by Jodi Payne
That smile buoyed his heart, and Matthew waited patiently. He couldn’t imagine living with this much traffic—it was like Houston and Dallas smooshed together.
When Tyler could he jogged across the street instead of walking. “Hey. Did I keep you waiting? Am I late? The subway was so crowded.”
“I’m early. No worries. It’s good to see you, honey. How’s your day been?” Aren’t you the prettiest thing?
“So far so good. I only got out of bed an hour ago. Are you hungry? You want to go in?” Tyler pointed over his shoulder.
“Absolutely. My cup of coffee was a long time ago. I was up and out and about early.” He was used to being up at six, every morning, rain or shine.
Tyler opened the unassuming front door and led him in. “The bar closes at two, and on Fridays there’s still clean up to do. I’m usually toast by the time I get home.” Inside the place looked like a cross between someone’s living room and a library. Small tables, a couple of couches, bookshelves on the walls, and a spiral staircase that led up to a second level.
“Oh, now look at this! I ought to do this in my office!” He loved that and the girls were old enough that a spiral staircase wasn’t dangerous anymore.
“Isn’t it cool? I thought you’d like the reading room feel.”
A young hostess seated them right away at a table near the front where lots of light was coming in through filtered glass.
“Oh, I picked you up a signed book this morning—it’s a thriller with a great hook.” He handed the book over, the cover lurid and wonderful. He figured it was a decent gift, but nothing that would be weird.
Tyler reached for it tentatively, like Matthew might change his mind and take it back. “You got me a book?”
“I did. I thought you’d enjoy it.” He left it on the table and picked up the menu. “Have you eaten here before?”
“Yeah, a couple of times.” Tyler pulled the book toward him, picked it up, and looked it over, flipping it over to read the back. “It sounds really good.”
“Good deal. I thought it looked fascinating. I liked the idea of a blind killer. It sounded wild. I mean—how does he manage it?” Matthew chuckled and his cheeks heated. God, he was a dork. “I guess that’s the reason to read it, huh?”
“I’m looking forward to it. Thank you. And it’s signed, how cool. It’s my first autographed book.” Tyler set the book down, that sunny smile sweet, but softer this time. “Thank you.”
“You’re more than welcome.” His phone buzzed with “Troubador”, and he picked it up, curious as to what Daddy wanted.
The text was a picture of his girls in the pool with their cousins playing chicken, Emma and Sophia on the boys’ shoulders. “Oh, look. These are my babies.”
He showed Tyler the phone.
“Wow, look at them. How much fun are they having? That’s awesome. Who are the boys?”
“My sister’s boys—Elias and Noah. They’re eighteen and just turned sixteen.”
“That’s cool. I’m a little jealous, I love to swim.” Tyler handed him back his phone and picked up a menu.
“I’m going to put one in. I decided for sure. The girls are having a blast at my folks’.” He spoiled those babies, but that was what having money was for.
“They’re lucky to have such a great dad. They’re readers too, I guess?”
“Sophia more than Emma. Emma is very visual—she loves to draw and paint and make things with clay.” Both of his girls were happy to be around the ranch, to ride and show their critters.
“They sound like fun. I bet you miss them.”
“Are you guys ready to order?” The server put waters down for them.
Tyler glanced at him. “I’m thinking about the fancy three-cheese grilled cheese and tomato soup.”
He checked the menu real quick. “BLT for me. Do y’all have onion rings?”
He was a sucker for deep fat fried battered anything.
“We do, they’re so good.”
“I’m stealing one.” Tyler grinned, handing the menus back to her. “Can we get a Dr Pepper and a ginger ale too, please?”
“You got it. Thanks guys.”
“This is a sweet place.” He loved a little hole in the wall. This was fancier than that, but the idea was the same. “So, tell me about you. What’s your favorite movie?”
“My favorite what kind of movie? I love movies. Favorite funny movie? It’s so wrong, but Blazing Saddles. Favorite SciFi? Alien. Favorite superhero? Iron Man…what else?”
Oh, Tyler was an old soul. He approved. “Do you watch any animated movies? I have seen Frozen and Despicable Me approximately eighty thousand times.”
“Despicable Me is way up there, also, all the Toy Story movies. Megamind. And…okay don’t judge me. Beauty and the Beast. I used to get such shit about that from—” Tyler’s brow furrowed for a second and then it was gone. “I used to get a lot of shit about it.”
“I love that one, but my favorite will always be The Lion King.” Oh, that was a sad look. Bad break up? That was his guess.
“I read somewhere that the whole opening lyrics basically translate to, ‘dude, here comes a lion’ over and over.” Tyler giggled—yeah, that was a giggle—and sipped his water.
“No shit?” Oh, he loved that. He seriously did. “Have you seen the musical? I took my girls to Austin to see it. Sophia loved it. Emma was a little scared—it was too big.”
“No, not the show. Which is funny because I live here, right? But I don’t see as much theater as you’d think. So you’ve seen the animated movies because you have kids…what do you watch just for you?”
“Lord, that’s a hard one.” He thought about what he had on his nonparent-controlled account in the bedroom. “My favorites are the Lord of the Rings movies, but I’ll watch anything with Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh, and monster movies. I love those.”
“Wolf of Wall Street with Leo? I loved that one. I forgot about the Lord of the Rings. I liked those too. Have you read the books a hundred times?” Tyler seemed genuinely interested, not just making small talk. His eyes were pinned on Matthew. Baby blue. Pretty.
“I’ve read them a few times. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed. I wanted to be a ranger, you know? I even spent a summer apprenticing with a swordsmith.” He’d felt like the world’s biggest stud.
“You can swing a sword? That’s nuts.”
“I can make them. I have a forge on the property. I don’t get to go play as often as I’d like, but it’s there.” He chuckled. “I have a lot of interests, I guess.”
“Wait.” Tyler stared at him, wide-eyed. “You have a forge at your house? Like an actual, real, forge? Are you kidding?”
“Not at all. Would you like to see?” He grabbed his phone and started flipping through pictures. Most of them were kids and livestock and dogs. “Okay, this is the house. It was my grandparents until I bought it and built on the second floor and added another two thousand square feet to the ground floor. The roses in the front were planted by my granny in the seventies. Then this is the garage, the workshop, and the forge. You can just see the horse barns from there.”
“Oh my God. Matthew. This is incredible.” Tyler flipped from picture to picture and back again. “Your place is beautiful. And big. Like, really big. Wow.”
“Thank you. I’ve been super lucky.” He’d been born into a good situation, and he loved what he did and made money with it. “I’m very blessed.”
Tyler nodded. “And rich. Like whoa. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude. That’s a beautiful house. I’ve just never seen anything like it.”
“Like I said, I’m lucky.” He wasn’t going to be ashamed. It wouldn’t change the fact that he was on the cushy side comfortable.
“So…school is out for the summer there?” He’d have sworn Tyler’s fingers brushed his on purpose as he took his phone back.
“They got out a couple of weeks ago, yeah. They’re so excited about summer. It’s all horses and swimming and
sleeping in for three months.” In fact, he needed to find someone to help out around the house too. Little Stephanie had finally graduated from Rice and had her an internship for the summer. They had a cleaning lady that they all shared between them—Aunt Kathy on Monday, Momma’s on Tuesday, Jonas on Wednesday, Sister’s on Thursday, and he was Friday—but Vera was not interested in wrangling kids.
“Living the dream, huh? I’d like to be a kid again. Well, maybe not a New York kid again. I did that. But a Texas ranch kid? Sounds like fun.”
Their food arrived, and the server set down a huge plate of onion rings between them.
“Any time you want to come out, holler. I got a guest suite, and there’s always stuff to do. Damn, that looks good. I do love an onion ring.” He looked at his sandwich and tried to decide how to attack it.
Tyler laughed. “I wasn’t looking for an invitation. I don’t even remember your last name, Matthew. You can’t just invite random strangers from New York home with you. I might be a serial killer or something. You have girls, man.”
“I do. And both of them can fire a gun, believe it or not.” Girls, cowboys, his folks, his sibs, and the fact that Westley and Buttercup, the lead stud and bitch of his Lacys would tear a bad guy’s throat out if they hurt the girls—he felt pretty confident. “It’s Whitehead, by the way. Matthew Whitehead.”
Tyler blinked, then nodded. “Right. Sorry. Onion rings are good?” Tyler picked one up.
“They look damn good. So tell me about you. Do you like tending bar? It seems like a hell of a lot to remember.”
“I do. Or, well, I did. I’m good at it, it pays the rent, I work with great people.” Tyler shrugged. “It’s good. It’s fine.” Tyler took a big bite of an onion ring. “I’ve thought about other things but… I don’t know. I’m tired, you know? I’m babbling.”
“So what happened that changed everything?” It wasn’t like the kid hadn’t given him a bunch of clues that shit had gone on, and he wasn’t anyone, just a stranger. It was easy to talk to them.
“Will died.” Tyler put his sandwich down and studied his fingers. “Will…my best friend. I’d known him since we were kids. He…he had problems. Depression. Drugs. He took his own life.”
“Oh damn. I’m sorry. Depression is a vicious whore.” He reached out and took Tyler’s hand. “My sister, her first husband had that happen to him. He tried hard to heal, but—it sucks, man. Deep down. I’m real sorry. Has it been long?”
“Six months. It feels like six days. I’m sorry for your sister, it does suck. It…” Tyler cleared his throat and took a big sip of his water. “It’s changed everything. He was my whole family. I don’t have a reason anymore, you know? I’m just kind of…doing things. I can’t sleep. I—”
Tyler looked up at him with a horrified look in his eyes and pulled his hand back. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
“For what? I asked.” Matthew got this. Less well than some, better than others. No one really expected someone to give up on living, and then you got the guilt for being mad because they did, the shame of admitting it to other people, and then the bone-deep missing part. “Grief is a real thing. It’s not shameful.”
Tyler leaned back in his chair. “It’s a little heavy for lunch. I really wanted to be…flirty, funny, interesting. That guy. Not this…disaster.”
“I get that.” When Tyler blinked at him, he held his hands open. “I want to seem amazing and fascinating and studly, and I’m just a cowboy and a dad and a guy who flies to New York City to come to a book convention.”
Tyler gave him a gentle smile. “I think you’re doing pretty well, actually.”
“Thank you. I think you are too. I am glad to be lunching with you.” He picked up his sandwich and tried to make it smaller. “How do you reckon I bite into this?”
That got him a slow but much brighter smile. “Um…squish it? And then be studly and take a cowboy bite.”
“No princess bites?” he teased. “Right on.”
He squished, leaned forward, and took a bite. Oh. Crunchy. Bright. Creamy. Best of all? Bacontastic.
“Oh. There you go. You look like you’re in bacon heaven.” Tyler picked his sandwich back up and dipped a corner into his tomato soup.
“Bacon heaven is a damn fine place. It’s next door to taco heaven and across the street from brisket heaven.”
“And kitty-corner to pizza heaven.” And look at that, he got Tyler laughing.
“I think that I might need an ice cream heaven too. Homemade ice cream is something special, don’t you think?” Peach. Peach was his favorite.
“Homemade like in your own kitchen? You can do that? There are some great ice cream places around the city.”
“I have two different ice cream makers: one fancy nice one and one old wooden one that I use to torture my children. Have you never made it homemade? I make it a lot, especially during peach season.” He tried an onion ring. Oh damn. Yummy.
“Never. It sounds fun. Is the old one slower or something? Why does it torture your kids?”
“It’s an old crank. I put the ice and the salt in and set the kids to churning. It can take most of an afternoon.” He grinned, knowing it was wicked.
“That’ll wear them out.” Tyler swallowed the bite he was chewing. “I grew up in the city. Mom worked a lot, I went to school and worked after school, so we didn’t really have time to do things like make ice cream. We went to the movies on hot days in the summer, and we’d sleep a lot in the winter. Mom liked to read. I listened to music. That’s what we did.”
“I was always, always busy. Muck out the stalls. Go find your brother. Wash the dogs. Go pick beans. And then we rode horses and fished and jumped on the trampoline and caught crawdaddies.” He’d been a busy kid. He was a busy adult.
Damn he did have fun though.
“Sounds different. I had a little more fun when Will and I hit high school and had more freedom. We’d play basketball and smoke and watch girls—and guys—and we’d stay up stupid late sitting on the fire escape and talking about where we’d go when we graduated. He grew up in the apartment right below mine.”
“That’s cool. I’ve never seen a fire escape up close. Hell, I’ve never lived in an apartment. Even in college, about thirty of us rented a big house.” He shuddered as he remembered. “God, the smell in there…whoa.”
“Oh gross. Where did you go to college?”
“University of Texas at Austin. I have a degree in environmental science.” He knew. Boring. But it had helped convince Momma and Daddy that he wanted to work the ranch.
“Oh nice.” Tyler reached over the table and rested warm fingers on his forearm, just for a moment before taking them back again. “This is the first time I’ve been out to do anything since Will died. Anything at all.”
“I’m glad you picked me.” He wasn’t bullshitting. It was an honor, and he was tickled as a pig in shit.
“I think you picked me. Our friends haven’t really asked. I don’t think they know what to say. They’re processing too I guess, and it’s awkward. I think maybe they thought we were sleeping together? We weren’t.”
“What did he do for a living?” Part of him figured Tyler just needed an ear, just needed to talk.
“He was a dancer. Well, he waited tables for a living I guess, but he was a dancer. He was really good. It’s a competitive thing here. Hard to get a job.”
“Wow. Like a ballet dancer, contemporary, jazz?” Emma and Sophia both took dance, every year, so he knew from dance styles.
“Whoa. Contemporary. He had a ballet background, but he danced contemporary. Wait…” Tyler leaned forward. “Do the girls dance?”
“Are you suggesting I haven’t seen every single season of So You Think You Can Dance?” He managed a straight face for, oh, about eight seconds. “God, yes. Since they were three. Sophia is already planning on her attack to get into the high school drill team in five years.”
“So you have seen every season of So You Think You Can Dance�
�” Tyler winked. “Me too. That sounds fun. Little girl recitals. Oh boy.”
“Every season. Every. One. And four costumes, times two girls, twice a year. You know how many sequins that is? You know how many times a year I’m in the barns yelling, ‘Don’t let that horse eat your dress! He’ll poop rainbows!’?”
“Oh my God.” Tyler laughed hard enough he bent over. “Who makes the dresses? Your mom?”
“Momma volunteered. Once. Then Miss Vicki, the dance teacher, criticized her ruffles.” He pursed his lips. “She told Miss Vicki to shove the fabric down her throat, and she could pull ruffles out her twat and see if they smelled like roses. It was…memorable.”
Sophia had damn near died. Deb had gone to the dance class in her all her fired-up rage and explained how the cow ate the cabbage. Miss Vicki had decided both Sophia and Momma could come to the recital. No worries.
“Holy shit.” Tyler stared at him. “Holy shit, that’s crazy! I’d like to have some tea with your mom one day.” Tyler was laughing so hard now he damn near fell off his chair. “Holy shit.”
“She is a hoot and a half. My daddy? He’s a gentle giant. Momma is a spitfire and keeps him busy.”
“Never a dull moment, I bet.” Tyler took another onion ring. “These alone were worth the trip.”
“Yes. I do love crunchy things.” He grabbed one of his own, wishing he had some jalapeno ranch to dip. “What’s your favorite food? Pizza heaven, I know you mentioned.”
“Mac and Cheese. My mom’s recipe. Or pizza. Pizza is up there. Grilled cheese sandwiches. Maybe anything with cheese involved.” Tyler took a bite of his sandwich and grinned at him.
“You and Emma. She’s my cheese eater. She loves her macaroni and cheese.”
“So what’s next for you? You have more convention today? Tomorrow?”
“No. No, it’s all free time for me until I fly home on noon Tuesday.” He had two and a half days, and he hoped to spend some of it with Tyler.
Shit, he was a moron.
That hadn’t ever stopped him, but…
“Nice. I could show you around on Monday if you want. I’m off work. And you know where to find me tonight if you’re thirsty.” Tyler waggled his eyebrows. “Or just feel like showing off your dance moves.”