Tucker

by Emily March

  Her thoughts were a million miles away as she drove the winding road through to Stardance River Camp and exited the gate, turning left. Her friends thought she had wedding envy. Caroline, in a sweet gesture from a caring heart, had even offered Gillian the opportunity to bow out of her bridesmaid commitment if the activities and events would prove too painful for her.

  They had no way of knowing, of course, that wedding envy was only a small part of what was bothering her.

  She wouldn’t be normal if she didn’t regret the circumstances of the Vegas event. She would have liked the bridal photos at dawn and sharing all the pre-ceremony fellowship with her own band of sisters. Caroline’s lakeside wedding tomorrow was sure to be gorgeous, and Gillian didn’t doubt that she’d feel a twinge or two for a beautiful ceremony of her own, but again, what unmarried woman doesn’t feel that way at a wedding?

  Of course, that was the rub, wasn’t it? She was not an unmarried woman. She was a married woman.

  Married by Elvis in a tacky neon wedding chapel in the middle of the night. Viva Las Vegas.

  Married to a tall, dark, handsome hero who made her knees weak and her heart sing and her soul yearn.

  Love. He’d offered her love. Her heart told her she loved him in return. Could she possibly believe in it? Believe in him? Believe in herself?

  Not this fast, no. Not in only four months. She read Cosmo and Allure and Women’s Health magazines. She knew to beware of the differences between infatuation and love. True love took time to develop. Tucker might be thinking he was in love with her, but it was more likely to be lust than love. They simply hadn’t had enough time to—

  A warning chime sounded in the car, and with a wave of worry, she sensed not for the first time. Her gaze flew to the dashboard, where the low fuel sign flashed, and the gauge’s needle pointed toward E. “Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

  She’d forgotten she needed gas. Surely she had enough to get back to town. It was mostly downhill, after all.

  The car engine sputtered and died.

  Gillian wrenched the wheel clockwise, and the Mercedes rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road. Sighing, she reached for her purse and her phone.

  Her phone. She’d left it on the charger. Tucker had gotten her so frazzled that she’d forgotten to grab her phone.

  She muttered an unladylike curse. “Okay, stay calm. Remember your lessons.” S: Size up the situation. Okay, that one was pretty easy. The man was going to murder her.

  Gillian got out of her car, sat on the hood, and took inventory of the supplies in her overnight bag and purse. Well, she could use her makeup mirror to reflect the sun like a signal mirror. Not that she would need to signal anybody. She was right here in plain sight on the side of the road. Lots of people knew where she’d gone. When she didn’t arrive when expected, someone would come after her.

  Someone named Tucker, no doubt, and this time he’d find her a whole lot quicker.

  While she sat waiting, she used the opportunity to fix the smudged polish on her left ring finger. She stroked pale pink onto her nail and thought about the red polish she’d worn when Tucker slipped the simple, thin gold band he’d bought at the wedding chapel’s shop onto her finger. When the plane leaving Vegas took off, she’d removed the ring and tucked it into her fairy-tale castle, Judith Leiber purse, which in turn she’d tucked away deep in her bedroom closet.

  Like the fact of her marriage. It, too, was in the closet. Now Tucker wanted to drag it all out, make it public, spread it across the road. Like roadkill on the road to Redemption. Or would the road to Ruin be more appropriate?

  Actually, he didn’t really want to yank their marriage out of the closet. He wanted her to make room for his stuff. He wanted a dedicated hanging rack and drawers in her dresser.

  And she wanted to give them to him.

  Her thoughts were getting crazy. Maybe it was altitude sickness. She should drink some water. She did have bottled water in her car. Too bad the engine wouldn’t run on H2O.

  She slipped from the hood of the car, grabbed a water bottle from her back seat, and took a sip. Not too much, because the need to pee would present a problem.

  Problems. Tucker said he loved her. Could it be real love and not just infatuation and lust? Could these feelings churning inside of her be the real deal too? She wanted to think so. She didn’t know. Maybe she needed to read more magazines.

  She needed to learn to trust herself again.

  Damn this divorce deadline! She didn’t want him to spend the summer in Death Valley, but she wasn’t ready to tell her mom about Elvis either. For a woman in the wedding business, why did marriage have to be so complicated?

  She heard the engine long before she saw the truck coming, and it wasn’t coming from the direction of town, although perhaps the mountains surrounding her distorted the sound. As a safety precaution, she got back into her rental car, locked the doors, and waited to identify the oncoming vehicle. A white pickup. Not a lot of help, since there were a lot of white pickup trucks traveling in the mountains. Once it grew closer, she identified the driver—Jackson—and his passenger.

  Tucker sprang from the truck before it rolled to a stop. She exited the Mercedes to meet him.

  “What the hell, Gillian?” he demanded.

  She gave him a hesitant smile. “I ran out of gas.”

  “You ran out of gas,” he repeated, his voice just below a bellow. “So, you didn’t bother to check your gas gauge before taking a drive in the mountains? Without your damned phone? And getting lost?”

  “Wait a minute,” she snapped right back. “I am not lost. I drove to the river camp, picked up my suitcase, and I was headed back to Eternity Springs.”

  “Eternity Springs is that way!” He pointed behind her.

  “Oh. I must have got turned around when I left the camp. Well, it doesn’t matter. I knew you’d find me.”

  “You knew I’d find you,” he repeated. He placed his hands on his hips, and temper sparked in his caramel eyes. If her life was a cartoon, he’d have had plumes of steam shooting from his ears. “I guess I’m good at that, aren’t I? Finding you? Finding you and making love. I know you think I’m good at making love. So I’m a finder, but not your love. Not a keeper. You need a keeper.”

  Jackson shifted uncomfortably, winced, and shot his cousin a warning look. Gillian folded her arms and lifted her chin, but before she could fire back, Jackson spoke.

  “Okay, then,” the groom said, turning toward his truck. “I don’t have a gas can with me, but I’m pretty sure they’ll have one at the river camp. Why don’t I run to get gas?”

  Both Tucker and Gillian held their tongues until the truck made a U-turn and headed off in search of fuel.

  Then Gillian said, “Did you really have to bring up lovemaking, Tucker? You’ve totally embarrassed me. And, you let the cat out of the bag. Thank you very much.”

  “Cat? Or maybe you mean a mountain lion, like the ones who roam these hills? The hills you decided to roam without so much as a cell phone!”

  “Maybe I really mean a weasel who doesn’t keep his word about weddings!”

  “I didn’t tell Jackson we’re married. I told him we’re sleeping together!” He hesitated a moment and added, “I told Boone we’re married.”

  Gillian gasped. “What about what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?”

  “It did stay there. It had a nice long visit.”

  “You broke your promise!”

  “I hired Boone in the capacity of my attorney. I’m having him rewrite my will to make my wife the beneficiary.”

  “Your will!” Shocked, she gaped at him. “Tucker, I don’t want your money.”

  “Good. Because I don’t want to die. However, if you go missing again, I think the odds are about even that I’ll have a heart attack and croak before that divorce you want so bad is final. There are dangerous wild animals in these woods—big ones!”

  “I know. I’m looking at a cranky one right now.”
/>   Damned if he didn’t roar at her.

  Gillian buried her face in her hands and slumped back against her car. “Don’t, Tucker. Let’s not do this again. Please? Not now. Not today. This is Jackson and Caroline’s weekend. Let’s let them have it.”

  That took the wind from his sails. He sucked in a deep breath and allowed a full half minute to tick by before he spoke in a calmer tone of voice. “That was certainly my intention, but I’m not the one walking around weeping and raising questions.”

  “I didn’t weep. I got teary-eyed, and I can’t help it. I’m an emotional person, and this is an emotional time. Weddings are emotional events.”

  “Your eyes have more red lines than an atlas,” he scoffed. “Maisy told me your mother said something that brought on the waterworks this morning. What was that all about?”

  “Oh.” Gillian rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “It was nothing, just a remark about princesses and wedding gowns. That’s all.”

  “But it made you cry.”

  “We both cried.” She shrugged. “My mother and I have a long history together about wedding gowns. Seeing Caroline in hers this morning churned it up.”

  Tucker shoved his fingers through his hair and muttered a string of curses beneath his breath. “All right. You’re right. This isn’t doing either one of us any good. This is not the time or the place to hash out how we’re going to go forward. We need to figure out how to get through the rest of today and tomorrow without making things worse.”

  Gillian felt the tears building behind her eyes once again. Damned if she’d let them spill.

  She was relieved that he was willing to postpone their talk. Wasn’t she? Then why did she want him to wrap those strong arms around her in a hug? Gillian Thacker, you are a hot mess. Frustrated with him and with herself and faced with the prospect of ruining her makeup for yet another time today, she snapped, “I suggest we start by staying as far away from each other as possible.”

  “Fine by me,” he replied.

  “Good,” she declared. “I’ll wait in the car where I’m safe from … angry bears.”

  Twenty minutes later, refueled with a gallon of gas from a red plastic can, Tucker opened the driver’s side door of her car and told her he’d drive her back to the Callahans’. “You can’t. You’re not on the rental agreement.”

  “We’re living on the wild side today, aren’t we?”

  They arrived back at the North Forty in a slide of tires crunching on gravel. Both front doors flung open. He shot from the driver’s seat, she from the passenger side. The doors slammed, and the pair marched off in opposite directions.

  Sitting in rockers on the front porch of a nearby cabin, Angelica glanced at her cousin and said, “Looks like we have our work cut out for us.”

  Celeste smiled beatifically. “Don’t fret a single long red hair of yours, cousin. I have a plan.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Destination weddings certainly have their unique challenges, don’t they?” Barbara Thacker observed as the wedding party watched Jackson attempt to calm his daughter down later that afternoon. Following the discovery that the socks she’d chosen for her rehearsal outfit hadn’t made it into the suitcase, a meltdown had commenced.

  Tucker’s gaze flicked over and met Gillian’s. They shared a moment of silent communication before Gillian replied in a subtly dry tone, “They certainly do.”

  The wedding party had gathered at the lakeside site of the ceremony, where rows of white wooden garden chairs had been set in two columns with an aisle down the middle. At the water’s edge along a narrow strip of sand, an arched arbor waited for attention from the florist tomorrow. Tonight, they’d tied ribbons on it in Caroline’s colors of dusky pink and gold that complemented the primary decoration, which had been God’s work—a crimson and gold sky against purple mountains rising above a sapphire lake.

  It was a great evening, cool enough to remind them they were in the mountains, but not cold. A mild breeze swept the scent of honeysuckle in their direction. Jackson and Caroline had lucked out wedding-wise on the weather.

  Now if the harried dad could figure a way to calm the storm that had become Hurricane Haley.

  “She’s a little anxious,” Angelica said as Jackson knelt in front of his sobbing daughter and wrapped his comforting arms around her. “She’ll be better once she’s run through the rehearsal. She’s been so fired up about the wedding for so long, and now that it’s finally here, she’s on overload.”

  Barbara gave the girl an indulgent smile. “That’s understandable. I’m a little on overload myself, and my only duty is to do the New Testament reading.”

  Angelica sniffed. “You’ve got it easy. I have those Old Testament names to stumble over in mine.”

  “I think what our Haley needs right now is a distraction,” Celeste offered. “I have a little gift for her. I had planned to make my presentation following the rehearsal, but I think I’ll do it now. If that’s all right with you, Caroline?”

  “Please, be my guest.”

  Celeste walked up the aisle between two blocks of white folding chairs and stood beneath the large metal arch that the florist would cover in flowers tomorrow morning. She lifted her voice and announced, “Excuse me. May I have everyone’s attention for just a few minutes before we get started? If everyone but the bride, groom, and flower girl will please take a seat. Caroline, I need you, Jackson, and Haley up here with me. I have gifts for you.”

  “Gifts?” Haley repeated, immediately distracted from her missing-sock meltdown.

  Jackson threw Celeste a grateful look, then took his daughter’s right hand and led her over to Caroline, who took hold of her left. Together, the trio walked up the aisle, Haley whispering loudly, “I don’t see any boxes or gift bags.”

  The sound of Celeste’s laughter chimed like church bells in the summer air. “Oh, my child. As you grow, you will learn that many of the best gifts life has to offer us do not come in packages wrapped up with a bow. That said, I happen to have three of these with me.”

  From the pocket of the light jacket she wore, Celeste pulled out a small square box wrapped in white paper and tied with a sparkling gold bow. Haley’s eyes lit, and she clapped her hands. “That’s pretty.”

  “Before I give it to you, I need to make a little speech.”

  “That’s okay,” Haley said, which caused Tucker and most of the rest of the wedding party audience to smile.

  “Some of you know this story, but most of our visitors from Texas likely do not. I moved to Eternity Springs and established Angel’s Rest Healing Center and Spa because this valley that cradles our little town is a special place with a unique, healing energy. Eternity Springs is where broken hearts come to heal, but that healing does not happen overnight. Nor does it happen without work. Usually, hard work.”

  Celeste shifted her focus to Haley as she continued, “Now, I’ve had many different careers in my long life, and in one of them, I was a schoolteacher.”

  “You were a teacher?” Haley asked. “What grade did you teach?”

  “Well, I taught almost every grade, but my favorite grade to teach was second.”

  “I just finished second grade.”

  “I know that. Did your second-grade teacher give you awards for accomplishments?”

  “Do you mean like stickers? She had a chart on the wall, and we got stickers when we completed a task.”

  “There you go. When I was a teacher, I gave stickers too. I’m a big believer in awards. That’s why I created a very special award that I give to very special people.”

  “Like me? I’m special. Everybody says so.”

  Everybody listening laughed. “Yes, like you.” Celeste pulled up a chair and sat in front of Haley. She handed her the box. “Open it, sweetheart.”

  It took the little girl mere seconds to tear off the bow and paper and flip up the lid on the white velvet jeweler’s box. “It’s pretty! It’s a necklace for me to wear?”

  �
�This is the official Angel’s Rest blazon, awarded to those who have accepted love’s healing grace.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” Haley said.

  “You will someday, love. Right now, wear your new necklace because it’s pretty.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Celeste stood and handed a box to Caroline and one to Jackson.

  Standing next to Tucker, Boone leaned over and murmured, “That’s the original Eternity Springs status symbol. I really want one of those.”

  Celeste continued. “You may have done your healing in Texas, but you are celebrating the start of your new life here with us, so I decided that qualifies for a blazon. Caroline, life has tested you, but never forget that climbing this mountain of trial has been aerobic exercise. It has made your heart strong. Wear your pendant proudly.”

  “Thank you, Celeste. I will.”

  Celeste turned to Jackson. “Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. You are strong at the broken places, Jackson, your heart and your ears. Your music is your angel talking to you. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Celeste.” Jackson accepted the box, then leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve admired Brick’s pendant, and he’s told me how much the Angel’s Rest blazon means to those who have earned it. I’ll be honored to wear one of my own.”

  “Excellent. Now, I suspect we should get on with the rehearsal, shall we not?” She turned to the ceremony’s officiant and added, “Reverend, do you want to take it from here?”

  Later, after the meal and the speeches and watching a seemingly happy-as-a-clam Gillian talk with everyone at the party but him, Tucker needed a few minutes to himself. He slipped away down to the lake, where he walked along the bank, lost in thought.