  “Harry has a cold, so he stayed in bed. Othewise he would have come to meet you. He’s a wonderful man. I love him very much.”

  “I’m happy for you, Jade, really I am. When is the baby due? Amelia and Shane must be excited.”

  “Very, and they’re already getting things out of storage from when we were babies, even though I’m only four months along.”

  Looking at the face that had once been so dear to her, Willow felt something move inside her, a subtle shift of emotions that made her feel exposed and needy.

  “I want you to be there at the birth,” Jade said.

  “What?” Willow shook her head. “No. Really? Surely not…I mean we…I haven’t—”

  “We don’t know each other anymore? Haven’t been close in years?” Jade guessed, and Willow nodded. “I love you so much, sister. You’ve been a part of me since I formed my first thought. Do you believe that distance can change that?”

  “I’m sorry,” Willow blurted.

  “For what?”

  “Leaving you and not coming back.”

  “Why didn’t you come back?”

  “I…I couldn’t live like that any longer. I wasn’t like you. I didn’t enjoy the instability. All that moving around.”

  “Shane and Amelia are good people, Willow. They’re just different.”

  “Maybe I’m different too,” Willow choked out as she jumped to her feet. “Maybe I needed them to understand that.”

  Jade got to her feet also and wrapped her arms around Willow, holding her stiff body tight until Willow slumped against her and hugged her back.

  “I missed you,” Jade whispered. “Please don’t walk away from me again.”

  “I-I can’t…please.” Willow felt choked up, her throat clogged with the words she had kept inside for so long. “I have to go now, but I promise that I’ll come and see you and meet Harry before I leave Lake Howling, okay?”

  Jade nodded, her eyes sad as she sat once more. Only Shane and Amelia were seated in the booth when Willow reached it. Her father had an arm around his wife as they watched the dancers.

  “Daughter,” her father said. “Will you sit with us for a while?”

  “I was just heading home, but I told Jade that I’d come and see you before I leave tomorrow.”

  “Sit and talk. We have much to share.”

  She hadn’t heard that particular tone from her father in a long time. Perching on the edge of the seat, she looked steadily at him. “Jade told me about the baby. I’m very happy for you all.”

  “And you also. You’ll be an auntie now,” Amelia said.

  “Yes.” Willow nodded and thought that maybe being an auntie would make her visit her family occasionally.

  “You’re still angry with us, aren’t you?” Shane asked.

  “I’m not angry with you,” she denied quickly.

  “Yes, you are. Amelia and I know that you thought we didn’t understand how much you disliked our lifestyle while you were growing up. What you have to understand is that we chose to live that way and changing everything for you would hardly be fair to the rest of us.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Willow tried to force her anger back down. “I had no right to expect you to change.”

  “We wanted you to be happy. You have to know that.”

  Suddenly words were spewing from
her lips, and she could do nothing to stop them. “What I wanted was for you to respect me enough to see that I was different. That I hated never sleeping in my own bed or going to a normal school. That I didn’t want to be different and stand out from the crowd. I wanted books and education, I wanted stability, but you never gave me that.” God, she sounded like a petulant brat. So many children had lives worse than hers, and yet she couldn’t seem to stop the anger raging inside her.

  “We did what we thought was best for you,” Amelia said.

  “Well, it wasn’t best for me.”

  “What happened to you when you left us? We lost contact with you, and when we found you again, you wanted nothing to do with us,” Shane told her.

  “Did you ever think to wonder why?” Don’t say anything else. Let it lie, she thought, but even as she had that thought, she felt another surge of rage that she knew was going to make her say something else she’d regret.

  “Yes, but you were old enough to make your own choices, or so we hoped.”

  “I was sixteen!” Willow snapped. “And raised in a commune. I left you with no life skills other than how to weave and make soap.”

  “What happened?” her father asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “We’re your parents, and we love you—”

  “No! If you’d loved me, you wouldn’t have let me walk out into the world like a lamb to the slaughter. I was hopeless out there, but too angry to come home with my tail between my legs, because I loathed it there too.”

  “We knew you weren’t happy. That was why we let you go. We raised you to make your own choices, and this was another one,” Amelia said. “Life lessons make you what you are today.”

  Willow’s laugh was high-pitched, bordering on hysterical. “Uptight, emotionally scared and commitment phobic. Nice work Mom, Dad,” she said. “It worked. All that freedom certainly molded me into a nut job.”

  “Amelia and Shane,” her mother gently reminded her.

  “Maybe I wanted you to be Mom and Dad,” Willow said, trying to get herself under control. “Maybe I hated calling you Amelia and Shane. Did you ever think about that?”

  “Did you?” her father asked.

  “Yes,” Willow hissed. “Just like I hated always being different from every other kid in every town we visited.”

  “What happened to you, daughter?” Amelia made a move toward her, but Willow got to her feet, ready to run.

  “Too much to say, and too much water to ever cross,” she said, sounding dramatic and not giving a damn. Ignoring the worry on her parents’ faces, she grabbed her bag and coat and ran through the crowd as quickly as she could. When she reached the door, she wrenched it open and walked out into the frigid evening air. Inhaling several cold breaths, she shrugged into her coat and slung her bag over her shoulder.

  She didn’t need this crap. She was leaving tonight. She’d drive to Brook and get a room, then fly out in the morning. This place was driving her crazy, making her do and say things she would never have said or done in New York. It was like she was on some weird drug, totally out of control.

  Walking down the main street, she tried to calm down and make plans. It hadn’t snowed today—just a few flurries, nothing major—so she should be okay to drive, as long as she took it slow. She’d send Macy a text saying she was leaving in the morning, and could she forward Willow Buster’s email address. If he wanted to look over the contract she’d send it to him; if not, she no longer cared.

  She didn’t owe these people anything. In fact, she’d probably never see them again. This thought depressed her so much that she started walking faster to drive the turmoil from her head.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Buster, you got a minute?”

  “Sure.” Buster said goodbye to Walt Heath and followed Noah Harris across the room until they were clear of people. “What’s up?”

  “I just saw Willow leave with her coat and bag.”

  “Who was she with?”

  “No one.”

  “What? Why’d she do that?”

  “She looked upset, Buster.”

  “Okay. Thanks, man. I’ll check it out.” After a moment of looking around, he found Jake on the dance floor. “Noah told me Willow just left alone. I’m going to see what’s going on.”

  “What’s the deal with that family?” Jake said. “They have this weird tension between them.”

  “No clue, but I need to find her before she freezes to death.”

  “Call if you need help.”

  Buster lifted a hand and left. Pulling on his coat, he walked outside The Howler and looked up and down the street. There was no sign of Willow anywhere, so he headed for the Jeep, wrenched open the door and jumped in. He gunned the engine Jake kept running sweetly and headed out of town on the lake road.

  “Where the hell are you, you crazy New Yorker?” Fear started to gnaw at his insides. She could have fallen and hit her head and be lying somewhere unconscious. There were plenty of people he didn’t know in town; one of them could have grabbed her.

  “Shit, Griffin, calm the fuck down,” he told himself. “She only left a few minutes before you.”

  His lights picked her up walking at the edge of the road beside the lake. The wind was buffeting her, so she must be freezing. Pulling the jeep to a stop, he swung open the door.

  “Get in,” he told her firmly.

  “I can walk. It’s n-not far.”

  “Get in, or I throw you in.”

  She did, then slammed the door and huddled against it.

  “That wasn’t a very slick move,” he said. “It’s freezing out there, and starting to snow. You would have had hypothermia by the time you reached the cabin.”

  “I’m an a-adult. I c-an make my own decisions.”

  Swearing loudly, Buster found a blanket in the back seat and threw it over her, then cranked up the heater. “Why’d you run out like that, when any one of us would have driven you home?”

  “My-my family. I-I…th-they—”

  “And that means shit to me, but since you can’t form any words we’ll get back to that.”

  He pulled back onto the road and headed for the cabin. Minutes later he parked as close to the door as he could get. Then he walked around to her side of the Jeep as she opened and stepped out. He lifted her into his arms before she took the first step. She was a block of ice, shivering, teeth banging together.

  “I can walk, Buster, I-I’m all right, just cold.”

  “Keys,” he snapped ignoring her and heading for the the door.

  “N-not l-locked.”

  He didn’t comment on the fact that she’d let her security standards lapse, instead opening the door and shutting it behind him. Then he walked to the bathroom and lowered her to her feet, reaching behind him to close the door and shut them in the small space.

  “For an intelligent woman, Willow Harper, you just did a really stupid thing,” he said, turning on the faucets. Anger was surging through his body at the risks she’d just taken.

  She couldn’t answer because her teeth were clenched together to stop them from chattering. He’d seen enough hypothermia to know right off she wasn’t there, and a hot shower was all she needed to warm her up. That alone should cool his temper, but it didn’t Steam started to fill the small space as he took her coat, then stripped off her clothes, down to her bra and panties. She didn’t fight him; she was too cold to even try, so he picked her up and dropped her under the hot spray.

  “I bet that’s gonna hurt real soon,” he said, trying to ignore the fact that her body was a work of art, and he wanted to map every inch with his hands and mouth.

  The breath hissed from her throat seconds later as she started to thaw out.

  “Stay in there until I get back.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his words, instead closing her eyes and resting her head on the wall. Her hair was slicked back from her face and her makeup was running in black rivers down her cheeks, yet Buster had
never wanted a woman more.

  He made himself walk to the kitchen to put on coffee, then stoked up the fire and headed for her room to throw open the door, hard enough that it hit the wall with a thud, to let the heat in. He returned to the shower with anger and lust still riding him as he walked into the steam-filled room.

  “Can you feel your toes and fingers?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was subdued.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Willow Moonbeam Harper.”

  He couldn’t raise a smile. “Where were you born?”

  “At midnight, in a field near Batchtown, Illinois.”

  “I bet that stuck in your craw, you being a prissy madam and all.”

  “I’m not, and my family are not bad people.”

  “Yeah, I can feel the love when you’re all together. So what was that shit back there in The Howler? Why were you running away from them?”

  “I got mad.”

  “Why are you angry with them?”

  “Because they didn’t care enough.”

  He had a feeling there was a whole lot more to that statement that he needed to understand, but he’d let it ride for now. He stripped off his clothes, then stepped into the spray.

  “Wh-what—”

  Sealing her lips with his own, he took her mouth in a savage kiss. Where one stopped, another started. Gripping her wrists, he raised her hands above her head and stepped close to her body, holding it upright with his own.

  “Buster…”

  He swallowed her moan. “You could have died out there,” he rasped, wrenching his mouth from hers and skating his lips over her jaw.

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m so fucking angry with you right now, New York.”

  “Show me how angry.”

  Lifting his head, Buster looked into her lavender eyes. Her lids were lowered slightly, her lips red from his kisses. Her hair hung in thick, wet tails around her face, and she looked sultry and so hot he wasn’t sure he could hold off from wrapping her legs around his waist and sinking deep into her wet heat.

  He lowered his head and sucked her nipple through the wet cup of her bra. She arched into his mouth, so he did it again. Reaching behind her, he undid the clasp and removed the bra so he could cup her breasts, then lifted the lush flesh to his lips, where he lathed and lapped until she was moaning low in her throat.