“Yes, he can. He just did. You need to go.” Mitch pointed toward the door. As Mitch called security and explained the situation, Tucker finished packing.
“Where are you going?” Mitch asked, the phone still to his ear.
“I need a flight into Roanoke. Right now. I need to see her. I need to fix this.”
“She can’t be that mad about the flowers,” Mitch said.
“She ended things with me.”
“But she seemed so understanding about Lydia being in your bed.”
Tucker froze. “What?”
“You told her about Lydia. I told you not to, but you did and it worked out. She took it fine. She was a little pissed about the photos Lydia posted from last night, but she seemed to understand how Lydia is.”
“I never told her about Lydia in my bed.”
“Then how did she know?” No doubt Mitch had given something away and Nichole had weaseled the information out of him. She was very smart.
“Wait. What pictures?” Tucker asked.
It took about ten minutes of replaying their conversation before he figured out what had gone wrong. He looked at the photos. They weren’t enough to make her leave him, but with the story of Lydia in his bed, he could see how he was screwed.
“I’d fire you right now, too, if I didn’t need you to get me a flight.”
“You have three interviews tomorrow and you just fired your assistant,” Mitch pointed out.
“Does it look like I give a damn about an interview right now? My world is crashing down here, man.”
“Right, okay. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get everything straightened out.”
“As soon as humanly possible, Mitch. I need to make this right.”
“The car will take you to the airport. I’ll have a plan by the time you get there.”
Tucker slid into the back of the town car.
“Airport?” the driver confirmed.
“Yeah. Hurry please.”
Nichole had called Cooper to tell him what had happened, and to find out if he had known. He said he hadn’t, and from the level of anger he vented through the phone, it seemed he was telling the truth.
She didn’t doubt Cooper’s loyalty to her over his own brother. Especially when Tucker was capable of this.
Cooper gave up the phone to Roslyn when he was no longer coherent.
“I’m so sorry,” she offered.
“It’s my own fault. I should have known better. I knew what he was like before, and I let myself be sucked in because of his stupid smile and ability to play a musical instrument.” There were many other reasons she had fallen for Tucker, but she decided Roslyn probably didn’t want to hear the details of her brother-in-law’s bedroom skills. “I just need to get away for the weekend. I need to be alone. I’m afraid he’s going to show up here and I’ll be too weak.”
“Let me see if the cabin is free.”
As much as she didn’t want to spend the weekend in the place she’d first made love with Tucker, she needed to get out of the home they had shared together. The home she thought he would come back to.
Her phone beeped again with another call.
Tucker again, followed by Mitch. They had been calling all day. Figures; he couldn’t ever find the time to call before, but now it was nonstop.
“That would be great, Roz. I’m already packed.” She had been planning to go see Tucker on the road. She could only be glad she hadn’t left. How awful it would have been to walk onto his bus and seen it for herself.
She was throwing a few last things into her carry-on bag and rolling it out to the car when Roslyn called back.
“It’s all yours. The code to open the lock to get the key is four-four-eight-six.”
“Got it. Tell Lexi she’s a lifesaver.”
“She’s happy to help. She’s been there. Hell, we all have at one point.”
“Thanks.”
Roslyn’s words would have given her hope, considering both Roz and Lexi had gone through hell but were both happy now. Except she knew no happily ever after waited for her with Tucker. She couldn’t trust him.
She pulled out on the interstate as the tears finally started to flow.
“You picked a fine time to show up now,” she said angrily as she wiped her eyes and tried to focus on driving.
An hour later, she arrived at the cabin. She let herself in, taking in the big room and the sofa where she had first been with Tucker.
She quickly went to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine so she could start drowning her sorrows.
Tucker arrived at Nichole’s house a little after nine the next night.
Mitch had had nothing but problems getting him a flight to Roanoke from Los Angeles. Then Tucker had missed a connection and had to catch a later flight out of Chicago into BWI. Finally, he made it to Roanoke. He was exhausted from not sleeping at all, but he was there and he would see Nichole and make things right.
He would explain and she would laugh at the misunderstanding, and everything would be fine. Well, fine once he blew off the rest of the tour so he could stay with her.
He had a key from when he’d lived there but decided he’d better knock instead of barging in.
In a perfect world, he would have had to beg her to open the door so he could apologize for not telling her about finding Lydia in his bed. But he didn’t live in a perfect world, and it seemed like she really wasn’t there.
He used his key only to find it didn’t work. Bending down, he noticed a new doorknob. She’d had the locks changed? This was serious.
Her car was gone. Would she come home to find him sitting out front and just leave again? What if she was in there but had parked somewhere else?
He needed to get in the house so he’d at least have a chance to explain before she threw him out. It was his only shot.
He went around the back of the building, knowing the sliding patio door was the weakest link.
He knocked and yelled her name, then cupped his hands at the glass so he could see into the kitchen. No lights.
After testing the door handle and finding it locked, he shook it a little before pulling out a credit card. He tried wedging it in the lock the way he’d seen people do on television but like most things, it didn’t work as easily as it did on TV.
He got frustrated and pounded his palm on the glass before taking a deep breath and trying again.
Desperation had him looking around her backyard for a large rock so he could break the glass. He would pay for it to be repaired; he just needed to get in the house. He’d found a garden gnome on the patio next door and was getting into position to bash the little guy’s pointed hat into the glass when two police officers walked up and told him to put his hands in the air.
The gnome fell from his grasp, landing on Tucker’s foot.
“This can’t be happening,” he said as they cuffed him and led him to the police car.
Tucker leaned his head against the bars, wondering how his life had got so messed up in just twenty-four hours.
He’d tried explaining to the officers that he used to live in the town house, but his New York driver’s license said otherwise.
His brother left him hanging for almost three hours before he showed up to bail him out. He took it as a sign that Cooper wasn’t going to be very happy to see him.
“If I get the homeowner to sign off that she knows him, will the charges be dropped against my client?” Cooper asked the officer, who nodded.
“Do you know where she is?” Tucker asked Cooper, who was all business while signing the documents for his release. “I really need to speak with her.”
One of the officers looked at him and then looked at Cooper.
“He’s no danger. He’s too much of an idiot to cause any real harm,” Cooper assured the policeman.
A few minutes later, they were walking out into the dark.
“When did she get security at the town house?” Tucker asked.
“After you left.” That
made sense. He hated that he’d left her alone and that she was scared without him.
“Thanks, Cooper. I really appr—”
“Just shut up, Tucker. I don’t want to hear it. I’ve been bailing you out of trouble all your life, but you’ve gone too far this time. She’s my best friend. She’s been through hell, and she never really had anyone to treat her well, and now you do this? I know she seems tough, but she’s not.”
“I know that. I never wanted to hurt her, Cooper. I love her. Really.” He added the really after Cooper gave him a doubtful snort. “Nothing happened with me and Lydia.”
“Nothing happened,” Cooper said flatly while he looked at Tucker across the roof of the car. “How many times have I heard you say that?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said.
“Right. About as many times as you’ve said that.”
“Damn it! This is so frustrating.”
For a moment he wasn’t sure if Cooper was going to let him in the car, but eventually he unlocked it.
“I assume you have a rental car at Nichole’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take you there so you can pick it up and go back to the airport.”
“No. I need to see her. I have to tell her it was a misunderstanding.”
“So you’re going to sit there and tell me Lydia St. James wasn’t naked in your bed?” Cooper said.
“Okay, that part did happen.”
“For Christ’s sake, Tucker!”
“I’m trying to tell you. She was in my bed when I came out of the shower. I asked her to leave. Mitch came in and saw her there. He heard me tell her to go and he watched her leave. He can vouch for me.”
“Your agent, who is employed by you, will vouch for your integrity?” he said, making his stupid point.
“Do you know where she is?” Tucker asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you take me to her?”
“No.”
“Will you tell me where she is?”
“No.”
“Can I stay at your place until she comes home?”
“No.”
“Come on, Cooper. I’m dying here,” he begged.
“You’re dying? You’re not the one who had to listen to Nichole tell the story while trying not to break down in tears.”
Tucker sat there frozen in place. He’d really hurt her. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but it didn’t matter. He’d caused her pain.
He didn’t say anything else as Cooper drove him back to his car. No one believed him. Even Mitch had his doubts about what had happened before he’d shown up. It looked bad. Really bad.
He got out of the car as if his legs were made of wood.
“Tucker, I don’t know what to say. You’ve messed up before, and I’ve always had your back. I really thought you had things figured out this time. I thought maybe you realized what was important in life. But hurting Nic like this . . . she doesn’t deserve it.”
Tucker could only nod and walk back to his car. He was reminded of the story from elementary school about the boy who cried wolf. He felt like that boy, only instead of lying about a wolf, he had cheated and slept around. His past reputation made it impossible for anyone to believe his innocence now.
He was left alone to face the wolf.
Nichole felt even worse the next morning.
In addition to the broken heart, she now had a hangover. She’d spent many hours on her laptop, searching the vast database for pictures of Tucker. There were a lot.
Some of them made her miss his smile. Some of them made her wish she could run her fingers over his muscles. Some—the ones with him and Lydia—made her want to find him and remove certain pieces of his anatomy.
When her headache subsided, she went for a hike and sat by the lake where Cooper and Roslyn had gotten married.
She threw stones into the water and watched the ripples spread out across the surface.
She wondered what she’d done that made her deserve all these bad things happening to her. Granted, she was healthy and had a good job, but emotionally she had always been a wreck.
Her father, the parent who actually cared about her, had died when she was little, leaving her with her emotionally vacant mother. Then she’d gone through one bad relationship after another until finally there was Dennis.
Dennis, who promised to love her forever, but was repulsed by the idea of having sex with her because he was gay.
Then Tucker. He’d wormed his way into her heart further than anyone ever before. Then he’d blown it to smithereens.
She knew she would get through this. She was strong. She’d made it through so much already, but for some reason she didn’t think she would ever want anyone the way she’d wanted Tucker.
She hadn’t listened to any of the messages he’d left her or read any of the e-mails. She simply deleted them, wanting to move on quickly. But she found herself missing him, wanting his arms around her to make her feel better.
When her pity party down by the lake was over, she went into town and walked around, buying some local art and listening to music on the street.
Somehow Tucker made it back to California in time for the next concert.
Lydia smiled at him, probably having heard he and Nic had broken up.
“Don’t” was all he said to her. She pouted and went out on stage to do her show while he waited to get it over with.
He’d called Nichole a few more times, begging her to let him explain. He told her he loved her and would do anything to get her back. It was all true.
When the band started playing Nichole’s song, he was lost in the memory of being with her in the cabin. The way they’d laughed together. How he’d taught her to play a few chords, and the way she’d beamed proudly when she’d strung them together.
“What am I going to do?” he asked no one.
Yet someone answered.
“You’re on. Go out on the stage and sing,” the stagehand said, pointing.
“Right.”
Tucker moved across the stage and everyone cheered. Sure, they were having a great time. He looked down at couples with their arms around each other.
“Hey—” He stopped when he realized he didn’t remember what city he was in.
“San Francisco!” Lydia covered for him. The crowd didn’t seem to notice. They were too busy screaming.
He sang the song, as he had many times. Lydia seemed to know better than to rub up against him. She kept her distance, only moving in to the mic when it was her turn to sing.
They sang their second duet, and then he took over. He was pretty much on autopilot. He sang and strummed and said the appropriate things about how San Francisco was the most wonderful city in the world.
Eventually he was done.
He went backstage and was mobbed by a crowd of women, all wearing lanyards and laminated squares sporting his photo. He signed pictures and books and body parts with a smile pasted on his face.
After an hour, Mitch came to spring him. His agent stayed to handle the crowd while Tucker wandered out back toward his bus. He heard music playing from Lydia’s bus. Most of her band and his were hanging out.
“You okay?” John, his drummer, asked.
“No, man. I’m not.”
“I heard you’re having trouble with your girl.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“The road is hard.”
“That it is,” Tucker agreed.
He walked closer, not wanting to be with Lydia but not wanting to be alone. She was dancing with three guys, so she was otherwise occupied.
“Hey, Tucker!” Gary, the bassist, called from inside. “Come in and relax for a little while.”
The bus was full of smoke as he went up the two steps, feeling much older than his twenty-seven years. Gary moved over on the sofa to make room for him.
“Good show tonight.”
“Was it?” Tucker asked.
“It didn’t suck.”
&nbs
p; “I guess not. I felt like a robot out there tonight.” He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.
“You want a drink?” Gary asked, holding out a soda.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
As Tucker opened the can, he noticed the black bottle of whiskey sitting on the table next to him. It was more than half-full. He took a sip of the soda and frowned as the stupid bubbles slid down his throat.
An hour later, he was still sitting there, listening to music and the people talking around him. He felt like nothing.
Another glance at the whiskey beside him. No one had touched it. It still contained enough of its contents to make reality fade away.
“Fuck it,” he said quietly as he swiped it off the table and twisted off the cap. Even before he got it to his lips, he could smell the smoky liquid that promised to help him feel better.
His stomach lurched at the wrongness of the situation, but he swallowed back another gulp, forcing his body into compliance.
His brain threw him memories of detox and rehab, trying to make him stop, but his heart was broken and the amber liquid in that bottle was the only thing that could fix it.
“Whoa, Tucker. Are you sure you want to do that?” Gary made a move to reach for the bottle after Tucker’s fourth gulp.
“Mind your own goddamned business,” he snarled, causing Gary to back off with a look of pity on his face. It made Tucker want to punch him right in his concerned expression. He didn’t need anyone to feel bad for him.
He would be fine.
He took another swig, and Lydia cheered for him.
“All right!” she hollered in excitement. “Tucker’s finally come out for some fun!”
Tucker wasn’t so sure he was looking for fun as much as a way to ignore the fact that his dream had come true and he was still unfulfilled.
He took another slug of whiskey, followed by another, and then, slowly, he stopped caring about anything.
When Tucker woke, he was moving.
He blinked a few times and saw an empty whiskey bottle come into focus in front of him. Both he and the bottle were lying on the floor in Lydia’s bus. He could hear the hum of the tires and feel the vibration of travel under his body.
Nick Of Time (Blue Ridge Romance 2) Page 19