The One Who Changed Everything (The Cherry Sisters)

by Darcy, Lilian

Probably nothing. Curiosity was a natural response. She was feeling it, too. If she’d never gotten to know Tucker Reid ten years ago when he was about to marry her sister, what would she feel about him now?

  Would he still be that granite-faced, uncomfortable presence she’d been able to call to memory so clearly a few minutes ago? Would he be someone that carefree Lee would still be happy to think of as a friend? Would he be the man Mary Jane thought he was—cold and superficial enough to dump his fiancée because she had some burn scarring on one side of her lower jaw and neck and shoulder?

  Or was there another truth to the man that none of the Cherry sisters had understood?

  * * *

  The paving stones were a delaying tactic. Tucker knew it even as he placed another one in position, rocking it back and forth on its sand foundation to make sure it was steady.

  It wasn’t.

  Or level.

  He didn’t have the spirit level with him to enable a final adjustment, so he was not just delaying his meeting with Daisy Cherry here, he was actively wasting his own time, because he would probably end up lifting all the pavers and laying them down again from scratch in order to get them right.

  He sighed between his teeth, irritated at himself.

  And then picked up another paving stone. There was something about physical labor that settled his head. He’d always been that way, through his father’s illness, through all the anger and mess, through the years he’d spent filling his dad’s shoes too young. When he had something on his mind, he worked through it, literally. Raking leaves in his parents’ yard at thirteen. Unloading deliveries at the garden center at twenty.

  Or fiddling uselessly with pavers right now.

  He didn’t like thinking back on his relationship with Lee, that was the problem. And he definitely didn’t like thinking about Daisy’s part in the whole thing.

  No, that wasn’t fair.

  As far as Daisy herself knew, she hadn’t been involved at all.

  It was all me.

  It had so nearly been a disaster—so very, very nearly—and he couldn’t give himself any credit for averting that disaster. He’d seen it coming, but he hadn’t been the one to act. He’d let Lee and fate do that. He’d been paralyzed by his intense need to do the right thing, without knowing what the right thing was.

  There were reasons for the paralysis, but he found it hard to forgive himself for it all the same.

  He sometimes still thought about getting in touch with Lee to see how she was doing. Thought about calling or emailing, but how did you do that? How did you revive something that had started as a friendship and should never have turned into anything else? How did you just ask someone out of the blue, “Hey...are you happy?”

  You can ask Lee’s sister if Lee is happy. You can ask her today. She would know the answer to that.

  But he wasn’t convinced that he would manage to frame the question. He could end up holding back and holding back until someone else took the matter into their own hands, the way he had held back ten years ago.

  Yeah, he definitely hadn’t forgiven himself for that.

  Ten years earlier

  Something’s not right.

  The thought was nagging and insistent, prodding at Tucker like someone trying to get his attention with the point of an umbrella. Hey, you! Notice me! Do something!

  Everything’s not right.

  “...and Mom is still questioning the fact that we’re only giving chocolate as wedding favors,” Lee was saying.

  Tucker tried to listen, tried to feel that what his fiancée was saying was important. “I think it’s fine,” he said, and she nodded, but neither of them was really thinking about chocolate or wedding etiquette or any of that.

  I’m thinking I don’t want to go ahead with this, and I’ve known it in my heart for a while, and today it’s making me sick. It’s like lead in my stomach. It’s gotten worse. Oh boy, has it gotten worse! How could this happen? Everyone in both families is so happy about the wedding, I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

  Was that what Lee was thinking, too? Or was she just scared? Scared because she could see that he was thinking it?

  His mind scattered onto six different tracks at once. Scared because she didn’t know what he was thinking, because he was fighting so hard not to let it show?

  More than that, he was fighting so hard not to feel it. He honestly did not know if it was just prewedding jitters, the kind everyone had, or if it was a serious problem, and he didn’t dare to bare his soul to a listening ear in order to find out. Not to Lee, not to anyone.

  Dad had “followed his heart” and left havoc in his wake for years, made his whole family miserable. Tucker thought that human hearts could talk a lot of disastrous nonsense, and had vowed many times that he would keep his where it belonged, under the firm control of his head.

  Meanwhile, Daisy had disappeared into the kitchen.

  Daisy, who’d knocked him off course the moment he’d set eyes on her from an upstairs bedroom window less than an hour ago. He’d never expected it. How the hell could you expect something like that?

  He’d heard the car swinging in from the resort driveway to park beside the house, a little later than predicted. Mary Jane had been the one to go pick up Daisy from Albany airport. He’d heard voices—Lee and his future in-laws, Marshall and Denise, as they rushed outside to greet her.

  He’d stepped over to the window. Daisy was climbing out of the car. Shafts of afternoon sun struck her blond hair and glinted on earrings and a gold bangle on a bare, lightly tanned wrist. She was wearing jeans, a white top and some kind of pointless but beautiful, vibrantly colorful summery scarf that got mixed up in her huge, warm hug with Lee.

  She didn’t even seem to see Lee’s newly scarred skin, she was just so busy hugging her and exclaiming, wiping happy tears from her eyes, laughing. She hugged her parents, said something about the beautiful June day and the sun on the water.

  “You’re later than we expected,” Denise Cherry said.

  “My fault,” Daisy answered. “I want to bake for you tonight, so we stopped for ingredients.”

  “You don’t have to bake for us! Not when you’re only just home!”

  “I want to. Please! I really do!” She was already diving into the trunk of the car and bringing out shopping bags. “I’m going to do a raspberry dacquoise that’s so luscious we’ll have to row right around the lake to burn off the calories. And a peach tart, because French tarts are just so gorgeous to look at.”

  “I don’t know where you get the energy, honey!”

  Tucker didn’t know, either. All he knew was that it glowed from every pore of her skin and he was captivated by it. Lee was pretty energetic, too. She liked to hike and ski and climb and run, and he loved that about her—that she was active and fit, and not some girlie girl who wouldn’t set foot outdoors for fear of ruining a pedicure.

  But Daisy’s energy was different, electric and beautiful, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  He felt as if he was spying, a voyeur, betraying Lee, betraying the whole Cherry family, betraying himself, and even his mother, who adored Lee. And he kept right on doing it, watching the outline and movement of Daisy’s body as she carried the shopping bags. She paused to take another look around her at the beloved, familiar sights of home, and let out a big sigh of contentment that he felt in his own body.

  It couldn’t be happening.

  Even if it was happening, it couldn’t mean anything, or be important in any way. It was just some stupid symptom of his prewedding nerves. He seriously didn’t believe in this kind of thing. He seriously didn’t want to believe in it, after Dad. And if it seemed to be happening anyway, then it was just a meaningless illusion. It wasn’t real.

  And yet... He felt it again a little later, when they formal
ly met, the moment they shook hands. The aura of creative energy and star-kissed good fortune that radiated from her like an inner light, the optimism and curiosity and zest for life. Her hair, her eyes, her bow of a mouth, the way she undraped that stupid, beautiful scarf, unconsciously running her hand over the silk as if its color gave off heat and her fingers were cold.

  Wow.

  Just wow.

  There were three Cherry sisters in his life. He liked the eldest one a lot, even though she could be prickly at times and he couldn’t stand Alex, her boyfriend. He loved the middle one like a comrade-in-arms and he was going to marry her. He was. Everyone wanted it.

  Sister number three was a revelation he hadn’t expected or wanted or—

  Hadn’t wanted.

  Really, really didn’t want.

  He wanted to marry Lee.

  He wanted to want to marry Lee.

  “Should we get out of here?” she asked him suddenly, and he realized he was still staring into space, roughly in the direction of the kitchen door, even though it was a good forty-five seconds since Daisy had disappeared through it.

  “Out of here?” he echoed stupidly.

  “Away,” Lee said. “Right after dinner. Go to a bar, or something. Even better, skip dinner and go to a bar right now.”

  “You know we can’t do that.” As a future Cherry son-in-law...as the first future Cherry son-in-law...he was well aware of family requirements five days before the wedding, and his sense of duty about it was strong. “Not even after dinner.”

  “Is it wrong that I want to?” There was a huge amount of appeal in Lee’s voice, and he didn’t know how to answer her.

  “We’re both on edge.” He touched her neck. It was a caress he’d used countless times before the accident and he wasn’t out of the habit of it yet, even though he knew she didn’t like it anymore. The burn scarring there and on her jaw and shoulder was fading now, but it was still too fresh for comfort and would never fully disappear, and they were both self-conscious about it, second-guessing their own motivations.

  Was he only touching her neck to prove that he didn’t mind touching it? Did she only dislike it because she didn’t believe such a caress could possibly be sincere? She hated the scarring way more than he did.

  Why had he started touching her neck in the first place? He liked her so much, they were such great friends, they had things in common, but that slightly crazy party night when friendship had spilled over into something physical...

  To be honest, he wondered where they would be now if that night had never happened.

  Maybe we would have stayed just friends, and I would have met Daisy instead...

  No! Idiot!

  When Lee had still been in the hospital after the accident, they’d both said to each other that this was what love was all about, going through the dark times together as well as the good times, and yet...

  Something’s not right.

  It wasn’t just wedding jitters.

  And it wasn’t just Daisy.

  Lee felt it, too, he was sure she did.

  Almost sure.

  But she wasn’t saying anything.

  And he couldn’t say it for her because then she’d think...everyone would think...that he was doing it because of the accident, when really he thought the accident had done him a favor, reaffirming his bone-deep understanding of how serious marriage was, forcing a realization that they weren’t together for the right reasons. They cared about each other, but not in the right way.

  I have to say it. If she won’t, I have to.

  But what if he was wrong? What if this was just a temporary blip in the beat of his untrustworthy heart? What if the Reid and Cherry families were right to be so happy about the wedding? And what if Lee was devastated instead of relieved? Could he do that to her?

  He couldn’t say it. Was there any way he could work out what both of them really felt without resorting to the finality of words? Maybe the best marriages were the ones that started out exactly the way he’d started out with Lee—as friends. After seeing what passion and wild impulse had done to his own family, he truly didn’t think that was the way to go.

  So where did Daisy fit in?

  She didn’t, his own ruthless honesty told him. He’d schooled himself not to believe in rosy scenarios, after Dad’s lymphoma diagnosis and his reaction to it. Life wasn’t sunny and effortless. Life wasn’t about going where the winds of emotion blew you. Life was struggle. Given a choice between believing in easy miracles and believing in solid work, Tucker chose the hard yards every time.

  Daisy didn’t fit. Daisy was an illusion.

  She was oblivious, and it was better that way.

  “You’re right,” he told Lee. “After dinner. After we’ve put in as much time as anyone could expect. We do need to get out of here and get a couple of hours to ourselves.”

  “Or I’m going to explode.”

  “Me, too.”

  “We need to talk, and—”

  “Yes, work things out. Think. Out loud. To each other.” The words didn’t come easily. Frustrated by the difficulty of coherent speech, he grabbed her shoulders and squeezed her and felt the breath come out of her as if she’d been holding it for too long. She squeezed him back.

  “Yes. Yes. We really do,” she said, and blinked back what could have been tears.

  Shoot, he was giddy with relief!

  Giddy, and thirsty, he realized. He’d been out of doors from six until two at the garden center, where he worked three days a week on top of his hours at the hotel. He’d repotted grafted plants, unloaded new stock and supplies, planned his own future landscaping business inside his head while his body lifted and carried and stacked and sorted. He’d grabbed a burger and a sugar-filled soda for lunch, but hadn’t had a real, thirst-quenching drink since before noon.

  Thinking only of a long glass of clear, icy mountain water, he made for the kitchen, and there was Daisy stirring a pot that bubbled with sweet, fragrant syrup. He could smell it the moment he walked in.

  And the moment he walked in, he was far too aware of her—of how pretty and exotic she seemed, so freshly arrived from France, with that indefinable nuance of Frenchness about her. She looked a little steamy at the hot stove, with pink in her cheeks and several tendrils of fine, golden-blond hair curling around her face in the humid warmth. She brushed one back behind her ear then looked up and caught sight of him.

  They looked at each other.

  He froze inside and looked away before either of them could even blink.

  This was not important. This was not what was making him jittery about his future with Lee. The jitters had been building for weeks, when Daisy was just a name and a vague reference.

  He’d seen her in family pictures as a cute toddler and then a gangly-limbed teen, and right up until their meeting ten minutes ago he’d still been thinking of her as a kid, as Lee’s kid sister.

  Someone he might tease a little about boyfriends.

  Someone with a boyfriend—a local guy she’d known since high school who’d been texting and calling and emailing her faithfully the whole year she was in France.

  She didn’t have a boyfriend, he’d learned.

  Not that this was important, either way.

  But still, they’d looked at each other for that tiny moment before he’d flinched his gaze away.

  “Thirsty,” he said, to explain his presence.

  “Beer or soda?” she offered, smiling. “There’s both in the refrigerator.”

  “Actually, water...”

  “Bottled or tap?”

  “Tap is fine. I’ll help myself.”

  “Thanks. I can’t leave this glaze right now, or very bad things will happen to it.”

  “No problem.” He ran the fauce
t, and cold mountain water gushed into his glass. And then he took it outside to drink it, because he didn’t trust himself to stay anywhere near her.

  Chapter Three

  Present Day

  Out in the yard, Daisy saw Tucker in worn jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up his arms the same way—although it was not the same shirt—as they’d been in the photo on the wall inside.

  He was shifting a large paving stone into place in an open-air alcove that formed one of Reid Landscaping’s displays. There were five of these alcoves, each designed to show what could be achieved with barbecue areas, ponds and fountains, raised garden beds and a dozen other features.

  He straightened, stepped back to judge his work and was apparently satisfied. He paused for a moment to stretch his shoulders and check his phone, then turned to begin striding across the large yard, sliding the phone into his back pocket as he caught sight of her. She waved at him and came forward to meet him before he got too close to the building. She really didn’t want to end up back inside, with the possibility of their conversation being overheard.

  Just in case Mary Jane was right about the kind of person he was—the nasty kind, like Mary Jane’s ex. After her long experience with Alex Stewart, maybe Mary Jane was a really good judge of scumbag men. Maybe there really was a good reason, even after all this time, not to contract Tucker’s company to relandscape the Spruce Bay grounds, and it was all bound up in Lee’s accident and Tucker’s response.

  Daisy wondered again about the second reason, the one Mary Jane hadn’t spoken.

  The one that had put a stubborn, shuttered look onto her face, as if the second reason was something she wouldn’t confess even under torture.

  Tucker saw her and stopped to wait until she reached him, watching her with a steadiness that unnerved her, given how uncomfortable she was already feeling. Those memories of his unreadable presence ten years ago were fresher and more vivid than they should have been.

  She hadn’t been too impressed with strong and silent back then, but she’d learned to appreciate it in the years since, and the Tucker Reid of today was even more impressive in the flesh than he’d been in the photos on the main office wall, hard and solid and strong, with the kind of maleness that only belongs to a man who works hard with his body in the open air.