Grady pulled his hat off his head and ran his hands through his messy hair. "I don't know."
"No way," Tucker said at the same time.
"I'm fine," I insisted. "I might not be setting any land speed records, but I'm fine."
Tucker crossed his arms over his chest and for the first time since I saw him roll down that window in his truck on the pretty stretch of road where he found me, Tucker glared at me.
"If you think we're dumb enough or mean enough to let an injured woman walk a mile by herself, then you've lost your mind."
I did some arm-crossing of my own. "So it's a woman thing?"
"No," he said, all patience and steady gazes and giant arms still folded across his giant chest. "It's a common-sense thing. I wouldn't let anyone walk back alone if they were injured. I could call for a Ranger to come help you back, but it's hard to say how long it would take them to get here. They've got just a few acres to cover and I'm not letting you sit here with an injured foot for who the hell knows how long."
I tilted my head. "Not letting me?"
Grady whistled under his breath.
Tucker leaned his face closer to mine. "I don't know who or what is coming down that trail next, and the first thing people need to know about being out in the mountains is that you get very little say about it. You're not sitting here alone for God knows how long, and you're not walking back to that parking lot by yourself."
Everything about that tone should have set the hairs on the back of my neck to standing. Everything. It should have had me imagining creative ways to stomp on his balls. Punch him in the throat. Jab him in the eyes.
Except it didn't.
It didn't do that at all.
Something twirled weightlessly at the base of my stomach. A fluttering where there shouldn't have been. A tingle where I didn't want one.
I huffed. The huffiest huff I'd ever huffed in my life, and I damn well knew it was to stop myself from popping more damn goosebumps at his bossy-ass declaration. "It's not your choice what I do."
Grady swiped a hand over his mouth. When he dropped it, he shook his head at me. "I don't know how this is possible, but I think you're more stubborn than you were three days ago when I last saw you."
Tucker lifted his chin and stared up at the trees, like they'd help him deal with me. When he looked down again, I blinked away, because something inside of me refused to look at his face where he towered above me. He was so tall that he was blocking the sun coming through the trees.
"What's my option?" I asked. "It's not like someone's going to chopper me out because I twisted my ankle a mile down the trail."
Tucker regarded me carefully, then nodded like he'd come to a decision.
"What?" I asked him.
"Hop on up," he said, turning to present me with his back, wide and strong and absolutely capable of bearing the weight of one gimpy girl.
"No freaking way," I said immediately.
Nope.
Not happening.
Not ever.
I clamped my teeth together and took a timid step on my bad foot.
It hurt. But it wasn't like I was bleeding to death.
I heard one of them sigh, probably my brother, because he knew better than to argue with me.
One more step, and then another, and another, keeping the majority of my weight on the uninjured leg.
Sweat was popping along my hairline when I reached the fallen tree. I sat down on it, closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. At this rate, I'd be back to the parking lot by midnight.
Someone hopped over the tree, and I knew it was Tucker from the scent that waived past me. It was the same scent from his truck, and I wished desperately that I didn't recognize it so easily.
This was my brother's fault.
"What?" he asked, when I told him so. "How do you figure that?"
I swung my good leg over the tree trunk and set my foot down on the ground.
"It just makes me feel better to blame you, okay?"
Tucker was watching me try to stand with an inscrutable expression on his face.
Grady hopped over the tree after me and kept pace with me for a few steps. "What's your deal with him?"
I shook my head. "Nothing."
"That was a terrible attempt at a lie, even for you."
"I don't know, okay?" I whispered, as we got closer to the man in question.
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I mean …" I searched for the right words. The ones where I'd sound the least insane. "It was like, I heard his voice, and I'd never reacted so strongly to someone in my entire life. I just … hated him. Everything he said drove me insane, like I wanted to jam my fingers in my ears so that I couldn't hear him anymore."
Grady gaped at me. "I think Tennessee zapped your brain."
"I think it did too," I said miserably. "And I don't really hate him anymore. It just felt so real yesterday. And I had no reason for it. That was the crazy part. Grady, I’ve never experienced anything like it. Like I’d been taken over by a pod person."
"Hate at first sight," my brother mused.
I shrugged. "I guess."
Grady laughed under his breath. "Maybe the Buchanan curse works opposite on women. Instead of love at first sight, you get the hate."
My elbow poked him in the side. "Not funny."
The jab wasn't worth it, even though he had to rub at the spot where I nailed him, because I lost my balance on the next step. Before I could grab Grady's arm, Tucker strode forward and gripped my elbow.
The place where his hand touched my arm must have had a million nerve endings that I didn't know about, because every single one of them was lit the hell up. Zipping and zapping along the surface of my skin, electric pulses that followed the rapid pounding of my heart.
"Steady now," he said in a low voice, right next to my ear. The hair falling out of my ponytail ruffled from his breath, that's how close he was. "Violence is never the answer, Angry Girl."
I swallowed down the ball in my throat, dry and sticky and cottony thick, this time risking a glance up at his face. He was smiling, just a little, and when my entire body wanted to lift on tiptoe to move closer, I slowly pulled my arm from his grip.
"Sorry," I said breathlessly. "I'm okay."
Tucker held his hands up, cheeks high with color and jaw clenched tight.
"Come on, kids," Grady said behind me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "Let's get back to the cars without killing each other, okay?"
I held Tucker's gaze for a brief moment, and I wondered if he saw the same look of confusion in my eyes that I saw in his.
Something changed.
He felt it, and I had too.
I just didn't know what it was.
Chapter 34
Tucker
Something was different. Felt different.
I sat across the table from Magnolia, and with a strange sort of detachment, I watched her mouth move around the words she was saying. Watched the way she cut her chicken into precise little squares, always setting down her fork and knife while she chewed.
The food in my mouth didn't taste like much of anything, which was fine, because I couldn't even recall what I ordered. I glanced down and saw a perfectly cooked steak, some mashed potatoes drowning in butter, and a tidy pile of brightly colored vegetables.
Right.
Magnolia waved at someone across the restaurant, but I didn't turn around to see who.
Her dress was new, I noticed. Light pink and thin-strapped against the golden skin of her shoulders. It matched the polish on her neatly rounded nails and the gloss slicked over her lips. Maggie loved pink. Had half a closet full of dresses in a hundred different shades. Our senior year of high school, she ran for student body president, and together, we plastered pink posters and buttons and fliers over the entire building.
Her father, J.T., rented a billboard, right along the road that led to Green Valley High, and the Pepto-Bismol colored background proclaimed her the winner
before the vote had even taken place. She won by a landslide.
Not that anyone was surprised.
That was the night we fumbled through losing our virginity together. We didn't wait for prom. We didn't wait for graduation. Those were too cliché for Magnolia. And since she'd proclaimed that she loved me a week earlier, with me fervently saying the same, we snuck out of our respective houses, met at Bandit Lake under the cover of darkness, and spent a sweaty, woefully short handful of minutes celebrating her victory on a wool blanket spread over the ground.
The color of her dress reminded me of those posters and buttons, and I smiled a little, thinking about the girl who ran her campaign on the promise that she'd get the school day shortened by an hour, no matter how illogical that was.
"You look pretty in that dress," I told her.
Her smile was bright and pleased. "I wondered if you noticed. Daddy bought it for me when he went to Nashville last week." Another bite of chicken, fork back on the plate, then careful chewing, before she changed the subject back to her work for her dad. "The office is such a disaster. Those women wouldn't know how to organize a membership drive if a how-to booklet slapped them in the face. He needs all new staff if he's going to increase membership this year, and since it's gone down two years in a row, he can't afford more of the same."
I nodded, wishing we could talk about something other than her father's job as the president of the Green Valley Chamber of Commerce. Anything other than her father, actually.
But as I sat there, chewing my food, and listening to her talk, it didn't really matter much what I wanted to talk about. As long as I smiled in the appropriate spots, affirmed that she was right in whatever she said, Magnolia wouldn't notice much if I engaged in the conversation at all.
If I let it happen, we'd never talk about my job, unless it somehow impacted her family. And that happened from time to time, given that my father had been the MacIntyre's family attorney for as long as Maggie and I had been together.
It was a strange feeling, to recognize just how superfluous you'd become in your own relationship. And I wasn't entirely sure what it was about tonight that made it so apparent.
Our routine had been our routine for so long, I hardly noticed it anymore.
Even though in the years since we'd been together, we both went to college, moved out of our parent's houses, and began careers that had been set out in front of us, the basis of our relationship had stayed the same. We had official date night twice a week, out to dinner and then dessert somewhere else in town. I'd drive her back to her place, where I usually spent the night.
The topics of conversation were the same two or three, on rotation.
I set my fork down and leaned back in my chair while she told a story of something that happened at work. Her arms were moving, her eyes bright and mouth smiling, and I had no earthly clue what she was saying.
Briefly, I wondered what my face looked like as I sat across from her, because it seemed as though my thoughts should be stamped over my face with perfect clarity.
If it was like this now, what might it turn into if we ever got married?
Maggie and I were both twenty-five, and according to her plan, she'd take a handful of years after college to solidify her career with her dad before she was ready to get married.
After marriage, we’d wait a respectable two years before adding children into the mix. Probably two of those, since Maggie and I were both only children, and we both fully understood the pressure that came with being the sole recipient of your parents’ attention.
She paused her story when the waiter came to our table to refill our waters. Maggie lifted her wine glass and asked sweetly for more chardonnay. I shook my head when he asked if I needed another glass as well.
I didn't really like wine.
I'd never liked wine.
So I handed him the half-full glass. "I'll have a whiskey," I told him. "Neat."
"Of course."
As he walked away, Maggie lifted her eyebrows. "Since when do you drink whiskey?"
I sighed at her tone. "Since now, I guess. It sounds good after my day today."
She rubbed her glossy pink lips together and peered at my face.
Ask me, I thought. Ask me what happened in my day that made me want to drink a whiskey. I wasn't even entirely sure how I'd answer if she asked, because so much of what felt off about me tonight stemmed from a small handful of moments with a woman who couldn't stand the sight of me. But still, even with that, I wanted my girlfriend of seven years to ask me, to show me that she cared about the things I was thinking, about what I wanted, what I was going through.
"Hmmm."
That was it.
The disappointment hit me like a wall of water to the face, and it was all I could do from sputtering for a solid breath.
A strange desire to push her, push against the routine, came quick and hot, right on its heels. "Just hmm?"
She fidgeted with the handle of her fork. "You're a grown man. It's not my place to ask."
"You're my girlfriend, Magnolia. If it's not your place, whose is it?" I kept my tone gentle, but her cheeks colored slightly nonetheless.
"What's gotten into you?" she asked quietly. Her eyes darted to the other tables, like she was afraid someone could hear us. "Is this why you hiked this afternoon instead of working?"
I shook my head. "No, that was me doing someone a favor. I just tagged along because I wanted to."
The waiter returned with her wine and my whiskey, and we both murmured a thank you before he walked away. Magnolia picked up her wine and took a small sip, rolling it around in her mouth before she swallowed.
I leaned back in my chair. "Remember me telling you about Fran and Robert's niece?"
In a blink, her eyes got cooler, a sheet of ice over the warm golden color. "I remember. The one Scotia saw in your truck."
I nodded. "That's the one. Maxine has us working on a project together for the chicken festival. While we were meeting, she got a call from her brother to go hike Coopers Road. I told her I'd bring her out there since Fran was still in the planning meeting."
In the entire seven years with Magnolia, I'd never thrown down such a deliberate chunk of bait for her. It felt necessary, even if it was entirely out of character.
I wanted to know if I'd see that audacious girl again, the one who proclaimed her victory before votes had been taken, no matter what people thought of her. I wanted to know if my girlfriend would tell me that it pissed her off. I wanted to know if she'd ask about these new people in town and offer to get to know them.
"Hmmm."
I shook my head. My fingers trailed around the base of the glass that held my whiskey, and her eyes tracked it as I lifted it to my mouth for a slow sip.
Carefully, I set the glass down and knit my fingers together on the table between us. "Magnolia, I'm trying to talk to you about something."
"I think I'm done with my dinner, if you don't mind getting the check." Her tone, normally sweet and pleasant, gained a sharp edge, even as she kept a polite smile on her face. It was the southern woman equivalent of If you know what's good for you, you will keep your mouth shut.
Every good soldier knew when to retreat, so I flagged down the waiter and asked for the bill.
We finished a few more bites of our respective meals before he brought the little black folder. From my wallet, I fished out enough cash to cover the dinner and a generous tip, and waited for Magnolia to gather her purse and stand from the table. We smiled at a few familiar people on our way out of the restaurant, but didn't stop to chat with anyone.
"Where do you want to get dessert?" she asked.
I tilted my head. "Magnolia."
"We always get dessert, and there's no reason for us to skip getting it tonight, no matter what strangers you hiked with today." She wore the expression I knew intimately after so many years. There would be no arguments from me on what we were about to do next. No discussion about the course of action she'd decided
on.
Normally it didn't grate.
Normally, I was fine with whatever she wanted to do, because in my mind, there were more important things in life to worry about than dessert or where to eat for dinner or who got to pick the music on the radio. But tonight, it felt like a slap in the face, because of how clearly I wanted to talk to her.
"They have names," I told her. I propped my hands on my hips and faced her. "They are new in this town, and they have names. Grace and her brother Grady. They have families that you know. Their aunt and uncle go to your church. Their father works for your mom. Levi was one year younger than us in school. Cooper invited us to his wedding, Magnolia. And that means they won't be strangers for long."
Given we were standing just outside the restaurant, and dusk had barely draped itself over the sky, the sidewalks of downtown were still busy enough that people walked within earshot. A man with a Titans ballcap gave me a look as he passed us, like he was worried about the way I was confronting the woman in front of me.
Magnolia, even with the heels on her feet, was a solid ten inches shorter than I was, and I softened my posture. I held out my elbow, because she liked holding on to it while we walked. Her fingers curled lightly onto the top of my arm, but she held her body away from me as we started down the sidewalk.
"It's not like you have to befriend everyone in town, Tucker." She glanced up at me. "You're not the Green Valley welcoming committee."
"No," I agreed easily. "Wouldn't that be your dad's job? Or yours, as his office manager?"
Because of the skin tone she inherited from the mix of her parents, it took a deep blush for Magnolia's cheeks to turn red, but my pointed statement did it. Even worse than the blush, I saw her eyes brighten with glossy tears.
"I'm not trying to embarrass you," I told her.
She sniffed, lifting her chin and blinking away the tears. "Yes, you are. You're trying to make me jealous of some California bad girl with her black boots and fake blond hair."
A smile spread before I could stop it. "Since when have you been jealous of anyone a day in your entire life?"
The Love at First Sight Box Set Page 29
