Kiss Me, Tate (Love in Rustic Woods)

by Karen Cantwell

  Tate propped himself on one elbow and squinted over her shoulder, giving it a kiss when he leaned back. “Eight forty-five.” He groaned. “Willow said she’d be home by nine.”

  Bunny bolted upright. “We need to dress.” She rolled over, a bit panicked at the thought of being caught in Tate’s bed by his teenage daughter, but also frustrated that they couldn’t spend more time together.

  He’d been just as she imagined. Gentle, but passionate. And he knew his way around her parts better than any man she’d ever been with.

  She slipped on her underwear while Tate did the same. As she zipped up her skirt, Tate zipped up his jeans. “We, um, never did talk about that man and the envelope,” she said hesitantly, not wanting to upset the moment. But it had been the reason she’d come here.

  “It’s another long story,” he said, thrusting an arm through one sleeve of his t-shirt.

  “You have a lot of those?”

  “Let’s just say that dysfunction runs rampant in my family.”

  She buttoned her blouse and shrugged. “I don’t believe there are any dysfunctional families. Everyone I’ve ever met claims they’re from a dysfunctional family, so that means wacky is normal.”

  “Wacky?”

  Tate’s smile made her tingle all over. As if he meant to tingle her some more, he strode over and pulled her in for a long, deep, toe-curling kiss.

  “I need to get my shoes on before your daughter gets home, and you’re avoiding the subject.”

  “He’s my brother, Samuel. I haven’t seen him in a few years, give or take a couple of decades.”

  Bunny had just slipped her foot into her other shoe when they both saw the light from a car’s headlights pass the bedroom window. Outside, a car’s engine rumbled as it pulled into the driveway.

  “Oh no!” Bunny said, looking to Tate for guidance. Would he want her to sneak out a back door?

  He laughed and took her hand, pulling her to the kitchen. “It’s fine, our beers are still on the table. Act natural.”

  Bunny lacked confidence that she could act anywhere near natural. She’d just made love to, literally, the man of her dreams. The mere touch of his hand on hers caused every nerve to scream Hallelujah!

  Act natural? She didn’t think so. She stopped, tugging on his hand. “I’m going to just leave, and if I pass her, I’ll just say I was dropping something off.”

  “Yeah. Okay,” he agreed. “That works.” He kissed her one more time, holding the back of her head with his hand. Then she walked quickly to the front door, looking back at him.

  “I’ll, uh...”

  She heard the hesitation his voice.

  “It’s okay,” she said waving off his stutter. “This doesn’t have to mean anything.” Actually, it does. It needs to be so much more. Please call me tomorrow. “You don’t have to call me. Or anything.” She put her hand on the doorknob and turned. “I hope you work things out with your brother.”

  When she pulled on the door, Willow was there reaching to let herself in. Her eyes widened, and Bunny wasn’t sure if she was startled at the door opening or at the person who opened it. “Hi, Willow!” she said as naturally as she could manage.

  “Hi,” Willow replied, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She gave Bunny a sideways glance and shot Tate a what’s-going-on-here look.

  “I just dropped something off for your dad. Work-related stuff.” Willow nodded. “Cool.”

  Feeling the need to escape an uncomfortable scene, Bunny threw a little wave to Tate. “See you Monday. Bye, Willow.”

  “Bye,” said Willow.

  Tate, cool as a cucumber, gave Bunny a light nod. “Monday.”

  In her car, she calmly backed out of the driveway and drove a few yards before pulling to the side of the road and slamming the gear shift into park.

  Her mind was on fire, and her stomach churned. Overwhelmed, she finally let go, put her face in her hands and bawled, her body wracked by heaving sobs.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WILLOW WAS PARTICULARLY CHATTY ABOUT her evening and insisted Tate sit with her over cookies and milk while she told him all about the funny things that happened at Nina’s house. How Charlie made sure he sat next to Willow in the booth at Full Moon Pizza and how Nina looked irritated when he did so.

  “I think she likes him,” Willow said, dipping a chocolate chip cookie into her glass. “But she’s kind of weird about it. She was really quiet on the drive home.”

  Tate tried to stay focused on the conversation. Although it wasn’t so much a conversation as a monologue. He smiled and nodded, but intermittently his mind drifted to Bunny or sometimes to Samuel. What a day.

  “The more I get to know him,” Willow continued on some train of thought that he’d partially missed, “the more I realize how really nice he is. He’s kind of quiet, but really nice.”

  Okay, thought Tate, she’d mentioned Charlie before so she must be talking about him now. He took an educated guess and entered an observation. “His mom is nice, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

  Willow narrowed his eyes at him. “You didn’t tell her that I liked him did you?”

  “Of course not.” He stole the cookie from her hand and took a bite. “We work together. It’s not like we’re...” lovers. “I mean, we’re associates.”

  He hadn’t pulled the wool over Willow’s eyes, and he knew it. She snuck a glance toward his bedroom.

  His bedside light was still on.

  She looked back at Tate. “Uh-huh.” She took another cookie from the jar and bit into it, not taking her eyes off Tate.

  He stood to avoid her stare, emptied the two bottles of beer into the sink, and turned the faucet on to rinse. He needed to change the subject. “I saw on the calendar that the quarter is almost over. Are you keeping your grades up with all of this rehearsing you’re doing?”

  “You asked me that yesterday.”

  “Did you answer me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Damn. She was right. He remembered now.

  He stretched his arms and forced a yawn. “I’m going to go read in my room and then hit the sack.” He tousled her hair, still avoiding eye contact, and padded down the hall.

  “Dad.” His daughter’s voice stopped him.

  He didn’t look back. “She is really nice. Charlie talks about her a lot. In a good way. Not a lot of kids think enough of their parents to talk about them.”

  He turned and smiled. He wanted to cry. “Thanks. Lock the door and turn out the lights when you go to bed?”

  “Sure, Tater Pop.”

  Tate was the type to fall asleep the minute his head hit the pillow. Tonight he tossed and turned for thirty minutes or more. When he finally dozed off, he dreamed Bunny was at her reception desk wearing glasses and aiming a laser pointer at a white board to indicate categories of proper beauty care. Olga and Abigail scribbled note on steno pads. The phone rang, but Bunny wouldn’t answer it. The thing just rang and rang and rang.

  Eventually, he realized in the dream that the phone was his real phone and that he needed to wake up and answer the damn thing.

  He threw back the covers and scrambled groggily to the kitchen where their only landline telephone hung on the wall.

  By the time he was halfway down the hallway, he heard Willow pick up. “Hello?” her voice sounded as tired as he felt. “Is everything okay?” she asked, suddenly sounding more awake and concerned.

  Tate rounded the corner where Willow held out the phone for him. “It’s Aunt May. Morty’s in the hospital.”

  They made the six and a half hour drive bolstered by hourly doses of coffee and listening to Tate’s Eagles CDs. He was lucky Willow liked them as much as he did.

  They sang out loud to “Hotel California,” and Willow played the air guitar to Don Felder’s riff. He would have taken Joe Walsh’s role if he hadn’t been responsible for keeping the car on road.

  They watched the dark sky turn a stunning shade of pink to “Tequila Sunrise.”

&
nbsp; Willow said she didn’t really get the appeal of “Desperado,” but that the other songs more than made up for it.

  For Tate, “Victim of Love” rang particularly true in the moment, but it was “Do Something,” which played somewhere around Greensboro, that caused him to go quiet and think.

  He decided to make a confession. “I’ve told you about Uncle Samuel, right?” he asked Willow.

  “Yeah. Not much. Aunt May called him a Rat Bastard once when she was a little tipsy.”

  Tate flicked an eyebrow. The name fit, he guessed. “He showed up at the Center yesterday.”

  Her eyes widened, and she turned in her seat to face him. “Out of the blue?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Have you been talking to him? What’s he like?”

  He shook his head. “A few weeks ago I hired an investigator to locate him. They gave me a phone number and an address.”

  “Where does he live now?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Boy, he did get about as far away as he could get, didn’t he?”

  “I left a message on his phone last week.”

  “You told him about Morty?”

  “More or less.”

  “Have you talked at all?”

  Tate shook his head. “When he showed up at the Nature Center...”

  “Oh my God. You chickened out, didn’t you?”

  “Can you not be so good at predicting my actions, please?”

  “This already happened, so I didn’t predict it. I made an educated guess that you acted like a chicken. So you snuck out? Seriously? Where’s your cell phone?”

  She didn’t bother to wait for an answer. Instead she reached over and patted his shirt pocket. She shook her head some more and pulled it out, lighting the display. “Six missed calls all from the same number...when did he show up, five o’clock?” She flipped and scrolled. “You shut your ringer off?”

  “I haven’t seen the man since I was six years old. He hates our father.”

  “Morty isn’t an easy man to like. You can’t exactly hold that against him.”

  Tate worked the envelope from his jeans pocket while trying to keep his eyes and car on the road. Eventually, he was able to wriggle it free from where it had remained, unopened, since Bunny handed it to him the night before.

  He gave it to Willow.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  He checked his side mirror while turning his indicator on so he could pass the slow car ahead of him. “I haven’t read it yet.”

  “You want me to?”

  “Read it to me.”

  “Why can’t you...”

  “He knew Morton was an asshole, and he still left. I was alone.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “You had a sister.”

  “I wanted a brother.”

  Willow pressed Tate’s arm, and he felt ashamed of his weakness. He was weak for not finishing what he had started and weak for leaning on his daughter.

  He shook his head and tried to retrieve the envelope. “Don’t. Don’t read it. I’m sorry.”

  Willow yanked her arm out of his reach. “No. We’ll do this.” She squeezed his arm again.

  Tate watched the road. We’ll do this. She sounded like her mother just then.

  Willow unsealed the envelope and unfolded the recognizable Rustic Woods Nature Center letterhead. Bunny must have given him the paper.

  “Tate,” Willow read, “I don’t like phones. I’m staying at The Monument, room seven-twelve. Samuel.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Wow. The Monument. That’s an expensive hotel, isn’t it?”

  “Understatement.”

  “What does he do—do you know?”

  “CEO. Western Skies Airlines.”

  “Holy Crap. Really? That’s kind of high profile. You could’ve just asked me to do a Google search, and I would’ve charged you a lot less.”

  “He changed his last name.”

  “Oh.” She folded the paper, returning it to the envelope. “To what?”

  “Alice. Samuel Alice.”

  “Your mother’s name.”

  Tate squinted to read the freeway signs above him. “Yup.”

  They arrived at St. Vincent’s Hospital tired and hungry and especially not ready for May’s dramatics.

  “What took you so long?” she demanded, rising from a purple chair in the hospital lounge. She hugged Tate briskly. “It’s been hell here. I am not cut out for this. I’m just not.”

  “Calm down. It’s a six and a half hour drive, and we had to take time to pack a few things. We got here as quickly as we could.”

  She pointed to him. “This is your fault.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “I didn’t want to do this.”

  Tate’s shoulders cramped with tension. None of them wanted to do this. He tried to keep his voice even. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “What was I supposed to say? ‘No, I don’t want to drive our father to see his dead wife’s grave before he dies?’”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Where is he?”

  “Third floor.”

  “Have you talked to the doctor recently?”

  “The doctor?” His sister threw her arms in the air with a predictable amount of drama. “As in just one? Try again. There’s a new coat talking to me every time I go up there.”

  They rode the elevator to the third floor in silence, staring at the lights above the door as they marked their progress.

  As the door opened, May put her arm around Willow. “How’s the play coming?”

  “Good,” Willow nodded.

  “Charlie—how that’s going?” she asked as they filed out.

  “Really good,” Willow said, grinning.

  Tate allowed himself a smile, but stayed focused on finding Morton’s room. “Which way, May?”

  His sister pointed down the corridor to their left. “Room three-twelve.”

  “You coming?”

  “I’ve had enough of him. You deal with it for a while.”

  Tate rolled his eyes. That had been her mantra since he’d moved back last summer.

  “I’ll be over there,” she indicated a small alcove of chairs and vending machines. “Wanna sit with me, Willow?”

  Willow looked at Tate, hopeful. “Is that okay?”

  He nodded. May had warned them on the phone that Morton was crankier than usual.

  He turned toward Morton’s room, but stopped. Taking his cell phone from his shirt pocket, he handed it to Willow. “Answer that if it rings.” He looked her straight in the eyes, hoping she’d translate his meaning. Answer if Samuel calls.

  She held his gaze, and he knew she understood.

  “Got it,” she said.

  Tate found room three-twelve, but he stood outside the room a moment, taking a deep breath and preparing himself before entering.

  Mort was awake. Drained, pale. Looking years older, but awake. Tubes and wires monitored him and fed him fluids and oxygen.

  “Hey, Mort,” said Tate. “Couldn’t wait til you got home, huh?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BUNNY SAT AT HER DINING room table, hovered over a cup of coffee, pen in hand, scribbling a list of things she needed to get done over the weekend. The more things she gave herself to do, she figured, the less she’d think about Tate.

  Number one on her list: call Peggy Rubenstein. According to Barb, Peggy had updated her real estate license and was looking for new clients. Peggy seemed to know everyone in Rustic Woods, so Bunny imagined she wouldn’t have trouble getting started again. She loved Peggy, so even though she dreaded selling her home, at least she’d be working with someone who could put her at ease during the trauma.

  She also had groceries to buy. Charlie and Michael seemed to empty the cupboards faster than she could fill them. Call Michael—another item.

  He had gone to Richard’s again for the weekend, but he had forgotten his soccer uniform, and he had a Sunday game. She wanted to arr
ange to get it to him.

  She stared at the list. Not long enough. She pulled the coffee mug to her lips and sipped. Thoughts of Tate nuzzling and kissing her neck floated into her mind. Her eyes closed, feeling again the warmth of his breath near her ear as he whispered don’t move when moving became inevitable, inescapable. She needed to...

  Oh, noodles! She forced her eyes to the list again. Think, think, what else did she need to do?

  Her mind wandered again. The firmness of his arms under her hands as she grasped him when...

  She slammed the pen down, pushed herself from her chair, and stomped to the kitchen faucet. She turned the cold water on and splashed her face with it. Well, that worked on her face, but it didn’t really do the job. She needed a cold shower.

  She filled a glass with water and was beginning to gulp when her cell phone rang.

  Running back to the dining room, she fumbled with the thing before focusing on the display to see who was calling. She didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?” she said warily.

  “Ms. Bergen?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Nancy Mills. From Whispering Pines.”

  “Oh.” Bunny was caught off-guard. She never received calls from Whispering Pines. Her heart nearly leapt out of her throat. “Is everything okay? Is it Daddy?”

  “I’m not calling from the office. Your father is healthy as far as I know, but I am calling about him. I thought you should know some things.”

  “Nancy, you’re worrying me.”

  “No, no. Don’t worry. But please promise me you won’t tell anyone about this call. I’d get fired in a split second. I’m looking for another job, but until then...”

  “You have my word. What’s going on?”

  “Your sister learned about the video game parties and has removed them from his unit. She’s interviewing addiction treatment centers.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “He’s very upset. She had a nurse in to sedate him yesterday before taking him to her house.”

  “Oh my God. Doesn’t he have any rights?”

  “He signed over medical power of attorney.”