“I like it,” Tanner said automatically. Anything not to agree with her. “We’ll be leaving for church in a few minutes. I don’t have time to talk right now.”
“I’ll go to church with you.” She smiled at him all sugar sweet, and Tanner wondered what she wanted. They’d dated for six months before he’d realized he wanted more out of his life, before he’d realized how happy Ethan and Brynn were, before he’d realized that he wanted what they had.
Daisy had not been religious when they’d been together. Looking at her now, Tanner knew she still wasn’t. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Her pink-painted nails slid up his arm. “Just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine.”
“When will you go back to Colorado Springs?”
Deciding right then and there, Tanner said, “I’m not. I’m going to stay here. Ethan’s helping me for a few weeks until I can find my own place.”
“So you’ll sell your place in Colorado Springs?”
Understanding flooded Tanner’s mind. “That’s why you came. You want my house in Colorado.”
She pulled her hand back and looked away. “I care about you, Tanner.”
He laughed, which sent an ache through his chest. “Sure you do.”
Brynn came out of the bedroom dressed and ready for church. “Let me grab some coffee and we’ll go.” She glanced at Daisy as if she didn’t know the woman was there. “Oh, hello. I’m Brynn. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Daisy.” She nodded at Brynn. “I’m Tanner’s….” She glanced at him. “Friend,” she finished.
Brynn searched Tanner’s face for confirmation, but he gave her none. “Ethan will be out in a minute. You want to start getting in the truck, Tanner?”
“I can take him,” Daisy said.
“No,” Tanner said. “It’s fine.”
“I insist.”
Panic pounded through Tanner. He didn’t truly believe Daisy would dare go into church with him. He didn’t have Summer’s number to text her. So he arrived at church with Daisy hanging on him like she was the one who couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t even warn Summer.
She happened to be twisted around, looking at the door when he went through it. He seemed drawn to her by some inexplicable force, and they locked eyes. Summer’s traveled down his shoulder to his arm, where Daisy clung to him. Shock colored her face, and she whipped around to face the front before Tanner could shrug Daisy’s grip off his arm.
Tanner suffered through the sermon, getting nothing from it that he hoped he would. He’d hoped God would answer his prayers about what to do with his life now that he didn’t have the rodeo. He’d hoped to feel the peace and comfort he often had at church. He’d hoped to maybe even be brave enough to hold Summer’s hand.
The service ended, and Tanner stood as quickly as his injuries would allow. “Stay here,” he commanded. “I need to go talk to a friend.”
“You have friends here?” Daisy asked as he limped away, the crutches an annoyance he wanted to toss away. He ignored Daisy, his mission to get to Summer before she could escape singular. He reached the end of her row before she left, boxing her in.
“Hey,” he said. He didn’t know Summer that well, but he somehow knew he better talk fast. “I’m so sorry. This old friend of mine showed up out of nowhere today. She’s leaving right after lunch. You’re coming tonight, right?”
“Five o’clock,” Summer said clinically. “Of course, if that doesn’t work…or if your friend can help you, that’s totally fine.”
He hated that she wouldn’t look at him, that so many people loitered around them, talking and cleaning up after their kids.
“Summer.” He reached for her hand and took her fingers in his. He rejoiced to be touching her, though the touch was simple and much more chaste than what he normally did. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was coming.”
She lifted her eyes to his. “You asked me if I had a boyfriend,” she said. “I guess it never occurred to me that you’d have a girlfriend.”
“I don’t,” he insisted. “She’s not—” He glanced back to where Daisy sat staring a hole through Summer. “I’ve been thinking about a specific woman a lot lately, but it isn’t her.”
“Summer,” a woman said from behind Tanner. He glanced at the redheaded nurse who’d made him get out of bed that first day in the hospital. She balanced a baby on her hip. “You coming to the picnic?”
Tanner dropped Summer’s hand. “Summer, please,” he whispered.
“Five o’clock,” she repeated, a beautiful flush rising through her face. “Excuse me.” She slipped past him and into the aisle as she cooed at the baby the redhead held. She took the boy and they moved down the aisle. Tanner watched them go, hope and gladness shooting through him when Summer turned back to him when she reached the doorway. She smiled halfway, and Tanner lifted his hand in an acknowledgement wave.
Now he just had to get rid of Daisy. Fast.
6
Date number four.
Belinda’s teasing voice wouldn’t leave Summer’s ears. She didn’t know what she was doing. Holding the man’s hand in church. Being so hopeful to sit by him during a sermon. Allowing herself to be so devastated when he’d walked in with another woman. She barely knew the man’s middle name. She had no right to feel so attached to him, so possessive of him.
And yet, she did. She sat in her car in Ethan Greene’s driveway, the air conditioning keeping the Texas heat out, as she waited for the final minutes to tick toward five o’clock.
One hour, she told herself.
Sixty minutes.
Thirty-six hundred seconds.
She would only stay for one hour. That was what she got paid for, and she would do her job and go home. Or rather, to her parents’ for dinner. Her oldest brother was in town for the weekend, so at least she wouldn’t be alone. No, she’d have two nieces to talk with while the adults enjoyed their conversation.
With five minutes left, Tanner appeared on the front porch, only using one crutch on his right side. The weight of his gaze reached across the lawn and through the windshield. Giving up on waiting, she got out of her car, sweaty before she’d taken three steps.
“You’ve been out here for ten minutes,” he said.
“Wasn’t sure if you’d be ready until five.” She climbed the steps under his scrutiny.
“I’m ready,” he said, and she was sure he wasn’t talking about his physical therapy.
“You’ve been walking?”
“As instructed.”
“So, typically our first visit is an assessment of the living conditions so we can gauge future needs.”
“Ethan has me in his guest room in the basement.”
Summer frowned, a spike of concern poking through her. “The basement? Tanner, that’s not good.”
“I can manage the stairs.”
She shook her head. “No, they’re too much for you right now.” She slid her assessing gaze down his body and back to his eyes. “You shouldn’t be putting so much weight on your leg yet.”
“I’m fine. And I’m not kicking them out of their room.”
“Then you need to get your own place.” Her eyes danced toward his and away again before she could get sucked into the dark depths of them. “You have the means to get your own apartment? Maybe a single-level house?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked at him. She gravitated a bit closer to him. “Do you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Did you know you’re really pretty?”
Every cell in her body ignited. “Thank you, Tanner.” She cleared her throat, feeling anything but pretty next to him. His good looks shrouded anyone else nearby in shadow. “I can help you find a place. We can look this afternoon if you have time.”
“Summer, I have nothing but time.”
“Great.” She hurried down the steps away from him. Being so close was proving to be so dangerous. From the woodsy scent of his cologne t
o that sexy cowboy hat, and all she could think about was touching him again, kissing him, going out with him over and over again.
She remembered her training when she reached the sidewalk. Turning, she said, “Do you need help?”
“Not yours,” he said as he took the steps one at a time to join her. He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed. “Is this okay?”
“Uh huh,” she said dumbly before remembering that she was not some silly schoolgirl. “I mean, sure.”
“There’s no policy about nurses dating their patients?”
Her feet froze to the sidewalk though the temperature had to be hovering near triple digits. “Dating?”
“Yeah, I’m…interested.” He lifted their joined hands a few inches and let them fall with an awkward chuckle. “Obviously.”
“But I don’t date.” She didn’t understand the anxiety accelerating through her. Only knew it was there, and it was screaming at her to run in the opposite direction.
“At all?”
She shook her head. “It’s a long story.”
“Like I said, I have nothing but time.” He gave her a kind smile, and she wondered if maybe the cowboys she’d been out with lately had simply been cut from different cloth than Tanner.
“All right,” she said. “I actually do go out quite a bit. But usually only once, and well, I haven’t had a second date in months.”
“That’s just fine with me,” he teased. “Is this a date?”
“No.” She laughed. “I’m getting paid right now.”
“So, after six o’clock, then. Can we go to dinner then? Would that be a date?”
She ducked her head, wanting to tuck herself into this man’s strong side. “Yeah, I think that would be a date.”
She waited for him to settle into the passenger seat of her car and then she closed the door behind him so he wouldn’t have to reach and stretch his injured ribs. When she joined him in the car, he held his phone toward her. “If you put your number in that, I promise to call tomorrow.”
Equal parts giddiness and fear paraded through her. She was interested too, though, so she typed in the digits and handed the phone back. Hers chimed as she backed out of the driveway.
“That’s me,” he said. “Now you have my number too.”
She pulled to the side of the road and collected her phone, the nearness of him, the way he filled the car physically and otherwise, made her head swim. She cleared it and said, “Okay, so I wasn’t prepared to go house shopping tonight. Let’s look at what’s available right now.” She pulled up a real estate app and put in the zip code for Three Rivers. “Thirteen properties,” she murmured.
“Lucky number thirteen,” he said, his voice so quiet she barely heard it.
“Is that your lucky number?” she asked, watching him.
He didn’t smile, and his eyes didn’t hold their usual light. “No, that was the name of the bull who changed my life.”
Summer pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry, Tanner.”
“I like how you say my name.”
“How do I say your name?” She glanced at him.
“Like you care about me.” He drank her in, and she couldn’t look away from him though every reasonable fiber of her being shouted at her to do so.
“I do care about you,” she said, her voice a ghost of itself.
“You’re a nurse,” he said, his head dipping a bit closer to hers. “You care about everyone.”
“That’s a myth,” she said even as he inched closer. “I’m a person too. I like and dislike people just like you do. I just don’t show it at work.”
His fingers combed through her hair and rested on her collarbone briefly. “Are you working right now?”
“No.” She felt mesmerized by him, completely taken by his charm, his good looks, his tragic accident.
“Can I kiss you then?”
“I don’t normally kiss on the first date.” She would not tell him that Belinda had labeled this as date number four. She would not.
“You said this wasn’t a date.”
“I definitely don’t kiss before the first date.” She smiled and ducked her head, causing Tanner to drop his hand. She wanted to kiss him, and yet the prospect also terrified her. She hadn’t kissed a man in longer than she’d been on a second date with one. She wouldn’t be telling him that either.
Summer pushed the fire climbing through her core back where it belonged. “So, thirteen options. This one’s on the second floor. That’s out. This one needs heavy remodeling….” Fifteen minutes later, she’d shown him five places on the app, and they’d decided to go drive by as many as they could before dinner.
As they walked up to the front door of the third house, Summer’s stomach growled. Tanner glanced at her. “Want to go eat after this?”
“You know what?” She faced him. “I forgot that I’m eating at my parents’ tonight. My brother is in town with his family, and I said I’d be there.”
His face fell, his hopes practically shattering on the ground at her feet. “Okay, another time then.”
“Maybe you’d like to come to dinner at my parents’ house,” she said. “I think we have time to poke around here. My mother said six-thirty.”
A bright smile nearly rendered her weak. “Sure, I’d like that.” As quick as he’d brightened, he dimmed. “I mean, if your father isn’t the kind of Texan man who answers the door with a loaded gun.” He peered at her. “Is he?”
She tipped her head back and laughed, the second time Tanner had been able to elicit such a response from her. She loved that he could make her laugh, loved how free she felt when she did. “My parents have been nagging me to get married for a couple of years now. I think he’ll welcome you with open arms and try to get you to propose before dessert.” She turned toward the house, but then fell back a step. “Oh, and my brother just might be your biggest fan.”
His face paled, and she giggled. “Bet you’re regretting accepting the invitation so quickly now, aren’t you?” She watched him without making it obvious, hoping for a reaction that said he didn’t care about her father, or her brother, or her mother. Just her.
“Will it still count as a date?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Isn’t taking someone home to meet your parents the ultimate date?”
“So maybe it’ll count as three or four dates,” he said, that dangerous glint she’d seen before entering his eyes.
“Why does it matter?”
“How many dates do you usually go on before kissing someone?”
“Well, I—” She clamped her mouth closed around the confession that her lips had been virgin for quite some time. She leaned toward him, her desire to kiss him close to spilling over, close to allowing her to abandon all reason, close to kissing him right here, right now, on someone else’s doorstep.
“About five,” she said breathlessly. She settled back onto her own feet and faced the door. She smoothed down her shirt and took a deep breath to center herself. “Now, let’s see if this house is the one for you.”
*
By the time they arrived at Summer’s parent’s house, her nerves felt like they’d been doused in gasoline and lit on fire. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t brought a man home for dinner in well, years.
Her mother would go into combat mode, and her father would ask too many questions, and her sister-in-law—true fear gripped her stomach. Gwendolyn was the queen of innuendo, and Summer sat in the driveway with her fingers clenched around the wheel.
“Are we going to go in?” Tanner faced the front of the red-brick house without a trace of fear. He swung his gaze to her, and she swallowed.
“Might as well, I guess.”
“We don’t have to,” he said. “I saw a diner back there that was open.”
“Nice try.” She tossed him a wry smile. “I just….”
He took her hand in his and all her fears fled. “Haven’t dated in a while. I heard the first time. It’s no big deal.�
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“I only know your middle name because I saw it on your chart.”
He blinked and then started to laugh, cutting the sound off with a groan. He pressed his elbows to his ribs. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”
She stared sourly out the windshield again, unsure why her nerves were boiling now. Over this. “My middle name is Renee, in case you wanted to know.”
“I did.” He reached for the door handle. “I want to know everything about you.”
Her fear warmed, but she still prayed for patience to make it through the evening with her family. As predicted, her mother gushed over Tanner’s presence at the dinner table. Her brother peppered him with questions about the rodeo circuit and the other cowboys while her sister-in-law kept whispering comments about his handsomeness to Summer.
Her father beamed at the lot of them, visions of summer weddings in his eyes. It was all too much for Summer after about thirty minutes, but she kept her smile hitched in place. She told her family she was helping Tanner find somewhere more suitable to live; he said he was looking to make a fresh start in Three Rivers; Gwendolyn and Rob announced they were having another baby just before Christmas.
By the time she spilled into the summer night, the moon was arcing through the sky and it was dark enough for it to light the whole sky.
Tanner sighed as he positioned himself on her right and once again took her hand in his. “That was really great.”
“You don’t have to lie.”
“I’m not.” He cut her a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Better than lying in bed, watching reruns for hours on end.”
“You’re not too tired?”
“I’m utterly exhausted.” He yawned as he leaned on the crutch and stepped. “But I have nothing on my schedule tomorrow, so I think I’ll have time to recover.”
She unlocked the car so he could get in. “You have physical therapy exercises,” she reminded him. “And I’m working until three-thirty, so I’ll be by after that.”
“I’ll get the physical therapy done, nurse.” He flashed her a teasing smile.
“Just doing my job.” She got in and started the car. When they got back to Ethan’s, she wasn’t sure if she should help him up the front steps or just drop him off. The protocol was blurred, as she wasn’t on-duty, but if she was, she’d help him in, assess the bedroom, all of it.
Lucky Number Thirteen: An Inspirational Western Romance Novella (Three Rivers Ranch Romance Book 9) Page 4