Our Love Unhinged (Reluctant Hearts Book 4) (3 page)

“Nah, that’s not an engagement ring,” Jase says, totally unaffected as he dishes up a plate for Haley and then for himself. “He would’ve asked me to help him pick it out.” He freezes as he reaches for the OJ for Haley. “Unless you asked Adam and not me.” He narrows his eyes at me, then darts them to Adam, who holds up his hands.

“I know nothing about a ring,” Adam says.

Jase makes a decisive nod, then pours Haley her juice. “See? Not an engagement ring.”

Winter looks over at me, the ring in question being twisted around and around on her finger. She’s nervous. That much is obvious. Even though I’ve done everything I could over the past two years to show her this little family of mine is
her
family, too, she still feels out of place. Though that’s to be expected when you’ve got five people who’ve known each other most of their lives. Still, I want her to be comfortable with this, with all of it, so I’m going to let her do whatever she needs to do, as much as I want to put a spotlight on her hand. I reach out and squeeze her knee, letting her know I’ll follow her lead.

But instead of letting the question pass and dishing up some breakfast, she clears her throat and brings her hand up from under the table, holding it out for everyone to see. “Actually, it is. An engagement ring.”

A chorus of reactions go off around us, Haley clapping and squealing about getting to wear a flower girl dress, Paige and Tessa fawning over the ring, Jase bitching about the fact that I didn’t even tell him I was thinking of doing this while Adam claps a hand on my shoulder, his quiet approval evident.

Even with all the commotion, all I can pay attention to is Winter’s face as she listens to my sister babble on about dresses and flowers and invitations. She looks happy, but there’s no denying the undercurrent of uncertainty and nerves. But even so, she did this. She opened up about our plans, put herself at the mercy of my overly exuberant sister when she probably would’ve liked a couple days to get used to the idea first. And she did all that for me. I didn’t have to say a word for her to know how much I wanted to tell my family, how much I wanted to share this with them. She just simply did it because she knew it’d make me happy.

And that right there is why I’ll love her every day for the rest of my life, until I take my dying breath. And why I’ll spend every single one of them trying to make her as happy as she makes me.

I
blow
the hair out of my face as I divide my attention between the recipe I searched for on Pinterest and the pan on the stove. I have no fucking idea how Cade manages to do this day in and day out. And not just
this
—this tiny meal for two. Oh, no. He makes dinner for hundreds of people a night like it’s no big deal. When he cooks something for just the two of us, he does it with the level of ease I could only replicate by using Haley’s Easy-Bake Oven to make him less-than-mediocre brownies.

I’m no stranger to the kitchen. My life never afforded me the luxury of being able to eat out, so I know my way around. But I know things like how long to boil packaged noodles and how to hit a jar just right to get it to open. Granted, maybe a made-from-scratch Italian meal for my chef boyfriend—
fiancé
—whose specialty happens to be Italian wasn’t my smartest idea, but it is what it is. Too late to go back now.

Besides that, I wanted to do
something
. It’s been a month and a half since he first put this ring on my finger, and I can’t stop the worry niggling me—that I need to try and prove my worth. I haven’t said that to him, because he’d shit a brick. Still, I can’t help what I’m feeling, and right now . . . these past several weeks . . . I’ve felt inadequate, to say the least.

It’s not as if there’s been a sudden influx of insecurities. They’ve always been there, but they were far enough under the surface that I was able to ignore them. Just go about our lives as if they didn’t exist. But that all went up in smoke the day he asked to share
all
my days. The day he asked to be tied down to me. He’s only known me for two years, and we’ve only been officially together for a year and a half of that. How can he possibly know he wants to spend his
life
with me?

Our whole relationship, Cade has been the rock, so firm and steadfast in his commitment to me. He’s been the one holding us together when I thought for sure we’d fall apart. I give him my love and myself, but how can that be enough when he gives me
everything
?

So, yeah, a homemade dinner might seem inconsequential—like throwing a pebble into the Grand Canyon—but if I can do this . . . if I can make him a stupid meal, maybe I won’t be the horrible wife my recurring nightmares tell me I will be. And those nightmares haven’t left me alone since he placed this ring on my finger. The one I hate the most—and, naturally, the one I have the most often—is when he abandons me in the ice cream aisle of a supermarket, like my mom did. Just walks away and never looks back.

I try to shake the heaviness settling over me and glance at the clock as I stir the more-brown-than-red sauce, wrinkling my nose. It doesn’t look or smell like the amazing stuff Cade normally makes, but I only have twenty minutes before he’ll come through that door, so there’s no time to start over. I want him to walk in from his more than twelve hours at the restaurant and be able to sit down and enjoy dinner instead of hurrying to whip up something exquisite for us like he does whenever he doesn’t close at the restaurant. Just once, I want to ease the burden and do something for
him
.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m covered in flour, the pasta dough is an absolute fucking disaster, and then to top it all off, the fire alarm goes off . . . just as Cade walks through the door.

“Shit!” Abandoning the ruined pasta, I rush over to the oven, coughing as I wave the smoke away with a potholder and pull out the charred pieces of garlic bread. And doesn’t that black, crusty bread just about sum up this whole god-awful attempt at dinner? After carrying the pan over to the sink, I drop everything inside, the bread sliding down into the ceramic basin. I rest my hands on the counter and let out a long breath, my head dropping between my shoulders.

The fire alarm cuts off, no doubt thanks to Cade. He probably reached up and plucked it right from the ceiling. The sliding back door cracks open, and then Cade comes closer. I haven’t lifted my head, can’t stand to see pity—or worse, revulsion—on his face, but I can feel him. His presence raises the fine hairs on the back of my neck, and that feeling only amplifies as he comes up behind me, his hands resting on top of mine on either side of me. The hard planes of his body fit against my back as he presses his nose into my neck and inhales deeply.

“What’s all this?” he asks.

I’m too tired to even try to say anything but the truth. “It’s my failed attempt at the practice run for being the perfect wife.”

I expect a lot of reactions from him, but his bark of laughter isn’t one of them. He guffaws so loud and so long that my spine straightens in response. I’m rigid and unmoving in front of him, and he must finally realize it, because his laughter cuts off and he turns me around to face him. My eyes are downcast, my arms crossed against my chest, but my closed-off body language doesn’t deter him.

“Winter.” He squeezes my sides, trying to get me to look at him.

I studiously ignore him, looking off to the side instead of at him. It’s stupid and childish, but I can’t help it—not when he just laughed at me. I don’t know if he was laughing at my attempt at dinner or over the fact that I thought I could even
be
the perfect wife, but it doesn’t matter. It stings all the same.

“Baby . . .” This time he ducks his head until he snags my attention. “I wasn’t laughing. I’m sorry.”

“No? What was all that noise coming out of your mouth?”

“Okay, I was laughing, but not at
you
.”

“Seriously? You’re going with the, ‘I wasn’t laughing
at
you but
with
you’ argument?”

“No, that’s not what I’m doing. I was laughing at the fact that you thought I’d even
want
a perfect wife.” He must feel me stiffen even further, because he wraps his arms around me to keep me from ducking under his arm and storming into the bedroom like I want to. “Don’t get pissed off. Just hear me out.” He pulls back and looks at me, one eyebrow lifted. “You gonna listen?”

“Say what you’re going to say so I can decide if this sauce goes on your plate or in your lap.”

His smile starts out slow, just a quirk of his lips, until it sweeps over his face. “That right there is why I’d never want a perfect wife. You think a perfect wife would threaten to dump pasta sauce in my lap?”

I groan and drop my forehead to his chest. “Oh God, I’m failing before I even have the job.”

His chest rumbles with a laugh as he runs his hands up and down my back. “You’re not failing. And what the hell makes you think I’d want anything but who you
are
? Have I made you feel like that?”

“God no,” I say quickly, not wanting him to think any of this falls on his shoulders. It’s all me. It always is. “I was just . . .” I blow out a long breath. “I just wanted to do something nice for you. Cook for you so you could have one night off. Isn’t that what good almost-wives do?”

“I don’t know about any other almost-wives. I only know about
you
. And I don’t give a shit if you never cook anything for me, because that’s what
I
do, okay? I love feeding you.”

“But that’s my point. You do all this stuff for me. What can I do for you? Build you a website?” I scoff and roll my eyes, even though my face is still pressed to the cotton covering his chest, hidden from his view.

“What can you do for me? You think anyone else picks up my favorite candy on their way home just because? Or sends me silly texts to make my days go by faster? Or would go to a movie they hated just because they know it’s my favorite? Nobody else hangs around to clean up the mess I make after I cook or tries out weird food combinations because I had a wild idea—that’s all you. Our relationship can’t fit into a nice, neat package, baby. We don’t do things perfectly around here, remember? We’ve tried hard to figure out what works for us, and we’re there. I don’t know why you’d think I’d want to change it. Or why I’d suddenly want someone other than who you are.”

He’s right. Of course he is. We’ve gone through a lot of trial and error while we figured out what worked for us and what didn’t. Where we each fit into this relationship and the roles we took on—conventional or not. But this weight still rests on my shoulders, and I’m not sure it’ll ever leave. I’m glad I haven’t yet lifted my face from his chest, because it’s going to be a lot easier to say this without having to look at him.

“I just . . .” I swallow and press closer to his beating heart, my hands grasping fistfuls of his shirt. I let his familiar scent surround me as I take a deep breath, then whisper, “I want to be worthy of your love, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be.”

He freezes for a second, his entire body going taut, his hands pausing in their caresses on my back. “Baby . . .” His voice is hoarse, the single word coming out like a broken plea. He wraps his arms around me and easily lifts me onto the countertop so we’re eye to eye, his hips settled between my legs. “Why would you
ever
worry about that?”

“Why
wouldn’t
I?”

He shakes his head and brings his hand up to my neck, his thumb running along my jaw. “That’s
my
job. It’s what I worry about every day, what I work for.”

I’m so stunned he could possibly think that when he’s everything to me, I can only manage to repeat what he already said. “Why would you
ever
worry about that?”

Leaning in, he presses a kiss against one corner of my mouth, then the other. He cradles my jaw in his hands, and then his lips are against mine, soft and sweet, just the barest brush of his tongue. After a few moments, he pulls back and rests his forehead on mine, his eyes still closed. “Why
wouldn’t
I?”

His words settle over me, the honesty of them seeping into my soul. Never in a million years would I have thought Cade would worry about that. Worry about being worthy of
me
? It’s laughable.

Is that how he feels, too? When he heard that I worried about it, did he think I was crazy, the same way I thought of him? We can see it so clearly in each other, but agonize about it in ourselves. Knowing I’m not alone in this eases the pressure on my shoulders, ever so slightly.

“Know what else you do for me that no one else does?” he asks.

“What?”

The grin he shoots me is one hundred percent devil, mischief sparking in his eyes. He reaches back, shutting off the oven and the burner on the stove. Then I’m over his shoulder, one of his hands gripping my ass as he carries me into the bedroom, where he shows me exactly what I do for him that no one else does.

Twice.

T
hat place
we just visited was a lot of things, but
bakery
sure as shit wasn’t one of them. I don’t even pause as I walk through the side door of the house and storm into the kitchen, Winter trailing behind me. My mom’s old recipe box is down from the cupboard in three seconds flat, and I’m shuffling through the contents as I look for her vanilla cake recipe.

“Are you seriously doing this?” Winter pulls out a stool at the island and takes a seat.

“Those hacks aren’t making our wedding cake. Who the fuck doesn’t use vanilla beans in
vanilla bean
frosting?
Who
? People who have no business in a kitchen, that’s who.”

“And you think you’re going to have time to whip up a cake the day before the wedding, is that it?”

“If that’s what I have to do to ensure no one else has to suffer through that dry, crumbly, flavorless disgrace of a mess, then yes.”

“You don’t bake,” Winter says. “In fact, I seem to remember you saying you ‘can’t bake worth shit’ when we first started dating.”

“For this, I’m baking, and it won’t be shit.”

I don’t have to be looking at her to know she just rewarded me with a headshake and an eye roll. The stool scrapes against the floor as she moves to stand. “While you’re in here throwing around all your vast culinary knowledge, I’m going to get some work done. Should I let Tessa know that bakery she suggested is a no, or . . . ?”

The glare I shoot her only earns a laugh as she walks out of the room and heads to her office. A few months after Tessa moved in with Jase last year, we turned her old bedroom into an office for Winter since she works from home. Well,
we
is a bit misleading since Winter fought me on it the entire time, even after Tessa told her she didn’t care if her childhood bedroom remained the same or not. Tessa and Haley had a home with Jase, so Tessa certainly didn’t need her room here. And we all—okay, everyone but Winter—agreed it made the most sense to keep Haley’s bedroom set up since she spent the night a fair amount, something Tessa never did.

I knew Winter would never do it for herself—would never even
ask
for it—so one day while she was out with the girls, Jase, Adam, and I busted our asses to get the room done for her. Black and white framed photographs of different geographical locations—some she’s been to and others we want to go to together someday—hang on soft gray walls. Her desk, a simple black piece with three drawers down one side, sits directly under the window so she can look out over the backyard when she’s on a deadline and too pressed to move from her chair.

She was shocked when she got home that night—and, yeah, a little pissed I went behind her back and did it for her even after she insisted she didn’t need it. She might not have
needed
it, but after the cramped apartment we shared in Chicago—not to mention the shoebox she lived in all through college—she
deserved
it. Something that was one hundred percent hers.

But the thing she didn’t understand—the thing I’m still trying to get her to see—is that this isn’t
my
home anymore. It’s
ours
and I want her to start treating it as such. That was one tiny step in the right direction. I have my space to do my thing—the kitchen my mom redid shortly before she got sick is any chef’s wet dream. And Winter deserved to have something she could feel creative in, especially when she puts her heart and soul into every website design . . . into making sure her business stays afloat. And not just stays afloat, but actually thrives.

Winter’s steps echo down the hallway until I can’t hear them anymore, and then music floats out of the still-open door. A song I’ve never heard comes on—she doesn’t like to listen to bands she knows while she works because she says she’ll be distracted with singing along—and I let it become the background as I finally find my mom’s recipe and grab the ingredients I need, fully prepared to make this cake my bitch.

While Winter is lost in her world, I get lost in mine, trying diligently to focus on the recipe so I can replicate it. In the culinary world, it’s kind of an unspoken rule that chefs are either fantastic with cooking or baking, but rarely with both. Cooking is where I naturally flourished because there are no rules. Sure, certain flavors marry best with others, but everything is an approximation, a splash of this, a pinch of that. Measuring cups don’t factor into my cooking, but they are a necessity in baking. One I don’t take to very well.

It’s a shitty excuse, but it’s the only one I have as Winter and I each take a bite of the vanilla cake with vanilla bean frosting. The texture of the cake is off, crumbly and dry instead of moist and flavorful. The only thing elevating it slightly over the crap we ate earlier today is the frosting I somehow managed to not completely annihilate.

“Mmmm,” Winter says, forking another bite from the slice. “This is good.”

“It’s horseshit.”

She laughs around a bite of cake. “It is not. It’s good.”

“
Good
is not good enough.”

Blowing out a breath, she sets the fork down on the plate, then walks around to my side of the island. Wrapping her arms around my waist from behind me, she rests her head between my shoulder blades, her palms running up and down my abs. “You don’t need to take this on, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” If I’m not here to make sure this area goes off without a hitch, who will be? Jase? He’d eat a pile of literal horseshit as long as it was covered in frosting. I certainly can’t help with dresses and I know fuck all about flowers or invitations, so this is the only place I can really contribute to our day.

“No, you don’t. Cade.” She steps back and turns me around, tucking her fingers into the waistband of my jeans. My cock stirs at her fingers’ nearness to it, but I ignore it and focus on Winter. “You don’t have to do
everything
. You need to let go of the reins once in a while.”

“I—” My retort is cut off by her raised eyebrow.

“It’s not just the wedding, either. You’re working yourself ragged at the restaurant. You have a sous chef for a reason. You need to let her step up and take the load off you a bit. And the wedding? You’ve already handpicked the caterer. Honestly, no one is going to notice the fact that the frosting has—gasp!—imitation vanilla extract flavoring in it instead of vanilla beans.”

“
I’ll
notice,” I say like a petulant child not ready to drop an argument he knows he’s lost. And I’ve definitely lost this one, because she’s right. The letting go lesson was a hard one to learn, but it’s one I had to come to terms with when I left Tessa and Haley behind, and when Winter traveled all over the country. And it’s still one I continue to learn every day. It’s a difficult habit to break, especially after more than a decade of priding myself on being the one to step up and take responsibility where I could.

“Actually.” She stands on her tiptoes and places a kiss on my jaw. Her arms go around my neck and pull me toward her so she can whisper in my ear. “I’m hoping you’ll be too busy noticing me to pay attention to much else.”

Images flash in my mind—Winter in a long, white dress, her hair pulled away from her face, a smile tugging at her lips as she walks toward me . . . And that’s all it takes to ease the tension cloaking my shoulders. The wedding day—the one she’s only just recently been able to mention in casual conversation—is coming both faster than I thought possible and slow as fucking molasses. I want her on my arm, by my side as my wife, and I want it now. But more than that, I want her to know that I’m not thinking of anything but her when that day comes. Shitty cake included.

I expel a deep breath, then wrap my arms around her and lift her off her feet as I hug her to my chest. “You’re right.”

“What’s that?” she asks, hand cupped around her ear.

I nip the skin at the side of her palm and say, “You’re right. No one else will notice. We can go with”—I swallow down my groan and force the rest of the words out—“Cakes by Mary if that’s what you want.”

She pulls back and smirks at me, her arms wrapped around my neck as her feet hover above mine. “Are you kidding? We’re not going with her. She doesn’t even use real vanilla beans in her vanilla frosting!” The smile she shoots me is blinding, and I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her even if I wanted to.

Her mouth opens for me, and I sweep my tongue inside, gripping her ass to lift her higher against me. She holds my face as she tilts her head to deepen the kiss, moaning into my mouth when I reach up and cup a breast in my hand, my thumb running back and forth over the pebbled tip.

Panting, she pulls back and says, “Don’t think your kisses are going to distract me from what we’re talking about. We’ll keep looking until we find someone we both like, okay? But you’re not making the cake.”

I nod, running my lips up the length of her neck. I’d agree to just about anything right now, especially when she wraps her legs around my waist and grinds down against my cock.

Her breath washes over my ear as she says, “First, though, how about we give Jase a run for his money while we take advantage of this perfectly positioned counter?”

“God, I love you.”

We both scramble for each other’s clothes, her hands inching up my stomach and chest to rid me of my T-shirt as I pop the button of her jeans, then let her slide down the front of me so I can tug them off. I grip her by the ass and lift her onto the counter at the same time she removes her shirt. My jeans are stalled somewhere around my knees, but I can’t be bothered to push them any farther, because Winter’s hand is around my cock, guiding me home, and all I care about is the sweet, hot heaven I’m sinking into. I grip her hips and pull her closer to the edge of the counter, thrusting deep at the same time.

“Oh
God
,” she moans, her head falling back as her fingernails dig into my ass. “Fast, Cade. Please.”

When your woman tells you to fuck her fast, you listen. I slide my hands under her ass, hoping to hold her to me and prevent the counter from digging in with each thrust. She’s moaning with abandon as I pump into her, but my balls are already pulling tight, and I can’t reach around to give her a helping hand while I’m protecting her perfect little ass.

“Touch yourself, baby. Rub your clit.”

Without hesitation, she does as I tell her, sliding her fingers down until they’re on either side of my cock as it pistons in and out of her. The unexpected touch has me groaning into her neck, trying to hold back the impending orgasm bearing down on me like a fucking hurricane. I know the second she touches her clit because her back arches, pointing her tits toward my face, and I take advantage, ducking my head to swirl my tongue around one nipple before sucking it into my mouth, hard.

Her breath turns ragged, her nails digging into my skin until finally, she breaks, her pussy squeezing my cock as she comes around me, and that’s all it takes to pull me with her. I hold myself as deep as possible as I empty inside her.

“Love you, love you, love you,” I say against her sweat-dampened chest.

She runs her hand over my hair, scratching slightly against my head. “I love you, too. But I’m still not letting you make our cake.”

I breathe out a laugh against her neck, then press a kiss against her fluttering pulse. “If this is how you plan to distract me from the shitty cake, I’m totally fine with that.”

“We did this to beat Jase’s record, not to distract you from the cake.”

“I hate to tell you this, baby, but we beat Jase’s record our first week home. This was totally bonus.”

Her cheek puffs against my head in a smile. “That was a fun week.”

I hum in agreement, then lift her off the counter and carry her toward the bathroom. “We might not have beat his record in the shower, though. We should probably rectify that.”

Her laugh bounces around the walls of the bathroom as I kick the door shut behind us and proceed to forget all about the shitty cake and the mound of responsibilities at the restaurant I need to figure out how to delegate. Everything but the feel of Winter around me and the sound of my name on her lips leaves my brain. At least for now.