by Cait London
Carly had closed the shoebox carefully. She didn’t want Tucker to know that she had seen inside his deep pain. The insight that she had hurt him deeply, that the smell and stain on the valentines was definitely beer and that she’d driven him to drink had upset her for another hour.
She’d lost years because no one seemed to fit her like Tucker—when he was a teen and sweet, her first love. She just knew she could do better on a second or third love, but they never came. He was the reason—the man standing in front of her, all six-foot-two of big, stubborn, in-her-face ex-husband.
“I’m not taking your bad mood, Ms. Hot-Shot Redford,” Tucker warned too quietly. “If Gary didn’t call, that’s between you and him. But then, maybe he’s seen the light of day—and he’s lucky to escape.”
“How dare you!”
This was the same old infuriating Tucker, who had changed from the sweetheart-friend into a demanding and sulking husband, one who ran every time they needed an intimate, resolving talk.
Tucker moved to the front door and opened it. “You’re getting all worked up, Carly. Maybe Gary didn’t call because he knows you’ve got a wildfire temper. Maybe all he knows is those sounds you make like you’re having a long, slow—”
She couldn’t bear to let her ex-husband know how she’d never had sex with another man, that somehow, just at the wrong moment, Tucker had managed to ruin everything—and he wouldn’t even be close! Tucker was always there, even when he wasn’t!
Carly shivered a little and her hand shot out to fist Tucker’s shirt. “I was dead-tired and my eyeballs felt like they’d fall out, so I relaxed a bit. My scalp is not an erogenous zone,” she lied, because she’d just discovered that it was.
She tugged him close enough to look up and frighten him with a glare. Tucker’s blue eyes were starting to get the look that said, “You’re so funny when you’re worked up.”
He reached up and slowly rubbed her scalp. “See how long you can take this and then we’ll talk.”
She would not give him one sound of ecstasy. She was a sophisticated career woman, who ran an office staff and negotiated with big business. She’d carved her way in a competitive field, and she was not letting her ex-husband get to her….
Carly stood very still, keeping her glare full-force and trying not to notice the deepening laugh lines beside Tucker’s eyes. The sensuous massage was getting to her and she had to defend herself. “I’ll bet your blond girlfriend fakes it. Women like intimacy with sex. You never learned that.”
Tucker’s teasing expression stilled. His eyes narrowed and a muscle in his jaw tightened beneath the stubble-shadow. He looked raw and tough and big, and Carly knew she was getting to him as he said slowly, huskily, “She likes it fine…. You’re trying to holdout…. So do you fake it?”
“Fake it? Fake it?” Livingston squawked.
“Get out,” Tucker said quietly and jerked open the door.
He’d always known just how to push the wrong buttons, and now it was about her life without sex. Not even a low-grade on the sex-barometer kind. Not even the mind-blowing kind. With a frustrated, muffled cry, Carly launched herself at him.
Tucker grunted as his arm circled her and his other arm reached out for the doorframe, missing it. Both off balance, they seemed to dance across the porch and down the steps, where Tucker tumbled onto the front lawn, taking her with him.
Carly wasn’t done with him yet. He’d primed her and knew it, and he could take the fruits of his punishment. She’d wrestled him to the ground since they were children and later sweethearts, and she could do it now.
In a fast flurry of arms and legs, she intended to wrest him out of her system, once and for all. Since she’d left the dignified businesswoman persona behind, she might as well make the most of it. She’d shame Tucker Redford on her own grandmother’s lawn.
They rolled across the lawn, and Tucker definitely weighed more than he had years ago. She hooked her knee around his leg and shoved, and he went beneath her with a soft whoosh of air. She’d always been really good at besting Tucker, at getting him down and sitting on him. This confidence gave her new strength and she held his wrists. They were bigger than she remembered; her hands looked small and soft and ineffectual against the strength of those wrists. “I detest you, Tucker Redford. You’ve done nothing but ruin my life.”
He rolled on top of her, all of him, his hands completely circling her wrists. He took her hands up to rest beside her head. “Uh-huh. I always let you beat me because I liked you sitting on top of me. Did you ever think about that?”
She struggled against his greater strength and weight, but right there on the grass next to the fragrant budding roses and the happy jumble of purple pansies, Tucker had that quiet, intent look.
His face was too close, and his thumbs were massaging her wrists. She could move—or she couldn’t—because her mind and her body were tangling…and waiting, as if the whole world had stopped moving.
“You’re a whole lot of trouble, Carly Walker Redford,” he whispered unevenly as his lips brushed hers and set fire to every flammable, womanly essence in her.
“You’re no Prince Charming,” she managed in a wispy voice as her body began to recognize his and quiver and heat and soften.
With an uneven groan, Tucker opened his lips and fitted them perfectly on hers. His hands released her wrists and his fingers began that slow massage-erotic-thing on her scalp. Tucker seemed to be dragging breath into him, his hands trembling, his face burning near hers.
Or was hers burning?
In the fragrances of home and flowers and lawn and man, Carly found her arms encircling him, smoothing the hard quivering muscles there, just as her tongue met his. He tasted the same and different and she trusted him, and her lips opened to the nudge of his.
Fire leaped into her blood, a sense of homecoming and new adventure sliding over her, seeping softly into the sweet remembrances of Tucker’s big body locking intimately with hers. The beat of his heart raced, a familiar match to her own; she could almost feel that they shared the same pulse, the same heat.
Carly slid her fingers into his hair and smoothed the tense ridge of his broad shoulders. She slid her hands down his sides to lock onto muscular, tight buttocks covered by his jeans. Meanwhile, Tucker’s big hand had opened upon her breast, claiming it gently. His other hand framed her face, his thumb slowly stroking her cheek.
She forced her lids open, saw Tucker’s grim expression above her—and glimpsed Norma above him.
The cold water pouring down on her caused Carly to gasp and to struggle for breath.
Tucker cursed and wiped her face with a brisk swipe of his hand. He slowly turned to look up at Norma. “She attacked me. I was just holding her down until you arrived,” he said darkly as he eased to his feet and stood in front of Carly.
She struggled to sit up and smooth her clothes at the same time, using Tucker’s big body as a shield. She struggled to place herself away from the fire and the hunger with Tucker into the reality of the Saturday evening—rolling on her grandmother’s front lawn with her ex-husband, the bane of her lifetime.
“Thanks for turning on the water, Norma. The lawn needed it.” He reached down and grabbed the back of her borrowed shirt, easily hoisting her to her feet. While she dangled almost on tip-toe, he studied her with a disgusted expression.
“She’s all yours,” he said firmly, before he shoved her at Norma. Tucker walked to the garden hose faucet, turned off the water and stalked into the house.
“I guess that about says it,” Norma stated briskly as she handcuffed Carly. “I gave you fair warning.”
“This is my grandmother’s house. You can’t do this.”
Norma dramatically adjusted her uniform belt’s night stick, leather pistol holster and pepper spray holder. “Watch me. And don’t get mud all over the back of my squad car.”
“That’s not a squad car, Norma. You have to have several cars and more than one policewoman to make a squad. I bet
you haven’t even used that roll of crime-scene tape you ordered a hundred years ago.”
Norma huffed up and glared at Carly. “I can add resisting arrest to the charges. Don’t make me. Wipe your feet on the lawn. There’s mud between your toes. Since you’re already dirty, you might as well clean the fish that Tyrell brought over for my supper. You used to be real good at that.”
“I’ve forgotten how,” Carly stated with as much dignity as she could as Norma marched her to the “squad” car and put her in the back seat.
The blast of Norma’s siren muffled Carly’s protests. The siren brought people to the sidewalks to stare at her—riding in the back seat of the car.
Tucker took a long, slow shower and, absorbed in his brooding, grabbed Carly’s shampoo. He was seated in his recliner, drinking a beer, the television blaring no-channel static noises, before he caught the scent of flowers. He sniffed, scowled as he remembered using Carly’s shampoo, and quickly poured beer into his palm. He brushed his hands together and then rubbed his hair hard to remove the scent.
Nothing would remove the feel of Carly moving beneath him, all full and hot and ripe and hungry.
Nothing could remove the need to hear those sounds again.
Or maybe the need had grown to hear those orgasmic hungry, sensual sounds, combined with her moving beneath him.
That Carly had ruined his life, his peace, and his Saturday night was obvious. He was feeling—vulnerable. He had to get Carly out of his system, one way or the other, but just now he had to calm down and think—
When the telephone rang, he supposed it was her single alotted call from jail. Norma wouldn’t let Carly ring that many times.
It continued to ring and with a sigh, and he rose to answer it. “Tucker, here.”
The silence wasn’t typical of Carly. By now, she would have burned his ears and got his temper simmering. A man’s deep voice spoke slowly, carefully, “This is Gary Kingsley. I’m calling for Carly Redford. May I speak to her, please?”
“She’s not here. She’s in jail. If you want her, call there. I’m not running a message service.” Tucker gave the number and decided he might as well make Carly’s life as miserable as she’d made his. After all, this was Gary, the guy she wanted to nab and who was “sensitive,” unlike himself. Tucker didn’t like the savage jealousy burning and driving him. Unaccustomed to every emotion he didn’t want hitting him at the same time, he said, “She’s in jail because she wanted to have sex with me—I’m her ex-husband—and she attacked me on the front lawn of my house. The sheriff had to run a hose on her to cool her off. I’d sure be grateful if you could come collect her.”
Tucker hung up and noted that Carly’s laptop was still humming. He touched it and it sprung to life, leaping with complex graphs and numbers beside a page layout, advertising for a high-priced car dealership. “Download complete” remained on the screen. Another touch brought up a cost-effective list and Carly’s notes on marketing to unique groups…she was very good. The yellow notepad beside the laptop contained a neat, thoughtful outline.
He turned off the laptop, watching it do its don’t-want-to-die thing. When the need arose, Tucker was still borrowing his brother’s office computer, and Carly had hooked up to her office’s mainframe in another state.
All he’d wanted years ago was the girl he’d always loved, a stay-at-home wife and a mother for his children, a good safe home for them all. He wanted to protect and love them and—
And Carly had fixed that…she’d gone off and learned how to be a—what? A wrangling, competent, competitive businesswoman with a boyfriend named Gary?
Tucker sat again and rubbed his chest, inhaling the feminine scent beneath the beer’s tang. He tried to still the slow hurting ache of love gone wrong—it was then that he noted the drawer askew in the table beside him. He opened it and noted that the papers inside had been rifled.
Still uncovered, Livingston was silent, his beady eyes locked on Tucker. The bird could say more with silence and a beady look than any human Tucker had ever known.
Fifteen minutes later, he was standing behind the town jail, watching Carly clean Norma’s supper. The old tenderness was there for the girl he’d known, his first sweetheart. He leaned against the brick wall, nodded to Tanner and Gavin who had followed Norma. The boys had collected five more friends, and they watched the town legend clean fish. “She’s good at it, isn’t she, Tucker?” Tanner asked.
“Real good. And fast. We used to all go fishing and Carly could clean the whole mess in a half hour flat. We used to time her. She could outswim most of us, too. Her jackknife dive was a thing of beauty. Better go on home now, boys.” He glanced at Norma who was standing with one hand on her pistol butt. The pistol probably didn’t have any bullets in it. Norma’s other hand rested on her pepper spray, ready for a potential prison break.
Reluctantly, the boys rode away, still discussing how the jailbird would escape. Norma studied Tucker as he walked to the jail’s back porch. “I guess she’s cooled down enough now. What do you want me to do with her?”
Carly was obviously ignoring him, and Tucker’s heart tightened at the sight of the tear streaks messing up the mud splatters on her face.
She had rinsed her hands in the bucket of fish water and dried them on the borrowed shirt. She handed the bowl of neatly cleaned and scored fillets to Norma. Then Carly sat with her knees up. Her head rested down on her crossed forearms.
Norma shook her head and spoke quietly. “She’s way down, Tucker. Don’t pick on her.”
“I’ll take it from here, Norma, if that’s okay.”
With a nod, Norma stepped inside the jail and closed the door.
“Go away, Tucker,” Carly whispered unevenly.
That’s what he usually did when Carly was angry or upset—he left, unable to face her need for intimacy of the talking-relationship kind.
He braced himself for a new experience, because somehow he had to tear her out of his life, his mind and his body. “We may as well talk about this,” he said slowly and sat beside her on concrete steps.
Her words were muffled. “The whole town is probably talking about us now.”
“That’s likely. They have before.” He wanted to place his hand on that shiny mussed hair, smoothing it, and rub the tension out of her shoulders and back. Tucker was surprised to see his hand hovering above Carly’s head. He lowered it and gripped his jeaned knee firmly, anchoring his need to touch his ex-wife.
“I really did save your life by marrying you,” she said.
Tucker nodded; at the time her father hadn’t been happy, and Billy Walker had a temper. “Thank you.”
She looked at him with suspicion. “Now you’re just tormenting me.”
“I married you because I was afraid you’d get away from me. You always were a fast mover.” His words surprised him; but they rang true in the sweet summer air.
Her eyes widened. “You never said that before.”
He took a deep breath and decided to hand her the rest. Because he couldn’t bear to look at her tear-streaked face, he looked up at the fading square of blue sky, wedged between the 1890s two-story buildings. “And I didn’t think I could catch you. I appreciate that you did try, and I shouldn’t have done some things like comparing your cooking to my mother’s. What you could do best just ran in a different direction…. I turned off your laptop. You can finish off whatever you have going—that office emergency—and then you’d better leave.”
“You were embarrassed because we didn’t have sex that first week.”
“We made up for that. Things change and so have we.” He looked down at Carly. “You smell like fish. Did you find what you were looking for at my house?”
She looked stunned and guilty for a just a heartbeat, before she recovered to come back at him. “My house. I don’t know what you mean, but I want to make an offer to buy back my grandmother’s house.”
“You’re not getting it, Carly.”
“You could make
a profit,” she insisted. “And you’ve been drinking. It’s Saturday night. Why don’t you go to what’s-her-name blond-woman and think about selling to me?”
Tucker had just bared his scarred heart to his ex-wife, and she’d stepped right in and started wrangling over property values. He wouldn’t let her know that he hadn’t managed a relationship after her. Every woman had seemed dull in comparison. He couldn’t think of getting naked and having sex with anyone else. Since they’d rolled on Anna Belle’s lawn, that was all he could think about doing with Carly.
Tucker forced himself to stand and stretch and breathe the alley’s hovering scents of summer and fish. He wasn’t certain how the intimate-talk business was supposed to go, but he’d just bared his heart, cleaning out a little of the ache, and got a real estate offer in return. His throat was dry and tight, but he managed, “I think I’ll just do that. I don’t appreciate you messing up my closets and drawers. Whatever you think you want was gone a long time ago.”
Carly could not let Tucker do that to her—just drop something on her that they’d wrangled about in their marriage, that had haunted her since—and walk away.
Tucker was doing just that—all six-foot-two-inches of broad shoulders, tapering down to narrow hips and long legs in those good-fitting jeans. He’d just given her the intimacy that she’d wanted and ached for in their young, short marriage—and he wasn’t giving her a chance to return it. It was just like him to leave the field while he was ahead. “Do not take one more step, Tucker.”
He paused, straightened just a bit, then turned the corner into the back street and out of sight.
Carly sank down and let the evening shadows surround her, brooding on Tucker’s admission and reflecting on the last bitterness of their marriage. She allowed her tears to drip down her face. Tucker had always been her friend and then her sweetheart, and she’d hurt him. He never lied and he’d just told her how his heart had bled. Valentine-proof lay in a box as worn and tired as she felt.