The One Who Changed Everything (The Cherry Sisters)

by Darcy, Lilian

  He owed it to her to try to do it right this time. He owed it to himself to earn another chance at that beautiful, luscious mouth before he exploded with the need inside him. “Can you just listen? Don’t say anything until I’ve said it all.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded, and he knew it was acknowledgment that he wasn’t the only one who’d handled things badly last night.

  “Emma was working for me at Reid Landscaping on a limited visa arrangement. Her son was ill,” he said. “Cancer. The same type that killed my dad. It’s a lot more treatable in children, especially when it’s caught early. But Emma didn’t have American citizenship and she was out of options for staying legally in the country. She didn’t want to have to go back to England when Max was in the middle of treatment. She has no family or support network there. She’s never really lived there, she’s lived all over the world. There was really no place to go that worked for her. So we got married. It was actually Jackie’s idea.”

  “Max isn’t your child?” Her blue eyes still watched him, cautious, glittering, unsure. She wanted so much for all this to make sense, and the way she was hanging on his words almost made him start shaking. There was a massive I want in both of them, and he didn’t know how much the sheer force of it would throw both of them off course, make rationality and clear thinking impossible.

  “No, he’s not,” he told her. “Emma was divorced from his dad when Max was just a baby. They don’t see him. He’s from New Zealand, so that didn’t help with her citizenship problem. Emma and I have never been involved, never slept together, never come close. You need to know that, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask her. Ask her about any of this. Or ask Jackie.”

  “They’re good friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this last night? Why, Tucker? If it’s such a practical matter. If it exonerates you so completely from any kind of two-timing and deceit?”

  “I meant to tell you. I messed it up. Started in the wrong place. I wanted to keep it simple.”

  “Is it simple?”

  “I—I don’t know. Feels simple today. For me. With the news about the divorce. Feels...”

  But she didn’t wait to find out how it felt, and he didn’t have the words, not even in his own head.

  Necessary.

  Meant to be.

  Impossible to deny.

  She put her hand on his arm, the way she’d done out here last time, when he’d pushed her away. She was asking for a do-over because she was sure that things had changed.

  And they had. She was right.

  His divorce papers were sitting on Jackie’s desk, while right in front of him stood the woman he’d wanted more than any other, for longer than any other, and if there was a reason not to respond to the soft invitation of her hand on his arm, he couldn’t remember what it was.

  “Oh, Lord, Daisy,” he said raggedly, and slid her into his arms.

  Chapter Twelve

  If anybody was watching...

  I don’t care.

  Tucker’s kiss, Tucker’s hard body against hers, Tucker’s low voice whispering her name... These things seemed to fill the whole of Daisy’s universe.

  He’d been working this morning and his body felt warm beneath a blue work shirt that smelled faintly of concrete and dry leaves and healthy man. His thick hair was clean and silky and short as she ran her fingers through it. His arms and shoulders and chest were hard and firm with muscle in all the right places. But most of all it was his mouth against hers that claimed her awareness.

  He drank her in as if he needed the taste of her purely to stay alive, and she just gave herself to it completely, closing her eyes, letting go of everything else. She didn’t care if anyone saw them. She didn’t care what was happening on the work site. His body felt strong and warm and already familiar. It felt like a gift, like a promise. Hers for the asking.

  Soon, she was leaning on him for support because the power of this had made her weak. He deepened the kiss with a certainty and skill that left her trembling and made her mouth feel swollen with sensuality and satisfaction. How could a kiss feel this good?

  And how long was it before they both realized they needed to stop? She had no idea. It felt like a minute, or like forever. He took his mouth away, loosened his hold, and she felt the cold air come between them until he took her hands in his, running his thumbs over her knuckles, making her instantly warmed once more.

  “When can I see you?” he muttered. He pressed his forehead to hers, bumping it lightly. He leaned his jaw against her cheek as if he needed the support of her body the way she needed his.

  “When...? I’ll be in the office—”

  “Not like this. You know what I mean. Alone. No one else around. Nothing getting in the way.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “Please.”

  “Soon. Whenever you want. Tonight.” She had no shame about it because it felt so strong.

  “Tonight, then?” His voice had gone so low, even a few feet away no one else would have heard. “My place?”

  “Above the showroom, right?”

  “Yes. Do you want to meet there, and we could—ah, hell—go out to eat, or see a movie or something?”

  “Or stay in,” she answered, too overwhelmed to pretend. “Just stay in? Could we do that instead?” Just as he did, she wanted privacy. Just the two of them. No one else.

  “Stay in. Oh, wow, yes.” He knew what she was saying, what she was offering. It hung between them, the promise of it so rich and real it almost made her gasp. Their two bodies tangled together, skin to skin. The smell of him all over her. Her hair brushing his chest. His weight on top of her.

  “Yes,” she echoed, because she didn’t mind how clear it was.

  He swore under his breath suddenly, and gathered her against his body once more, squeezing her as if he was feeling too full of joy to hold himself back. He was taut as a wire and eager as a child, raining kisses on her head, sliding his slightly roughened jaw against hers. “Just come when you can,” he said. “I’ll get in at around six, probably. Don’t know how I’ll get through the hours till then. I’ll stop for something to eat for us on the way home.”

  “What shall I bring?”

  “Nothing. It’s fine. I’ll take care of it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she teased, her lips against his neck. “So I should come when?”

  “Come anytime. Come whenever you want.”

  “I will. Oh, I definitely will.” She laughed, hearing the double meaning in what he’d said, and he laughed, too. It was such a good sound, with something like triumph in it, all happy and male and proud. For sure, he wanted to make her come.

  “We should get back,” he growled. “I can’t stand being this close to you and not being able to take it further.”

  “Oh, I know.” She heard the breathlessness in her own voice and felt a dart of fear suddenly about how vulnerable she was making herself, how naked and raw. Tucker gave his own vulnerability back just as powerfully, in his transparent happiness about their plans, but should she trust that?

  There was something else, too. This giddy, all-consuming rush of happiness felt familiar. The glow around everything. The perfection. The tide of feeling carrying her away. Wasn’t this how she’d felt once before, two years ago, with Michael?

  But Tucker kissed her again, as if he couldn’t yet bear to drag himself away, and as they left the dock together she let go of the fear.

  Don’t spoil it, Daisy, not when it feels this good.

  * * *

  “Something in your in-tray,” Jackie told Tucker in a carefully neutral tone when he checked in at the office for an hour in the middle of the day, before heading out to a potential new client in Saratoga.

  Daisy h
ad been right. It was the finalized paperwork for his divorce. He could tell by the return address on the front of the envelope.

  Jackie watched him pick it up and weigh it in his hand, the end of his marriage in the form of a handful of papers. Her eyes were large and her mouth carefully closed. Happily married herself, she was in the same camp as Tucker’s mom. She would have liked his marriage to Emma to turn into something real and lasting. It fit her sense of tidiness, and her sense of romance.

  “Don’t say it,” he warned her now.

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “But you were thinking it.”

  “Oh, you’re keeping tabs on my thoughts now?”

  “Ah, don’t...”

  “I can’t help it, Tucker, I’m so fond of both of you, and it would have been so nice. I think I’m mourning this more than you and Emma are.”

  “I know you are! Emma and I aren’t mourning it at all.”

  “It would have been so nice...”

  “Call my mom, then.”

  “No need,” she drawled. “Nancy called me.”

  “Oh, she’s heard, then?”

  “I think Emma must have told her.”

  “I’m surprised I haven’t had her on the phone. Mom, I mean. Well, and Emma, too. I thought she might have called.”

  “Busy,” Jackie said in a significant tone.

  “Busy?”

  “New boyfriend. He was waiting for her in the car when she dropped those off.”

  Wow. He felt the shock move through his body like the impact of a blow—a gut response on his part that rationally wasn’t fair. The words slipped out anyhow. “What, she went to a bar and picked someone up half an hour after the papers arrived?”

  “No, c’mon, Tucker, no need to say it that way.”

  “You’re right. Ah...I’m sorry.”

  “I think it’s been going on for a while. Emma talked about celebrating her freedom. Even though I’m disappointed you two didn’t decide to go for the long haul, it was great to see her looking so happy.”

  “Huh.” He didn’t know what to say, or what to feel. His thoughts processed like a slow wheel turning, while Jackie watched him.

  Okay, this was the heart of the matter—he’d been fighting this thing with Daisy, hurting her and confusing her in his striving to stick to an agreement with Emma that the latter had apparently forgotten all about.

  He knew what Emma would say—that they’d already been divorced for a couple months in all but legal fact, that their original agreement not to get involved with anyone else was irrelevant now. Max knew about the separation, and understood that it wasn’t a disaster or a tragedy, and that his life would go on in much the same way. He occasionally visited Tucker here at his upstairs apartment, but they were pals, not father and son. Max was in a much more secure, happy place in his life than he had been three years ago.

  In other words, the original agreement between Tucker and Emma was obsolete, had been for a while now, and she was free to do this. And yet...

  Emma had always had a thing about freedom that tended to assert itself at what Tucker considered the wrong times. The whole thing unsettled him, and he made the mistake of asking Jackie, “What did Mom have to say?”

  “She thinks you’re both going to regret the divorce. She’s thrilled that Emma’s seeing someone—”

  “Oh, she’s thrilled? That’s weird!”

  “—because she thinks he can’t possibly match up to you, and Emma will realize what she’s lost—”

  “She hasn’t lost anything.”

  “—and so will you, and in six months you’ll be back together and planning a real wedding. Not to scare you or anything,” Jackie teased, “but I think Nancy’s probably looking at reception venues as we speak.”

  Tucker swore.

  He felt the sheer joy and anticipation that had filled him since seeing Daisy this morning ebb away. He just wanted this to be simple, and true, and clear. He didn’t want to consider that he might be doing exactly what Emma was doing—celebrating a freedom he hadn’t had for three years. Or exactly what his father had done— pursuing needs and passions that left no room for the rights and needs and feelings of anyone else.

  He wanted this feeling to mean more than that. Way more than that. But how could he know if it did?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jackie was saying gently. “And don’t take any notice of silly, sentimental women, okay?”

  “Like you?”

  “Like me. You’re a good person, Tucker. Trust that. Live a little. Enjoy yourself.”

  “There I think you have the right idea.”

  He shook off his unsettled mood and drove down to Saratoga, wishing he could eat up the hours as fast as he ate up the miles.

  * * *

  Tucker heard Daisy’s car pull into the empty parking area in front of the building at twenty after six. The fall darkness had closed in an hour ago and he’d turned on the outdoor lighting as soon as he arrived home, not just the plain white lights that marked the route to the front steps and the stairs leading up to his apartment, but the carefully placed lighting in the surrounding plantings, as well. They made shadows and magic, and Daisy belonged with magic, he decided. She owned it.

  Looking down as she climbed out of the car, he felt his pulse leap into action. This was the way he’d seen her that very first time ten years ago—getting out of a car, her hair catching unexpected shafts of light, while he watched unseen from an upstairs window.

  For a moment, the idea spooked him. What was he looking for here? Some magic doorway into the past? Was there something unworkable and wrong about the way he responded to this woman? Was the timing all wrong, as it had been back then?

  He just didn’t know, and as he watched her, he decided not to care, not to ask any of those scary questions right now.

  She wore a draped skirt in one of the intricately colorful pieces of fabric she loved as well as a wicked pair of black heels and a stretchy, figure-hugging black top with sleeves that came coyly to her wrists and a neckline that wasn’t coy at all. As she moved around to the trunk of the car, opened it and leaned in, he saw the neat, enticing bounce and then the pale, shadowy swell of her breasts. Sheesh, he couldn’t look away!

  But then she heaved an enormous grocery bag into her arms and the sight of her body was lost to him. He wanted it back.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to bring anything?” he said to her moments later, when she reached his door.

  “Yes, but I didn’t say I was agreeing to that.”

  Still, it was just possible she’d gone too far, Daisy decided. She handed over the bulging bag of groceries—or would supplies be a better word?—and stepped into the warm, bright space of Tucker’s apartment.

  She’d been jittery and zingy all afternoon about their date, feeling like a schoolgirl and a princess and a cavewoman all at the same time—wildly crushy, the luckiest girl in the world, and desperate to be dragged by her tangled tresses into his primitive lair. She couldn’t think about anything else.

  “I won’t be home to eat tonight,” she’d told her parents.

  Her mom had opened her mouth to ask about Daisy’s plans, but her dad had cut her off very firmly. “In that case, Denise, why don’t you and I go out somewhere, just the two of us.” Her mom had managed to agree to this idea and had only needed one more piece of forcefully muttered coaching from her other half. “Don’t ask, Denise. It’s her life.”

  To escape her own turbulent feelings as much as her mom’s heroically unspoken curiosity, Daisy had attacked the supermarket, initial plans for buying a bottle of wine and something for dessert soon turning into a basket that was almost too heavy to lift. Wine, mineral water, exotic juice mix and the ingredients for some kind of free form sweet treat that would be an exotic riff o
n tiramisu.

  “It’s not that I’m complaining,” Tucker said, holding the bag, “but how long are you planning to stay?”

  “As long as you want me?”

  “Past your bedtime for sure.” He put the grocery bag down on the side table and took her in his arms instead, and her body said, “Yes. This.” And the schoolgirl-princess-Neanderthal feeling dovetailed into a sense of blissful, expectant calm.

  You. Me. This.

  “My bedtime might turn out to be very soon, I’m thinking,” she said softly.

  His dark eyes were alight and he was smiling a wicked smile filled with a blend of dizziness and satisfaction that echoed the way she felt. She wanted him to kiss her but he held back, watching her mouth with such a smoky look on his face that her lips felt the heat.

  Instinctively, she darted her tongue out to cool the burn, and that was when he swooped, painting the touch of his mouth on hers then taking it away at once, teasing her so that she whimpered and he grinned.

  “How could you do that?” she whispered. “Do it properly.” She took his face between her hands to keep him where she wanted him and he gave her another swift kiss, gone too soon.

  “Never heard of a place called delayed gratification?” he said.

  “Heard of it. Never been there.”

  “I’ll take you sometime.” The whispered words brushed her mouth oh so lightly.

  “But not tonight?”

  “Not tonight,” he agreed. “Not for another second.”

  The simmering kiss flamed between them as if it might never stop, and the grocery bag sat forgotten. He bent his head and trailed his mouth against her neck, her ear, her hair. He traced a line of warm contact around the neckline of her top, lingering at the center V, where a push-up bra made the very most of everything she had.

  Yes, she’d worn it on purpose, and yes, she didn’t want him to stop.

  He slid her top and bra strap off one shoulder and kissed her there, then did the same on the other side. She felt the soft slide of the fabric and then the warm press of his mouth. On her shoulders, on the slopes of her breasts.