by Alexa Davis
“I’ll be sure to get a permanent order of protection for the school. I certainly don’t want parents worried that your lawsuit is going to put any of the other children in harm’s way.” I sighed and nodded, biting my tongue. After all, I didn’t expect that she’d suddenly become human.
I excused myself and Paul followed us home in his truck. I offered to feed him, if he’d run to the store for me and pick up a few things I needed. I was still shaky and nauseated from Carl’s unexpected visit to the school, and my brain couldn’t stop chewing on what possible reason he had to come stalking us. Paul happily agreed and refused my money, and we split up—Olivia and I going inside to check on Kristy, who was on day two of staying with us, and Paul to Carr’s for groceries.
As to the reason Carl had come around the preschool, it didn’t take too long to figure out. Kristy was curled up in a ball on the couch, a wad of used tissues crumpled in her fist. She let me read the slew of texts that she’d woken up to. She hadn’t responded, so then he’d begun calling and leaving messages. They ran the gamut of wheedling “I miss you”s, to anger, to name-calling and threats.
“Kristy. How long has this been going on?”
“He started the day I was supposed to leave the hospital. I left my phone in lockup when I was under observation, so there were a lot of messages when I got out.”
“You told him you were here?” I tried to control the rage that was simmering in my gut.
“God, no! I came here because I had nowhere else to go but to him. I figured he’d never expect me to be here.”
“He came to the preschool an hour ago, and got Olivia by herself for a minute or two. I think we need to get Olivia in here. She said he didn’t talk to her, but….”
“Maybe I should go pack while you talk to her.” I looked at her sweet, open face, the same worry in her eyes as mine.
“No. Tucker’s M.I.A. We need to stay together. If it gets any worse, maybe we can have Cynthia stay here, too.”
“Oh, that would be nice. She came to see me, you know?” Kristy confessed. “She was so nice, and I don’t know if you guys talked much, but she had it rough as a kid, so….” I watched her face, and the happy flush that crept into her cheeks.
“I’m glad she was there for you,” I admitted. “I feel better about her knowing she took the time.”
“Well, she admitted that at first she had an ulterior motive. She wanted to see if I was lying to get attention. Now, I think she, you know, likes me.”
“Oh.” My mouth made a round “O” of surprise and I blushed. Kristy shrugged.
“Lots of exotic dancers have less conventional ideas about sex, and you’d be surprised how many actually have issues with men, and don’t date them.” I thought about the life I’d lived, and tried to multiply that times bosses and customers and random stalkers.
“No. I’m not really surprised at all. Um, let me get Olivia in here.” I searched out my girl and brought her and a chocolate milk into the living room. She readily told “Aunty Kristy” all about how Mommy ran into the fence like a guard dog, because Daddy’s friend was being rude and talking to her when he was outside the fence.
“Grownups aren’t supposed to talk to kids through the fence,” she said very solemnly, her toes in one hand, chocolate milk in the other. Kristy and I exchanged a glance, and she shook her head.
“Olivia, your Aunt Kristy is going to stay here longer than she planned, okay? What do you think?” Olivia cheered and toasted with her sippy cup of milk.
“And Uncle Tuck?” She added, her grin lighting up her entire little face. I heard a low chuckle from Kristy, who pulled Olivia into her lap like they’d always been best friends.
“Oh, I don’t know, Olivia, he’s away for a little bit.” Kristy eyed me from slanted eyes.
“He’s out at the ranch, right?” I tried to cut her off, but she kept right on going. “You loved the ranch that Tucker comes from, right?” Olivia jumped off the couch and ran in circles around us, begging to go back to the ranch and play with the horses.
“Why?” I asked Kristy, who giggled and shrugged.
“It gets you out of the bullseye, Libby. I can handle myself, but I never wanted to put Olivia in harm’s way.” I sighed.
“If we go, you go. Trust me. There’s room, and Tucker would be disappointed in me if I left you behind. The problem is that Tucker doesn’t want to see me right now. I can’t show up on his doorstep the same day that I told him I’m not ready for a relationship with him,” I hissed as Olivia expanded her victory march to the kitchen and dining room.
The trouble was, I did want to be with him. I wanted to wake up next to him every morning, and fall asleep next to him every night. I couldn’t tell him that the best moments of my life were watching him read to Olivia and helping me tuck her into bed.
“You gotta fix this, Libby,” Kristy commanded. “If there’s anything that intensive psychological evaluation has taught me,” she laughed, “it’s that you can’t wait for good things to prove themselves absolutely. Life is yours to create. Pushing away your best happiness just in case you’re wrong will never bring you anything but loneliness and pain.”
I knew she was right. But knowing she was right, and knowing how I could make it right with Tucker, were two very different animals.
25. Tucker
No one had asked why I was back, which was one of the best things about being surrounded by men all the time. A lot less fun in a lot of ways, but you were almost guaranteed privacy and a hundred miles between you and anyone who would even suggest you had feelings.
That said, it was an entirely different story when the shadow that fell on me while I was repairing a fence post turned out to be my mother. Hannah Lancaster was not a woman to be trifled with. Her stubbornness was honed to perfection from years of being the smallest and physically weakest person on the ranch, and she’d taught all five of her sons that they were no match for her five-foot-tall, hundred-ten pounds of pure bullheadedness.
“Hey Mom, did you bring me lunch?” I’d been out all day, and hadn’t bothered to eat with the family and ranch hands since I’d arrived. She didn’t say a word, and a boxed lunch dropped at my side, which I knew wasn’t a good sign. I wrapped the wire around the fencepost and sat back on my haunches, looking up at her from under the brim of my hat.
“Any idea what’s going on back on the front lines with those little girls you left all alone?” she asked, one hand slapping her work gloves against her hip.
“I know that if Libby heard you calling her a ‘little girl,’ and making her sound helpless, she’d kick your skinny butt.” I laughed, a split second before her gloves connected with the side of my head. “Mom!”
“The police were at the preschool that Libby works at. A man tried to take Olivia from the play yard.”
“Wait, what? When did this happen? I was just there yesterday before I came up.” I sopped sweat off my face with the handkerchief my father had loaned me, and stood up, now towering over my tiny mother.
“Yesterday afternoon. I found out from Karen Monaghan, who heard from Maggie Dunham, about an hour ago. You probably don’t remember Maggie, but she runs the committee for the safety fair every spring.”
“I remember that she’s an awful gossip and intolerably self-absorbed.” My mother glowered at me. “She’s also Libby’s boss, and she isn’t nice to Libby,” I admitted.
“Well, to hear her tell it, they’re best friends. Anyway, some lawyer Karen said has dealings with Libby, approached Olivia while she was waiting outside alone for her mother yesterday, right at the end of class. I don’t know if I believe it, but she said Libby threw herself at the fence like a wild animal, and then the police gave her a restraining order against the man.” I leaned forward as all the blood seemed to drain out of my face, down to my toes. You’ll never guess who it was….”
“Jameson.”
That one word suddenly held all the hate I had ever had, for all the monsters in the world. I kic
ked the fence post and threw my gloves out into the grass, and cursed loudly enough for all of Austin to hear.
“So, you did already know.” She made it a statement, but I shook my head.
“I need to check my phone. Is there anyone who can take over for a while?” She rolled her eyes at me, and patted me on the shoulder.
“Believe it or not, we managed to get the chores done, even while you were being a bigshot and neglecting your family.”
“Well, Libby and Olivia are my family. So, I need to clear this up.” She offered me her horse, but I’d ridden out in the truck with a bed full of fencing materials, and I wasn’t going to leave her without a ride. It was at least two miles to the ranch house and even if I wanted to accept the ride, my father would never have forgiven me for taking the ride and making my own mother walk.
I told her I’d meet her at the house and started the long walk back, leaving my gloves somewhere out in the field and my little cardboard lunch next to the fence to break down and fertilize their small patches of ground. My legs ate up the ground as I strode, then jogged back to the house, envisioning the many ways I planned to destroy Jameson’s life, as my rage grew with each step. I was soaked with sweat and ready for war when I reached the lower pastures and our horse master, who was busy vaccinating all the brood mares.
He waved me down, but I caught sight of a vehicle I hadn’t expected to see up here at the end of the driveway. Libby pulled around the curved driveway and had barely stopped before Olivia was out of the car and up the stairs into my mother’s waiting arms like a shot. Libby parked and when she stepped out of the car, safe and whole, my chest felt like it might explode. Sweaty, smelling like a stable on the wrong side of a cleaning, I cleared the last fifty feet that separated us in seconds and pulled her into my arms.
“Hey, there, sexy cowboy. You got any plans tonight?” she teased, as I stroked her hair and counted her fingers, holding her hands in between us like an offering.
“I just found out, literally just, that you were attacked?” I hissed at her, glancing over my shoulder at O.
“No, not attacked. The gossip greatly overrates the danger anyone was in. Except, perhaps, Carl Jameson, who is lucky there was a fence between us when he was on his little fishing trip.”
“Fishing? For what?” Libby looked over her shoulder and my jaw dropped as a slender, young blonde who could have passed for Libby’s younger sister, stepped out of the car and waved to me, an embarrassed grimace on her face.
“For me, Mr. Lancaster. I’ve been staying with Libby for a few days, and somehow, he must have started to suspect it.” I looked down at Libby, who shrugged.
“It was a good idea for her to move in,” she defended.
“Wait. Move in… like, permanent arrangement?” My hands dropped to my sides. “So, commitment isn’t your problem.” Lightning flashed in her eyes and I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder as she pinched me, hard.
“You are so lucky I don’t want the drama of your parents seeing me slap your face, Tucker James, because that is exactly what you deserve.” She pushed her hair back from her face, pain clearly etched into her eyes. “She has no money, you froze her assets, and she’s doing everything in her power to stay away from Jameson, who is acting like an obsessed ex-boyfriend stalker instead of her lawyer.”
I scratched my jaw, the thick stubble a reminder of my time away from work for similar reasons.
“Sorry Lib. You’re right. That was a little low.”
She rolled her eyes. “That was beyond low. You ever say anything like that to me again, and that ass of mine that you like so much, disappearing on the horizon, will be the last you ever see of me.” She gestured around her. “I wasn’t going to bring them here. You and your family don’t need the extra stress. But who else would I turn to for help when I need it most? Who can I count on to keep me and my family safe?”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards me.
“You and your family are welcome here, always. No matter what happens to you and me. I’m sorry I got jealous. I don’t have the right to be.” She jerked on the front of my shirt to lower my mouth to hers.
“I like you jealous. But not of Kristy, because that would be weird.” I laughed and gave her a second, chaste kiss on the mouth.
“Well, you’re here now. What are you going to do next?” I asked, my own thoughts still betraying my hurt feelings by imagining her in one of the big, jetted tubs with me. She pressed the button on her key fob that popped the latch on the trunk, and removed several bags. Olivia ran down to retrieve her little Minnie Mouse backpack, and Kristy hauled a suitcase in each hand.
“I thought maybe we could stay a night or two, just to stay off certain people’s radar.” she closed the trunk and leaned against it, with her back to the house and our audience. “We need to talk, too, if you think there’s a way for us to get away from prying eyes and find somewhere we can be alone out here,” she teased.
“Thousands of acres of untamed land… I think I can find a place.” I scoffed. “Let’s get you inside and showered, since some thoughtless cowboy thought he had the right to get his dirt and sweat on you. Then, we can sit down and talk about exactly what happened at the preschool, and why Jameson is acting the way he is.” She nodded and pointed out her younger doppelganger on the veranda.
“Do you remember when Jameson and your then-fiancée started dating behind your back?” I huffed out a breath and nodded. “And how weird she said he got when she kept trying to break it off?”
“Sara ended up dating Carl for two years. I’m still shocked his wife never caught on to them.”
“I think he’s fixated on Kristy now. She’s told me a lot about how inappropriate he was, and how close she came to sleeping with him.”
“How does an overweight, balding jerk get women like that to have sex with him?”
“Coercion, mostly, from the sound of it. Kristy said even her mother-in-law was pushing her to do it. Ultimately, it was that pushing that helped her say ‘no,’ repeatedly. Anything that woman wanted, Kristy started doing the opposite, just trying to save her sanity.” I put my arm around her. My pride was still so bruised from her rejection that my body felt stiff when touching hers. But she was scared. I could hear it in her voice, and see it in her eyes.
“Well, you’re safe here. If he did show up, it would go badly for him, real fast.” With my words, I felt tension leave Libby, and she relaxed against me, despite my appearance. “Watch out there, I’m dirty.” I reminded her.
“I don’t care, if you don’t,” she replied. “I’m just happy to see you.” With that, I felt the last dregs of my anger flow away, and my heart grew in my chest until I thought it might break through my ribcage and float away. “Thank you for being better than me. I know I said some stupid things. The fact I knew I could trust you to help me protect what’s mine anyway, means more to me than you will ever know.” I leaned back and looked down into her eyes, wet and shining, her nose turning pink as she started to cry softly.
“Kristy is yours now, too?” She nodded solemnly. “She chose a better path. She deserves a chance to make that happen.”
“What about you? You have so much you’re trying to accomplish, without adding to your burden.”
“Did you know, that Kristy was a music production major? She was starting college, and paying for it with her exotic dancing… I know, seriously, some girls really are paying their way through school—who knew?” she added upon seeing my incredulous face. “Anyway. She’s a bona fide DJ. Wouldn’t that be great for someone who plans parties for a living?” I looked at her and threw my hands up.
“That would be amazing for a party planner.”
“I know, right?” she giggled and watched Kristy carry O into the house, while the men got their bags. “I went to the hospital to try to be the bigger person. Now, I’m blessed to have a sister, for the first time in my life.” Her voice went soft, and she dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve.
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“I remember a time when my heart went out to you, because you had no one. No family to count on, even when they were disappointed in your choices. No one to forgive and forget and stand with you through anything.” I admitted. “Things have changed, haven’t they?”
“I used to think that being strong meant doing it all on my own, Tucker, not leaning on anyone.” She squeezed my arm and tugged me up the stone walkway towards the house. “I’ve learned that all you really need is to choose the right people to lean on. People who make you work harder, stand taller, and be better than you are.” I stopped walking and put my hand over hers on my arm so she couldn’t pull away.
“That’s what you’ve always been for me, Libby. There’s a reason people come to you for strength. Andrew knew he was weak; he hoarded jealously like a treasure for himself. Kristy came to you after literally being on the opposing team. Did you ever think that you were the one who made the people around you stronger?”
I kissed her on the forehead and escorted her into the house, where we were met by the din of twenty people and several dogs, including Kennedy and my brother George’s service dog, who was apparently getting a few minutes to just be a dog. I found my brother and introduced him to Libby, and then repeated the introduction with his wife.
“How is this madhouse not stressing you out?” I asked him while the ladies chatted, and he shrugged.
“Because this is home. Despite the noise, I never get shaky or scared here. It’s home, you know? There are no enemies here. Dad and Daniel would kick their asses.”
“Only if there was anything left after Mom and Patty got a hold of them,” I nodded. “Yeah, people do seem to come here to be safe.” I was watching Kristy and O, my little goddaughter sitting in her arms like a swing while Kristy stood on the edge of the room, taking it all in. I left my brother and wound through the people and animals to get to them, a grin splitting my face as Olivia caught sight of my and wriggled out of her hold to throw herself at me.
“You smell like dirt and outside, Uncle Tuck,” she informed me as I set her down.