[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet

by Catherine Gayle

  Tallie shifted in her seat, turning toward me more. She toed off her stilettos and tucked her feet up beside her, and the split of her dress gave me an insanely nice view of her thighs. They were smooth as a baby’s butt, with just the right amount of flesh to make them shapely. She didn’t seem to notice that her legs were exposed, so I should probably do something to cover her…but I was enjoying the view too much. I was really an asshole sometimes.

  She leaned in toward me, and I got a whiff of her perfume. “Accidentally?”

  “You’d have to ask him that,” I muttered. I didn’t want to talk about my brother. Not now. Not ever. It didn’t matter that he was the reason we were here. All I wanted to do was take Tallie, get the hell out of this hospital, and not look back.

  “You think he might have done it on purpose?”

  I shrugged. Hell if I knew what went on inside Kade’s head at this point.

  “There’s got to be a way we can help him,” she said.

  We. She said it as if there were such a thing as an us. Hunter and Tallie Fielding were only a couple on paper and in the public eye, though, and it didn’t matter how fucking sexy she was and how long her legs went on, that wasn’t going to change.

  “I don’t have it in me to try to help him anymore,” I said.

  “Well, I could try.”

  “What do you think you could do to help my brother?” I didn’t want her having anything to do with Kade. I wanted her as far away from him as possible, the same as I wanted her to keep her distance from Lance. There was no reason for her to drag herself into the mess that was my brother’s life. I shook my head. “It’s better to just let him slink off to whatever slum he’s living in these days and rot. Don’t worry about him.”

  “I just thought it would be something I could do… You know, now that we’re married.”

  “There will be a lot of things you can do. The team will want all the guys’ wives and girlfriends to get involved. Community involvement, charity work… You could probably head some of that up, get the other girls organized. Besides, it would be one more way for us to stay in the public eye to continue our charade.” And it would keep her the fuck away from Lance. Granted, I didn’t know most of the guys on this team, let alone their wives, so I had no clue what sort of hornet’s nest she might be walking into there.

  “Well, I could do all of those things, too.” She straightened out her legs, and the fabric of her dress fell back down to cover her thighs. Too bad. I had been enjoying the view, probably too much for my own good. She tugged the jacket closer around her shoulders. “I’m going to have quite a bit of time on my hands. I could do a lot of things.”

  “Kade doesn’t need to be on your to-do list. He needs to go back home.” And the sooner he did that, the better.

  Mom and Dad came through the swinging double doors of the emergency room, and Tallie immediately got to her feet and went over to them. I moved a hell of a lot more slowly.

  “They’re admitting him and keeping him for at least a couple of days,” Dad said once I’d trudged across the waiting room to join them. “Same as usual. Pumped his stomach, pushing fluids through him.”

  “They’ll send a drug counselor in to talk to him once he comes around,” Mom added. “In the meanwhile, there’s not much to do but wait.”

  Which was something we could do anywhere.

  Tallie reached for Mom’s hand and squeezed it. “Tell me what I can do.”

  “The best thing you can do is exactly what you two had already planned,” Dad said to her. He nodded in my direction. “You’ve got a flight to Hawaii tomorrow morning. You have a honeymoon to enjoy.”

  He said it without even a hint of irony. I’d filled in both of my parents on the transience of the relationship. Dad knew the honeymoon was just for show, the same as the rest of it. We were only going because it would keep people from questioning why we hadn’t.

  That said, the trip to Hawaii was a good excuse for getting the hell out of here and taking Tallie away from my brother. Maybe everything to do with Kade would blow over by the time we returned. I could get John to try to fight things off for a while, do what he could with the media to get them to forget about my fucked-up brother. Maybe Tallie would forget all about the idea of trying to help him out by the time we got back. She could get some real sun instead of her spray tan, spend some time at the beach, and put everything to do with Kade out of mind. Like I was going to do.

  I didn’t know why my protective instincts were flaring to life as far as Tallie was concerned. It had started because of the way Lance treated her, but now I felt the urge to keep her as far away from my brother as I could, which was a different situation entirely. I wasn’t particularly keen on exploring any of it right now, so I decided to ignore it. I could deal with that later. Or maybe I could ignore it long enough that it would go away.

  “Oh,” Tallie said, obviously deflating. “I’d just thought—”

  “Dad’s right,” I cut in. Might as well seize the opportunity that had presented itself. I didn’t have the first clue how our trip to Hawaii would end up, but there wasn’t a single good fucking reason to stick around here. I just wished we could get on the plane right now instead of waiting for tomorrow. “We should get out of here. Let’s go to the hotel.”

  John had made all the arrangements already. We were staying in a suite at one of the nicest hotels in town. Tallie could have her own room tonight if she wanted. Or not. It was completely up to her. And we had a suite waiting for us at our Maui hotel, too. Once we were there, no one would be following us around to see how head-over-heels in love we supposedly were. We could just have a vacation. Free from Lance’s influence. Free from Mrs. Roth’s interference. Free from any distraction my brother and his addiction might cause. Free from the fucking cameras for the first time since I’d arrived in Tulsa.

  It would be heaven, or at the very least, it would get me temporarily out of hell. That would have to be enough.

  OUR TIME IN Maui might have ended up being one of my favorite weeks of all time, if not for the lingering worries I had over Kade and the rest of Hunter’s family. I probably wouldn’t be quite so bothered if Hunter would talk and let me know what was going on with them, but he didn’t want to, and I didn’t think it was something I should push him about at this point in our relationship. It might not ever be. Whatever had happened between him and his brother was none of my business, and even though we were married, I didn’t know how to act around a husband who was still a complete stranger. I wasn’t part of his family on anything more than a highly temporary basis.

  Maybe it was silly of me to worry when Hunter had as good as pushed them out of his mind the instant we’d stepped off the plane and into the tropical air. He was the one who knew them, after all, and he was acting as though nothing was out of the ordinary. No matter what sort of airs he might try to give off for the world to see, I knew he wasn’t cold and callous. One glance at him flying toward his mother when all the commotion had started was all I needed to grasp just how much he loved his family, even if there were issues.

  And what family didn’t have issues? Lord knew mine did, so why should his be any different? I just wasn’t sure how deep the problems ran, let alone if there was any chance to repair them, so all I could do was sit and wait. If there was something I could do to help, I’d figure it out soon enough. More than likely, there wasn’t anything beyond keeping my head down and my nose in my own matters, where it belonged.

  For now, we were on vacation together in Hawaii. This was my chance to get to know Hunter as well as I could before we returned to Tulsa to face the year ahead of us.

  Other than the fact that we were sleeping in separate rooms in our suite instead of sharing a bed, no one would know that we weren’t exactly like any other honeymooning couple in paradise. Everything seemed normal on the surface. We had romantic dinners on the beach with nothing but candles or the light of the moon helping us to see. We spent our days walking along the beach
and getting to know each other, sometimes going out into the ocean, and other times just dipping our toes in the crashing waves.

  After a few days of it being just the two of us, we had started to feel more comfortable together, to the point that he would even pick me up and toss me in the water, making me squeal. Once, he’d made a big splash and gotten my hair wet even though I’d begged him not to—because it would take me forever to get it looking right again without my team to help me—winking at me when I huffed in protest.

  Actually, every time I mentioned my beauty team, he gave me a you-know-you’re-crazy look. “Do you not have any idea how gorgeous you are? You already look sexier than any woman should have a right to the second you roll out of bed in the morning,” he told me on multiple occasions.

  I always felt so conflicted when he said things like that to me, despite the fact that I was gradually spending less time getting ready and more time with him, styling and makeup be damned. There was a part of me that knew there had to be at least a kernel of truth to his words. But there was another part of me that still heard Mama and Lance nattering on in the background, analyzing every aspect of my appearance and how they could fix it. Even when I’d gone off to college, I hadn’t been free from it. Lance had ensured I had a team there to prepare me every day. My sorority sisters had given me such a hard time about it, but the only time I’d done without my team in the three years of my college education had been when we’d gone to Cancun, just the girls.

  Maybe if I spent enough time with Hunter, I would hear his voice rising above Mama’s and Lance’s. Maybe the insecurities I felt after years of being told I wasn’t up to snuff could fade until they were just background noise, like the chatter at a restaurant. I doubted it, but there was at least a glimmer of hope now.

  Anything to do with Lance quickly became a taboo topic of conversation between Hunter and me. Since he associated my stylists and makeup artists with my former pageant guru, it didn’t take long before I stopped mentioning them altogether, stopped worrying about getting through my beauty routine on my own, stopped wondering if my hair was out of place or searching the mirror for stray hairs that needed to be plucked. Instead, I began to revel in the freedom of readying myself within minutes instead of spending hours in the chair each day. It was amazing to be able to do nothing more than dust a bit of powder on my cheeks, slip on some lip gloss, drag my hair into a ponytail, and head out to do whatever we wanted to do.

  With no cameras around to document our every moment, we both started to let go of the pretense we had been putting on for the world to see. It wasn’t long before we weren’t trying to pull up Twitter to see what was being said about us while we were gone. We could just be a guy and a girl having a good time together. And we were having a good time. I couldn’t deny it surprised me. A lot. I’d been attracted to Hunter since the moment we’d first met, but I never expected that physical attraction to turn into something more. But it had. I was getting the sense that it was becoming more on his part, too.

  Now that there was a good bit of distance between us and our families—and maybe more specifically between Hunter and Lance—Hunter seemed to finally be loosening up. Not enough that he would tell me about his relationship with his brother. We weren’t there yet, but I thought maybe we were getting closer. The only time he’d even mentioned Kade since we’d gotten off the plane was after he’d received a text message from his father, letting us know that Kade had been released from the hospital and was at the hotel resting. I was pretty sure Hunter had only mentioned that because I’d asked him who was texting him, half expecting a non-answer or a brush-off. But instead of either of those things, he’d filled me in and then closed off that line of questioning by asking me about some of the classes I’d taken in college.

  Since our arrival in Maui, I’d picked up the habit of watching Hunter when he didn’t realize I was looking. From that I’d started to get a good feel for his sense of humor. It was as dry as an Oklahoma summer and full of sarcasm. I realized now, while we were alone, that his sarcasm had been revealing itself as surliness when he was around my family. Without them here, though, he made me smile more often than not, particularly once I’d picked up on the way the left side of his mouth would curl up when he was making jokes. When he was being serious, though, that hint of a smile evaporated. Now that I knew to look for it, I saw it more often than not. He liked to tease me, and I liked to let him. Every now and again, I teased him in return. He took it all in stride, letting things roll off his shoulders the way Daddy always had. In so many ways, Hunter was the complete opposite of Lance, and I was starting to appreciate him for it.

  It was little things, really, that showed me his lighter side. He wasn’t going around cracking jokes. Hunter was far more subtle with his humor.

  Like today. It was Tuesday, and we’d been lounging on the beach for a while this afternoon. I was reading a swoon-worthy romance novel on my tablet, and he’d been busy playing some game or another on his phone, both of us idly passing the time and having a few drinks. Or really, more than a few drinks.

  Every time he got up and went to the bar, he came back with a beer for himself and a fruity cocktail for me—something Lance would have had a conniption fit over because of all the calories in them. I didn’t care what Lance thought right now, though. Those things were amazing. Delicious. And every time Hunter brought me one of them, I thanked him and drank it. Yeah, I was a little tipsy right now. Maybe a lot tipsy. It was a good thing we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, and I wasn’t in a hot tub with a bad boy in Cancun, or I might really find myself in trouble. Again.

  I wasn’t entirely convinced I wasn’t in trouble now, with Hunter.

  He snorted out loud at one point, so I looked over and raised a brow in question. He shook his head with a shrug, drawing my eye to the fire-breathing dragon tattoo on his shoulder and arm, but there was no denying the fact that a smirk was curling up the corners of his lips, apparently against his will. I kept trying to surreptitiously peek at his tattoo to see it better. It was bold and colorful, and the dragon’s tail was curled around something in a protective manner, but I couldn’t tell what. I wanted to know what the dragon was protecting, and if he was supposed to be the dragon. But I couldn’t tell. I would have to come out and ask him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him knowing I’d been looking that close.

  “No, really,” I drawled. “What’s so funny?” It was only fair for him to tell me since every time I’d let out a happy sigh over something I’d just read, he’d insisted I tell him why. Lord knew he had to be sick of hearing about my romance novel. Either that or he was a closet romance lover, too. I giggled, thinking about him reading romance novels in the locker room and his teammates finding out, what they might say to him about it.

  “It’s nothing important,” he said, putting me off again. “Just thinking about our good friend, Lance.”

  I pouted. He tended to only avoid talking to me when it was something to do with his family, particularly Kade, so I was taken aback by his refusal to explain his laughter. Then I scratched my head, trying to sort out what he’d said. I was just about to question when Lance had become anything close to a man Hunter would consider a good friend when he decided he wanted another beer.

  He tossed the phone on his beach chair to go to the bar, and I snuck a glance at the screen. He’d left it unlocked, clearly trusting I wouldn’t take a peek. It was open to a word scramble game, and he’d solved the puzzle including at least half a dozen words I’d never heard before. Or I didn’t think I had. My eyes were crossing a bit, so it was hard to be sure. I should maybe let my last drink settle before I had anything else. The longest word from that particular scramble was one that I absolutely knew, though, no matter how dizzy I might be from drink. Bastard. Well, that explained the Lance comment. I hid my grin behind my e-reader when he returned carrying a beer for himself and a mai tai for me.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked, repeating my earlier question, as dry as ever.<
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  I must not have hidden my reaction as well as I’d hoped, then. “It’s nothing important,” I mimicked, shaking my head. That made my head swim, though. I shouldn’t do that again anytime soon.

  I took the drink from him, giving the glass the side-eye. I shouldn’t drink it. I really shouldn’t drink it. At least not for a while.

  He quirked up a brow, smirking. Then I shrugged and took a big sip from my drink, ignoring my own advice and swallowing my own laughter along with the fruity liquor. Hot damn, that was good, like liquid candy. I smacked my lips.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, glancing over at the now locked screen of his phone. The smirk from before turned into a full chuckle, though. He picked up the tube of sunscreen from the table between us, setting his beer where it had been, and squeezed some into the palm of his hand. “Need to reapply so you don’t burn, or you’ll be miserable later.”

  He should know, since he’d burned up his back like a lobster on our first day here. I supposed he didn’t get a lot of sun up in Canada. It was sweet of him to want to take care of me, but I could take care of myself. I shook my head, instantly regretting it, and held out my hand. He raised a brow and passed the tube over to me before kneeling down in the sand beside my chair. He rubbed the lotion into my shoulders and back while I took care of the tops of my legs. Kind of. The lotion didn’t seem to be cooperating with me. Neither were my hands. I needed to stop drinking.