"Goodness, so impatient."
"I'm impatient because I know exactly what you're doing, Aunt Fran."
"Do you now?"
"You don't want to tell me what it is because you think I won't come with you."
Her lips curled up in a tiny smile. "You always were too perceptive for your own good."
I sighed and settled back into the chair again. "Fine. You win. I should probably start unpacking anyway. That way Grady can't try and take the apartment from me when he gets here."
Aunt Fran laughed. "Want some help?"
I shook my head. "It's okay. I wouldn't mind some quiet. Wrap my head around being here, you know? I kinda feel like I left it back in California as real as this feels."
Inexplicably, that made her smile.
"What?"
She stood from her chair and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. "Nothing. You'll hear all about heads tomorrow, that's all." When I glanced up at her, she winked. "Or lack thereof."
"Great," I muttered as she walked back into the house. "That makes me feel much better."
Chapter 30
Tucker
“I won't stand for it, Tucker. I'll sue his ass from here to Timbuktu if he doesn't move that tree off my property. It's blocking the milkweed from getting enough afternoon sun and if my monarchs don't show up then he's got a whole other problem."
I held the phone away from my ear when his volume hit decibels not fit for human ears. "I understand your frustration. Why don't you let me deal with the zoning commission, all right? No point in taking this into court if we can avoid it."
Through the speaker, I could hear the deep, tortured sigh that only a man upset about his butterfly garden could achieve. "I ain't afraid to sue him. And he should know it."
"No one thinks you're afraid, Cornelius." I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling of my office, followed the lines of the map that my mom spread over the entire thing. Straight above my chair was Russia, massive lines of sepia and cream that I'd memorized over the last three years of working with my father at the law firm that bore our last name. Haywood and Haywood. The largest law firm in Green Valley, with two full time lawyers and one legal assistant. "Besides, I don't want to have to send you a giant bill if this gets dragged out. I'd rather you use your hard-earned money to make your garden bigger. Remember those trees you told me about?"
He grunted. "Spicebush. I could get more swallowtails if I had a couple more spicebush trees."
"Exactly."
Cornelius was nothing if not predictable. "Biggest butterfly garden owned by a private individual in all of East Tennessee. D'you know that?"
"We're all really proud of it, Cornelius. It's a beaut," I agreed easily. "I think we can take care of this easily, you just let me handle the leg work, all right? If the zoning commission has the original paperwork, we won't even need mediation to get him to move the tree."
"All right," he agreed. "Thanks, Tucker. Let me know what you find."
I dropped my head and rolled my neck. The starched edge of my collar dug into my neck, and I wanted to rip it off. "Will do."
He hung up, and I sighed as I set the phone back onto the cradle. Irritably, I unbuttoned the top button on my white shirt and loosened the tie around my neck. If my dad had a problem with it, he could fire me.
I laughed. That would be too easy.
The office in which I sat, the same one I'd sat at every week since I held my diploma from Vanderbilt, had my father's stamp all over it. The whole place did. Haywood and Haywood had been in our family for three generations, first opened by my great-grandfather when he moved to Green Valley.
Every single week, I spent at least fifty hours in that building, and every week, it was like another rock got added to a bag strapped across my back. One isn't bad. You hardly notice it. But once that bag has a hundred rocks, then two hundred, it starts feeling awfully heavy.
After that many rocks, you have a hard time moving forward. Feeling like you can move at all.
I sighed, the bridge of my nose pinched between my thumb and forefinger. My cell phone buzzed on the lacquered surface of my desk, and I saw a text from Magnolia.
Magnolia: Bringing you lunch. Can't wait to see you. XO.
That brought out another sigh. It might have only been twenty-four hours since I pulled my truck from the Buchanan's driveway, but my girlfriend was acting like she'd caught me sticking my tongue down someone's mouth.
The bell hanging over the front door to the office jingled, and I heard the familiar tone of Magnolia's voice when she greeted my mom, where she always sat at the desk in the front of the office.
There was the low voice of my father, asking her how her daddy was, Magnolia's laugh, my mom saying something as well, and I took a moment to just breathe before my office door opened.
When it did, I'd see a wide, cheek-splitting smile aimed in my direction, I'd see bright golden eyes that never missed a single, cotton-pickin’ thing, and dimples in both cheeks that made her look as sweet as cotton candy.
And she was. Until she wasn't. That was the underlying steel core to almost any good Southern Belle. They had it buried underneath a sugar-spun exterior. And usually, in the case of my girlfriend, she only showed it in one instance—if anyone upset the perfectly organized apple cart that was Magnolia MacIntyre's life.
She had a list of how life was going to play out, one she'd been working on (with the help of her daddy) since we were sixteen and met in marching band. Me on trumpet, her waving one of those big stupid flags and wearing glittery white boots over top mile-long legs.
That list, the one I'd never contributed a single item to in the last seven years of dating, added the 'rocks on my back' tally well into the three hundred range. And I still wasn't entirely sure how to offload some of them.
Before the knob turned, before the hinge creaked on the right side of the door, I straightened my tie and smoothed my hand through my hair.
Just as I did, there was the turn and the squeak, the smile and the eyes, a brown paper bag clutched in her hands, looking drab and inconspicuous against the mint green and white of her perfectly tailored dress.
"I hope you're hungry," she said, coming around the corner of my desk. I stood, sliding one hand around her waist to drop a kiss on her waiting cheek. "I made your favorite sandwich."
I smiled, because I knew exactly what was waiting for me in that bag. Tuna salad on rye, and it was absolutely not my favorite sandwich. I'd complimented it once, the first time she tried her Grandma MacIntyre’s recipe. From that day on, she'd cemented it in her head that any time she wanted to butter me up for something, that tuna salad was made in bulk.
"Sounds great, thank you." I took the bag and settled back into my seat. "You didn't have to come into town just for this, did you?"
Magnolia took a seat on the edge of my desk, daintily perching one hip on the corner so that she could cross her legs and face in my direction. "It's no trouble. What's the rest of your day look like?” Her gaze sharpened on my face when I paused before answering. “Your eyes are tired. Are you feeling all right?"
As she said it, she leaned forward to trail her finger underneath my eyes and I sighed. They probably did look tired. All night, I'd tossed and turned, an itch at the back of my head that I couldn't scratch. There was nothing left undone in my day, nothing I hadn't finished, but I slept as if there had been.
Carefully, so she wouldn't feel like I was rebuffing her, I clasped her hand in mine, pulled it away from my face and rubbed my thumb over the soft skin of her knuckles. “Just tired,” I answered, studying her hand in mine.
I used to tell her—when we were younger and hadn't realized that skin could be compared to something other than the color of food—that we could make a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich, between the two of us. Especially in the summer, her normally golden skin turned into something more like burnt caramel, and if I wasn't careful, I'd get red as a lobster, except the skin covered by my swim trunks, which stayed
marshmallow white. She used to think it was funny, the thought of us as an ice cream sundae, and I did as well, but sometime in college, the things we found funny, just kinda … stopped.
Magnolia pulled her hand back to root around in her purse, and I opened up the bag with a quiet exhalation. The last thing I wanted to do, in this office, in this building, on this day, was eat that damn tuna salad sandwich.
"You didn't stay over last night," she said quietly, after she'd shut the clasp on her purse.
I stared at her when she said it, eyes trained down on her lap, but I knew her too well to think she was afraid to ask. Magnolia wasn't afraid of anything, and I wanted to catch just one glimpse of that fearless girl that I met on the football field, instead of whatever she'd been molded into now.
"I had some work to do before I came in this morning."
The rise and fall of her chest picked up at my quietly spoken answer, one that clearly didn't hold enough weight with her. Her lips, soft and pink from the lipstick she probably reapplied just before coming into my office, opened to say something, when my father walked into my office with a brisk knock on the door.
"I need you to step in for me on something, Tucker," he said, winking briefly at Magnolia.
I nodded. "What is it?"
"The festival planning board. They meet this afternoon, and I can't swing it in my schedule."
"You've been on the board every year though. Won't those ladies kick me out if I try to take your seat? They scare the bejesus out of me on a good day, I'd hate to cross them when it comes to this."
He scratched the side of his face. "It'll be good to get some fresh blood in that room. They do the same damn things every year. This year we finally grabbed one of the top sponsorships, so I think it's time you took over the reins."
"I can come with you, if you want," Magnolia interjected. "I'm sure Daddy could find a place for me on the planning committee."
I glanced at my dad, and he lifted his eyebrows. My parents loved Magnolia, and they thought the world of her momma. But like most people in Green Valley, we merely tolerated J.T. MacIntyre, the most recent chamber of commerce president. He could talk a snake into crutches, if he put his mind to it.
"It's all right. I know you've got a lot on your plate, Maggie," I said. Her eyes narrowed ohhhhh so slightly at my slip, and I felt it like she'd kneed me in the balls. "Sorry. Magnolia."
She must have felt my dad's curious stare, because she smiled big and bright, standing off my desk to give me a kiss on the cheek. "You know I haven't gone by that silly nickname since high school."
"I don't know how I dared to forget," I said with a smile.
That softened her. And for one second, like she'd lifted the blackout shades on a window, I got a glimpse of the girl I fell in love with when I was eighteen.
"Fine, but if you call me Maggie, then shall I call you by your high school nickname?"
My answering glare made her laugh under her breath, and I felt, deep inside me, something out of place click back into spot. She dropped a kiss on the top of my head after she stood to leave.
"What was your high school nickname?" my dad asked when she walked out of the office.
"It's not very original." I stood from my chair and gave a guilty glance at the brown bag before I tossed it into the garbage. I waited to answer until my dad was taking a sip of his coffee. "Junior year, the guys on the football team started calling me Fucker Haywood."
He choked, spitting coffee out onto the floor, before he gave me an incredulous look. "And you think that's appropriate?"
I slapped him on the back as I walked past. "You asked, sir. Now if you'll excuse me, you have coffee to clean up, and I have a meeting to get to."
Momma waved at me when I left the office, and I sighed contentedly the moment the sun hit my skin. Being cooped up in that office all day was starting to feel more and more like a punishment, the longer I did it. Shuffling papers instead of hiking trails, taking depositions instead of baiting a hook and reeling in a fish, sitting at a shiny desk or staring at a map on the ceiling instead of climbing up the side of some big ol’ rocks, that was my life.
Unless my mother became the oldest pregnant woman in the history of Tennessee, keeping Haywood and Haywood in the family fell squarely on my shoulders, no matter how badly my soul ached to be doing something else. Anything else, really.
The drive over to the community center went quickly, as traffic was light. Music played quietly on the radio in my truck, and as I slid my sunglasses off when I pulled my vehicle into a parking spot, I glanced at the empty passenger seat and smiled.
Briefly, I wondered what Angry Girl was up to today, and if she was on a mission to make anyone else in town cry.
From the open window of my truck, I heard two women laugh, and I glanced over to see Francine, and wouldn't you know it, Grace Buchanan, walking into the community center. Their arms were intertwined, and Angry Girl didn't look so angry this morning, given she was laughing heartily at whatever her aunt was saying.
I slipped from my truck, and slammed the door shut before jogging to catch up with them. Fran saw me approach, and a pleased smile split her face.
I lifted my chin in a nod. "Well now, if you two are headed in to help with some headless chickens, then I'm in the right place."
Grace froze, one combat boot-clad foot not quite lifting up high enough, and she tripped over the lip of the doorway. I reached out to steady her, but she pulled her elbow out of my grasp before I could.
"Great," she mumbled.
I leaned in as we walked into the gym. "Nice to see you too, Angry Girl."
Her eyes flashed up to mine. "I swear, if you call me that one more time, I will punch you in the throat."
Fran clucked. "Grace Bailey Buchanan, what manners."
Hearing her full name brought a grin to my face, and she knew why I was smiling.
"Oh, it's all right, Mrs. Buchanan. I do love a good threat of violence after lunch." I patted my stomach. "Keeps me alert all afternoon."
The look that Grace gave me could have sent a coat of ice over a flamethrower, and for reasons I couldn't even begin to pinpoint, it was the funniest thing I'd seen all damn day.
In that one moment, she broke up the monotony I'd been feeling with all the subtlety of a newly-sharpened pickax, and all the little pieces of my boring day went scattering into a million pieces.
Not only that, but I had no desire to sweep them up and attempt to put them back into place.
That should've been my first clue that Grace Bailey Buchanan was going to blow my life wide open.
Chapter 31
Grace
Not that I had much practice glaring someone to death, but Tucker Ames Haywood was not only completely unintimidated, his booming laugh echoed through the entire gymnasium.
Heads turned. Eyes widened. Judgment began.
I could practically hear the whispers at the way he was smiling down at me.
Who's she?
Why is Tucker—golden God of Green Valley and ultimate wearer of the starched white dress shirt over the widest chest known to mankind—laughing at her?
If I could have imagined a different entrance to a gaggle of Green Valley women, I could think of forty-seven scenarios that I would have preferred. Because all forty-seven of them did not include him.
Him, all polished to a spit shine in his work clothes and smiling like he was a friggin’ dental ad, which I did not appreciate.
Him standing shoulder to shoulder with me while I was faced with the little old lady equivalent of a firing squad. In place of uniforms, they had circles of pearls around their necks and clothes in varying shades of pastel.
One lifted an eyebrow as her gaze trekked from the top of my head, down, down, down to the steel-toed edges of my boots. Briefly, I thought about lifting my camera to catch an image of that face.
Southern Judgment, I’d title it.
Aunt Fran rubbed hand down my back like she could feel the way my skin
started tightening over my bones.
"Come on, sweetpea, let's find a seat." She cleared her throat. "Ladies, quit gawking at my niece or I'll give you something to stare at."
Tucker cleared his throat, a terrible attempt at hiding his laughter, and I closed my eyes while Aunt Fran directed me toward two metal chairs at the corner of the long rectangular table. I took the one on the end of the table, sitting before anyone could speak to me.
Aunt Fran did the same, but she chattered on with a couple of women as she did. Mundane things like the weather and who got what job and who had a baby in the last week since they'd seen each other.
Small town conversations were an entirely different animal than what I was used to, I'd found. Grady and I didn't visit Dad much over the years, but one thing I did know about living in a place like Green Valley was that they had a certain way of speaking to each other.
Greetings didn't require hugs or air kisses. Because you probably saw that person less than twenty-four hours earlier in the Piggly Wiggly, or the gas station, or the library, a nod would suffice, or maybe a smile. But more than likely, they all just picked up where they left off. They talked in a continuous loop, or a figure eight, if I tried to imagine it in my head.
"I told you about that sweater pattern, right?" the woman next to Aunt Fran said.
My aunt nodded, picking through her purse for something. "How'd it turn out?"
"Oh, it's a mess. You'll have to show me where I went sideways the next time you're over."
Aunt Fran patted her hand. "First time is always the trickiest. You'll get it."
For a moment, I let my eyes drift around the table, now that I wasn't under the proverbial spotlight. To a certain degree, they were all speaking like that. Twisting around each other, popping into each other's conversations like it was a dance.
Someone laughed, and it pulled the person on the other side of them into the discussion. The next person dropped their voice to a whisper, and the person next to her tilted her head to try and hear better. I lifted my camera and took a quick snap.
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