Little Matchmakers

by Jennifer Greene

  “Uh-oh.”

  “When I came back…well, your son had phone messages tacked to the corkboard for me, with the time and the name and the message and the number. And then there was my desk. I didn’t know it had a green slate top. I don’t remember ever seeing the top of my desk naked like that before.”

  “Um…”

  “Pete said he didn’t have enough time to really case the place. That was his term. ‘Case.’ But he’d gotten on the computer, discovered the programs I had, went online, looked at the website. He said, not to insult me, but it was pitiful. Hey. Are you laughing?”

  She couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “He shouldn’t have been disrespectful. Honestly, he knows better—”

  “He wasn’t remotely disrespectful. He said over and over that he wasn’t trying to insult me. Would you quit?”

  But she couldn’t seem to choke back the laughter. “You don’t understand. It’s such a relief. To have someone else—an adult—spend time with my son. I’m always blaming myself for his not being, well, like every other kid. For his sake.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s terrific. Just because I wanted to knock his smart little block off doesn’t mean I didn’t get the picture. And I’m just saying. You have to give me time. He’s smarter than me. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Neither was I. He came out of the womb smarter than me.”

  “I do think he should get yanked out of the office and forced to have fun now and then.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said wryly, and suddenly he leaned back, as relaxed as she was, and started chuckling along with her.

  “This is not how I thought the afternoons with the boys would go.”

  “Me either! To be honest, I never thought this had a prayer of working. It just seemed too crazy an idea. For sure, there was no harm in trying it, but now…” She hesitated, then said more seriously, “I have no way of knowing if being around me will help Will. But I really, really like your son, Tucker. We had a great time together.”

  “That’s how I felt with your Pete. I have no idea if I can get the kid into trying a sport or anything physical. I expected to challenge him—not for him to challenge me. But I had a blast, just talking to him, being with him. Which is to say, I’m 100 percent okay with our continuing this. As long as it works for the boys.”

  “As long as it works for the boys,” she echoed.

  A silence fell. She was still smiling—what a surprise, that she could be comfortable with Tucker. It mattered, that he liked her son. That she liked his. Talking about their kids had proved to be a natural anxiety squelcher.

  But that easy silence seemed to fade away, turn into something else. She had the sudden urge to gallop down those long steps, grab Pete, get home, lock the doors. She wasn’t in danger exactly. There was just something kindling in Tucker’s eyes—a hot-blue, electric something—that had nothing to do with sons or parenting or anything sensible.

  The sky seemed to hush. She started to say something, then stopped. She had nothing to say, no words in her brain that made any sense. Nerves tiptoed into her consciousness. Nerves, need…and a yearning, long ignored, long denied.

  Something could happen here.

  A touch. A kiss. Not because she’d been turned on by him from the first moment she saw him. But because he was looking at her that way. Like a man on the prowl. For her. The way a buck picked out a doe. The way an alpha male wolf chose his mate.

  In that hush of a millisecond, she had a crazy instinct that something monumental, something overwhelming, something irrevocable, could happen if she did the wrong thing. That was the problem, of course. That she’d done so many wrong things already. That—except for Petie and Plain Vanilla—she had a long, long history of disappointing everyone in her life. Of making bad choices.

  Yet…her heart was beating so fast, so hard, that it seemed like a raucous thrum in her ears. Only then she realized…there really was a raucous thrum. It emanated from the cell phone in his shirt pocket.

  Tucker put on an ogre’s scowl—but he plucked out the phone, saw the message, punched the thing. “Yeah. Of course. We’ll be right there.”

  He snapped the thing closed, shook his head, stepped back. “That was the kids, naturally, wanting to know what’s taking us so long.”

  There. The interruption was just enough for her to find a way to breathe again, to find some nice, normal words. “I’ll bet. Our boys have to be starving.”

  “They’re ten. They’re always starving. You feed ’em and they’re empty in an hour.”

  “You’re not kidding. I swear Pete has a hole in his foot. He keeps taking in food and yet never seems to gain an ounce….”

  The whole climb down, they laughed that way, talking nonsense, telling son-stories. Tucker revved the Gator to top speed to skedaddle home. They pulled into his drive less than five minutes later. Garnet could see the boys on the porch with Tucker’s sister.

  She quickly fished her van key from her shorts pocket. “So, we’re going to try this again on Thursday?”

  “Sounds great.” Yet he suddenly reached out, hooked a hand around her wrist. The instant she glanced up, she saw that unpleasant, dangerous, unnerving glint in his eyes again. “Saved by the bell this time,” he murmured.

  “The bell?”

  “All right. Technically you were saved by the phone. And I suspect it’ll be tough working anything out with the boys around—and the boys are pretty much likely to always be around. But I’ll find a way. Trust me.”

  She wanted to pretend she didn’t know what he was implying, but she was shocked that he’d been so blunt, so daring. And in the next second, Petie came hurtling over, whining loudly about how starved to death he was, and when did he get to come back to Mr. Tucker’s?

  The group shared goodbyes, and faster than lightning, they were in the van and gone, first his house out of sight, then his road, and finally they were taking the hairpin turns toward home. Her son kept up his usual chatter. Relief slowly eased her runaway pulse. They’d been a family of two for so long. They’d been doing just fine, thriving in their two-against-the-world scenario.

  She wasn’t really worried about Tucker.

  She’d learned from her mistakes in the past. Maybe she’d been a rebel as a kid…but now she colored between the lines. She no longer took risks she couldn’t afford.

  She just had to keep reminding herself of that.

  Chapter Five

  Tucker watched until they were out of sight. The sun was dropping fast now. A silken mist softened the edges of the woods and muted the sky colors, easing the way into night. In that prenight lonely silence, the mountain started to whisper.

  Or maybe he just heard that unnerving whisper because he was thinking about Garnet.

  He loped up the porch steps into the house. Inside, across the great room, he saw his sister and Will huddled over the kitchen counter—where they’d obviously been raiding the entire contents of his refrigerator.

  “Help yourself,” he said wryly.

  Rosemary shot him a gesture that Will couldn’t see. “I swear I won’t stay long. But Ike called me yesterday. Told me I should check in with you when I could, or you’d start worrying.”

  “You think I worry about you?”

  “Yeah, you’ve always been a total pest that way.” She finished a spoonful of ice cream—peppermint stick, her favorite, which he just happened to always keep stocked. “I was fooling around the upper-east quadrant of Whisper this afternoon. I was so close, figured I might as well visit.”

  “I take it there’s some weeds up there you’re interested in?”

  “Orchids, boy. Not weeds. Wild orchids. I pity you, having to live with him,” Rosemary said to Will, who blushed to the roots of his hair.

  Tucker st
ared at his son. Will used to be as easy around Rosemary as anyone alive. Yet when that last hormone spurt had kicked in, that changed, even with his one and only favorite aunt. Yet Garnet said he’d talked nonstop with her.

  What was that about?

  Tucker started with the older-brother grilling. “You talked to the parents recently?”

  “Of course. They both call at least once a week. Always on the fly—you know they have no free time. They definitely don’t want me to forget that they’re still upset I canceled the wedding. That I hurt George irreparably. That nothing I’m doing makes sense these days. And right about then, the phone call invariably gets interrupted—usually by a page from the hospital—and I’m off the hook for another day.”

  She was being mighty flip, typical of Rosemary. But he was glad she stopped by, because she was incapable of asking for help from anyone. The only way he could know she was seriously okay was to get a look at her.

  From the time Tucker was in grade school, he’d felt more like a father than a brother to both his siblings—but Rosemary especially. Their parents couldn’t help being absent. They were both top surgeons in their field, always seemed to get called away. Tucker couldn’t remember a birthday or a holiday where both parents were present. And that was all water over the dam, now that they were all grown.

  But since running out on her fiancé, Rosemary had been trekking all over the mountains and woods, living solo, and being out of cell range for long stretches of time.

  Of course he worried about her.

  Something had gone way wrong with the guy she’d almost married. She was hurt. Bad hurt. She never said it. But her eyes looked lost, and she’d stopped confiding in anyone. Even him.

  “Hey. Earth to Tucker.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Whatever you were thinking about, quit it. What’s with the lady?”

  “What lady?”

  “Give it up, Tucker. This is your sister. I heard the whole deal about the infamous and terrible Mrs. Riddle, and because of her, the boys get to do some new stuff this summer. I heard. Then I took the wax out of my ears, because there was certainly more to the story. Once I met her…well. You haven’t looked at a woman that way in a long, long time.”

  “The boys are in the same class, for gosh sakes. They have been for a blue moon. Parents get to know each other.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Rosemary nodded gravely. “That’s why you were looking so gobsmacked. And just for the record, she was looking at you google-eyed too.”

  “She wasn’t looking at me google-eyed. She’s never looked at me google-eyed. Even once.” When Rosemary didn’t immediately shoot back something annoying and sisterlike, he glared at her. “What? What?”

  “So that’s how it is,” Rosemary murmured.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” She stood up, leaving a counter-full of dirty dishes in her wake. “Will promised me a game of cards. After that, I’m headed home.”

  Maybe. He suspected she’d crash in one of the spare rooms if he pushed her to stay—which he would. Even when he was mad enough to strangle his sister—which happened often—his bond with her was still stronger than titanium.

  He foraged for dinner, found more than enough to fill a plate. But his mind homed back on Garnet the minute he was alone.

  There’d been an almost-kiss between them. An almost-embrace. He knew it. She knew it. Damned if he could figure out why he hadn’t just taken the chance, pulled her in, forced both of them to figure out whether they actually had something together.

  But he had the instinct that they did. Have something serious. Something so serious, so strong, that maybe there’d be no turning back once that door was opened.

  That could be a good thing. A great thing. But there were just a few lines that Tucker never crossed. He’d been raised by a family who didn’t put kids first, then married a woman who turned out to have the same flaw.

  Tucker didn’t mind trouble, didn’t mind risk…and from everything he’d seen, Garnet was as crazy about her son as he was about his. But he took the family word seriously. He didn’t do anything halfway, didn’t want a halfway family.

  Pretty insane to worry this early in the relationship, but it was there. Tucker had no interest in playing unless the stakes were for keeps.

  * * *

  When another week had passed, Garnet figured she’d been worried for nothing. Will came over on Thursday, then Monday, then Tuesday again. Her Petie spent the same afternoons on the mountain. She’d left messages to let Tucker know what his son had been up to. He’d left messages back about Pete.

  She wasn’t avoiding him. He didn’t seem to be avoiding her. Summers were crazy busy for both. There was no spare time to breathe—much less find time to do silly stuff like, well, like date. Or fall in love. Or even daydream about falling in love.

  She woke up Thursday morning, bounced out of bed, couldn’t wait to face the day.

  Right about that point, the day turned around and became a nonstop debacle. First a bag of fertilizer broke in the back of the van. Then Sally showed up for work with bruises on her face and arms, wouldn’t go home, wouldn’t go to the doctor, wouldn’t call the police, just dropped and broke about everything she touched. A tour bus blew in—no warning, no planning—and that was good. Sort of. Technically it was a mother lode of customers; it was just that the bus doors spilled out somewhere around fifty-five ladies, all wanting to wander around and be waited on simultaneously. One had a dizzy spell. Two needed their insulin refrigerated. Another lady needed first aid for a scratch and a blister.

  She might as well have sold tickets to a frenzy, and then midafternoon, out of the blue, Tucker called. Will was with her that afternoon; Petie was still at Breakaway. When she grabbed the cell, she was so parched she could barely find her voice.

  “Garnet. I think we should talk. We haven’t had a catch-up on the kids in more than a week.”

  “Sure,” she said, and meant it. But there was something in his voice. Something besides the usual sexy tenor that knocked her socks off. “Something’s wrong with Pete?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. But yeah, I do want to talk to you about him.”

  “Tell me now.” Her worry button had been pushed. It was her mom worry button. Kind of like a siren that refused to shut off until she knew for positive he was okay.

  “Can’t.”

  He didn’t explain. She credited him with having a reason. And it didn’t matter what she had going on, if there was an issue with her son, that came first. “I close up shop here around six. But it’s my turn to do the pickup on the boys—”

  “I’ll do it this time. And I’ll bring some burgers or something. The boys will hopefully just hang for a while. We can just take a walk, get a conversation in that way.”

  “All right,” she said, although she wasn’t sure how she could possibly pull all her loose ends together by six.

  But the craziness started to ease around five. She grabbed a few seconds to wash her face, put on lip gloss and brush her hair, but that was all the prep time she could manage. Even after the Closed sign was put in the window, the cash register had to be emptied, the cash and checks counted. Will loved counting money. They’d pulled up stools, leveled a half pitcher of lemonade, and both kept an eye out for Tucker’s white truck.

  A car pulled in a few minutes before six—not Tucker’s truck, but a sleek silver Mercedes. The lady who stepped out was a beauty, a classic Charleston belle. She was slight in build, with a simple, perfect blond coif, a St. John outfit in white with navy trim and Italian white sandals. Her makeup was discreet, her posture perfect.

  Garnet could see the wink of diamonds in the lady’s ears and around her throat from a hundred yards away.

  It was her mother.

  Patricia Cattrell peered in the shop window, spotted her
youngest daughter and strolled in with a radiant smile. “Oh, sweetheart, I missed you and Petie so much! Your daddy and I had a little surprise for you, and I just wanted to deliver it in person. It just seems like ages since you’ve been home—”

  In two seconds, Garnet was enveloped in a hug of delicate perfume, then held at arm’s length.

  “Oh, my, you look so tired. I know you’re working too hard. And I see that chin of yours going up. I know you’re too proud to admit it. You wouldn’t be a Cattrell if you didn’t have a good dose of pride, honey. You’re strong and proud and so beautiful—”

  “Thank you,” Garnet said swiftly, “But…”

  “But honey, your skin. And I see callouses on your hands. And your face, no makeup, no moisturizer. And is that a terrible bruise I see on your calf?”

  “It’s nothing, Mom, I just—”

  “Well, now, I do love your hair. It was always so thick, such a wonderful color, but bless your heart, I do think you need a little trim. And this is all going to come together, trust me—”

  Garnet’s heart suddenly thumped with alarm. “What is all going to ‘come together’?”

  “Why, the surprise your daddy and I have for you.” Her mother stepped back, just long enough to open her snakeskin bag and pull out an envelope. “Four days in a spa in Charleston. Just for you. And I’ll take Petie, so don’t worry about that even for a second. I can’t wait to have some time with my grandson, and your daddy feels the same way. It’s just a little present for your birthday, honey, we wanted to give you something special—”

  “My birthday isn’t for a month, Mom. And I can’t go anywhere right now and leave Plain Vanilla.”

  “Of course you can. It’s just a shop. And the timing is precisely the point, honey. You’re not getting any younger, bless your heart. You want to look your best, but that takes a little extra effort after the big three-oh. Now…where’s my Peter? And who is this handsome young man?”