The way she opened the bedroom door, tightening the robe’s sash, as she walked barefoot across the long, wide hall.
The way she knocked.
Because a woman looking for trouble always found it, Tucker answered in less than a millisecond. Apparently he’d had the same idea she’d had—about cleaning up—because his hair was still wet from a shower.
Where she was completely concealed in the giant robe, though, Tucker just had a black towel hooked low around his waist. His bare chest was still damp.
He’d half shaved.
He cocked his head when he saw her, as if surprised, but that was foolishness. She was the only one likely to be knocking on his door. He knew it was her…and the expression in his eyes mapped out that a bad, bad mistake was on his mind, too.
“Glad you decided to stay,” he said, in a voice rustier than wind.
“I’m really tired. But I knew I wouldn’t sleep until I got a couple questions off my chest.”
“Right. Come on in.”
“I can ask them from right here.”
“Whatever works for you,” he said, as casual as if they’d had conversations in his bedroom a million times. He grabbed a short towel to dry his hair while she tried to get her vocal cords working.
His bedroom was bigger than the spare, had two sets of French doors leading to the second-story veranda. His four-poster was king-size. He didn’t seem to go for much furniture, which meant the massive bed just naturally seemed to draw the eye.
At least her eyes.
She heard Tucker taking a step, and whipped around again. His hair was now dry—or dry enough—so he’d tossed the towel in the bathroom sink, and met her eyes with a grin on his face.
“I was thinking,” she said, and then stopped because that was such a total lie. She wasn’t. She wasn’t thinking. She knew it. He probably knew it, too. “Don’t you think it’s interesting? How well our sons get along? When they’re so completely different?”
“You bet. They look like Mutt and Jeff when they’re walking along together. I haven’t figured it out.” He cocked his head. “Hey, I didn’t congratulate you on winning the burger contest.”
“It was Will who did all the work.”
“I doubt that.”
“Tucker…I was glad you warned me. About what happens when he visits his mother. I almost had to pry a smile out of him with needle-nose pliers. It’s not as if he were cranky or rude exactly. He just didn’t seem…connected. Engaged.”
“I never thought of it in those words, but you nailed it. He always comes back disconnected. Like a turtle without its shell. He wanders around as if he’s looking for his life again.”
“But he got over it. Really had fun, making the burgers.”
“Uh-huh,” Tucker said, and then stood there. Silent. Waiting to hear what she really came for.
She felt like a fool, still standing in the doorway like a prissy goose. So she walked in, sort of wandered, trying to look—and feel—at ease. As far as she could tell, this was the only room in the house he’d completely carpeted. It was dark red, plush beneath her bare feet. “I wanted to ask you about your family. About what happened at dinner.”
“What do you mean?”
Was he being facetious? It didn’t seem like him. “Tucker. Your parents both got paged by the hospital. They had to leave. Until then, as far as I could tell, your whole family was having a blast together—laughing and teasing and just plain having fun. Then your mom and dad left…and our boys were still okay…but you three siblings shut down as if you’d been thrown in a freezer.”
He frowned. “I don’t remember that happening.”
“Okay. I didn’t mean to intrude on something that was none of my business. It just really troubled me at the time. The three of you didn’t say anything, but you all seemed upset.”
“That’s kind of funny.” He adjusted the towel, which was sinking to a fascinating level. At least until he reknotted it. He hooked a hip on the edge of a sleek walnut dresser. “I thought the parents were on their best behavior. Didn’t hound Rosemary about her broken engagement. Didn’t bore us all today with old stories about family traditions at the lodge. They obviously liked you from the start. And Pete. Not that I’m surprised.”
“Tucker, I’m asking about you. Not me.”
He glanced out the French doors, as if something amazing had shown up in the darkness in the last two minutes, ambled over there. His butt was tighter than hers. It was another thing that annoyed her about him.
But his was so cute.
The rest of him was so alpha guy. The whole outdoor, brawny thing he had going on all the time. The way he walked and moved and talked, all had that invisible frame of testosterone. But his butt. He had such a little flat butt.
Her eyes shot back to his face when he turned around. “I can’t think of a Christmas or a Thanksgiving or a birthday where our parents actually stayed through a whole day. They’re terrific surgeons. Even when we were squirt-size, we got it. They were important people. They had the power to save lives. Their work came first.”
“And you kids felt as if you always came second,” she said gently.
“We did come in second. They love us. We love them. But all our lives…if one of us had a scrape, we just bandaged each other up. If Rosemary had a nightmare, she’d come wake me. If Ike got in trouble at school, I’d write the note to excuse him. When Ike broke his arm in football, I took him to the hospital, stayed with him, no different than Rosemary’d open up the Campbell’s soup when I had the mother of all flus. Of course she served it cold.”
He said it like a joke…and she smiled. But it wasn’t funny, the image he’d created in her head, and her heart. Of a lonely Tucker. Of the oldest sibling feeling responsible for the other two.
“You couldn’t depend on your parents.”
“It didn’t matter. We knew we could depend on each other. It worked out fine for all of us. It was just today… It was a get-together for the kids. Your son, my son. They think the sun rises and sets on Will, couldn’t wait to be part of this, and then—”
“It was a déjà vu thing. History repeating itself.”
“It didn’t matter. I didn’t notice either of the boys troubled by it in any way.”
She doubted the grandparents’ swift departure bothered Will or Pete, either. But it mattered to Tucker.
Her throat suddenly felt thick. Her heart picked up some kind of weird-sick rhythm, as if she was looking at a mountain of hurt. Maybe she was. She readily understood why Tucker might be wild enough to climb mountains and do daredevil kayaking and get a charge from that kind of excitement. But deep down, in his heart, he wanted safe. Family he could count on. A lover who wasn’t unpredictable and impulsive and had a history of making extremely big mistakes.
Like her.
Yeah. Well, right then, she did what she always did.
The wrong thing.
He was hurt. He’d shouldered the parenting role for both his siblings. Didn’t believe someone else could be there for him. And maybe she was the wrong person to be there forever, but she could be there right now.
She closed the door. Took seven steps across the room, her bare feet sinking into that thick red carpet. Her eyes stayed on his, taking in his suddenly confused expression, the way he tilted his head, opened his mouth—as if he were about to say something…but she got there first.
Or her mouth got there first. Her lips sealed his. Her hands climbed up his bare arms. He smelled of mountain and moonlight and damp clean skin. The feel of him, the texture of him, was everything she’d ever yearned for. He was all the things a woman wasn’t. All the things that made her strong.
All the things that made her weak.
He picked up the kiss as if he’d started the madness and mayhem. No grass ever grew under Tucker
’s feet. He was always ready, had his pulse on inventive possibilities before she’d even forged a next step. He knew all the steps. Crossed the room in two shakes, leveled her onto the middle of his feather bed, sent pillows skidding to the floor.
“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, in that whiskery tone that always stoked her fires. Approval, so hard to win anywhere else in life, was so easy to earn with Tucker. All she had to do was yield. Power and pleasure.
Outside, there was a peek of moon through glistening windows. Where the relentless wind had been intrusive before, now there was a soft silence, light where there’d been darkness. She could hear Tucker’s breath, so clearly, getting gruffer. Her fingers combed through his thick dark hair, while she felt the scrape of his half-shaved jaw roughing up the skin at her throat, then down to the valley between her breasts.
If his breath conveyed urgency and impatience, the wash of his tongue was luxuriously slow, easy, a wraparound tingle that she felt clear to her toes.
She’d had a robe on. Belted on. Yet somehow he’d made it go away, so there was nothing between his skin and hers. Where breast touched breast, tummy touched tummy, fingers touched anywhere and everywhere…and sparks of flame seemed to light up the night. She couldn’t lay still, not with that kind of burn.
She had to move, to kiss him back, stroke him back, press tighter, promise more. Demand more.
“You ready to climb mountains?” he murmured.
“With you.” The answer was so easy.
“No anchors. No safety nets. No fail-safes.”
“With you,” she whispered again, because that was how it would always be with Tucker. No giving halfway. No maybes or conditions.
He slid inside her, smooth and easy, the fit closer than a surgeon’s glove. He filled her up, beyond what she could take, yet her greedy gasp of pleasure said otherwise. She wanted all of Tucker. Every inch, every molecule.
He tucked her legs up tight around his waist, started the climb, slow and tantalizing at first, then moving into music, a rhythm echoed in heartbeats.
On that fast, sweaty, glorious race to the top, she heard a splintered groan from him. He was waiting, waiting for her to reach the top before he did. She loved that agonized sound. It propelled her into a toboggan slide uphill, up a mountain, up somewhere near Tucker’s heart…and hers.
* * *
It was still the black velvet time of night, but she didn’t know how much time had passed. One of them showed no inclination to sleep. There’d been a lazy pattern of smooches. Nuzzles. Tickles.
“Are you going to let a girl sleep, Tucker?”
“Are you kidding? No.”
“You’re a bad, bad man.”
“Thank you.”
Well, that required her to rouse. At least a little. “Thank you,” she whispered back.
“Hey. Garnet?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m pretty sure there are no other women in your bed.”
Her fingertip traced his smile, but then he nipped it. “I love you. I can’t remember if I told you before. I’ve known it for quite a while. And I’ve said it in my head a thousand times. But I’m not dead sure if I happened to tell you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Well, don’t panic. It’s only love.” And that time he kissed her, so deep and dark and sweetly, that she couldn’t talk for a long time after that.
* * *
Tucker woke the same time he always did, when the dawn was just peeking over the horizon, mist swirling around the trees, birds just starting to stir. He faced the east, always slept that way, but immediately turned toward Garnet.
His sleepy smile died. She wasn’t there. She’d edged two pillows against his back, keeping him warm, making him think she was still sleeping next to him. But the sheet beside him was cool.
He’d never heard a car, never heard a footstep or a door opening and closing…but then, likely he wouldn’t have. She’d worn him out after the second round of lovemaking. Maybe he was usually a light sleeper, but he’d crashed completely last night, still wrapped around her.
He pushed off the comforter, climbed out of bed. It didn’t have to mean anything “bad” that she was gone. She had a business to run. Probably needed to get there early, before the staff showed up, and she might have wakened Pete, just to make sure her son didn’t wake up and go wandering to find his mom.
Or, she could be downstairs right now. Making coffee. Waiting for the household to get up to share breakfast.
But somehow he knew that wasn’t the deal.
She was gone.
He did a fast wash-up, pulled on clothes and charged downstairs, first toward the den, then toward the kitchen. In the den, he didn’t need to switch on a light to see that Pete was gone, and his Will was still sprawled on the couch, sleeping hard, blankets all a tangle.
The kitchen was another story. He switched on the overhead, and realized immediately there’d been an intruder in the night. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, not even glasses. The vandal had cleaned the counter, did something to make the sink shine within an inch of its life, even swept the damn floor.
He opened the back door, and with hands on hips just stood there, taking in the milky morning, the pale light just stroking the edge of the trees, the deck with dew…and her van distinctly gone.
She had a business to run, he reminded himself again. She had every reason to leave early. It didn’t have to mean anything troublesome.
But he was troubled.
He should never have told her he loved her. She didn’t believe people loved her. She didn’t see herself as lovable. She saw herself differently than the entire rest of the world saw her.
When he’d mentioned that four-letter word, it hadn’t been impulsive, hadn’t been because of the heat and wonder of lovemaking. He’d thought she was ready to hear it. He’d thought, sooner or later, they had to get past that boulder, or how could they progress beyond being lovers? And as lovers—with two sons far too observant to fool for long—they couldn’t make it. It had to be all or nothing.
For him, maybe it always had to be all or nothing. He wanted a wife. A love-mate. Someone to wake up to, to argue with, to laugh and work with. To make love to, easily and often, rough and soft, fast and endlessly slow and all the variations possible in a loving relationship.
He’d feared she’d panic. She was just so wary of the L word.
So he had a choice. To honor her silence, her choice of distance.
Or to confront her head-on, no holds barred, risk the whole world and winner take all.
It wasn’t really a choice or a decision. Tucker knew the minute he woke up exactly what he intended to do.
Chapter Thirteen
A carload of women pulled into the yard, just as a fresh pot of coffee finished brewing.
Garnet needed the whole pot before diving into a crazy Monday.
Pete had fallen back asleep the minute they got home, but Garnet knew how much had to be done today. Maybe her mind and heart were on Tucker, but she couldn’t just run around being in love with the damn man. Bills had to be paid today. Vanilla needed to be harvested. Money had to go to the bank. The cooking herbs needed misting, and other herbs needed drying—and in this heat, when things were ready…they were ready.
She unlocked the shop door and let the carload of ladies inside. Steam was already coming off the pavement, a mix of the wet from yesterday’s rain and plain old summer heat. It was definitely going to be a scorcher. She charged around unlocking and straightening, setting up the cash register, opening the shades. Mary Lou showed up five minutes early wearing dark capris and a fawn top, scowling at the customers. “Where’s the fire?” she barked, because she never liked to open early and didn’t think Garnet ever should.
“No fire,” she said brightly.
“Something’s wrong.” Mary Lou stalked over to peer into her face. “You all right?”
“Mostly. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so I might need to mainline some coffee.”
“That’s not what’s wrong.” Mary Lou poured her first mug of coffee and carted it with her as she began her start-up chores, but while Garnet handled the church ladies, she found Mary Lou staring at her again.
“You aren’t happy, are you?”
“Pardon?”
“I was still trying to figure what’s odd about you this morning. Is that it? That you’re happy?”
“It couldn’t be,” Garnet assured her, and cut the ridiculous conversation short. Two cars and an SUV pulled into the drive. What was this? The craziest Monday of the whole year?
Tucker called when she had a frazzling fourteen customers in the store—Mary Lou was still hiding in the back, and Sally hadn’t shown up yet. He called the shop landline, so she didn’t know it was him until she heard that low, wicked voice.
“You told my kid he could have two kittens? Without asking me?”
“Yes, Mr. MacKinnon, I did. So don’t blame Will.”
“I wasn’t blaming him. I just couldn’t believe you did that.”
“I can’t, either. I knew it was dead wrong.”
“Did I ever mention that I’ve never been a cat person?”
“Well, darn it, Tucker, I wasn’t, either. She showed up pregnant. It was too late to give her the facts-of-life lecture.”
“Like that’s an excuse. There is going to be payback,” he threatened, and hung up.
She started breathing again. Had there been yearning in his voice? Or hers? Was his call really about a love song, or was he really thinking about cats? When he’d muttered about payback right before hanging up, had he said it in a loving, crooning voice? Her pulse seemed to think he had.
“Hey, Mom.” Petie ducked around customers, ambling in her direction.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing, really. I just stopped to tell you I was going to make something cool for lunch. Like peanut butter and bacon. And maybe brownies.”
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