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It also allowed her to fantasize about a certain cowboy who’d been escorting her to all of her holiday events these past several weeks.
Cayden Chappell.
He’d readily agreed to let her stay at the homestead for a few days, which Ginny had done. Her mother had not understood why she’d want to stay so far away from the distillery, but Ginny sure had enjoyed her limited freedom and the tiny break from everything Winters and Sweet Rose.
She’d told a little fib and said she was staying at Olli’s. She had for one night, and she was almost forty-six years old, so she didn’t feel too badly about the little white lie. No one had gotten hurt with it, and she relished the fact that she had something her mother didn’t know.
Her imagination went wild right now, warring between the serial killer scenario and having Cayden for a real boyfriend.
He’d asked her some hard questions back in October, and she’d told him that she was interested in him. They’d never gone out, though, not unless it was a social engagement she was required to attend as the reigning queen of Sweet Rose Whiskey.
“Just like tonight’s party,” she murmured, noting that Sarge had laid his head back down and neither of the other two dogs had heard anything to alert them.
She stood from the vanity where she’d been painting on her perfect face and turned to look at herself in the full-length mirror mounted to the wall. Tonight, she wore a deep midnight blue dress with plenty of sequins across the bodice. The sparkle hid a lot of her extra weight across her very barrel-like middle, and Ginny lifted up onto one toe and looked at the line in her calf from the resulting use of her muscles.
She had great legs; she knew that. They seemed to be the only part of her body—along with her arms—that didn’t store fat. When she worked out, she lost weight from her legs, arms, and neck first. It was much harder to slim down through her torso, and Ginny had honestly given up.
Most mornings, she shimmied into her workout pants to lift weights and do core training with a professional trainer. She sometimes walked a circuit around the property, which was a mile and a half loop. That way, she could tell her mother she worked out, though no one needed to know about the bags of mini candy bars she had stashed in various places around her house, in her office, and even in the glove box of her car.
Sometimes she just needed a Snickers to make it through one more meeting, or a Twix to endure a phone call later in the day.
Tonight, she hadn’t eaten yet, because this Christmas Eve party was a formal dinner and dance for all employees at Sweet Rose. Mother had been planning it for months, and the only way anyone in the family would’ve been able to get away with not coming was if they’d died.
She inhaled slowly and put both feet back on the ground. Tonight, she’d show up with Cayden, and he’d get to see all the Winters in action.
Dread filled her, and she said, “Come on, guys. Let’s all go out so you’re good for a while.”
Each dog jumped down to follow her, Minnie, the littlest, running ahead of Ginny as if going out to the back yard to take care of business was akin to attending Disneyland. Ginny held onto the railing as she went downstairs, careful to not let her heels catch against the rug as she walked.
In the kitchen, she opened the sliding glass door the dogs used and left it open as she stepped over to her clutch to make sure she had what she needed that evening. A sigh filled her body. She didn’t need anything but herself and her phone, and Ginny didn’t own a single dress without a pocket.
The gowns she owned never had pockets, but she hired a woman named Louise to sew them in so Ginny could go to anything and have her hands free. Mother would expect her to have a clutch tonight, though, as that was what Southern socialites simply did.
Ginny was tired of all of it. She wanted to wear sweatpants and eat almond ice cream bars while she watched some trashy reality TV until she was so tired, she fell asleep. First, she’d have to buy some sweatpants, and second, she’d have to ask Olli for the best reality TV show to binge-watch.
The doorbell rang right when she clasped closed her empty clutch and remembered she hadn’t spritzed on any of the perfume Olli had sent her home with last week.
Get Your Manwas supposed to work amazingly well, Olli claimed. After Ginny had stood in Olli’s perfumery, helping her label candles and bottles of perfume for the last shipment that would arrive before Christmas, complaining that Cayden had cooled considerably toward her, Olli had run up to the house and brought down her personal supply ofGet Your Man.
In your hair, Olli had told her.Along your collarbone.Make him lean it to smell that, and then, bam.She’d snapped her fingers, a joyful smile on her face.He’s yours.
Ginny wished.
She also ran her fingers through her perfume-less hair as she went to get the door. The dogs came inside, one of them barking while the others just slid on the hardwood as they met it. Their steps became more sure, and the clicking of claws accompanied her through the cavernous living room to the huge foyer, where she opened the door.
Cayden stood there in a deep, rich tuxedo, and all Ginny could think about was kissing him. Her smile felt like the most normal one she’d worn in months, and she had the crazy idea of making up a horrible illness, texting her mother that she simply couldn’t make it, and asking Cayden to drive her to the nearest store that sold sweatpants.
She’d change, and he’d sit with her while she ate that ice cream and watched that reality TV. She’d eventually fall asleep, her legs across his lap, and everything in the world would be absolutely right.
His eyes slid down to her bright red heels and back to her face. “You’re stunning,” he said.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, her smile instantly turning fake. She hated that, and she forced it from her face. She didn’t want to be fake with Cayden, and in that moment, it was as if someone had thrown a lightning bolt at her.
It struck her straight through the chest, sending truth through her whole body.
She’d been fake with Cayden Chappell. Every date was a show. Every dinner for someone else, not the two of them. Every text and phone call an arrangement for the next lie she was going to tell through her body language, her plastic smiles, and her multiple body shapers that made people think she weighed ten pounds less than she really did.
“Come in,” she said, her voice quivering slightly. “I’m not quite ready.”
