The One Who Changed Everything (The Cherry Sisters)

by Darcy, Lilian

  But he was just going through the motions. He didn’t think the client was serious, or realistic about a budget. You grew to have a feel for these things after a while. He added up the figures for his rough costing, based on what the client had wanted. Sixty-five thousand, give or take. No way they would go ahead, but he’d refine the estimate and email it to them anyhow. What did it really matter, when all he could think about was having Daisy in his bed again?

  She still hadn’t texted him back.

  He felt irrationally impatient and jittery about it. Only ten minutes. Sheesh, it wasn’t that he expected her to be hanging on her phone.

  But it would be nice if she was, because he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head for a minute all morning. He could smell her on his skin, feel her in his arms. She put a smile on his face every time he thought about something she’d said or something she’d done, or those moments when they’d licked chocolate and cream from each other’s bodies, laughing about it because it was silly as much as it was sexy.

  He wanted her in his bed again tonight and he felt selfish about it, and ruthless, and illogical. There was no room for patience, no room for sensible ideas about taking it slow, no room for her to have other plans.

  Her sister was getting back today, he remembered.

  Maybe that was why she wasn’t checking her phone every five minutes.

  He had a rush of irrational annoyance with Mary Jane for getting in the way, and he wished the trip to Africa was lasting another week at least. And while he was on that subject, he would have sent Marshall and Denise back to South Carolina if he could. And sent time-wasting clients to purgatory while he was at it.

  He wanted Daisy to himself. He wanted their free hours to be just that—free and open-ended and answerable to no one so that they could see a movie and go to bed, eat out and go to bed, and laze around and laugh and talk plans and go to bed.

  His phone sang out a melody, and he quickly touched the screen to bring up the new message. Daisy!

  Tonight or the weekend? he read.

  He texted back, How about both? and didn’t care that he wasn’t remotely playing this cool.

  Sounds great.

  Forget the texting, he wanted to hear her voice. He called her number and she picked up in about three seconds. Her voice was pitched low. “Tucker?”

  “Yep, it’s me.”

  Even lower. “Just a minute, let me close the door.”

  He liked the sound of that. Liked the sound of her breathing, because she’d kept the phone to her ear as she moved. “So, can I take you out, or something? Somewhere better than Joe’s Pizza?”

  “Hey, I had no complaints about Joe’s Pizza...”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll make a reservation and pick you up, okay?” He wanted to spoil her. He was already combing through the possibilities in his head. Lake views and candlelight, or maybe music and the sizzle of steak.

  “Mom and Dad and Mary Jane will all be here,” she said, with doubt in her voice.

  “Does that matter? Oh, you mean...is your family having a welcome-home dinner?”

  There was a second’s pause, then, “No, it doesn’t matter. We weren’t planning anything special. Mary Jane has a mother lode of jet lag. It always hits her pretty bad. She’s going to be sound asleep by seven. You’re right. It doesn’t matter who’s here.” She laughed, as if this was a delicious idea.

  “Seven, then?”

  “Seven,” she agreed, and made one simple word sound like an erotic promise.

  “Dress up,” he blurted out, thinking of lacy underwear beneath silky fabric.

  “Same back at you, buddy. The work shorts and flannel shirt are pretty hot, I have to say, but I’d like to see what else you got.”

  “Oh, I got plenty.”

  “I know. I saw.”

  “You did...”

  “I tasted.”

  They ended the call and he wondered why the phone hadn’t started to smoke.

  A surge of energy and joy flooded through him so powerfully that he had to fling open the car door and get out, purely so the energy would have somewhere to go. The air smelled so fresh and good with its tang of autumn pine. The sky was so blue today, with a pattern of cloud just starting to pass across it, suggesting a change in the weather. He could hear a stream rushing in the woods, hurrying to reach the lake he could glimpse through the trees, whose near-bare branches looked as graceful as a woman’s limbs. The sound of the water was like wild music.

  Man, he wanted to run or dance!

  Instead, he yelled. Whooped like a sports fan or a cowboy.

  “Whoo-oo! Yee-ha!” Then he just laughed. At himself. At life. At the driver of the car tooling past, who looked at him as if he needed a straitjacket.

  So this was happiness. Your voice carrying and echoing in the cold air. Your body with energy to burn. Your heart aching with happiness and threatening to burst out of your chest. This was what it did to you. It made you crazy, and you didn’t care about a thing.

  Back in the car minutes later, he called the Adirondack Steak House and made a reservation purely because it had the darkest corners of any restaurant around here that he could think of, and if he wasn’t eating with Daisy tonight with a little darkness for safety, he thought he might get arrested before the night was out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I won’t be home to eat tonight,” Daisy announced at around six o’clock. She’d thought about waiting until Mary Jane hit the hay before saying this, but that seemed sneaky somehow, and after the naked phone conversation with Tucker she wasn’t about sneakiness.

  He’d made it so clear how impatient he was to be with her, and she felt the same, and why hide it—from each other, or from anyone?

  Her parents and Mary Jane would all have to know soon enough, so why not now?

  The three of them looked at her, and she could see her mom trying hard not to ask the obvious question. Time to put her out of her misery.

  “I’m having dinner with Tucker. He’ll be picking me up.”

  “Dinner?” Mary Jane said.

  Mom and Dad stayed silent, and Daisy could see them reaching the correct conclusion. She’d been with Tucker last night also, and the night before.

  “It seemed like a nice idea,” she told her sister lightly.

  Mary Jane nodded slowly, and the word date hung in the air, unspoken.

  After a moment, Mary Jane stood up. “I am too tired for this tonight,” she announced. “But, Daisy, have you told Lee?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just stood up and headed for the door. “I’m going to bed.”

  “And I’m going to go through that final box of papers,” her dad said.

  Mom waited until both of them had left the room, and until their two sets of footsteps had faded away in opposite directions. She had more to say. This much was clear.

  “Daisy, I have to ask... I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mary Jane... She always seemed the one most angry with Tucker for the breakup with Lee...”

  “She would say that that was you and Dad.”

  “Well, yes, at the time, maybe, but as soon as I’d been to visit Lee in Colorado and seen how happy she was...”

  “So what is it that you have to ask, then?”

  Her mom sighed. “Just...are you sure you know what you’re doing?” She spoke quietly because Marshall was only in the next room.

  “No. I’m not sure at all.” She paused. “Why do you think Mary Jane was so angry about the whole thing? Was it Alex? Was she channeling her own situation?”

  “I don’t know, honey. There were things she didn’t say. When you and Lee both moved away, Dad and I were so thankful to still have one daughter close and committed to
Spruce Bay, but I wonder now if we should have discouraged her from staying on here. I’m not sure how we’d have run the place without her, but maybe that was the wrong priority.”

  “She loves it here. She’s such a good manager for a place like this.”

  “Still...” her mom said.

  “Still...” Daisy agreed. “When are you and Dad heading down South again?”

  “The day after tomorrow. We won’t be back again until Christmas, and then just for the holiday. This shuttling back and forth, not really living in either place, is getting old pretty fast. So you and Mary Jane will be opening for Thanksgiving and then the winter season on your own.”

  “We’ll get our teeth into it. Mary Jane knows what she’s doing.”

  “And have you told Lee that you’re dating her ex?” Mom asked quietly.

  “Not yet,” Daisy said. “I’m not sure there’s anything to tell, is there? I talked to her about hiring Tucker’s company before we met for the initial consult, and she was fine about that.”

  “There’s a difference between contracting him and dating him.”

  “And there are a lot of steps between seeing someone and getting engaged.” She hated the idea of telling Lee. She remembered the way she’d gushed to her about Michael, and couldn’t imagine saying those things about Tucker. Spilling it like that. Opening her heart. It just felt wrong.

  “Don’t put it off too long,” her mom said.

  “I won’t,” Daisy promised, because too long was a very inexact measurement, after all.

  After Mary Jane’s room had gone dark and quiet, Daisy took a shower and changed, appearing in the family kitchen at ten before seven. Standing at the stove making spaghetti for herself and Dad, Mom immediately went wide-eyed at the sight of the slinky black dress, killer heels, smoky makeup and glints of jewelry. “Wow. You really are going out to dinner!”

  “Yep, I sure am,” she answered, deliberately flip.

  They heard a car coming along the main driveway.

  “Um, say hi to him for me, then,” Mom said.

  “I will.”

  She said a quick good-night to her dad, then hurried down the stairs and out the door, heart already beating faster, wanting to meet Tucker before he could park and get out of the vehicle. She wanted nothing to spoil this, and the wariness in her parents’ eyes certainly had the power to do that.

  As she slid into the seat beside him, she saw the way his eyes went dark at the sight of her. “You look amazing.” He leaned across and gave her a velvety kiss laden with the promise of more. He smelled wonderful, clean and male and tangy. What was it about a man’s warm skin? Tucker’s warm skin?

  The dark interior of the car was like a cocoon as they drove. The weather had turned colder, with the possibility of light snow in the forecast. You could smell it in the air, and the cold tingled in your nose, but here in Tucker’s car they were warm and quiet and together. Neither of them spoke much. Daisy simply hugged this precious feeling of unity and kept herself in the moment.

  “Where are we eating?” she asked.

  “The Adirondack Steak House.”

  “It’ll be pretty quiet tonight.”

  “That’s the plan.” He glanced across at her, a sweet, wicked grin breaking onto his face. “Quiet corner of a quiet restaurant. Dark corner.”

  “Ooh.”

  And when they were seated, he kissed her across the table before their menus had even arrived.

  They were lost in each other for the next two hours, talking about everything and nothing, laughing out loud and then dropping unexpectedly into stories from their past. Daisy told him about her year in Paris, about how it felt to make perfect desserts for a hundred people. Tucker told her about the lean years when he’d first gone into business for himself.

  “It was just me and one other guy, no office. I worked out of my truck. That truck was my biggest investment. Brand-new, professionally painted signs on the sides. Because I knew if I showed up in what I could really afford to drive, which was some clapped-out old pickup with a hundred thousand miles on the clock, no one would hire me.”

  “Now you have how many trucks?”

  “Four. And even if a couple of them have a few miles on them now, they’re repainted whenever they need it.”

  “First impressions, which is just what you’re doing for us at Spruce Bay, with the landscaping.”

  “First impressions... They’re pretty important.” He gave another slow grin. “I wonder if I should tell you—”

  Their steaks arrived, both of them still sizzling on black metal platters, with the aromas of freshly poured mushroom and pepper sauces rising with delectable intensity into the air. Daisy leaned over hers and inhaled as it was placed in front of her, and she could smell the gardenia and wax of the white scented candles, as well.

  She looked across at Tucker. He was leaning back, his eyes in shadow and his mouth very soft. There was the tiniest suggestion of a frown creasing his brow. “You wonder if you should tell me...?” she prompted.

  But he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Not important. Not today.” He added something else under his breath that she couldn’t catch, then said in a different tone, “Tell me about the new menu for the restaurant at Spruce Bay.”

  The steaks were tender, juicy and delicious, and they lingered on for dessert and coffee until they were the only ones left. On the way out to the car, Tucker asked her lightly, “So...my place?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.” He pulled her close and squeezed her, and they walked with their arms around each other and their hips bumping, and had to stop before they reached the car, because it had been a whole ten minutes since they’d last kissed.

  “We’re never going to get to your place if we keep getting distracted like this,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “This isn’t the distraction. This is the whole point. The driving part is the distraction.”

  “It’s quite a big truck,” she said, only half joking. “And quite a dark parking lot.”

  “And quite a cold night,” he pointed out. “And starting to snow.”

  He was right. The first feathery flakes began to spiral down. They broke contact and ran to the vehicle hand in hand, then drove through a white whirl and reached his apartment with snow caught in their lashes and china-cold cheeks.

  They soon warmed up.

  In the best way possible.

  Tucker stripped fast, pulling his shirt over his head so that Daisy had to stop to look at what the action did to his ripped body. She shimmied out of her dress, then saw that he’d done the same as she had—paused to take a look. They grinned at each other, and Daisy felt a balloon of such intense happiness swelling inside her that it almost hurt.

  “You’re still cold,” he muttered.

  “So warm me up,” she whispered back.

  “Like this?” His big body spooned her from behind, and he stroked her wherever he could reach. Her breasts, her hip, between her thighs. “It’s not cold here...”

  “No, far from it.”

  They stopped talking, and the heat began to radiate outward from where his fingers stroked her. It sizzled across her skin, it throbbed deep within her, it wrapped around her in the form of his arms, it filled her as he turned her and pushed inside her, hard and velvety and groaning his impatience.

  Their need for each other was so powerful that it almost made her cry. She had to cling to him, pressing her mouth into his shoulder, feeling their shared climax like an ocean wave. She didn’t even know which direction was up. All she could do was breathe and feel.

  When they lay still again, spooning as before, he was more tender with her than she’d known a man could be. “Okay?” He moved strands of hair from her eyes and mouth with fingers th
at moved like delicate brushes. Tucking one behind her ear, he ran a fingertip around the sensitive edge, down to the lobe and then to the soft valley between her neck and jaw.

  She whispered, “So okay, I can’t even tell you.”

  He brushed her breasts lightly, letting his hands wander as if they just wanted to explore for hours. His breathing had slowed and deepened. She could feel the movement of it against her back, so intimate and quietly strong. “Was amazing, wasn’t it? Was...mmm...just amazing.”

  “You got nothing better than amazing?” she teased.

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  They both slept. Daisy was the first to awaken—sleepy, happy, sated. She could see the numbers on the bedside clock, reading 2:17 a.m., and was lazily surprised to find it that late. She’d slept so soundly in Tucker’s arms. How long since she’d last fallen deeply asleep this way, and awoken to such a feeling of perfect contentment?

  Well, Michael.

  She remembered.

  Wished she didn’t.

  They’d been out to some lavish charity event, where he’d seemed to know everyone—celebrity chefs, Hollywood stars. She’d been dazzled at being in such company, overwhelmed at being chosen by a man like this, a man who moved in these circles, and had disappeared into the huge and gorgeous ladies’ powder room a couple times to text friends, and Lee, You would not believe who I just met!!!...I am having the most incredible night.

  Michael had taken her back to his place afterward, and they’d made love without a false move or a second of silliness, and she’d fallen asleep, woken just the same way she’d awakened now, in the arms of her lover.

  She’d stroked Michael’s smooth chest, registering for the first time that it had been waxed to remove every hair. Well, this was California. Most men probably did it...

  Then she’d realized that Michael was awake, too, and watching her with a sleek smile, and in the spill of light from the street outside, she could see the self-satisfaction in his face. She was a lucky girl, to be in his bed like this, and he was clearly quite sure she knew it. “Get me some water, could you, lover?” he’d asked.