The One Who Changed Everything (The Cherry Sisters)

by Darcy, Lilian

  That was the moment when the first chink of doubt had cracked the facade.

  “You okay?” Tucker was awake also, and didn’t realize that there were three of them in the bed—himself, Daisy and her memory of Michael.

  “I’m great.”

  No chink of doubt tonight.

  But she was spooked by the memory. Was there any difference between how she felt about Tucker now and how she had once thought she felt about Michael?

  There was.

  There was!

  How did you truly know...?

  “Can you please take me home?”

  “You don’t want to stay?” He stretched an arm and pulled her even closer against him, instantly giving her twenty reasons why she should.

  “I really, really want to stay, but I—I’d better not. Not tonight.”

  She needed some breathing space. This was so scary good that she didn’t trust it, didn’t know how to trust it, after Michael. She had to get her feet back on the ground, because real feelings didn’t float like this, did they?

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” Daisy dragged herself from the bed, and Tucker watched as she began to dress, his face hard to read. She gave him a prompting glance, and said with a tease, “What, you’re going to drive me home naked?”

  “Nah, I’m getting there.” He rolled to his feet in one movement and grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt draped over the back of a chair. He was fully dressed and sticking his feet into running shoes without undoing the laces, while she was still working on the zipper at the back of her slinky black dress. “Let me help you with that,” he said, and the feel of his body standing behind her and the deliberate caress of his fingers as he slid the zipper up almost brought the whole driving-her-home plan undone before it had even gotten off the ground. Was he doing it on purpose?

  Almost brought the plan undone, but not quite. She took control of herself and stepped away from temptation, hugging her arms in front of her body for self-protection. “I really don’t want to be doing the walk of shame tomorrow morning in this dress, with raccoon eyes, Tucker.”

  “You can take care of the raccoon eyes,” he teased. “I do have a bathroom.”

  “I know, but...”

  “But? C’mon, Daze.” He gave a slow grin, wickedly tempting. He knew it was tempting, damn him, and she could tell how much he wanted to win this. And how much he was sure that he would.

  She hardened her resolve. “I just think I need to get home. It’s late enough already.”

  He was disappointed, and he couldn’t quite hide it. Even though he didn’t say anything, Daisy could feel the slight change in his mood. He thought she was being ridiculous, acting like a teenager scared of being caught out after curfew. He was wrong, but she couldn’t give him an explanation. How could she?

  I love being with you so much, I’m scared I might burst. And then I’m scared the bubble might burst and there’ll be nothing left. It happened before and it was so horrible I get sick to my stomach when I think about it.

  They went down to his car. The snow laid two inches deep on the ground now, but it had stopped falling. There had been very little traffic on the roads tonight, and when they turned down the Spruce Bay entrance driveway, after a largely silent journey, Tucker’s pickup made the only tracks through the pristine white. The tracks would tell their own story, come morning, if anyone cared to examine the evidence.

  He pulled up in front of the office, turned off the engine and looked at her. She knew he was angry. Not so much angry, the feeling wasn’t as strong as that. Frustrated. Disappointed. Not seeing it her way.

  It felt horrible, and she didn’t know what to do. So she did the only thing that seemed possible. She kissed him quickly, then asked upfront, “Again? Soon?”

  “What time will curfew be?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then tell me what it is. Here I am, sneaking you home in the middle of the night. Are you going to climb through your bedroom window? Take off your shoes on the porch so you can creep inside in stockinged feet? Is your dad going to be standing there with a shotgun pointed at me?”

  Oh, crap!

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Isn’t it? Isn’t it because of what happened ten years ago?”

  Okay, maybe that was a part of it, too. Tucker had already broken up with one Cherry sister. Would it end up being two? She didn’t want to put her family through another mess. She didn’t want them thinking it was Tucker’s fault.

  “Maybe a little,” she said. “I want to ease them into it. Which is probably me more than them, but...no, it’s them, too.”

  “It’s Mary Jane.”

  “Yes, it is. How did you know?”

  “Ah...just a gut feeling. She disapproves.”

  “No, Tucker, she’s lonely.”

  “Lonely?”

  “We talked about it today. She wants a husband, and babies, and not to be going on all these exotic trips on her own. But please don’t blame Mary Jane. It is me. I...need time.”

  “You can have time, as long as you spend it with me.” He was trying to joke about it, but the words came out sounding a little too forceful.

  “Tucker...”

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything.” He let out another sigh and pressed his fingers into his eyes. “That was me in bulldozer mode. Sorry.”

  “Let’s forget this whole conversation.” At almost three in the morning, neither of them needed to argue anything out for long.

  “Let’s. I’ll call you,” he said. “We’ll ease into this...”

  “But let’s make it fast?”

  He gave a reluctant grin, there in the snowy dark. “You got me,” he said. “I have no patience.”

  “I like that. Mostly.”

  “Get out of this truck before I make a grab for you and we’re right back where we started.”

  She was still smiling as she let herself into the house, using the office entrance. Tucker waited until he saw the door swing open, then started the engine and circled the truck around, making another loop of fresh tracks in the snow. She waved at him, but couldn’t see if he was waving back.

  Didn’t matter. She kept smiling anyhow.

  Then noticed that there was a light on upstairs, in the family living room. Going up, she heard sounds in the kitchen, and there was a light on there also. Mary Jane was making herself coffee.

  “What are you doing up so late?”

  “You mean, what am I doing up so early? I slept for nearly nine hours.” Mary Jane added deliberately, “Then I heard Tucker’s truck.”

  “Your window doesn’t look out onto the front. How did you know it was—”

  “Oh, please, Daisy! I went along the landing and looked out the end window and saw the Reid Landscaping logo on the side. And, no, I didn’t keep looking, I came back here and got the coffeemaker started. Want some?”

  “No, thanks.”

  There was a short, awkward silence.

  “You didn’t tell me it had reached that point,” Mary Jane said quietly.

  “What point?”

  “Oh, don’t make me say it. The point where you come sneaking in at three in the morning, all scrambled into your clothes.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Of course I mind.”

  “Because it’s Tucker?”

  “Because it’s anyone.” She made a stricken sound, impatient at herself. “Yes, because it’s Tucker. Because he’s been waiting—” She stopped and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Sorry. Believe it or not, I do know this is largely my problem, not yours. When are you going to tell Lee?”

  “Soon. Sometime. When it feels like it’s gotten to that point.”

  “Don’t you thi
nk it’s gotten to that point already?”

  “Can’t you let me be the judge of that, Mary Jane? Can’t you trust that I care about Lee as much as you? And that I need to have the right handle on where this relationship is going before I talk to her about it?”

  “You mean, you think it might not last?”

  “How can I know? It’s so far lasted about a week. Where’s its track record? Where’s mine? Are you really asking me to search my soul about this now, at three in the morning?”

  “No, okay, I guess not. Go to bed.”

  “Only if you promise we’re good.”

  “We’re good. It’s not your fault.” She turned back to the coffeemaker with a stubborn look on her face, and all Daisy could do was say good-night and go to her room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Tucker, do you have a minute?”

  “Well, I’m in the pickup, pulled over on the side of 9N,” Tucker told his mother at the far end of the phone. He’d finished the final check on a completed project at a bed-and-breakfast in Lake Luzerne and was counting the minutes until he arrived at Spruce Bay.

  After some intensive work, there were only a few tasks awaiting completion, and the Reid Landscaping crew’s focus had largely moved to their next job. Kyle was back after his accident, his attitude much improved and his conversation littered with Rebecca’s name far more than previously. With Marshall and Denise in South Carolina, Daisy and Mary Jane had been working like dynamos on readying the place to open on a limited basis for Thanksgiving next week.

  “So you can swing by?” On the phone, his mom sounded eager, confident and a little concerned.

  Tucker could read that voice. She really needed and wanted him to come, and was sure that he wouldn’t let her down. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing really... I’ll explain when you get here.”

  “Because you’re so sure I’m coming.”

  “You never let me down, Tucker, I hope I know that by now.”

  A neat piece of emotional blackmail, he noticed. She didn’t resort to it very often, but when she did, he was a pushover for it. Okay, yes, he was a good son. He hadn’t let her down in the past, and he wasn’t going to start now.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said, hoping it was just a leaking washing machine or some insurance papers she needed him to look over.

  It wasn’t.

  Pulling up in front of his mother’s house, Tucker saw Emma’s lime-green metallic-finish car parked in the driveway. They’d only seen each other once since their divorce had been made official, when he’d taken Max to a movie ten days ago. Now Max met him at the door, lunging at him with total trust. He knew Tucker would scoop him up and give him a swing through the air, and Tucker obliged. “What are you doing here, buddy?” he asked.

  “Just hanging out with Nancy. Mom was busy.”

  “Oh, Nancy was taking care of you?”

  “Just for the afternoon. Mom’s here now, to pick me up.”

  “Yeah, I saw the car.”

  “They’re in the kitchen.”

  He went through, steeling himself for the two women to present a united front in whatever this was about. Emma greeted him with her usual brief hug, her cheek carefully turned for a token kiss. Her eyes were a tiny bit pink around the rims, and he had about four seconds in which to wonder if she’d been crying. She was one of the few women he knew who looked pretty when she was in tears.

  There were two empty coffee mugs and a milk glass on the café-style table in the kitchen, as well as a plate dotted with cookie crumbs. Something was brewing in here, and it wasn’t just Colombia roast.

  His mom didn’t waste any time. “You don’t have plans this evening, do you, Tucker?”

  “I might,” he said cautiously.

  It was the truth. He and Daisy didn’t make plans anymore. They made assumptions, and he was making the usual one right now—that they’d spend the evening together. Tonight it would most likely involve eating Thanksgiving recipes a week ahead of schedule. Which was fine. If he was with Daisy, that was all that mattered.

  She’d softened on the subject of spending the night at his apartment, and that need for space that she’d talked about at three in the morning a couple weeks ago had seemed to fade. If he was bulldozing her, then he was pretty sure she liked it.

  He liked it. He had endless energy for this, so much that he couldn’t imagine her not feeling the same. Life didn’t work like that, did it? When one of you felt this strongly, the other one did, too.

  “Oh, good!” Mom said, instantly translating “I might” into a straight out “No plans at all.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Mom spread her hands. “I don’t know how to start.”

  “It’s fine, Tucker,” Emma said. “It’s really not a huge deal.”

  He didn’t usually hear her accent anymore, with its odd mix of British and South African and something else, but tonight it jumped out at him. Cute. Exotic. She did do that deliberately, he knew. She put the accent on a little stronger when she wanted something. He didn’t know if she was even aware of the affectation, it might be entirely unconscious, and normally he found her so transparent that it didn’t bother him. He’d never felt manipulated by her because he’d only ever acceded to her wishes when they made sense.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Emma and Rob have had a fight,” Mom summarized.

  “Not a fight, Nancy,” Emma corrected quickly. “Tucker, we had a bit of a tiff. We were supposed to be having a family night with Max today. The go-karts at Lake George, then pizza and popcorn and Max’s choice of movie at home, but Rob has business in the city tomorrow and he decided to fly down this afternoon.”

  “For a start, who’s Rob?” Thanks to Jackie, he could make a pretty good guess, but he was feeling stubborn and resistant, facing his mother and his ex-wife like this. They were both looking at him with big eyes, turning him into their knight in shining armor, but the only knight he wanted to be right now was Daisy’s. He hadn’t seen her since six o’clock this morning, and that seemed way too long.

  “Emma’s been seeing him for a couple months,” Mom explained.

  Tucker thought about mentioning his agreement with Emma that they wouldn’t get involved with anyone else until their marriage was over. He thought about asking why he was apparently the last person to know, and why nothing had been said ten days ago when he’d taken Max to the movies. He thought about probing a little further on Rob’s background. Would he make a good stepfather for Max, for example?

  But then he let it all slide. He would always be there for Max...and for Emma...if they really needed him, but he couldn’t be their fallback every time the tiniest hiccup happened in their lives, and he couldn’t prevent Emma from dating anyone she wanted. He said easily instead, “Right, yes, I think Jackie mentioned it. So Rob had to cancel?”

  “He shouldn’t have!” Emma said. “He has to start shifting his priorities now that we’re getting more serious. He could have taken the first flight down tomorrow. He could have insisted that they keep the meeting to the original start time instead of pushing it forward.”

  “So that was why he flew down this afternoon? Because the meeting time changed?”

  “He should have said he couldn’t make the earlier time,” Emma insisted.

  “I can’t imagine you doing something like this, Tucker,” Mom put in helpfully.

  Tucker ignored her. “But he’s gone now.”

  “And we’re supposed to have a family night without him? I’m terrible on those go-karts. Max won’t have any fun at all.”

  “I told Emma you’d do the go-kart rides with him...” his mom said.

  “Well, I—”

  “...and the movie, pizza and popcorn.”

  O
kay, no. No!

  His scalp tightened. He’d been about to say that, yes, okay, he could stop in at the go-kart place and do a few laps with Max—he’d have to text Daisy and tell her he was going to be late—but the dinner plan was too much.

  And in fact the go-kart plan was wrong, too, he realized. If his mom was trying to prove that he and Emma and Max made a better family than Rob and Emma and Max did, she could just end that idea right now. It wasn’t happening.

  “Mom, you shouldn’t have asked me to come over for something like this.”

  “But you’re always concerned for Max’s happiness.”

  “Max’s long-term well-being, yes, but not his happiness every minute of every day. Emma, I’m sorry, I do have plans for tonight. I’m sorry Rob let you down, but he does seem to have had a reason for it. Max is ten, he’s old enough to understand that plans have to change sometimes. Give him the choice. He can either do the go-karts and the movie tonight just with you, or he can wait until Rob can be a part of it, too.”

  Emma looked at him with those big eyes. Were the rims a little pinker? Was the new gleam in them the brimming of tears? He waited for her to up the ante and make him feel like a total heel, and suddenly he knew with startling clarity why their marriage had never turned into the real thing, as his mom still so clearly wanted. Why it had never even come close.

  He’d always put it down to the lack of chemistry, but there was a lot more to it than that.

  He cared about Emma and Max, and he always would, but if he’d ever cared enough to make himself emotionally vulnerable to Emma’s wishes and desires, he would have made himself utterly miserable and filled with rage, and Emma and Max miserable, too.

  As an aside, he realized that Daisy had never tried to manipulate him like that.

  Hell, he couldn’t wait to see her!

  Nobody spoke. Tucker had said his piece—long, for him—and didn’t have anything more to add. His mom was attempting not to interfere, now that it was clear her misguided little ploy had backfired. Emma was hoping that the brimming and blinking eyes would push him into an agreement if she just stayed quiet a little longer, although he was certain her secret agenda was much more short-term than his mother’s.