A Cross-Country Christmas(33)

Lauren glanced into the next room, where the men were engaged in some sort of wild debate about whether the Cubs were ‘retooling’ or ‘rebuilding’, and she nodded. “I’ve known him since I was eleven.”

Rosa gasped. “And you haven’t fallen in love with him yet?”

Lauren dried—then re-dried—the dish in her hand, avoiding the older woman’s eyes.

“Oh,” Rosa said quietly. “You have. Does he know?”

Lauren frowned. “Know what?”

“How you feel?”

“Felt,” Lauren corrected. “I outgrew my crush on Will Sinclair a long time ago.”

Rosa responded by raising her eyebrows and looking at her hands in the soapy water.

“I did,” she said, desperately trying to convince both women in the room.

“Why?” Rosa asked. “Did something happen?”

Lauren did not want to be transported back to that night, nor the days following. It was a floodgate being held back by only a small piece of masking tape. She shrugged off both Rosa’s question and her feelings and picked up a plate that had been drip-drying in the sink. “He broke my heart is all.” She sighed. “And between you and me, I don’t think he even remembers.”

“Are you two solving the world’s problems in here?” Will’s voice yanked Lauren’s attention to the doorway. Seeing him standing there while mired in the memory of his poor choices knocked her off-kilter.

What was she doing letting herself swoon and fawn and fall for this man all over again, as if they had no history? As if she was safe to put herself out there again?

This wasn’t a trip down a snowy hill that might end with stitches in her chin. It was so much more than that.

“We are.” Rosa teasingly flicked water from her soapy hands toward him. “And the Cubs are rebuilding. They wouldn’t have traded El Mago if they were retooling.”

“Rosa, you never cease to amaze me.” Will wrapped an arm around the woman’s shoulders and squeezed. “Now, if we can just convince your husband,” he said this loud enough so the men in the other room could hear, “that his wife is RIGHT. . .”

“Don’t listen to that woman!” Joe shouted from the other room.

Will laughed. “Who’s ready for the torchlight parade?” His eyes fell on Lauren, and concern creased his forehead. “Lauren, you good?”

“Yep.” She folded the dish towel, a fresh dose of her resolve firmly back in place. “Thank you for dinner, Rosa. It was so good.”

“Anytime,” Rosa said. Then she turned to her and directly said, “You are welcome here anytime.” She pulled Lauren into a tight hug and whispered in her ear, “I think he’s changed a lot. Give him a chance to prove it.”

When Lauren pulled from the woman’s embrace, she found Rosa’s eyes, encouraging and kind, trying to communicate an important truth.

Thanks Rosa. . . but you just don’t know.

She didn’t know the depth of Lauren’s feelings all those years ago, or the way Will had humiliated her. They could be friends, maybe, but from this point on, no matter how many moments she montaged that Will seemed to be genuine and kind and good, none of those would—or should—change her feelings.





Chapter 15





As Lauren got into the SUV, she told herself to stop wondering about Will’s past. She knew everything she needed to know, and there was no sense dredging it all back up.

But her curiosity wasn’t listening.

After her freshman year at Berkeley, Lauren had stopped going home. She’d found summer work on campus and spent the holidays in the dorms, and later, in the off-campus house she shared with five other girls. She hated the holidays anyway, so it wasn’t a big sacrifice, though Spencer had always made sure she knew he wasn’t happy about it.

She’d forced herself to stop thinking about Will Sinclair—it wasn’t hard after she saw his true colors.

Trying to do the same now—well, she wasn’t nearly as successful.

His true colors, it seemed, were more than black and white.

If what Rosa said was true, he’d lost his scholarship, and, as a result, he’d lost baseball, the one thing that meant the most to him.

But he must’ve finished school, otherwise, he wouldn’t be coaching.

What was the story? How had this managed to slip past her? And why didn’t Spencer say anything?

Actually, why would Spencer say anything? It wasn’t like he ever knew how she felt about Will. It wasn’t like he knew—or could ever know—what had happened between them.

“You’re deep in thought,” Will said.

She bit back a groan. It wasn’t enough that he occupied her thoughts, now he had to occupy her real life, too. She was doing a terrible job of putting him out of her mind.

“I was thinking about something Rosa said,” she said quietly.

“About what?”

She hesitated. “About you.”

He smiled at her. “Hopefully it was in Spanish, and you didn’t understand it.”

“I like her a lot.”

“Or, maybe it was—how did it go—that I ‘look like a superhero’?”