by Cait London
“I had to,” she stated unevenly. “I just had to leave, Tucker.”
He couldn’t deny that fact. He’d always known that Carly was very bright and needed challenges and adventures, one after another. She needed to succeed. Marriage to him wasn’t enough for her. She couldn’t help her natural instinct to fly away to discover and investigate life.
“I know,” he said quietly and walked into his bedroom and slid into a pair of jeans, dressing quickly in his hurry to get away from Carly and the resulting emotions in him.
He went back to the kitchen, took one look at the tears sliding down her cheeks as she looked out at her grandmother’s backyard and knew he was about a heartbeat away from giving the house to her. The best thing for him to do was to get out fast, just like he did when they were married. “Do what you have to do, Carly. I’m going fishing with my brother.”
“How is Tyrell?” she asked. Her tone said that her mind was really on her grandmother.
“Same as always. Single. He’s been engaged a couple of times. Runs a little financial planning office on Main Street.”
She shook her head and a tear dropping from her cheek caught the morning light. It gleamed silvery as it fell to the V of skin exposed by her vest.
Carly—soft and grieving and rumpled in the morning—was dangerous, because Tucker’s natural instincts were to comfort her.
But when that tear trailed downward into the soft valley of places he’d better forget, Tucker hurried for his truck and bass boat in the backyard. His hand still felt that soft backside as she struggled on top of him. He’d gone hard at the morning scent of her, the feel of his woman rubbing against him. A tangle of sweet and desperate emotions churned around him. There was an instant when he wanted to tug her beneath him, hold her wrists in the old playful way as she squirmed and laughed before the sweetness came gently upon them.
But she had a boyfriend named Gary, and Tucker always had been too easy where Carly was concerned.
Not this time.
At the lake, with Tyrell sitting at the other end of the boat, Tucker brooded about Carly and the feel of her against him earlier. All the old sweet feelings tangled with bitterness, and frustration that he couldn’t take the whole mess and dump it in the lake and forget about everything.
Tyrell was six years younger and not as romantically bruised.
“Sally Jo thinks you need protection from the way Carly was acting at the MidTown Cafe. To help protect you, Sally Jo told Carly that you had a girlfriend,” Tyrell said softly as he reeled in another bass.
The fish had long ago taken the worms off Tucker’s hook, but he hadn’t cared about catching them.
“If Carly stays around long, you’d better come up with a girlfriend,” Tyrell continued. “Carly has gotten to you pretty good in one day. I do not want to have you mooning over at my house and ruining all my good ball games with those long, deep sighs. You’re in sad shape, bro. And she wants that house back. You’re a solid thinker, but she’s all over you when it comes to speed and deal-making.”
“She is not getting to me,” Tucker said as he felt another fish tug on his hook and dismissed it.
“So how about me dating her?” Tyrell asked with a grin.
Tucker glared at his younger brother. “She’s got a boyfriend named Gary.”
“Probably wants to marry her and live in that house. She’s probably in the baby-making mode and needing a donor.”
Tucker brooded on that topic. He’d donated plenty, but Carly hadn’t let her eggs play. “She’ll be gone by the time I get back. So lay off.”
Tyrell’s line sailed out in another cast. “I wouldn’t bet on it. She’s older and wiser now, and you’ve still got an ache for her the size of Texas. And you’ve got that horny look. It hasn’t been there in eleven years, since she divorced you and left town. Of course, now and then, when you heard about her visiting Anna Belle, or saw Carly, you got it back.”
“I was over her a long time ago, and I don’t want to hear any more about Carly. She’s just passing through.”
“Uh-huh,” Tyrell said as if he didn’t believe Carly would leave easily. “Remember when we made her clean those fish before we’d let her in our tree house? She got to be real good. I wish she’d clean this big mess of fish for me now.”
Tucker ignored another nibble on his hook. “Her stuff will be out of the house when I get back.”
“Uh-huh.” Tyrell’s tone was disbelieving.
Tucker dropped his brother at his home two hours later, and dreaded going back to Anna Belle’s house—where he’d told Carly the facts of the sale and told her to get out.
He filled the truck with gas, picked up a few groceries, browsed through some home renovation magazines at the drugstore and stopped at the MidTown Cafe for supper. Peter Amos, the local postmaster, came to Tucker’s table. “Carly is having her mail sent to your house. I hope that’s okay. She said that you and her had an understanding. Folks are glad about that. Catch any fish today?”
Tucker forced himself to swallow his last bite. The understanding he had was that Carly would be gone when he returned. “They weren’t biting.”
On his way out of the cafe, Tucker tuned out the gossip about Carly’s car parked overnight in his driveway. He nodded briskly to Jeff Thomas’s nosy probing, “I hear Carly’s back in town…that she’ll be staying a while…she bought an extra-long phone cord from Mac. Heard she figures that house is really hers.”
“We’ll settle that hash,” Tucker said firmly as he got into his pickup and almost pulled out in front of Norma’s police car.
Her siren drew him back to the side of the street. She was out in a heartbeat, ticket book in hand. “Got to write you a ticket for reckless—”
Tucker shook his head and tried to work up a sweet-talking line and a smile. It was difficult to do when he was on his way to evict his ex-wife squatter. “Your hair looks real nice, Norma.”
She patted the big gray fluff around her head. “Thanks. New perm. Okay, forget about the ticket. Saw Carly’s car parked in your driveway all last night. I figure you’re due a mistake or two. Dealing with her can take a lot of brain-time.”
“It sure can,” Tucker agreed as he pulled in behind the car that was blocking his drive to the backyard. He parked, grabbed his small sack of groceries in one hand, and strode up to the door with Carly-eviction on his mind.
Inside, Carly was busy at work on Anna Belle’s dining room table, punching her laptop’s keys. Tucker’s business papers were heaped at the other end of the table. A telephone cord ran from her laptop down onto the floor, up over the stacked boxes of her things, and across the living room and into his bedroom.
“Oh, hello, Tucker,” Livingston squawked. “I love you, big boy.”
Tucker ignored the parrot’s make-up talk and surveyed his home. Carly had moved her boxes in from the car and some of them were open. That meant that her stuff was somewhere in his house!
Tucker primed himself to tell Carly what he thought of unwelcome women squatters and how much Norma would like to evict her. Then he looked at Carly more closely.
Bundled up on top of her head, her hair had ends sticking out like a war chieftain’s feathers. Some of the silky strands hadn’t been captured and quivered softly around her face and nape. A pen was propped over one cute little ear.
He knew that ear very well. He used to blow in it….
Tucker held very still, his heart leaping. Carly was wearing one of his faded cotton summer shirts, and her legs and feet were bare. He hoped she was wearing shorts, because if she wasn’t, he’d never be able to sit on that dining room chair again.
Carly shifted and exposed the requisite cutoff shorts, and Tucker released the breath he’d been holding.
This woman was a brand-new Carly—a tigress at work. Bent over her work, her fingers flying over the keyboard, pausing only to make notes on a yellow pad, Carly didn’t notice Tucker. She unplugged the cord from her laptop, slid it into the telephone
on the table and punched in a number.
Carly stood, and holding the telephone began to walk the length of the room. “Look, Tim, the brochure for Stiles Advertising just has to be updated. It’s blah, blue and black. Not a drop of zest in it. Get a graphic artist on that, will you? Not a staff person, but send it out to that last freelancer we had—Iris whats-her-name. And put her on retainer, if you have to…. Yes, I know that…. I am not babying some copywriter who doesn’t deliver on time. Give Megan notice that if that copy isn’t sent e-mail to me pronto, she may be looking for another job…. And Tim, send the photos from the last shoot to me—e-mail—the ones with the jeans. If I can see the model’s panty lines, so can everyone else and that is just tacky, tacky, tacky….”
On her way back, she glanced at Tucker who was leaning against the wall, watching her. Carly’s expression had a fighter’s flashing keep-out-of-my-way look.
He shrugged and swept his free hand in a go-ahead motion. In full stride, and chewing on problems, Carly was fascinating, a tip-top female shark, in the pool and scrapping to get business done her way.
“No, Jessica just had a baby. Don’t you dare push her to come back into the office,” she continued as she passed in front of him. Her free hand rubbed her temple as if a headache had lodged there.
She glanced at Tucker and momentarily a soft smile crossed her expression. For just a heartbeat, she leaned against him with a little tired sigh.
Stunned, Tucker couldn’t think. Then she was off and striding across the floor, intent on business.
While Tucker was dealing with the flow of her long smooth legs and the soft way she’d rested against him for just that instant, Carly continued, “Don’t you dare call her in to work on the graphics for the dog show. Get that woman a computer set up at home pronto and everything she needs. Keep her happy. I don’t want her going freelance for some other company, and she’s already said she plans to work at home. She might as well work for us…. And I want some progress reports from the sales department. I’ll handle the digital camera account myself. Express that brochure on the Cayman Islands to me and what you’ve got on the trade show, and I guess that’s all until Monday morning.”
She placed the telephone on the table, closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. Picking it up again she said, “Listen, Tim. I’m sorry. You’re doing a good job. I didn’t mean to jump on you. It’s just that this stuff has been going on all day—problems that shouldn’t arise, especially when I worked overtime to carve out this time for a break. Thanks for being so good about helping me. I’ll sign for time and a half on your next check…. Yes, everything is going fine. Same to you…. Bye.”
Carly eased into her chair and shoved her laptop aside to make room for her arms, which she rested on the table. She placed her forehead on them. “It’s been hell today,” she said quietly. “They’ve got to make do without me once in a while. I’ve got the best assistant in the world, but not even Tim can manage what came apart—all in the one day I’ve been out of the office.”
Did Carly realize that she’d rested against Tucker for that fraction of time?
Looking at her all bent over her work, Tucker wished he would have brushed her hair as she’d read in the romantic novels.
If Carly’s work was that demanding, no wonder she needed a getaway. “Do you keep this up all the time?”
“I love it. I’m really good at multitasking and I’m creative as heck. But I’m just handling a lot right now and shouldn’t have jumped on my assistant. I feel bad about that.”
Tucker understood how young Carly’s energy and competitive instincts fit well into her adult vocation. “You like the angling and the challenges, the push and the shove, the game. And you’re good. That’s why they depend on you so.”
“I suppose.” She reached a hand to her shoulders and rubbed the muscles there, as if they were stiff and aching.
She’d built herself a whole life away from him. Carly was a different person than the girl he had married….
And still, her need to lean upon him when she was tired and frustrated was still there….
Tucker pushed away from the wall. He preferred dealing with his customers’ payments due, than dealing with his emotions right now. He could run, like he did this morning and in their marriage. Or he could stay.
It was his house. He’d stay, of course. He couldn’t run from Carly at every turn.
Carly’s hand slid limply down from her shoulders and the long deep sigh said she was close to dozing.
Tucker shook his head and walked slowly to her. He considered her as she slept, her head on her arms. He forced himself away from her, and into the kitchen, putting away his groceries. One glance back at Carly told him that she hadn’t moved.
Drawn to watch his ex-wife without all the flash and barbs, Tucker stood beside her. She’d smiled that soft old way at him and had rested against him, as if he were home and safety to her….
He saw his hand reaching for her hair, to ease the pen from over her ear, to smooth back her hair. It seemed only natural to release that twisted bundle of silky hair, to rub her scalp gently with his fingertips. He’d always been able to touch Carly in a way that soothed her and that pleasured him….
Tangled in his thoughts about the softness of that one moment as she passed him, Tucker began to toy with her silky hair. He lifted the strands to watch the fading sunlight from the window catch the different shades. When Carly sighed deeply, slowly, his fingertips found her scalp, massaging gently.
The first long, soft, erotic purr staked his steel-toe boots to the floor and sent every one of his muscles into hard alert. The next sound simulated a woman beginning her orgasm. Carly angled her head for more, and the very long purring sound caused his throat to dry.
The image of a frisky, just discovered oh-my sex, young Carly flashed across his mind. After they’d made it through that first long week of him coaxing her into lovemaking, Carly was fast and hot, zapping him into a warm boneless mass with a silly grin. He hadn’t minded a bit that he’d had to initiate every seduction, but he’d wondered how it would be to have her actually set to seduce him.
Carly had always been a fast learner and a fast runner. These sounds came from a woman who savored a slow, intense sexual climb, waiting there for every particle of pleasure, and the soft fall to earth…. She had probably learned the art of seduction from other men….
Tucker’s hands tightened. She’d probably learned a few things—and not from him. He tilted her head, so that she looked up and back at him. “So, did Gary call?”
It took a minute for her drowsy expression to clear and then she frowned, jerking her head away from him. She stood slowly and faced him, her arms crossed in front of her. She took her time in answering. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you answered the telephone this morning. No, he hasn’t called. You’ve probably ruined the only chance I’ve got to nab him. He’s everything you aren’t, and everything I want. He’s sensitive.”
“Big boy,” Livingston added.
Tucker leaned down to Carly, making certain she didn’t mistake his expression for kindness and understanding. “I told you to get out.”
“You told me to do what I had to do. This is it. I had work to do and I’m not ready to turn everything Anna Belle loved over to a squatter.”
“Squatter” echoed his previous thoughts about Carly, and began a headache that had moved up from his southerly parts, started by the scramble on the bed this morning and her orgasmic crooning.
Tucker threw up his hands. “I’m getting an aspirin and when I come back, you’d better be hauling stuff out that front door.”
“Make me. You are not renegotiating at this point. You told me to do what I had to do, and I am. That’s the deal. No post-agreement amendments.”
After a minute of deciding just what he could do with Carly, Tucker had no definite course. He didn’t trust himself where Carly was concerned. Tucker left the battlefield and marched into his bathroom. He jerke
d open the medicine cabinet to find it stuffed with feminine facial creams and cleansers, cosmetics, an eyelash curler, pills for “that time of the month,” and a tiny pink razor. He closed the cabinet door to find a big circular magnifying mirror that had been stuck to the mirror. The image of his two huge, glaring eyes shot back at him.
He held still and surveyed Carly’s invasion of his thinking-space and library. Bottles of women’s shampoo and bathing items ran across the window ledge in the shower. “Give Carly an inch and she’ll take a mile,” he heard himself growl.
Anna Belle’s frog planter sat on the back of the toilet stool, replacing his library magazines. And the seat was down.
Tucker grabbed the fluffy white net-thing that hung from the showerhead, crushed it in his fist and stalked out to see Carly. She hadn’t moved. He was finished with words and unsettled warm-soft emotions sneaking in to confuse him. He tossed the fluffy net-thing at her face, but she caught it. Tucker noted that her catching hand and reflexes were still good, and picked up the telephone receiver. He punched in a number. “Norma? There’s a trespasser in my house. Come get her.”
Chapter 4
“I cannot believe you actually called Norma.”
Tucker showed his teeth in a cold smile. They gleamed in his late-day approaching stubble. Carly had always distrusted that smile, because it was his “gotcha” smirky look. Sometimes in their dating, it had been matched by the warmth in his eyes. But this time, his eyes were as silver as a cold steel blade. “You’ve got a few minutes. Norma’s car is at Jimmy’s getting a new battery. She doesn’t think it looks right to make official calls in his wrecker and she’s hurrying him. It’s Saturday, and Jimmy doesn’t like coming in to work on his day off. You’d better start packing your things. Get that junk out of my bathroom.”
Carly hurled her bath scrub-net at his face and it bounced to the floor. She’d lost almost an hour sobbing over the shoebox of valentines she’d discovered in her search for the diary. Tucker had kept every valentine from her and no one else. Her handwriting on the back had been crossed out by a big black marker. His adult masculine script had graded every one, from “Not bad for a first attempt at spelling my name” to “Pure Mush Stuff” to “She didn’t mean a word of it.”