Seven days of fantasizing about him and all those muscles. Torturous thoughts of him naked, bronzed, smiling, gorgeous followed her at every turn.
All of a sudden, everything reminded her of Tag. From the place where he’d sat on her couch to the book she’d grabbed at the library, and he’d kept his promise that she’d have to ask him out next. He’d waved cheerfully to her at the office while he made repairs on the pool house outside, but he didn’t approach her.
He’d called a “Hey!” to her as he shared a sandwich (a bologna sandwich, no less) with LaDawn before he’d gone back to helping her with her crossword puzzle. He’d waved and smiled as he drove by on his way to Lucky Judson’s Hardware store.
He’d even wiggled his fingers in her direction while none other than Kitty Palmer, who wanted a deck built in her backyard next summer, ushered him off.
She’d readied all her tired old excuses each time she saw him, preparing to send him packing yet again, but there was no need.
Clearly, he was sticking to his guns—no more chasing down Marybell Lyman for him. Not for a week.
An entire week.
She couldn’t concentrate for thinking about him. It was driving her right out of her mind. She missed sparring with him. She missed making nondate deals with him. She missed the smell of him, his silly grin. His clever comebacks, his hands. Definitely missed his hands. She missed smiling about him, laughing with him.
And the pounding down the hall didn’t help.
Pulling off her headset, Marybell threw it on her desk and went in search of the banging. She poked her head out her door and listened. It was 11:00 p.m., for gravy’s sake. How was she ever going to get someone’s sexy on if she couldn’t think straight?
Dixie’s office. It was coming from there. Loud, abrasive, not sexy background noise.
Stalking down the long hallway, she caught the flash of a hand in Dixie’s office. Before thinking, she pushed the door open and said, “Are you going to be done soon? This is—”
“As I live and breathe, it’s Marybell Lyman.” He grinned. That grin that made her stomach flutter like the wings of a butterfly.
She had to catch her breath it was so good to see him for longer than ten seconds. It filled up all the empty spaces inside her. “I came to ask you to stop making so much noise.”
He made a funny pouty face. “And a girl can’t get her naughty on with all this big bad noise?”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Yes!” she said, stomping her foot.
“I won’t be much longer. I just have to finish up this baseboard, and I’m out. Promise.” He grabbed the hammer and lifted it to swing.
That was it? Aw, c’mon. No openings? No funny repartee? Nothing? “How’ve you been?” she shouted, her cheeks turning red when she realized she was yelling.
Tag sat back on his haunches, the muscles of his thighs rippling beneath his jeans, and smiled some more. “Really good.” He lifted the hammer again, preparing to knock out another nail.
Hold on, now. “You’re not going to ask how I’ve been?”
He pursed his luscious lips. “Um, how’ve you been, Marybell?”
Bad. Very bad. “Good.” She smiled, too. Just to show him she had it in her to be cheerful.
“Good. Now, if you want the banging to stop, I’ve got to finish up.”
“But wait!” She leaned against the door frame and waffled. “How’s Maizy?”
That brought more smiles. Pleasant, distant smiles. “She’s great. Just got an A on her spelling test.”
“That’s awesome. How about Jax?”
Tag bobbed his head, one that had a brand-new hat on it. He hadn’t even bothered to come back for his hat. “Jax is good, too.”
“How’s—”
“Everybody’s great at the Hawthorne residence. Now, like I said—”
“Right. You need to finish. Sorry. But if you feel like talking or hanging out, I’m just down the hall.” She pointed to “just down the hall” with a ringed finger over her shoulder. “Sunday nights are usually slower. Day of worship and all.”
He yawned. “I’m kind of tired. It’s been a long day, but thanks.” He didn’t bother to wait for her to respond. Instead, he hit the nail this time, the clang of it echoing in her head.
Feeling incredibly pouty on the inside, she slunk back to her office and dropped into her chair as if the popular kid in school had just turned her down.
Seeing Tag gave her sudden life. Ridiculous, no doubt, an odd sort of truthful inner confession, but the truth all the same. Seeing him reinforced how much she’d missed seeing him.
Something had to be done about that.
Soon.
* * *
Tag gave the last nail a satisfactory bounce from the head of his hammer, hoping Marybell heard it good and loud.
He smiled to himself as he cleaned up his tools. Marybell Lyman wanted him to come to her office and hang out.
Not gonna happen—even if he wanted to do that almost as much as he wanted to keep breathing. He understood the word no. Question was, did Marybell understand why she wasn’t saying yes? What was she keeping so locked up inside her that it prevented her from enjoying herself?
He knew that place—a dark, empty dwelling. He understood the place where you didn’t think you deserved to laugh or smile ever again. If you did, something bad would happen to punish you for it. You didn’t deserve to laugh or smile when you’d done something unforgivable. He’d lived in that place when his sister, Harper, had died.
She’d been that thread that sewed them all together, and when she was gone and they were left with an empty chair at Thanksgiving dinner, left without her feminine guidance for Maizy, left without her unwavering love for them, he’d taken the worst dive of his life.
Because what he’d done when Harper died was unforgivable. That his brothers still spoke to him left him floored. But they did, because in some buried corner of his mind, he knew when they told him she’d want that, she really would have.
Was that what it was? Had Marybell done something unforgivable? She’d said she lost her scholarship. Maybe wherever this closed-off vibe she threw went deeper than he’d first guessed?
He’d thought about her day and night for the past week. Wondered about all the things that made Marybell tick. Wondered why she’d never watched a Disney movie. Didn’t all little girls like princesses? And even if they didn’t, didn’t they at least know they existed?
Hadn’t Marybell been given the chance to decide whether she liked them or not? A strange sadness grabbed his heart when he considered she’d been a foster kid. Obviously, there’d been neglect on all fronts if she’d been bounced around, but he found himself aching for the things she must have missed. The things Maizy had should be the things all little girls had.
For some weird reason, he wanted to turn that around for her.
Wanted nothing more than to beat down her door, scoop her up and make more love to her—because it felt right. But he wasn’t going to beg.
Something was up with Marybell. She didn’t want to date, but she definitely enjoyed his company, if that exchange said anything about their relationship thus far.
He might be overconfident, but he sensed she missed him, too.
Good.
Now he just had to wait around until she made the next move. He was patient, though seeing her day after day, treating her like some distant acquaintance was killing him. And sometimes, after seeing the look on her face when he gave her a quick wave, secretly amusing him.
But she needed space to come to whatever conclusions or peace she had to make with herself. He didn’t want to push her so far away she wouldn’t come back.
Now, if she would just damn well come back.
All good things come to those who wait, Tag. His sister, Harper, had once said he was as impatient as a newborn, waiting on a midnight feeding.
Harper. It was getting easier to think about her these days. Maybe because his focus was lying e
lsewhere. When he woke up, he didn’t have that sinking feeling in his stomach anymore. The dread that had followed the opening of his eyes for almost two years since Harper had passed was easing, ebbing and flowing more and more.
He was learning to forgive. Making his peace with what he couldn’t change.
There was a seed of hope sprouting, and he kept watering the hell out of it. He just had to wait for it to grow. Some seeds took longer to root than others.
Obviously, Marybell was one of those types of seeds.
She was giving him yet another reason to stay out of the dark recesses of his mind. He wanted something for the first time in a long while. He wanted to get his shit totally together. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to look forward to things—all kinds of things.
He wanted Marybell Lyman.
Eleven
Marybell’s stomach was a nervous ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Up, down, sideways, backward. She’d thought long and hard about this choice late into the morning after her shift was over. She’d hadn’t slept much in the past three days, but she’d come to a sort of peace with her choice at about noon on day two, just before she clicked “ship to this address.”
She’d kept right on thinking it through even after the package arrived. Then she’d waffled a little, but she rallied in the eleventh hour.
It was time to stop hiding. Time to stop fearing everything she loved would be ripped from her clinging hands.
It was time to stop wringing her hands, and figure this out. It would take a whole lot more than just resolutions and promises in her head, but she wanted to do this as clean as possible. As fast as possible. Figure out the almost impossible.
Tucking the package under her arm, she gripped it tighter with clammy fingers.
She found Tag out by the pool, working on the trellis. The gray day made his dark hair darker, his image against the cold sky warming her from the inside out.
A quick tap on his shoulder had him turning around, his eyes cautious when he realized it was her.
She hated that. Yet it wouldn’t stop her. Marybell pulled the package from her arms. Metaphorically, she was dragging the tail from beneath her legs. “I brought you something.” She held it out, rather proudly, almost like a cat handing over a mouse to its owner.
“For me?” he teased in a feminine tone. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll open it. I’m freezin’.” Her teeth began to chatter.
“You always know all the right things to say to a man, Marybell. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
The tension in her eased when Tag joked with her. “So open it.”
He put the package on the glass table of the patio set and slit the box open with a knife from his tool belt. Peeling away the tape, he pulled out the first item. “Beauty and the Beast?”
Marybell’s stomach did another nervous flip, so nervous she could only nod.
Tag riffled though the package, pulling the rest of the DVDs out and fanning them on the table. “Let’s see, there’s Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Mulan, The Little Mermaid...” He sighed.
She held her breath and looked away. It was too late.
“So, this is going to be one of those awkward gift-giving moments where I tell you I already have all of these, isn’t it? It’s like that diamond ring I got once. How do you tell a woman you already have one?”
She giggled—still an unfamiliar sound to her ears. “They’re not really for you.”
“Now you’re just being fair-weathered. You give, you take away.”
“They’re so you can watch them with me. On our da...date,” she forced her lips to enunciate.
Tag raised an eyebrow in that comical way he had and gave her the eye. “Are you asking me out? Me? Because I gotta tell ya, it better be a real sell after all that rejection. You’ve let the pie sit out a long time, tiger.”
She sucked her cheeks in to keep from laughing. “I need a guide to Disney princesses. I figured you were my best bet with all that experience.”
He barked a laugh. “Oh, now it’s a guide you need? Not a date? Well, then, I just might have to turn you down, Ms. Lyman. Unless you want to call it a date. That—” he paused, pointing at her “—could change everything.”
“What’s the difference what I call it?”
“Oh, I dunno. What’s the difference when a man calls it sex and a woman calls it making love? What’s the difference when a man calls it his lifeblood and a woman calls it just a silly game with a bunch of loud roughnecks in tight pants? It’s huge. So call it a date or call it nothing.” He ended with a flirty challenge of a smile.
“Fine. It’s a date.”
He shook a finger. “Oh, no, it is not. You have to ask me first.”
Marybell narrowed her eyes at him. “I just did.”
“No. You declared it one before you even asked. Overconfident much?”
“Do you want me on bended knee, too?”
“No, that’s more like the marriage question and far too presumptuous at this early stage of the game. So quit being so stalkery and ask politely.”
Taking a deep breath to keep from giggling more, she said, “Will you, Taggart Hawthorne, come to my house and watch Disney princess movies with me on a real, live, honest-to-God date?”
He scooped her up and planted his lips directly on hers, kissing her so hard their teeth almost collided.
Just as she was melting back into his incredible warmth, his delicious muscles, he pulled away, looking down at her. “Yep.”
“Put me down! Someone will see,” she said, though her protest sounded weak.
He rolled his eyes. “Are we going to start that again? Because if this is a secret date, I’m out. If you’re embarrassed by me, then I just won’t be able to go on.”
Embarrassed by him? Who’d ever be embarrassed by Tag? She gave a tug to the collar of his denim jacket. “I’m not embarrassed by you. If anythin’, it should be the other way around.”
The light in his eyes went out like a doused fire. “Don’t ever say that. Ever. As long as we date, never say that. Okay?”
Now she was the one coaxing him by planting her hands on the sides of his face. “Easy, there. I’m just stating a fact. Going into this, you should know people will question your motives about dating me when there are perfectly good Southern belles who fit the norm just waiting to be dated.”
He gripped her hands, running his thumbs over them. “If I was interested in them, I’d have dated them by now. But I’m not. So no more talk of embarrassment.”
It was easy to search his eyes from behind her people shield. When she wore it, she felt less exposed, less like someone could look beyond her curtains and right into the window of her soul. “Fair enough. Now put me down. I have to go clean my apartment because I have a date.”
He was light again, all smiles and teasing. “Does this date include food? What kind of date are we talking about?”
“How does pizza grab you? It’s a marathon date, by the by. As many princess movies as we can fit into one evening.”
Tag grabbed a handful of her butt, reminding her how talented those hands were. “Then I’ll bring my comfy slippers and pipe.”
She leaned into him and kissed the edge of his mouth, and it felt good. So good to do something spontaneous. “Bring popcorn, too.” She squirmed out of his embrace with reluctance and sauntered toward the guesthouse. “Tonight, seven or so. Don’t be late, Hawthorne!” she called over her shoulder, her heart lighter than air, her stomach anxious with anticipation.
She’d done it. Phase one complete. Yay!
Now for the hard part.
Boo-hiss.
* * *
Tag rang her doorbell at seven sharp, shaking the box of microwave popcorn at her. Tonight wasn’t the first time she hated putting on the people shield, but it was with the hope that soon she wouldn’t have to put it on at all.
Her nerves about embarking on dating Tag were a mixture of excitement an
d fear. The people shield gave her courage. The makeup, the hair, all of it left her bolder than she’d once been before the people shield existed.
Or maybe it was just life that had done that? Would she be as sassy without her spray-on hair dye from a can or the thick eyeliner?
She’d like to think she’d be just as bold if her face was naked and her hair was in a ponytail. Those things came naturally to her. They were things she really liked. Maybe she’d just keep them.
Tag didn’t give her much time to think about it. He swooped in the front door and pulled her to him, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m positively giddy, Ms. Lyman. Like a debutante at her coming-out ball.”
She was giddy, too. Giddy and more giddy. “Giddy? Would that be attributed to a man as big and brawny as you?”
“Are you sexist?”
“Not on your life.”
“Then I can be giddy, too. Even big and brawny. Look.” He held up a plastic bag. “I brought you a gift.”
She tried to pluck it from his hands, but he held it out of her reach. “Not until we watch the movies. So let’s get this date started. You grab the pizza, I’ll warm up the DVD player and we’ll cuddle up on the couch.”
“You mean eat on the couch?”
He dropped a kiss on her lips before nodding. “Hell, yeah, I mean eat on the couch. When you watch movies, don’t you sit on the couch?”
Marybell tugged at her leopard leggings, embarrassed by her knee-jerk reaction. Sometimes she forgot she could live by her own rules, or if someone or something spilled food on her couch, the answer was simple—she could clean it.
Possessions, things she was always afraid would disappear right under her nose, became a territorial issue for her when she least expected them to. She had trouble letting go of her control of them, and as a child, she’d never been in anyone’s home where she was allowed to eat on the couch or have things of her own.
She’d worked hard for these things, as sparse as they were, and she was always afraid she was going to lose them.
But Tag almost looked as though he understood. “You know what? Tonight’s for breaking rules. We’re gonna break ’em all. Just like you broke the one about not asking me out.”
Talking After Midnight Page 13