Chapter Four

· Four ·

Will

“Oh my God.” Juliet tumbles off her swing and rushes over to me where I’m sprawled on the ground. I’m gaping like a fish, the wind knocked clean out of me.

I knew that swing set was too flimsy for me. If anyone else had asked me to swing with them on something built for people half my size, I would have flatly said, Hell no .

But there’s something about this woman every time I’m around her that makes me want to say yes .

So I did. And now here I am, knocked on my ass because of it.

“Will, are you hurt?” Her hands dance across my chest, up my neck to my face. “I mean, obviously, you’re hurt, but like, seriously injured hurt? Should I call an ambulance? I’m calling an ambulance—”

“Juliet,” I croak, clasping her hand as her fingers press into my neck, like they’re checking for a pulse. Saying her name required air I don’t have yet. I try again to suck in a breath.

She bites her lip, her face drawn tight with worry as I try to get my bearings. But it’s damn near impossible when sunshine spills from the sky behind her. It casts another bronze halo around her head, just like it did when I first saw her this morning, like she’s an angel the light can’t help but love.

“Will,” she whispers, her eyes darting between mine frantically. “Are you okay?”

Her hand’s trembling. I clasp it tighter and finally find myself able to draw in a big lungful of air. “Juliet.” I squeeze her hand as her fingers dance along my pulse. “Baby, it’s okay. I have a heartbeat. I’m okay.”

Her fingers ease up on my throat; her eyebrows lift. “ Baby? ”

I have no idea where that came from, why the word rolled right off my tongue, when almost nothing does. Stroking my thumb along the inside of her palm, I stare up at her and pray I can, for once in my life, talk my way out of something. “Hit my head. Might be concussed. Can’t be held responsible for what I say.”

A smile lifts her mouth for a moment, but then it falls, concern returning. “You’re not going to die on me, are you?”

I squeeze her hand again gently. “Nah.”

But if I was , I think, this would be a damn fine way to go .

She doesn’t look convinced, so to show her, I plant both palms on the grass and sit up. My head aches as I get myself upright. I reach for where it feels tender, finding a small bump already.

Juliet claps her hands over her mouth. “Oh no. My swing set did concuss you.”

“I’m not concussed.” Groaning, I stand slowly, rolling my shoulders to work out the knot in my back from landing on it hard. “It’s just a little bump.”

“But it’s my fault.” She groans, too, as she stands, clasping the side of the swing set and easing herself up. “I’m the one who said we should sit on the swings.”

I peer down at her, in her tiny flower shorts and soft pink top, clinging to all those beautiful curves. I want to throw her over my shoulder and toss her onto my bed, crawl up her body, push her thighs wide, and—

I shake my head to snap myself out of those depraved thoughts. This is Juliet, the woman who’s like a sister to Petruchio. I have no business thinking about her this way. Since seeing her in what she told me was her family’s greenhouse, putting two and two together, I’ve been telling myself that even if I wasn’t hopeless at romance, there’d still be no way I could pursue her.

The Wilmots are a surrogate family to Petruchio; they took him under their wing after his parents died in his teens. Their daughters are like sisters to him, with the exception of the youngest daughter, Kate, the only one whose name I could remember because of how often I used to hear Petruchio gripe about her. Turns out he was actually in love with her, and now they’re happily dating and living together, at least when Kate’s not traveling for work.

The point is, I’ve got no chance with Juliet. She is both off-limits and entirely out of my league. Rationally, I understand this. But my body, as I peer down at her, at the line of worry etched in her brow that I feel this ache to smooth out with my thumb, is struggling to get the memo.

“You’re being really quiet, Will.” She steps close, clasping my shoulders.

“I’m always quiet,” I grumble.

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I’ve gotten that. I meant, more than it seems you normally are. Are you really okay?” Her eyes search mine, that furrow in her brow deepening. “How do you know you aren’t concussed?”

“Juliet.” I gently grasp each of her hands and bring them from my shoulders. I pin them inside my palms. “I’m all right. I promise, I just got the wind knocked out of me, and, well…I get tongue-tied sometimes, but especially when I’m around very beautiful women.”

Especially you.

Her cheeks turn pink. “You think…I’m beautiful?”

My cheeks turn even pinker. “I, uh…” I clear my throat as I release her hands and step back. “I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, yes, I do—think you’re beautiful, that is—but that was a thinking thought. Shouldn’t have become a talking thought.”

Her face brightens with a smile. “Why shouldn’t you have said that? I told you you’re hot. You can tell me I’m beautiful.”

“Because you’re basically Petruchio’s sister. He’d have my nuts if he knew—” I manage to stop myself from admitting exactly what I’ve been thinking about Juliet.

“Let’s get something straight.” She drags her hands from mine and plants them on her hips, scowling up at me. Hell, even her scowl is cute. It makes her nose wrinkle and turns her wide, pretty eyes adorably squinty. “Yes, Christopher is like a brother to me, but I am not his property whose virtue needs to be protected.”

I scrub at my neck, my cheeks turning even hotter. “I know that. I just…I just mean you’re important to him, and it’s a code between friends, we keep an eye out for the people who matter to each other. We don’t…flirt with them. Or at least try to. Very badly.”

Her scowl dissolves. “You’ve been flirting with me?”

“Like I said, very badly.”

She smiles again, and she’s so damn pretty, it makes my stomach flip. “I wouldn’t say you were doing it very badly .”

I give her a look.

A soft laugh jumps out of her. “I mean it! I’d just say it wasn’t very…obvious. But, then again, I’m out of practice myself. Maybe I just didn’t pick up on it. It’s been a while since I…” Her voice dies off. She clears her throat. “I’ve been taking a break from romance—not that, you know, you’re feeling romantic toward me, I just mean…” She wrinkles her nose and groans. “I’m not saying this well. See? I’m rusty, too.”

“I’m not rusty,” I tell her flatly. “?‘Rusty’ implies I was once a well-oiled machine. I’m terrible at it.”

“At what?”

“Romance. Flirting. All of that. Always have been.”

Juliet tips her head, peering up at me. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it.” I shove my hands in my pockets and nudge a pebble in the grass with my boot. “It’s just how it is.”

She’s quiet for a minute as she stares at me. “Does that…upset you?”

I give the pebble more undue attention, scooching it across the grass. “Who likes being terrible at something?”

“Everyone is terrible at plenty of things—we can’t be great at everything we do. Being terrible at something only bothers us when that something matters to us.” She hesitates for a beat, then says, “ Does romance matter to you? Do you want it?”

I frown down at the pebble, grinding it into the grass.

I’ve never considered it that way, never asked myself if I was “bad” at romance because I actually didn’t want it. But, thinking back to when my insecurities started as a teen, when my sensory issues, my social anxiety, morphed from me being a quiet, particular kid to a painfully awkward and shy adolescent, when we figured out I was neurodivergent, I can admit that romantic connection is something I wanted. I wanted someone to walk around the farm with hand in hand; who’d trust me with their feelings and hopes and fears and listen to me when I wanted to trust them with those things, too; whom I’d feel so close to that the hunger and want burning through my body would have a place with them, would have meaning with them.

But my intense shyness, my need for earplugs in noisy spaces, my tongue-tied quietness, my anxiety when trying to socialize, made it hard to connect that way with girls in high school, then in college. The rare times I managed to click with someone, it only got as far as a couple of dates before I’d get some version of I don’t feel a romantic connection. I think we should just be friends . So I stopped trying to have romance, when time and again people told me that they weren’t experiencing it with me, that they didn’t want it with me. I moved on, let myself have what they did want from me—a good time in bed and nothing more. Since then, I haven’t let myself get so far as even considering what I wanted again.

Until recently—now that I’m faced with the fact that I need to marry, which, at thirty-four, has gone from a far-off problem for future Will to a pressing problem for present Will. I’m already functionally running my family’s distillery and farm, but there are giant gaps in the business that I do not handle—all the in-person work of maintaining a business’s connections, expanding its reach, networking, and wining and dining. That’s where I need a partner, someone who’ll happily take on the social aspect of running this business, who’ll help me step fully into being the next generation leading Orsino Distillery and Farm. No consultant or manager is going to cut it. I need someone with those skills having my family name, being at the heart of our brand as a family-run business. I need a wife, and I intend to find one. I’m just not sure, based on my experience, if she’s someone I can reasonably expect to love me romantically and feel me romantically loving her back.

“I guess…I’d like to be better at flirting,” I finally tell Juliet. “At…romance. I’ve got to settle down at some point. Soon, actually.”

“You have to?” Juliet wrinkles her nose. “That sounds awfully obligatory.”

“It is,” I admit, shifting on my feet. “My family business, I’m getting ready to take it over so my parents can retire. And running that business requires…well, a lot of socializing and networking, things that are not my strong suit or my interest. Hoping to find someone who’s passionate about the business, who wants to get married to join me in that work.”

“So…like, a mutually beneficial business arrangement?” she says.

I nod.

She tips her head. “And that’s the reason you want to be better at romance? To find someone who’ll be willing to partner with you. Not to find someone who could fall in love with you?”

I scrub at the back of my neck. “Past experience…it hasn’t made me think that’ll happen. Suppose I just want to find someone I could make happy—make her feel appreciated, listened to, cared for. I’d be faithful to her. I’d…you know, hope we could meet each other’s, uh”—I blush fiercely—“needs. We’d share a life, a business, maybe a couple kids, if she was up for it. But can’t say I’d expect her and I to be…in love.”

“Why?” she asks.

Because I’ve tried before, Juliet, and every time I did, I was told I’d failed.

I can’t tell her that. It’s too damn humiliating.

“Because…” A sigh leaves me. I shrug. “Hell, I don’t know. It just seems romance isn’t for me.”

Juliet bites her lip against a smile that still wins out.

“What?” I ask her. “What’re you smiling about?”

Her smile widens. “You’re giving me major duke-in-a-historical-romance-who-thinks-he-needs-a-marriage-of-convenience-to-carry-on-the-family-line vibes right now.”

“I…remind you of a duke?”

She waves her hand. “Forget it. I’m being silly.”

“No.” I take a step closer to her. “I’m not saying it’s silly. I just…don’t understand.”

Juliet seems to hesitate, then says, “It’s just that in those romance novels, the character who’s driven by what they say is duty to the people counting on them, rather than the pursuit of love, well, their acting on that sense of ‘duty’ is love. What we’re meant to see when they act out of a sense of duty is that they have the capacity for love, even though they don’t see it in themselves. That’s where romantic love comes in, like a mirror, showing them what they really can have, if they’re brave enough to go after it. And yes, romance novels are fictions, happy, hopeful stories. But I think they often capture very realistic human fears and hopes, and how the former often stop us from going after the latter, how love can make us feel safe and brave enough to change that.”

I stand there, absorbing what she’s said, sifting through it. I’ll admit I’ve never read a romance novel. My mom loves them, historical romances in particular. Every surface of the family home has a precarious stack of well-loved mass-market paperbacks. But I’ve never thought about what those books might inspire, what Juliet’s laid at my feet, maybe without even realizing it: a flicker of hope.

“So…” I clear my throat, folding my arms across my chest. “You’re saying, if I’m like…one of your dukes, who…well, things work out for him. Maybe, if I got a bit better at this flirting and romancing, maybe…they’d work out for me, too.”

Slowly, she reaches for my wrist and clasps it. Her touch is warm and firm and so impossibly soft. “I absolutely think that things could work out spectacularly for you, Will, yes.”

Searching her eyes, I ask, “Why…” I clear my throat, which has suddenly gotten thick. “Why do you believe in me?”

A smile breaks across her face. “Because I believe we all deserve the kind of happily ever after that we want. If we’re brave enough to put our true selves out there, we can find someone who wants us for all of that, who wants that same kind of happily ever after, too.”

My heart feels like it’s made of sunlight, like it’s spilling, hot and hopeful, through every corner of me. “That’s a hell of an optimistic outlook.”

Juliet’s smile tightens. “I’m trying.”

“Trying?”

She draws her hand away, crossing her arms against her chest, and glances up at the clouds, frowning thoughtfully. “I’ve always been an optimist. I don’t think I ever stopped being an optimist for others. But I sort of stopped being optimistic for myself.”

“Why’s that?”

She peers down and meets my eyes, a shrug lifting her shoulders. “Last year, I stayed on that optimism train a little too long, ignored the red flags all around me, and didn’t get off before I’d landed in Toxic Relationshipville. Since then, I guess I’ve been doubting myself. That’s why I’ve been on romance hiatus. I want to believe that one day I can love someone again and this time, it’ll be a real, healthy happily ever after…” She squints a little, her nose wrinkling. “I’ve been waiting to feel confident about that again, before I put myself out there romantically, but I’m starting to think I’ll never feel as confident as I used to. I think I’m just going to have to try again, and hope the confidence follows.”

“Do you want to try again?” I ask, searching her eyes.

She tips her head to one side, then the other. “Yes. And no. Being romantic, I think maybe it’s like riding a bike. You can stay away from the thing for years and then yes, you can allegedly get right back on and start riding again. But even with muscle memory pulling its weight, you’re real wobbly at first; you might fall and get a few scrapes. When I think about how great it would feel to fly down the road again, yes, I want to. But when I think about all those wobbles, those bumps and bruises I might get along the way, I don’t want to at all.

“I guess, when I think about getting back on the bike, I want somewhere gentle to start, so when I take those tumbles, it won’t hurt too bad. That’s the hard part—figuring out what that gentle place looks like. I’m not sure it even exists.”

“Maybe…” My voice catches as nerves tighten my throat. “Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe instead of looking for a soft place to fall, you just need some…training wheels.”

It made sense in my head, but I feel like a schmuck the moment I’ve said it.

Except a smile brightens Juliet’s face, and all my self-consciousness evaporates. “My training wheels,” she says. “I love that. Though who would want to do that for me?”

I stare at her, my heart pounding. I would.

I’ll never get to have her, not fully—she’s off-limits, out of reach. But I’d take this. I’d take every crumb she’d give me.

Her gaze snaps up to mine. “What did you just say?”

I blink at her. I couldn’t have said that out loud. Oh God. Did I say that out loud?

Juliet steps closer. “Did you just say, I would ?”

My cheeks heat. “If I did…that was another one of those thinking thoughts that shouldn’t have become a talking thought.”

“Will, you are a genius.”

“I am?”

“Hear me out.” She clasps my arms. “I want to get comfortable with romance again. You want to get better at romance. What if we helped each other?”

My heart’s pounding, my mind racing, as I process what she’s saying. “You think we could be each other’s…training wheels?”

Her smile brightens. “Yes! I know we barely know each other, but…look at us, bumping into each other twice in the same year, in two distinct corners of the world, our lives connected by someone so important to us. Doesn’t it feel…like something’s putting us on each other’s path? What if this is why?”

“To help each other out?” I venture.

“Exactly! To help each other. We could be like workout buddies, but for romance. You’d get to find and flex those romance muscles. I’d start to use mine again, get them back in shape. It would put me back on the bike and you…”

She doesn’t say it, probably because she’s too sweet to say something that might prick my pride, so I say it for her: “I’d be learning to ride.”

Silence hangs between us. Then she steps forward and squeezes my hand. “I’d be wobbling right beside you.”

I stare down at her, my insides knotting. It’ll be so embarrassing for her to see up close how awkward I am, especially when I’m so attracted to her. But the look of hope in her eyes, how much I hate the thought of taking that away, loosens every thread of my resistance. I couldn’t say no to this woman if I tried.

“Then let’s do it,” I tell her.

She claps her hands together and squeals. “Let’s do it!”

“On one condition.”

She freezes mid-clap. “What condition?”

“You swear you’ll tell me if I’m ever…if you don’t want to do it anymore. Just don’t walk out on me, okay? I need to know you’ll tell me to my face if it’s not working.”

Juliet’s expression turns serious. Her hands fall to her sides. “Will, of course. I…” She sighs. “I know I’ve bolted on you—”

“Twice.”

She grimaces. “I swear it had nothing to do with you. That was my stuff. The stuff I need to work on. I promise”—she juts her pinkie up into the air—“if we do this, any part of it that isn’t working for me, I’ll tell you. And same goes for you. We’ll talk it out, be truthful but kind in our honesty. That’s what friends do.”

“So we’re friends now, huh?”

She juts her pinkie closer, eyes narrowed. “We better be. We’re going to be romance workout warriors, flirty biking buddies. We’re going to be thick as thieves.”

A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. I like the idea of being friends with Juliet. Gently, I hook my pinkie with hers. “Deal.”

Juliet squeals again, smiling wide. “I can’t wait. Oh gosh, I feel like I’ve been on the Whole30 diet and someone just handed me a plate of brownies. I’m going to gorge myself. When can you start? How do you want to plan it? Wait.” Her face falls. “You don’t live around here, do you? How are we going to do this if you’re…well, wherever you are?”

I scrub at my neck. She’s got a point. “I’m not too far, couple hours’ drive upstate. I could…come down on weekends? Take a few weekdays off here and there, too, if we needed them, if that worked for your work schedule.”

“I work from home right now,” she says. “Freelance business writing. I’m flexible. We can plan it around your work.” She peers up at me, her head tipped in curiosity. “What is your work?”

My phone starts going off in my pocket, and I recognize its sound as the one I have programmed for my right-hand man, our operations manager at the distillery and farm, Fest.

“Speaking of work. Sorry,” I mutter, drawing my phone out of my pocket and frowning down at his text, relieved to see it’s nothing urgent; in fact, far from it. Fest has too much time on his hands and an obsession with videos of people falling on their asses. The man laughs so hard at those damn videos, he cries. I only ever feel secondhand embarrassment and sympathy for those poor bastards.

I tap back on the video with a thumbs down, like I always do when he sends this shit, and pocket my phone. “That was my operations manager. Just had to make sure nothing’s on fire. My family owns a whiskey distillery and a small farm upstate. My work, my part of it…the easiest way to explain what I do is, I make sure none of it goes to hell. Fest, my operations manager, keeps things running smoothly for me and keeps me in the loop when I’m gone.”

“So he’s like…your steward?” she asks.

I frown. “I guess…that’s accurate?”

She sighs, a smile wide on her face. “You really are right out of a historical romance.”

My frown deepens as she loops her arm through mine. “Because I run a farm and distillery?”

She pats my arm. “Don’t worry, once you read one, it’ll make sense. I mean, only if you want to read one.”

“You think I should?”

“I think if you’re trying to learn about romance, reading about it would be helpful. If learning romance is a workout, romance novels are your protein bar, the kind that taste so darn good, you want to eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” She stops at the bottom of the steps, turning to look up at me. “Would you be okay with that? Reading romance novels?”

“If you think it’ll help, I’ll take all the help I can get. My mom’s got lots of historical romances. I can pick one up while I’m home.”

“Great.” She beams up at me. “I could pull some contemporaries from my library and have them ready for you when you’re free to meet up?”

“Works for me.”

“Perfect,” she says brightly. “Well, let me give you my number, then you can text me when you have a sense of your schedule and we can get some plans nailed down.”

I freeze as it hits me like a truck, what this plan we’ve hatched is going to involve. I’m going to have her phone number. I’ll be texting with Juliet, spending time with her. Romantic time with her. Even if it is just for practice.

Juliet tips her head. “Will? What’s wrong?”

“How do we explain this to Petruchio?”

She frowns. “What’s to explain?”

“Friend code,” I remind her.

A sigh leaves her. “That applies? When it’s just for practice?”

“If he sees me with you, acting, uh…” I blush, my cheeks hot. I hate how damn easily I blush. “Romantic, I’m going to have some explaining to do.”

“Hmm.” Juliet taps her chin. “I could come to you upstate, and we could keep it between ourselves?”

I shake my head. “All my family is too close by, and I live in a tiny town of busybody gossips. We’d be the only thing anyone was talking about, no matter how much we tried to fly under the radar. I’ll have to come here. And I don’t…I don’t want to lie to Petruchio. I know what we’re doing is our business, but he’s my friend, and if I’m in town, spending time with you, I don’t want to be sneaking around behind his back.”

“That’s fair,” she says thoughtfully. “I don’t want to lie to him, either. I guess…I also don’t feel like we need to share everything about what we’re doing. Like you said, it’s our business. I propose a compromise: we tell Christopher we struck up a friendship this morning, because”—she winks up at me—“we did. It’s pinkie-promise official. When you come into town, if we happen to bump into or even intentionally spend time with him, my sisters, our friends, we don’t practice, just save that for when it’s only the two of us.”

Dragging a hand along my jaw, I think it over. “That seems reasonable.”

“I think so, too,” she says. “Besides, it’s not like we’ll actually be romantic and hide it. It will all just be for practice.”

I nod. “I’m not actually going to flirt with you. I’ll just be…practicing…flirting with you.”

“Right,” she says. “Like two actors doing a hot make-out scene on a movie set. I mean, yes, they’re making out, but they’re not making out , you know?”

I barely hold back an audible gulp. I don’t think making out with Juliet, whether for practice or not, would feel anything except very much like making out. And I think I’d thoroughly enjoy it.

Will that be part of practicing? Are we going to make out?

Juliet grimaces. “Okay, that was an intense example, but dammit, if Emily Blunt and John Krasinski can make it work, so can we! And if Christopher finds out what we’re up to, well, he’s just going to have to deal with that.”

I frown. “Who is Petruchio in this?”

“Well…” She taps her chin. “I don’t know, the metaphor sort of broke down on me, but what I mean is, they’re two hot people who’ve been together for a long time and kiss other hot people very convincingly for pretend, and their marriage is still going strong.”

“Right.” I nod. “Got it.”

I really don’t, but she seems so sure that we can make this work, and I want to be sure, too. Because this is the first time I’ve had hope for this part of my life in so long, and God, does it feel good.

My phone rings again. This time, the sound tells me it’s my mom.

“Aren’t you Mr. Popular,” Juliet says, releasing my arm.

I silence my phone in my pocket. “It’s just my mom, most likely wondering why I haven’t told her I’m on the road yet.”

Juliet bites her lip. “You let your mom know when you’re on the road?”

I shrug. “For longer drives, yes. She’s the worrying type.”

“I think a lot of moms are the worrying type,” Juliet says. “My mom certainly is.”

My phone starts to ring again. I yank it out and silence it, then send Mom a quick text that I haven’t left yet. “Sorry I keep texting while we’re talking. If I don’t do this, she’ll just keep calling.”

Juliet smiles. “That’s okay.”

“I hate these damn things,” I mutter as I start to pocket my phone.

She grins. “You’re the emailing type, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see why more people aren’t, frankly.”

“Wait.” Juliet clasps my hand. “My number. You’ll need it so we can make plans. Unless you plan for us to correspond like it’s 2003. I can give you my Gmail. While I’m at it, would you like my AIM username?”

“Oh, real cute,” I grumble.

She plucks my phone from my palm, head bent as she types quickly, then hands it back.

“Being serious, we can talk however you like,” Juliet says, smiling up at me. “I’m going to head inside now, let you get on the road.” She takes a step back. “See you soon?”

I nod, lifting a hand. “See you soon.”

She spins and walks across the grass, up the steps to her own back porch. When she stops one last time and turns, waving brightly goodbye, I feel my heart thud in my chest.

As soon as she shuts the door behind her, I look at my phone, at her contact info. A quiet laugh rumbles in my throat. She did give me her Gmail. And next to her name, there are two tiny blue bikes.