But she couldn’t help herself. She leaned into his touch and closed her eyes, as he leaned down to kiss her lips.
The kiss earlier had been drunk with the hormones still raging in her from her dream, plus she’d only been halfway aware of it, still thinking that she was asleep and only dreaming of kissing him. This kiss was real, and soft, and gentle. His lips guided and coaxed hers, his tongue meeting her own teasingly, reminding her how much she had missed kissing him. He was a skillful kisser, to say the least.
When he pulled back from her, Becky felt herself leaning forward, wanting more. He swept her sleep-mussed hair back from her eyes and pulled her into his embrace, cradling her head in his massive hands.
“I’m sorry that I spanked you so hard just now. I should have made myself wait t’ill I had calmed down. I… I was too damn angry, and I lost a little bit of control.”
“I… I don’t imagine I’ll have any permanent damage,” she heard herself say, surprised that she wasn’t trying to play on his guilt. “You only gave me fifteen spanks...”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’m not saying I’m sorry for spanking you. It’s just that I wouldn’t usually have done it while I was that angry. And then I walked away from you, after just yesterday I promised not to ever forget to hold you after a spanking again.”
Unable to resist, Becky turned dancing eyes up to him. “Does this mean I get a get-out-of-my-next-spanking-free card?” she teased.
Some of the darkness left Tucker’s gaze at her attempt to make him smile. He tweaked her nose. “Not on your life, Red,” he said with a half grin. “But I will allow a pillow for your poor abused sit-upon for this one meal.”
Becky gave a half shrug, as she watched him walk away to get said pillow. A girl had to take whatever breaks she could get with that man…
“And later on today, you and I are going to have ourselves a long talk about the future,” he called from the living room.
Becky closed her eyes briefly, imagining for a split second the future she used to dream about having with Tucker… Living here in this farmhouse with him, teaching school at the elementary school that she’d attended as a little girl, and bringing a good half dozen or more babies into the world with him. Not a lot to ask for in life, but it seemed like such a stretch of the imagination right now. She couldn’t even fathom how she was going to get through this one particular morning, let alone the rest of her life from here on out!
He returned with the promised pillow and set it down on the nearest chair with a flourish. “Come on, Red,” he encouraged, indicating the food he’d set out. “Time’s a’wastin’. Dig in.”
* * * *
When they pulled into the driveway at her mother’s house, Becky wasn’t surprised to see that everything looked exactly the way that she remembered it. Her mother didn’t like change, considering the daily roller coaster that was her life because of her son’s usually erratic behavior. And apparently, Tucker had been here often to help her with whatever work she couldn’t tackle herself or things that needed fixing.
“I feel like I’m going to throw up,” Becky confided to Tucker, as the truck came to a stop. Her eyes darted from the house to the barn to the backyard to her mother’s car, waiting with sick dread for the moment that she would see her mother for the first time in over a year. She finally glanced at Tucker and felt her eyes stick to him in desperation. “I don’t think… I … I can’t do this.”
Tucker shook his head at her and took his keys from the ignition. “Don’t start with me, Rebecca Marie. You came all this way, already, and you’re not getting out of anything as long as I’m around. Now get your little butt out of this truck.”
Oh, jeez. Well, she obviously wasn’t getting any sympathy from him! With a heavy sigh, Becky reached a shaking hand to the door handle on her side of the truck and hesitantly let herself out of the cab.
She was just walking around to the front of the cab to meet with Tucker and take his hand when she saw it: the flash of graying auburn hair, the dark brown barn coat, and the shadow emerging from the barn door that was her mother. In the next moment, as she watched that shadow solidify into Joyce Atlee, she saw the sad smile that appeared on her mother’s face when she saw Tucker standing before her, a welcome friend and helper. And then she watched as that smile evaporated as if it were a deceptive magician’s trick with smoke and mirrors. She saw her mother’s eyes, the same hazel green as her own, as they darkened to near black and narrowed in anger at the sight of her daughter standing in the driveway beside Tucker.
Her words hit like sharp icicles against Becky’s chest and made Becky’s heart hurt as if they had pierced the fragile muscle within her chest wall. “What in the hell is she doing here?”
The fierce question was hurled at Tucker’s feet, and voiced in an anger-thickened drawl. Over the years, Becky had only heard that tone in her mother’s voice when it was directed at Mark. To hear it directed towards her, now, made her sick to her stomach.
“Becky is home for the funeral, mom,” Tucker explained. He had called Joyce ‘mom’ since he’d been a teenager. “She came home to be here for you.”
Joyce looked her daughter up and down in obvious disbelief and disapproval. “Yeah? Well I sure the hell don’t need her here. And I’m sure she doesn’t care to see her own brother put to rest, so she can just turn right around and go on back to New York, then, can’t she?”
Tucker squeezed Becky’s hand and took a step closer to her mother. Becky did not follow him.
“Mom,” he started slowly, “don’t you think it’s time to put all these bad feelings to rest between you two?”
“Why?” she snapped. “Now that my boy’s dead, I’m just supposed to magically forget all the times she wanted me to turn my back on him? I’m just supposed to forget the way she ran off to New York because she couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore?”
Becky closed her eyes at her mother’s version of her actions. She didn’t see things quite the same, but it still hurt to hear how she had abandoned her mother in favor of maintaining some of her sanity.
“That’s not exactly the truth of why she left, and you know it,” Tucker challenged her. “Please, just sit down and talk to her. You two need each other right now, though you’re both too stubborn to see that.”
Becky felt her mother’s hard gaze on her face, and she nearly flinched when she made herself open her eyes to meet it. “I don’t need anybody with the lack of loyalty that she has. Far as I’m concerned, I have no daughter.” Her gaze flicked back to Tucker. “I’m disappointed in you for bringing her here, Tucker. I don’t want to see her. Please leave, both of you.”
That said, Joyce Atlee turned on her heel and strode angrily toward the house, leaving Tucker fuming and shaking his head after her in anger. Beside him, Becky stood wilted and shivering, tears standing in her eyes.
“Wait here,” Tucker told her curtly, and he followed in her mother’s wake. From the way his purposeful strides ate up the ground beneath his feet, Becky almost felt sorry for the ear lashing her mother was surely about to receive on her behalf.
* * * *
“Didn’t I just tell you to leave?” Joyce thundered, rounding on the opening door behind her, as it revealed Tucker’s dark figure.
“Yes,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “but since when do I ever blindly listen to anyone?” He came nose-to-nose with Becky’s mom and glowered down at her. “I’m not going away until you see reason, mom.”
Joyce glared up at him, looking like she might brain him upside the head at any moment now. “You are not going to change my mind, Tuck. I know why you’re doing this, and I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but she hurt me when she took off. And I’m not…”
“You’re not being fair,” Tucker interrupted quietly. “To me, and especially not to her.”
The woman before him actually gaped at his words. If there was one thing that he knew Joyce tried to pride herself on, it was her fairness. Well, at le
ast, he’d finally gotten her to shut up. Now if she’d just let herself listen, too….
“I’ve been here all these months helping you whenever you needed me, have I not?” he questioned her, watching with sharp eyes, as she slowly nodded her head. “Then, why do I suddenly have no good advice, no valuable opinion where your relationship with Becky is concerned? You’ve turned to me for advice on damn near everything else in the past fourteen months… why won’t you even try to listen to me about this?”
Joyce shook her head mutely. “This… this is different…”
“Only in that it’s even more important than all the other things wrapped up together.” He reached out and took the older woman’s hand, led her to the kitchen table nearby and seated her there, then joined her himself. “And as for Becky, how many times over the years have you given Mark chance after chance to try and redeem himself after he screwed up? When has Becky ever asked you before for a similar second chance? Never. Not ‘till now. And she has treated you a thousand times better all these years than your son has. If you’re honest with yourself, you have to see that I’m right about that. You owe her a second chance. She deserves it.”
Joyce was staring at him, her hands clenched in front of her. Then she bowed her head, and he watched with his hands clenched into fists, as twin tears slipped down her weathered cheeks. Tucker resisted the urge to comfort her, knowing she had to reach this decision to let her daughter back into her world on her own, and that comfort from him would only make the decision to say no all the more easier.
After a long, uncomfortable moment where Joyce made a noisy attempt to quiet her emotions, she finally looked back up at him. She swiped away her tears with impatient hands and took in a deep breath, letting it out as a sigh. She raised her eyes to meet Tucker’s gaze.
“All right,” she said in a whisper. “You win. I’ll… I’ll talk to her… um…” she shrugged. “Whatever. But I wasn’t expecting this. And I need a little time to… to get used to the idea. Straighten up around here, you know.”
Tucker glanced around the immaculate kitchen and gave Joyce a half smile. “Looks fine to me,” he challenged her.
“Just give me some time to pull myself together a little bit,” she asked. “Go, for now. And come back at eleven-thirty. I’ll make us all some lunch.” Her eyes were wide, as she spoke, and the words sounded to Tucker’s ears like a plea. “Okay?”
Tucker winked at her. He reached across the table to give her hand a squeeze. “Sure, mom. We’ll see you then.”
He left her sitting there at the kitchen table and returned to where Becky still waited in the driveway. From the window by the table, Joyce watched, as he looped his arm about Becky’s shoulders and guided her back to the truck. He was talking to her, as they walked, his shoulder hunched down, so he could speak right into her ear. Becky looked like her mother felt: a wreck. Joyce watched, as Tucker turned her daughter to him, and wiped tears from her cheeks. He was still talking, probably giving her a pep talk about the lunch to come. Then he turned her back around and gave her a hand up into the cab of the truck. Just before Becky swung into the seat, Tucker tapped the seat of her jeans playfully with his hand.
Joyce sighed wistfully… Well, it was good to see those two together again, if nothing else. That had been the thing about Becky’s leaving that had angered her more than anything else – what it had done to that boy, who had loved her and needed her like he did his next breath.
If coming back here now for the funeral could bring those two back together, Joyce supposed she could try to make nice with her daughter, too. Not that she planned to just roll over onto her back and give in to everything… she had been really hurt when Becky had up and left them all, and she wasn’t past that pain, or the anger, either.
Tucker might have been right about Becky being deserving of a second chance. But in Joyce’s book, she also had to be deserving of having the relationship back with her mother that she’d once enjoyed. She had to prove that she wasn’t just going to up and leave again; Joyce supposed she had to prove that to Tucker as well.
One thing was for sure – there was going to be a hell of a lot to talk about over lunch. So she’d better get a move on and get started, so she’d be ready when they returned!
* * * *
“Now what?” Becky asked. Tucker had told her about the conversation he’d had with her mother, and the somewhat promising outcome of lunch for the three of them together. But they had a few hours to waste before the agreed upon return time.
“Now…” He shot her a mischievous grin as he drove. “I’m taking you back to my lair to have my way with you.”
Even when he was being funny about sex, it still made the core of her tighten in awareness.
He chuckled at the wide-eyed expression on her face. One large paw reached across the seat between them and briefly squeezed her knee through her worn jeans. “Relax, Red, I’m just jokin’,” he assured her. “And besides, I’ll save that reunion for a time when we’ve got more than just a couple hours.”
Becky tried to ignore the continued heat in her loins at the promise in those words. “So, where are you taking me now?” she repeated.
“I thought you might enjoy seeing Amy for a little while, since we’ve got the time, and we’re close to her neighborhood.”
Becky smiled at that plan. “I’d love to see her.” She slid a glance at Tucker out of the corner of her eye. “You know, she called me like twenty times yesterday while I was at work, probably trying to warn me that you were on your way to New York.”
“Did she now?” She watched Tucker’s jaw tighten. “What am I going to do with that little sister of mine, hmm?”
“She was just trying to warn me, so I’d be prepared to see you,” Becky insisted nervously. “She… she…”
“Spit it out, Red. She, what?”
Becky sighed. “Amy knew that I was still…”
“Still in love with me?” Tucker finished for her when her sentence hung in the air unfinished for several long moments.
“Yeah,” Becky quietly agreed.
“Humph,” Tucker shifted the truck up a gear. “And all this time she didn’t tell me, huh?”
Becky worried her bottom lip, looking at Tucker out of the corner of her eye. “I begged her not to tell you,” she tried to explain. “She was just being a good friend.”
He nodded as if he completely agreed with her, though he didn’t glance away from the windshield. “Not in my opinion,” he said a moment later as if he’d been thinking about her statement and had only now decided she was wrong. “If she really wanted to be a good friend to you, she would have told me the truth, so I could have been with you instead of sitting around miserable by myself all these months. She already knew that you really wanted us to be together, so she should have helped that to happen by coming to me with the truth instead of just going along with what you thought was ‘best for me.’”
Becky had to look away from him, at the way his hands tightened on the wheel, the way his jaw clenched as he spoke. Usually, when she was spanked – and well spanked, for that matter, as in this instance – she was forgiven for whatever the spanking had been for, and the slate was wiped clean. But, apparently, this was going to be the exception to that rule. Maybe Tucker wasn’t exactly holding it against her still, but it was obvious that he hadn’t gotten over it yet, either.
And maybe that was because in the back of his mind, he was wondering how much longer he had with her this time before she went back to New York. Maybe he knew her well enough to recognize that she’d go back alone again, despite everything that had come out on this trip home about the way she really felt.
Maybe he knew, deep down, that she’d been right all along about how badly he’d fare living in New York…
Either way, she’d just gotten her best friend in the world in trouble because the next thing Tucker said, as he pulled off the road and down a long gravel driveway, was: “Looks like it’s past due for me and my ba
by sis to have ourselves a little chat about family loyalty.”
* * * *
The minute they stepped into Amy’s house, the second that Tucker’s sister enveloped her in her arms, Becky whispered fiercely in her ear: “Tucker knows you kept my secret, and he’s going to spank you – run!” Just like she might have done when the woman had been younger and about to get in trouble.
Amy surprised her by bursting into laughter.
When they pulled back from each other, Becky stared at the slightly younger woman, then glanced at Tucker who also wore a lopsided grin, apparently having heard her warning himself.
“Becky, I get spanked so much now being married to Johnny, I don’t even feel it anymore!” Amy scoffed, and then dodged a playful swat aimed her way by said husband, giggling, as he growled in frustration at having missed her.
A wistful feeling settled in Becky’s chest, as she watched Johnny and Amy. She couldn’t help but imagine Tucker and herself in their places.
“She’s right though, little sister,” Tucker interrupted, and this time his smile was gone. “I do want to have a talk with you about that. If you wind up over my knee, well that remains to be seen, but I won’t rule it out, either.”
Amy let out a great, suffering, melodramatic sigh. “Right now?” she complained in a whiny two-year-old’s voice, indicating Becky with one hand.
“Damn straight, right now. And out in the barn, if you please.”
Amy rolled her eyes but reached for a lightweight coat all the same. “That venue doesn’t bode well for my backside,” she remarked casually as if she was talking about the weather.
“You need help, old man?” Johnny called, as brother and sister started towards the front door.
“Thanks, friend, but no. This one is personal.”
“Aren’t you going to do something to stop him?” Becky demanded, as the door shut behind them. “You’re her husband!”
“Yes, ma’am, and being so, I’ve given her a spankin’ or two myself over the past couple months for keeping the truth from him about you,” Johnny drawled, looking Becky up and down. “I’m not about to stand between her and her brother, if Tuck’s got a mind to settle this matter like that himself.”
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