“Race you to that rock.” He pointed to a big granite boulder jutting out from the beach.
She beat him handily.
“Ha!” She exulted, albeit breathing like a bellows.
“Wench!” he laughed. Both pleased and nonplussed. And high-fived her.
“I’ll give you a head start next time, J. T.”
He kissed her.
For a long time.
“I almost forgot how much I love to win,” she mused when they came up for air.
“I’m sure it’ll all come back to you,” he teased. “We’ve established that you like the view from up top.”
She laughed and shot away from him like a mermaid.
A half hour later they waded dripping out of the water and stretched out on the rock to get warm. They fished out their e-readers. They read and passed the thermos full of iced tea back and forth, swigging at it like a couple of bums under an overpass. Britt on her stomach with her bikini top untied so the sun could erase any tan lines, J. T. on his back.
J. T. felt as happy to be himself as that rock or that boulder or those trees were to be what they were. Present and purely content and right where he should be.
She chuckled.
He turned to her and smiled. “What are you reading?”
“It’s a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book. It’s pretty funny. What are you reading?”
“Malcolm Gladwell. Outliers. It’s good, but I guess I’m not really in the mood for it today.”
“Wanna swap? I’ve read this one before. I like Gladwell and I haven’t read that one.”
They swapped e-readers and read in companionable quiet for a time, instinctively, almost unconsciously, shifting every now and then to make sure their legs, their hips, some part of them was always touching.
Until the inevitable time came when they wanted all of their parts to be nudely touching.
They hurried back to his house to break in the bed he’d bought at Home Depot.
And not only broke it in, but nearly broke it.
CHAPTER 15
“John Tennessee McCord, are you living in sin with Britt?”
Britt froze over the sink, a dish in one hand, the scrubber in the other, letting the water profligately run. She realized she was holding her breath.
She was washing up the dinner dishes and J. T. was over on Mrs. Morrison’s porch, sharing a drink and a chat, which he did pretty much nightly now. And Britt could hear every word.
J. T. didn’t answer right away. She heard him take a stalling sip. The ice cubes tinkled.
It was a good question, though, Britt had to admit. What were they doing? They talked a lot about nearly everything, they laughed more than she’d laughed in ages, they swam, they watched television with J. T.’s arm slung around her, they read, they hiked, they had lots and lots of sex. There didn’t seem to be any point in stopping or discussing the fact that their date of about three weeks ago had never really ended, in the way there really isn’t any point in thinking too hard about what your lungs were doing at any given moment. It had just happened. It was that easy.
They didn’t go back to Maison Vert, though. By some tacit agreement they’d decided not to let J. T.’s reality intrude.
“Well?” Mrs. Morrison pressed him.
“Well, I’m just thinking my answer over, in light of your shotgun sitting right there.”
“I’m old, and I don’t have time for equivocating. Seems to me like a yes or a no would get the question answered.”
Good God, to be quite that bold and fearless, Britt thought. When the sands in your proverbial hourglass were running out before your eyes, maybe it was easier to cut to the chase.
She almost hoped he didn’t answer.
All she knew was that life with J. T. here made her previous life, by contrast, feel like that chair out there on the porch with the frayed cane back. Like something that was functional and homely and a little broken but could potentially be a work of art. The whole world had paradoxically gotten roomier and brighter by virtue of the addition of a large man crammed into her little house. A large man who, she’d learned, sometimes liked to eat peanut butter straight from the jar with a spoon.
A large man who had never cohabited with Rebecca Corday.
“I think we’re just thoroughly enjoying each other’s company at the moment in all the ways available to men and women,” J. T. finally said.
Wow. Nice save, J. T., she thought dryly.
Mrs. Morrison chuckled and gave her knee a slap. “John Tennessee McCord, you should have been a politician.”
“Don’t rule it out. In my next career, maybe. If the acting thing goes kaput.”
Britt carefully dried the dish and inserted it in the rack so she could hear the next thing they said.
“That was a clever answer, and I like you, John Tennessee McCord, but don’t you hurt Britt Langley, J. T.”
Britt froze.
How in God’s name would a man respond to that? By running in the opposite direction, and Britt would hardly blame him if he did. In dreams, the moment you noticed you were dreaming was the moment you woke up, usually.
“You should worry more about me!” J. T. said, after what was likely a nonplussed silence. “See this here bruise on my neck? She’s enthusiastic, our Britt.”
Britt’s jaw dropped.
“John Tennessee McCord!” Mrs. Morrison was thoroughly, delightedly scandalized.
She heard something that sounded like a smack—that would be Mrs. Morrison giving him the swat he deserved. J. T. was laughing wickedly.
Britt was scandalized, too, and she realized she was blushing.
But she was also grinning.
He really could charm the birds from the trees, and he could get away with saying things no ordinary human could get away with saying. In part because one of the loveliest things about J. T. was that he generally liked people, and they knew it.
She turned the water off. She drew in a long breath.
He hadn’t answered the question. She was actually a little glad.
His phone was on the table. And she would never look at it, but every time an e-mail or a text rolled in, it chimed, and it chimed a lot.
It chimed now.
Speaking of sands in an hourglass, that’s what every little chime felt like. She knew he was preparing for things when she was away at work, struggling to write a wedding toast, setting up meetings for The Rush, answering e-mails about a big, fancy celebrity wedding that he’d RSVP’d to ages ago and that had nothing at all to do with her. She’d never expected to be included in that. Nor had he suggested she be included in that.
And then his downtime would come to an end.
He’d left the peanut butter out on her counter. She smiled when she looked at it. But its presence was worrisome. He now had his own peanut butter at her house. And she’d bought it for him. Because it made him happy, and making him happy seemed to be what made her happy.
It might be peaceful enough between them now, but in Britt’s experience, inherent in every peace was a sort of tension. The sort of tension presented by the smooth unbroken surface of a new jar of peanut butter.
The whole point of that surface was to shatter it. Which sometimes felt like the fate of any kind of peace.
A couple of days later Britt slipped out of bed around seven a.m. to get ready for work and tiptoed into the living room, leaving J. T. sleeping. He didn’t snore, thankfully. But he occasionally murmured, which was funny. “Damn straight,” he muttered once.
She showered and flung on some clothes and just opened her laptop to do her first e-mail and news check of the day when Skype began booping and beeping.
She yawned hugely and answered.
She frowned faintly when her sister Lainie’s face filled the screen. Lainie’s mouth was wid
e open. So wide, in fact, that Britt could see the fillings in her back molars.
“Hey Laine. Did you mean to call me, or did the cat accidentally walk across the keyboard again?”
In the background was Laine’s living room, pleasantly cluttered. She saw one of Will’s shoes and an old afghan their grandmother had knitted on the floor.
Laine still didn’t move. Not one hair.
“Lainie?” she tapped the screen, a little worried now. Maybe Skype had locked up?
But then Lainie’s cat strolled across the room in the background and stopped to sniff Will’s shoe.
Laine still didn’t move.
“All right, Lainie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“JOHNTENNESSEEMCCORD!”
Lainie clearly had been working up a head of steam in order to shout that.
Britt winced. “Yikes! Why are you yelling?”
“You and JOHN TENNESSEE MCCORD, THAT’S WHY!”
Britt wrapped her arms around the monitor as if she could muffle it. “Shhhhhh! What’s the matter with you . . . do you mean J. T.?”
Her sister swiveled in her chair and she saw the back of her sister’s morning hair, still in its messy sleep-bun. “MITCH!” she bellowed to her husband. “Honey, she calls him J. T.! She already has a pet name for him!”
“Oh, brother. It’s not a pet name, it’s his name name. Wait . . . what’s going on? How did you know about J. T.?”
“It’s on TMZ! Two pictures of you! And him! One of you getting out of a car at a restaurant and you’re wearing a white dress, and another of you in a bikini lying next to him on some big rock. TMZ doesn’t know who you are, but I do,” she said delightedly and ever-so-slightly inanely.
“Lainie, if you don’t stop shouting you’re going to make all the neighborhood dogs bark.” And maybe wake J. T., but she didn’t say that. “What are you talking about? We’re on TMZ? How did we get on TMZ?”
“Go look.”
“I believe you. I will in a second.”
Her mind was now whirling, and it was way too early for her mind to be whirling.
How the hell would anyone get pictures of them?
“How on earth did you wind up with John Tennessee McCord, Britt?”
“I won him over with a fart joke.”
“SHUT. UP.”
Britt laughed. Pretty much the only thing better than J. T. was sharing the news of him with her sister.
“I totally remember that bikini you’re wearing in that picture. You got it on sale that day we went to T.J. Maxx around March a few years ago. You look really pretty, Britt. And that white dress is super cute.”
“Thanks. I got it on sale plus I had a coupon, plus I got to use someone else’s discount!”
“Score! But how did this happen?”
“Okay, the CliffsNotes version is that he’s in Hellcat Canyon for work. Speaking of which, I have to get to work, Laine. I’ll tell you the rest later. Oh, and don’t tell Mom and Dad! Not yet!”
“You and John Tennessee McCord.” Britt had broken her sister, apparently, and now all she could say were those three words and variations thereof.
“Told you it was nice up here.”
Her sister laughed dizzily. But it was clear from her expression that she had a thousand suppressed questions.
Britt showed mercy. “All right. You get one more question.”
“Okay, but it’s an essay question. And it’s this: What is he like?” Her sister had deferred to her wishes and was speaking on a hush now.
Britt hesitated for effect. She crooked her finger for her sister to get closer to the screen.
And then she leaned toward the screen and stage-whispered.
“So hot.”
Lainie froze again.
And then she made a little whimpering sound.
And then she leaned back blew out a long, satisfied breath. “You always were an overachiever. Way to get back on the horse, Britt.” She sounded awed.
“Jeez, Lainie, he’s not a horse.”
“You sure about that?” J. T. said from the doorway behind her.
Lainie froze again. Her head whipped to and fro on the screen.
“OH MY GOD,” she whispered hoarsely. “Who was that? Is that him? There? Is he there right now?”
Britt hesitated.
Then she nodded smugly.
Lainie squeaked.
Mitch’s face squeezed into the Skype frame. “Tell him I loved Blood Brothers! And Faster than the Speed of Sound! Tell him I said, ‘Daaaamn, Son—’ ”
Britt clapped her laptop closed.
She turned to look at J. T., who looked sleepy and delicious clothed in nothing but shadows.
“So . . .” she said brightly after a longish silence. “My sister just Skyped.”
“Yeah? How is she?”
“She’s great.”
A funny little silence fell.
“How much did you hear?” she asked resignedly.
“Just the horse part.” He smiled faintly. “But I already knew that.”
Another uncomfortable little moment beat by.
She ought to say, You’re not just a horse to me.
But that might bring up uncomfortable questions about what he actually was to her, and it was much too early in the morning to have that conversation.
She’d prefer never to have it, actually.
“Okay, then. Well, there’s something else you should know,” she began carefully.
“I think I know it. I got a congratulatory text from my agent. He thinks you’re cute.”
He handed Britt his phone, and it was open to the photos.
Britt’s heart lurched. There she was with J. T. exiting Maison Vert. They were both smiling, her head turned toward him, his hand possessively on the small of her back just shy of her butt. Nothing said “we’re doing it” like that particular pose.
Perfidious maître d’ had probably sold them out, even after J. T. had given him a fifty!
But the second photo was much more unnerving.
There she was sprawled on her stomach, the ends of her bikini top trailing against the rock, her knees bent up, her feet crossed. He lay alongside her on his back, one knee up, the other tipped companionably against her calves. Their heads were turned toward each other. They were smiling. It was a breathtaking moment of casual intimacy violated by a telephoto lens.
She didn’t think she’d seen any two happier or peaceful-looking people. It was stunning.
It was peculiarly disorienting to watch it from the outside. Because anyone watching that would assume things about how they felt about each other.
And yet the fact that the photo existed at all was deeply creepy.
She gave the calendar on the wall an unconscious flick of a glance. It was July 31.
That wedding in Napa was just two weeks away.
“Gosh. Tell your agent thanks.” But her voice was abstracted. And a little thick.
Someone had thought it worth hiking up to that rise to get that photo, and neither one of them had noticed. They looked happy because they were happy in that moment, and they were completely absorbed in each other.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said quietly.
“Don’t be. I look great in that dress.”
He gave a short laugh. But there wasn’t much humor in it.
“I thought we were safe swimming there, otherwise I might have been more vigilant. I bet that first photographer followed us here, or was somehow tipped off about the swimming hole. How, I don’t know. They’re like wasps tracking the scent of meat. They just kind of know.”
“Yeah, I don’t think anyone in town can afford a telephoto lens. And they see enough of me as it is, in the Misty Cat.”
She was trying for a joke.
He smiled tautly.
And the silence was just as taut as that smile.
He drew in a breath. “Britt, I don’t want you to have to be part of that zoo. The photographers and sycophants and all that. That stuff is my job. It doesn’t have to be part of your world.”
“It’s okay,” she said. After a moment.
She said it automatically, because she hadn’t fully thought it through yet. Her impulse was to reassure him. But if she’d said instead, “I don’t mind,” for instance, it would have implied that she considered herself a part of it already, or that she thought he was inviting her to be a part of it.
And it occurred to her that what he might be saying now is that he never really intended for her to be part of that world in the first place. That she was, indeed, what he was doing in his downtime. She could picture a magazine cover article now: “French, karate, blondes: what John Tennessee McCord does in his downtime.”
“Maybe it’s just a couple of photos,” she suggested. “Maybe it won’t turn into any kind of a zoo. Maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Maybe,” he said.
Neither of them believed it.
“I have to get to work,” she said finally. Quietly.
“I’m going to do some work on the roof over at my house today. See you tonight?”
That “see you tonight” had been implied for weeks now.
The fact that he was saying it injected that first note of caution and uncertainty in their little idyll.
“Sure.”
She took a step away toward the door, suddenly eager to run off some of this emotion.
And suddenly he curled her back into his chest and held on to her a moment.
She could feel his heartbeat against her cheek. She clung to him for a moment, too. God, he smelled amazing.
He kissed her temple.
“Tonight,” she said into the delicious wall of his chest.
But J. T. was pretty intuitive. He could probably tell she was ruffling her flight feathers, and not just to get out the door to the Misty Cat this morning.
J. T. watched her dart out the door to work and realized he was smiling, which was a reflex when it came to watching Britt.
Hot in Hellcat Canyon Page 22