by Robyn Neeley
Chapter 2
She probably would have stayed at the window long into the night if the fading daylight hadn’t made it too difficult to watch the snowfall. At one point, Sam, not saying a word, had dragged a tall, wingback chair over to the big bay window. He grabbed a pillow off the couch and propped it up against the back of the chair, arched a brow and gestured for Wynter to sit down. She’d shrugged her shoulders but given in. When he’d added an old afghan she’d groaned. She wasn’t an old lady. She was just pregnant. She had to admit, though, it was kind of nice to be coddled.
Not only was it getting hard to see outside, but inside as well. Regretfully, Wynter turned her back on the steady snowfall. It was comforting, she decided, the way a storm kept people inside. The more snow that fell, the cozier it felt. She turned on a table lamp and went to stand in front of the gas-powered fireplace. The flames were mesmerizing, and the warmth fortifying, but there was something about the snap and crackle of a real, wood-burning fireplace that made this modern one feel fake.
The old farmhouse was so quiet, Sam having hidden away in his office to get some work done. Or so he said. She couldn’t blame him for hiding. He’d spent years avoiding the past and here she’d gone and dredged it all up again. Her being here was awkward, uncomfortable for both of them. Again, she regretted the desperation that had her rushing to search out her one-time best friend before considering what things would be like once she’d found him. She had tried to talk to him earlier. She figured he’d want to know about Holt, at the very least. But she guessed Sam just wasn’t ready. She’d try again another time.
Wynter decided to give herself a little tour of Sam’s home. He hadn’t said there was anywhere she couldn’t go, yet she felt a little like Belle, sneaking through the Beast’s castle on her way to the forbidden west wing. She stifled a giggle as she snuck past the closed door at the end of the hall. The strip of light beneath revealed Sam’s office, his hideout. She didn’t even know what he did for a living.
Upstairs she found her bags had been left in a spare bedroom. She flipped on the overhead light and nodded her approval. Unlike the downstairs, the upstairs was carpeted, plush, and luxurious beneath her bare feet. The room wasn’t overly masculine or disgustingly frilly, but struck a nice balance. Wynter would have chosen a similar shade of green for her own walls, but their apartment lease had specifically prohibited painting the walls of their tiny rental.
The bedding and curtains were a neutral white. She gasped when she discovered the deep window had a cushioned bench. Oh, to curl up in that spot and read the day away! She gave it a test sit for now, pressing her fingers to the chilly glass. She couldn’t wait to see it during a gorgeous, sunny day. Sometimes she wondered if she might have been a cat in a former life.
Tiptoeing across the hall, Wynter slipped into Sam’s room. This was so different from his childhood bedroom. No Star Wars spaceships hanging from the ceiling or action figures cluttering every available surface. The ugly blue comforter with a crude recreation of the solar system had been replaced with a soft brown duvet. She knew this because she couldn’t help reaching out to run her fingertips over the smooth fabric.
The room was comfortable, inviting, but it was lacking … something. Wynter turned in a circle, approving of the overstuffed bookshelves, the piles of books on both matching bedside tables. Sam’s closet door was firmly shut. She wondered if he still had trouble sleeping if he knew it was open. No clothes littered the floor. Well, that was new.
Then she realized what had bothered her. Most people had photos on the walls, on dressers or tables. It was what gave a room personality, heart. Sam’s bedroom didn’t showcase a single photograph. Nothing that captured memories of his childhood, of his family. Not even a picture of his late parents. Wynter wanted to cry for the boy she had known.
“You want to tell me why you’re poking your nose in my room?”
Wynter turned to face her old friend. His tall form filled most of the doorframe. An unruly lock of chestnut hair fell down over one eye, just as it had since she’d met him, the first day of kindergarten. She noticed a jagged scar that bisected his right eyebrow. That was new … to her. His hazel eyes flickered with irritation. She looked down, guiltily.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in. I just wanted to see if I could learn a little about you from your house, your things.”
“You were going through my things?” His voice growled, even deeper than before.
“No! I didn’t mean it that way.” She scowled in frustration, started to reach out to him and stopped herself.
“Sam. I miss my best friend. Where did you go?” They both knew she didn’t mean here, in this farmhouse in backwoods Vermont.
“You didn’t need me. Neither did Holt. You had each other. You didn’t seem to notice I was gone until he died.”
Wynter sucked in a hiss through her teeth, like she’d been hit in the stomach. She flinched, noting the look of satisfaction on Sam’s face. He’s trying to push me away again. This is deliberate. Instead of feeling anger or hurt, Wynter felt a deep sense of sadness—for Sam.
Again, she forced herself to remain still, when her whole being wanted to go to him, comfort him. She pasted on a cheerful smile and stood up straight.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I came into your room without asking first. I promise to do a better job of staying out of your hair.”
She sidestepped past him through the doorway, her hand brushing against his at the last moment. Her eyes flew wide. The only way she could describe what she felt was an awareness. That one brief touch had her seeing Sam as a man. A grown up, virile man. Oh, this was not good.
Willing her racing heart to calm down, Wynter slunk back into the room that held her belongings. She shut the door and leaned back, her head banging softly against the wood.
She needed to get used to the fact that Sam had changed. Where once her old friend had been supportive, always willing to lend an ear, this new Sam was surly and reclusive. Her old Sam had been skinny, all knees, elbows, and harsh angles. Now he was … No. She refused to go there.
Wynter had not come here looking to hook up. She’d come to the man she’d once thought of as a brother. Only this Sam felt nothing like a brother to her. Oh, this was not good. Again, she was reminded of how disastrous her impulsive decision to change her plane ticket had been. Now she was trapped in Nowhere, Vermont, with raging hormones and a man who had no business looking so damned hot in plaid flannel and a thermal undershirt. No, this was not good.
• • •
The room was exactly as he remembered it. Walls painted a light lavender, the trim a snappy white. The gauzy curtains had been drawn for the night. A patchwork quilt, his mother’s pride and joy, covered the bed where they slept.
A relentless blaring from the alarm clock on his father’s side of the bed had drawn Sam into his parents’ room, once he’d snuck back into the house that fateful morning. The sound was jarring and yet neither bundle beneath the quilt stirred.
Hand trembling, knowing a fear that came from deep in his bowels, Sam reached out to cup his mother’s shoulder. She wouldn’t wake up. Why wouldn’t she wake up?
He sat up with a start, soaked in a cold sweat, panting and disoriented. It had been years since he’d had this dream, no, this nightmare. He sat up, lowered his head into his cupped hands and struggled to slow his racing heart. His jaw hardened and his eyes narrowed. She’d brought the nightmares back. It was Wynter’s fault.
Swinging his legs out of bed, he stuffed them into a pair of sweats and headed for the doorway, intent on a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich. To hell with the fact that it was—he glanced back at the digital clock on the nightstand—two-thirty in the morning. Peanut butter was his comfort food.
Sam slipped quietly down the hall, resentful that he now had to be respectful of his new houseguest. The immature part of his brain, the part that had never grown up, wanted to whistle past her door, jump down the stairs, whoop and ho
ller and wake the dead. He settled for slamming the fridge and cupboard doors. He grumbled while he slapped the peanut butter spread onto a slice of wheat bread.
He heard a slight sound and his head snapped up, his eyes focused on the doorway. Wynter stepped into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. Aw, crap! Now he felt like a jerk for waking her up. He plated the sandwich and held it out to her.
“Ah, no, thanks. I’m not hungry … just desperately thirsty.” Her smile was shy.
“I’m sorry I woke you up. I needed a snack.” She didn’t need to know about his nightmares.
“Oh, you didn’t wake me. I don’t get much sleep lately. I think it’s the body’s way of preparing itself for the sleepless months ahead.” She giggled softly, rubbing her belly.
Sam took down another glass from the cupboard and filled it with milk. This she gladly accepted. She pulled out a stool and sat at the kitchen island, groaning as she took the first sip. Sam had to stifle his own groan as his body reacted, all too easily, to that sultry sound. He stuffed his sandwich into his mouth, his mind desperately searching for a safer topic to latch onto.
“You kept tabs.” Wynter interrupted his racing thoughts, setting down her glass of milk and fixing Sam with a challenging stare. “You knew about Holt and me.”
“I never asked. Pauline just couldn’t keep it to herself.” His sister, a die-hard romantic, had heard it through the grapevine and figured he’d want to know that his two best friends had found happiness together. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
“It wasn’t like we were sneaking around in high school.” She reached down and began to twist the terry cloth belt that held her skimpy robe together.
“After what happened, and you leaving us … We just sort of took comfort in each other.”
“Like you wouldn’t have fallen into bed with each other eventually?” He knew he was being hurtful, but he couldn’t help it. He hurt too.
“I missed you, Sam! Holt missed you too. He knew how upset I was that you just cut me—cut us—out of your life like that. I leaned on him. One thing led to another.” She pushed her glass away and slipped off the stool, hugging her arms tightly around herself.
It was his fault. He had pushed Wynter into the arms of his best friend. He had no one else to blame. Oh, things just got better and better. Sam watched her for a moment. She was grieving and he’d been a prick to attack a relationship that had been cut down in its prime, with Holt’s death.
“I’m sorry. He was your husband. He was a good man. You deserved to have forever together.”
The hysterical laugh that burbled from her throat caught Sam by surprise. She wouldn’t look at him. He’d pushed her past her limits. She was tired, fragile. He tossed his mostly untouched sandwich on his plate and skirted the counter.
“Wynter, I’m sorry. If I could bring him back for you I would.” Sam paused, unsure how to ask the next question. “How long ago did he … Um, how long ago was it?”
Eyes studying the floor tiles, Wynter took her time answering. Her fingers still fiddled with the ties on her ratty bathrobe. She finally met his gaze, her jaw trembling slightly.
“It wasn’t too long after we’d found out we were expecting. Maybe three weeks or so? It seems so long ago, and yet I still find myself turning to tell him something and remembering he’s not there.” She sounded so lost.
“God, Wyn.”
He folded her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin and rocked side to side. Don’t cry, please don’t cry. She shook her head back and forth, pushing against his chest with her fists before crumbling against him. She whispered his name before wrapping her arms around his waist and hanging on tight.
She smelled of vanilla, warm and heady. He buried his nose in her hair and breathed deeply. His Wynter. She was back in his life. He could say he didn’t know how much he had missed her until she’d shown up on his porch, but that wasn’t true. Missing Wynter had been the cruelest torture Sam had ever had to endure.
Losing his parents had been bad enough. But they were gone, and they couldn’t come back. Wynter was alive and she’d moved on. Growing up, he’d always thought they’d share all of life’s milestones together. And now here she was, in his arms again, but carrying another man’s child.
Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, Sam held her, memorizing the moment to replay later in his mind. His body was betraying him and he couldn’t let her see, or feel, how she affected him. With all the willpower he possessed, he extracted himself from their embrace. Again, she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed.
“You’re cold. You should get back to bed. Get some rest.” He reached out to rub some warmth back into her arm, thought better of it, and dropped his hand.
Wynter smiled gently. “Thanks for keeping me company for a bit. I hope you can get back to sleep for a few more hours.” Wiggling her fingers, she turned and padded from the room.
He watched her go, the hem of her short robe swishing as she walked. He was a perv! Sam plowed his hands through his hair in frustration. Angry with his behavior, his feelings, he tugged at the locks until it hurt, cursing himself for being such a dick. Wynter was a widow. A pregnant widow. Get your mind out of the friggin’ gutter, jerk! He chastised himself. Holt had been his friend too. He couldn’t betray a friend by hitting on his wife, even if she had been a widow for the better part of six months.
He’d passed up the chance to make Wynter his own a long time ago. He couldn’t blame his friend for snatching up the best thing that had ever happened to either of them. She had come to him as a friend and he needed to respect that, his feelings for Wynter be damned.
Chapter 3
“Where are you? What on Earth do you think you’re doing? See? This is exactly why you need to come home. Thirty years old and you go jetting off to who-knows-where without a second thought, and this close to your due date.”
Wynter held the phone away from her ear. She had no trouble hearing her mother’s shrill tirade, nonetheless. She rolled her eyes, certain her mother could somehow see that through their cell phone connection.
Dropping onto the window seat in the bedroom, she tried to hold it together. She pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache starting to bloom over her right eye. In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have let all thirty-seven (yes, there were that many!) of her mother’s phone calls go to voicemail yesterday. It only made having to make that one return call this much harder.
“How do you expect to raise a baby when you are this irresponsible? You can’t. That’s why you need to come home.”
“I do want to go home, Mom. That’s what I’ve always wanted. But you don’t live in Scallop Shores anymore. You live in Florida. That’s not home.”
“How dare you sass me, young lady? Burt, she’s sassing me again.” Her mother hadn’t even bothered to cover the phone as she dragged Wynter’s dad into the conversation.
There was a brief pause and then he came on the line.
“Wynter Elise Allen, you give your mother the respect she deserves!”
“Grayson.” She reminded her father of the married name she’d had for almost ten years.
“What? You know damned well what I meant.” He mumbled a brief rant about ungrateful daughters that she wasn’t sure was meant for her ears.
“Where are you? We’ll come pick you up and take you home.”
“What? No! You can’t do that.” Panic had her raising her voice unintentionally.
Visions from her childhood made Wynter’s heart race, and chilled her blood. She remembered every moment she’d ever spent locked in her bedroom for daring to have an opinion of her own, or the times she’d been locked in there for something one of her brothers did. They didn’t have parents; they had prison wardens. And the bitch of it was, they were basically good kids. They hadn’t deserved to be treated so harshly. At least that was what the therapist (Holt had insisted she see one after they’d started college and she was safely away from her parents’ influence) h
ad explained to her. She was mortified when Sam loomed in the doorway, watching her closely as he gauged the situation.
“Young lady, we know what’s best for your baby. You are coming with us so we can take care of her.”
“Like hell!”
She was an adult now. Years of therapy had taught her to stand up for herself. However, it couldn’t stop the scared little girl from wanting to run and hide. Her eyes focused on Sam. She was torn between wanting to shield him from this unpleasant exchange and wanting him to step in and rescue her.
Apparently she looked more terrified than in control of the situation. His features hardened and he stalked into the bedroom. He held a hand out for her cell phone. Wynter shook her head, determined not to cry. He nodded, though he looked stern, as he sat down beside her, taking her hand in support.
“You aren’t ready for this, Wynnie. We know what’s best for you. We’re going to come get you. Just tell us where you are.” There it was again. That tone. Like he was speaking to a petulant child. Like someone speaking to an inmate at an asylum, in an attempt to keep them from raging out of control.
“Daddy, I was married for eight years before I decided I was finally ready for a baby. Just because she’s not going to have a father anymore, doesn’t mean I am any less fit to be her mother. You and Mom need to back off.”
“We’re only trying to help you.”
“And I don’t need your kind of help.” She tried to say it nicely, but he just wasn’t making this very easy.
“I still think we should come get you. I can track this call, you know.”
Fear zinged through her as Wynter considered this. He was bluffing. Please, God, let him be bluffing.
