by Rexi Lake
Okay, that was a better apology than the voicemail. Still, he waited. He could see that she was struggling. He wanted to make it easier for her, but he knew from experience that a true apology was never easy when it meant facing a hard truth about one’s self.
Her teeth were worrying that lower lip of hers until it was red from the teasing. “Would you please sit with me? I would like to tell you about what led to yesterday. And what happened after you left.”
“I have to finish bringing in the delivery,” he told her. The way she kept looking at him was sending him close to cracking and just pulling her close and assuring her that everything would be fine. He needed a minute, or ten, to collect himself.
“Oh, okay.” She nodded and moved out of the doorway she’d been blocking.
He moved to walk past her, but the dejected look was finally too much. Instead of walking past without pause, he stopped beside her. Wrapping one arm around her waist, he tugged her against his side and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He felt her entire body deflate from the tension she’d been holding.
She turned into him and broke into tears. Big, gulping sobs that shook her body.
Well, fuck. That was something he hadn’t expected. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving his truck open and the door open to take her into the break room. Nor did he feel like he could let her go to close things up. So instead, he stood there, holding her against him while she cried.
He rubbed one hand up and down her back while the other secured her tight against him. Her arms were tucked between them, her fingers clenching in his t-shirt as she sobbed. Curled against him like she was, he was acutely aware of how small she was compared to him. All his protective instincts reared up inside him. Damn. What was it about this woman that could piss him off so hard and then just wipe that anger away with tears?
Chapter Eight
Olivia didn’t know how long it was before she was no longer bawling into his shirt. She did know that when the tears finally slowed, she was exhausted in a way she’d never been before and she was thankful for his strength that held her up.
After he’d walked away from her, after Lola had sent her home, she’d spent the night sitting in her small apartment and thinking about the person she was. She’d never considered herself to be an awful human. At least, not until Tucker had thrown her intentions back in her face with a level of bluntness devoid of humor that isolated for her just what she sounded like. She’d tried to call him and apologize then. But he’d ignored her.
She’d then called Lola. Luckily, the woman had answered and after an hour of apologizing and also explaining what happened to make Tucker so angry, Lola had given her an opportunity - with conditions. She could open the cafe for Tucker to deliver the morning’s apples that had been ordered thanks to her burning so many pies. In return, she had to make something - anything - with a dozen apples to be on the day’s specials.
“I need to close up the truck and bring the second box in,” he murmured softly. She felt the rumble of his words in his chest. The soothing vibrations, coupled with the strong warmth and pressure of his hand on her back was more helpful than she could imagine. She hadn’t had someone hold her like that since she was a girl. Maybe not even then. She honestly couldn’t remember being held with such a protective ferocity.
She nodded and slowly released his shirt from her grasp. Sniffling, she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his chest for a brief moment before she leaned back and opened her eyes again.
He didn’t release her though. Instead, his hands moved to span her waist and hold her steady. “Will you be okay for a few moments?” he asked.
She looked up into the concerned blue gaze of his. She blinked, feeling the coolness of tears on her lashes when they hit her cheeks. But she nodded at him in response. “Yeah, I can manage I think.”
He looked at her for a moment, then she found herself airborne for a brief moment before her butt collided with the hard counter behind him. “Just, don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She grasped the edge of the counter with her hands. “Okay,” she answered.
She took a few deep breaths as he went out the door. She hadn’t expected that she would break down on him like that. She’d been more than a little nervous about how he’d react when he saw her. She knew she’d worked herself up into a bit of a mess before he arrived. The double shot of espresso in her iced coffee probably hadn’t been a great idea, but she’d slept poorly and needed the jolt to wake her up. Then he’d been so silent and stoic. She’d jumbled up her apology that she’d rehearsed and started rambling. She thought it might have been coherent, but it wasn’t until she took a breath and asked him to sit down that she thought she’d gotten herself under control.
But no. It was just a brief grasp of her emotions that allowed her to speak clearly. And then he’d given her the tiniest display of comfort. Well, maybe not so tiny. But that crack had broken the damn holding everything back. She’d lost it. Utterly lost it.
“Come on, Red.” His words broke through her thoughts and she looked up to find him back in front of her.
“Huh?” she asked, confused.
He smiled wryly. “You really did a number on yourself last night, didn’t you?” he asked. Grabbing her hips, he helped her down to stand on the floor again. “Let’s go sit down.”
She nodded and let him lead her into the breakroom. She expected they would sit separately, so she went to the small couch and curled up on one side. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.
“I didn’t mean to break down on you,” she said softly, looking at the obvious wet mark on his shirt. The grey was darker where her tears still soaked the fabric.
“I kind of guessed that.” He sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Not used to that, are you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t think of a time I cried like that before.” She shrugged. “Maybe when I was a kid.”
He waited quietly. It wasn’t the angry silence this time. There was a patience behind the quiet that wasn’t there before. She could feel the difference and it soothed her and helped ground her so she could think clearly.
“I never thought that I had an elitist attitude before last night,” she said. She took a breath and continued. “I know I shopped the best stores, loved my designer clothes, enjoyed my Plaza apartment. But I just considered that my way of life. I always tipped my servers, the cab drivers, the doorman. I made sure to say please and thank you when I ordered food and drinks. I complimented the women helping me make my purchases and the shop owners of the boutiques I liked.” She paused, taking a breath. “I did that because my mother had ingrained in me the need to have good manners. What I didn’t do, though, was consider that behind my actions there was a lack of respect for these people. I didn’t respect them. I expected that they would serve me my drinks because that was their job. I expected high end customer service because I was going to spend my money - my father’s money - and therefore I was entitled to a level of care and attentiveness that matched what I had access to in my wallet.”
She shook her head, the words were coming faster. She didn’t want to ramble though. She wanted to try and put to words her feelings and her revelations. She looked down at her fingers. The nails that had been done just ten days before were now chipped and the polish needed repaired. She should probably just take it off. She didn’t need pretty nails while she was working so hard. Nails - why was she thinking about her nails? She sighed.
“I’ve been so busy being angry that my father took away my stuff, that I wasn’t considering that maybe he wanted me to learn a lesson about life. I’m angry that I don’t have my clothes. I don’t have my purses or my lipsticks. I don’t have my nights to go dancing or the money to spend on buying drinks.” She rubbed her hands across her cheeks, wiping away the trails left behind by her tears. “Yesterday, Megan told me to find something and enjoy it. I’ve been so bitte
r about the last week of having to work when I didn’t want to. I’ve been frustrated by the rather obvious lack of skill I have with baking a damn pie. And really, the only thing that got past all of that was you. Bantering with you was fun. Sex with you was great.” She looked up at him. Those bright blue eyes of his were still trained on her. She doubted he’d even looked away since she started talking.
“I didn’t think that there was anything I could enjoy about being without my normal life. I didn’t intend when I said I was going to enjoy you to make it sound like you were an object to pick up and put down at my whim. But that’s how it came out.” She paused and bit her lip as she considered her words and remembered just how angry he’d been. “It came out that way because whether I thought I intended it or not, that was how I meant it. And that was wrong. When you got angry and threw that at me, my first instinct was to deny it. I didn’t want to consider that you could be right. I didn’t want to think that I was such an awful person to believe someone else was only there to be what I wanted, when I wanted.” She looked down, away from him again.
“What changed your mind?” he asked when she was silent.
“Lola,” Olivia answered truthfully. “She kicked me out of the cafe for the day. Told me she didn’t want to be around someone that could make you angry like that.” She started feeling that jittery energy again and hopped from the couch to pace the small room. “I went back to my little apartment and after railing about the unfairness of everyone else and life in general and Destiny Diamond and my father, and everything else I could think of, I realized that the only thing I hadn’t railed at in all of my anger, was myself. Everything was against me, at me. I wasn’t taking any responsibility.” Her arms started to wave around her as she spoke, so she crossed them in front of her. “But I responded to Destiny’s taunts. I know everyone has a cellphone with a camera. I should never have allowed her to get me worked up like that to begin with. I got myself into this situation. And then, instead of just trying to make the best of it, I was mouthy and bitchy about everything. I didn’t want to be here, so I just didn’t care to learn. I did the bare minimum and left Lola to pick up the slack, because this is her life anyway. I’m only supposed to be a visitor. Make my rent and I can go back home. How hard should I have to work when it’s not even going to last?”
“Olivia?” Tucker’s voice broke through the stream of words and questions and rambling that she’d fallen back into.
“What?” She paused, taking a breath and refocusing on him. He was leaning forward, his elbows propped up on his knees. Her gaze lingered for a moment on those long fingers of his, interlaced together. It travelled up his forearms and the corded muscles that stood out. Up still and those big biceps of his were making her lose her train of thought. She’d been talking. But she was barely remembering much as she finally forced her eyes above those broad shoulders and to his gaze, which was squarely on her.
“Breathe, baby. You were going so fast. Come sit down.”
She took a breath. Then another. “Yeah,” she murmured, moving back to the couch and sitting down beside him again.
“So you thought through all of this last night?” he asked.
She nodded. “I didn’t have anything else to do. My father let Megan outfit the apartment. There’s no television, no radio, not even a book to read.”
“What conclusions did you come to after all of the revelations?”
“That I need to try and enjoy everything I can, not just pick and choose what or who might be around me.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t certain if that was necessarily a good conclusion, but it was where she was starting.
He nodded and she felt relief.
“I think that might be a good start for you. How are you planning to do that?”
“I thought maybe it would help if I just smiled and didn’t complain. Not even in my head.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that would probably help.” He stood and held a hand out to her. She accepted it and let him pull her up. “How about I help you enjoy the life the rest of us live everyday?” He asked.
“Okay,” she answered cautiously. “I don’t really know what that means,” she admitted.
“It means, let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll start by helping you find what is enjoyable about making something with your own two hands.” He said.
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He reached out and tipped her chin up with his fingers. “First, though, I’m going to kiss you.”
“Please,” she breathed out.
He grinned, this time the twist of his lips had that wickedness that was reflected in his eyes as he lowered his lips to hers.
She tasted the sweetness of apples on his tongue as it swept gently into her mouth. This wasn’t the rough and tumble of their last encounter. This was different. Softer. Sweet even. She felt his hand cup the back of her neck and hold her still while he teased her senses. His lips didn’t crush hers. They were light, exploring. Tasting. She whimpered on a sigh as he pulled her body to his with a carefulness she didn’t expect from him. Her hands rested on his back as she hugged him close.
Her breath caught in her throat when he pulled back and feathered light kisses over her jaw and then down the column of her throat.
“Not everything in life needs to be fast and furious, baby,” he murmured between kisses as he feathered them back up to her lips. “Sometimes, slowing down and taking in the scenery is more pleasurable.”
He stroked his tongue over her lower lip and she trembled. Her lips parted and he dipped his tongue between them. It tangled with hers, stroking and twisting in her mouth with a casual ease that made her crave more. She sucked on it and was rewarded with him pulling her tighter against him. She could feel his cock hardening against her. She moaned and ran her hands up his back, trying to hold tighter.
But he gentled the pressure again and pulled away as his hands travelled down her back and cupped her ass briefly before releasing her. “Let’s get cooking,” he told her.
She considered pouting, but the easy smile mixed with the wink he gave her told her that this was one of those things he meant about slowing down.
Chapter Nine
Tucker had pulled her with him back to the kitchen. For the next hour before the place opened, he taught her how to make his grandmother’s Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal cookies.
“I thought you said this was easy!” Olivia said as she attempted to peel the apples the way Tucker was.
He put down the knife and apple he’d just finished peeling and moved behind her. “Here,” he said as he readjusted her grip. “Hold the apple like this and the knife this way.” He applied pressure on the knife and helped steady her hands with his. “You don’t want to cut into the apple, just remove the peel.”
“It feels a lot easier with you helping, she murmured.
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “That’s because you don’t have the right muscles yet, baby. We’ll have to build those up for you.”
“I don’t think that’s the only problem,” she answered wryly.
“You’re right. You need more confidence too.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” she returned.
“I know. But it’s the truth,” he told her. “Now, let’s finish the dozen apples you need and measure them out. Grandma’s recipe calls for a cup. We’ll have to do some math once we know how many cups we have of apples.”
“Oh! Math I’m good at!” She smiled at him, her eyes brightening at finding something she would know.
“Recipes are math, science, and emotion mixed together to make delicious results. Once you’ve got the math and science of them down, there’s nothing that can stop you from creating what you want.”
“Is that a quote from a chef or something?” she asked.
He laughed. “Not exactly. It’s what my great-grandmother told my great-grandfather. She’d just won a blue ribbon at the town fair for her third recipe with his apples. Sh
e was the one who created our apple cider recipe. And there’s always been a new recipe from each Hart woman since. My grandmother married into the family and this was her favorite. My mother makes a sweet apple iced tea.” He shrugged. “It’s something of a family tradition now.”
“It sounds nice,” she said. “I don’t have anything like that. My mother passed when I was younger, but her advice, aside from drilling manners into me, was more along the lines of what functions to wear a dress and when it was appropriate to wear white in public.”
“What about your father?” Tucker asked. “By all accounts he’s a self-made man in many ways.” He started gathering the chopped apples into a measuring cup. He counted as he filled each cup and dumped it into a bowl.
She shook her head. “He brought Marsten Enterprises into the twenty-first century, but all he did was expand some of the investments. He’s got a good head for stocks. That was what boosted him up into the billionaire status. But the family business has always been trades and stocks and investments. My grandfather built my great-great-grandfather’s business from a single local financing business into the conglomerate. But until me, all the children were boys. They were taught the trade and how to be business-minded from birth. With me, no one thought much about teaching me the business. I wasn’t supposed to be the only child, but my parents didn’t have any more kids even though they tried.” She shrugged. She’d just finished slicing her apple and set the knife down. “Didn’t change how I was only supposed to be the society daughter though. My father’s been pushing some of his up-and-coming employees at me for years. He thinks maybe he can get a son-in-law to pass the reins to now.”
“I imagine that’s not something you’re enjoying,” he said.
She shook her head. “Not in the slightest. Either I’m nothing more than a tool to get the position as Elias Marsten’s heir, or I’m a booty prize as well as a tool.”