by Josie Kerr
Suddenly the dusk sky lit up with lightning, soon followed by a clap of thunder so loud it made Charlotte’s teeth rattle.
“Oh, Tig, I think you were right about that storm,” she murmured, looking at the wall of black clouds that headed toward them.
“Crap. I don’t think we’re going to be able to outrun this thing, so we’ll go to the house until it passes. Is that all right with you?”
Charlotte nodded, still looking out the window, as Tig made his way to his childhood home.
Tig’s mother, Hattie, was surprised to see that he brought someone with him, much less a woman, but he gave her a silent look of warning, and she merely smiled at the two of them as they dashed through the downpour to the small ranch-style house.
“You two look like drowned rats,” Hattie said with a laugh. “Stay right there, and I’ll go get some towels.”
“So much for a good first impression,” Charlotte muttered under her breath.
Tig pulled her to him and tipped her chin up until she looked in his eyes. “Charlotte, none of that. My mother doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. She’s going to love you, okay?” Hattie walked in with the towels just as Tig kissed Charlotte on the mouth and then the cheek. She cleared her throat.
“Here, you two,” she said, handing them each a towel. “Dry off some. Trevor, I know you have clothes here. Now . . .”
Charlotte stuck out her hand. “Charlotte Markham, Mrs. Mashburn. It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Hattie. Please call me ‘Hattie.’ And it’s very nice to meet you, Charlotte.”
“My Lord, Granny Flossy would have a fit,” Tig said with a laugh.
“Granny Flossy is Floyd’s mother, the Mrs. Mashburn. She probably just rolled over in her grave.” Hattie shook her head and turned to Charlotte. “There are some sweatpants and T-shirts in the guest room that you can wear while your clothes dry, okay?”
“Thank you, Mrs. . . . Hattie.”
“You’re quite welcome, honey. It’s not often that Trevor brings friends home.” Hattie’s pointed look at her son made him groan and roll his eyes. “Trevor, show Charlotte where the guest room and the bathroom are. I’m going to check on supper. Come on into the kitchen when you’re changed.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tig kissed his mother on the cheek before she headed to the kitchen. “Charlotte?”
Charlotte took a deep breath and followed Tig down the hallway to the bedrooms. He opened a door and said, “Here’s the guest room.” Then he immediately went to the closet and began pulling out clothes and handing them to Charlotte.
“Thanks, Tig.” She stood there and looked at him, and he looked at her.
“Aren’t you going to change?”
Charlotte tipped her head toward the other end of the house. “You do not need to get me, or yourself, riled up, Tig.”
Tig stepped into her space. “I just want a peek.”
“Just a peek?”
“Sure. Just a peek.”
Charlotte unzipped her jeans and pulled one hip down. “There, that’s a peek. Now scoot.”
Tig grinned at her and swooped in for kiss and a squeeze to that bare hip. “Be back in a few.”
Charlotte finished changing, thankful that her underwear was still mostly dry and she was not going to need to go commando and braless.
A knock came at the door, and she heard Tig call her name, so she took a deep breath, straightened her ponytail, and went to properly meet Tig’s mother.
The storm continued for hours, necessitating a sleepover in middle Georgia. Hattie had seemed surprised but appreciative when Charlotte said she preferred to sleep in the guest room instead of with Tig. Thanks to Tig being sequestered in another room, Charlotte got a full night’s rest and was awake and alert a little after the sun came up.
Charlotte padded into the kitchen, still wearing her borrowed clothes, to find Hattie sitting at the kitchen table with a thoughtful look on her face.
“Good morning, Hattie.”
“Good morning, Charlotte. Are you a coffee drinker?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“Please, stop with the formalities. It makes me feel old,” Hattie said with a laugh.
Charlotte looked at Hattie in the early morning light. She doesn’t look much older than me. Oh God.
As if reading her mind, Hattie asked, “How old are you, Charlotte?”
Charlotte huffed a laugh. “I’m sure you think I’m too old for your son. . . .”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.” Charlotte looked out the bay window into the backyard garden. “How old are you, Hattie?”
“How old do you think I am?”
Charlotte looked at Tig’s mother and could see his features in his mother’s face. They both had one of those ageless faces that could look simultaneously young and old.
“I think you’re a lot younger than you probably should be.”
Hattie laughed and nodded. “I like you more and more. That’s a good answer.”
Charlotte waited while Hattie drank her coffee.
“I was barely fifteen when I had Trevor. My Lord, I thought my mama was gonna kill me. Either that or she was going have a heart attack. Or maybe both. But it was okay. And after Trevor’s daddy went to jail, well, that wasn’t okay, but we made do.”
Tig had given her a quick summary of his somewhat complicated family on the way down to middle Georgia he had his mother and stepfather, along with a biological father that he did not know about until he was eight. He found out about his biological father when the man, newly released from prison, showed up at Tig’s birthday party, demanding that he be allowed to visit his son. And now, even twenty-two years later, Tig’s biological father was not allowed within ten miles of the Mashburn homestead even though he lived and worked his horses on the far edges of their land.
Charlotte thought Tig made an effort to downplay any tensions between the older adults, but she could tell that he was not as comfortable with the dynamics as he made himself out to be.
“That’s when you met and married Floyd, right?”
“Yes, it was. I was a sixteen-year-old high school drop out with a baby boy and a sick mama, and he was a thirty-year-old widower with an eight-year-old son. Floyd took care of us, all of us, and I took care of him and Tyler.”
Charlotte tried to remember if Tig ever mentioned a brother, and once again, Hattie read her mind.
“Trevor probably hasn’t mentioned his brother. That’s okay. He will, eventually.” She cleared her throat and continued to talk.
“I never thought I’d see Neil again, honestly. His people weren’t settled. He was in and out, even back then. He hasn’t changed.”
“How old was Neil?”
“Old enough to know better than to mess with a fourteen-year-old girl, but not old enough to have much more sense.” She laughed. “He was seventeen. That robbery that he went away for? He was gonna use the money to buy me a ring, and as soon as I was old enough to drop out of school, he was gonna marry me.”
“How do you think that would have ended up?”
Hattie laughed. “Probably with a bunch more kids who could time their birthdays as nine months after horse breeding season ended.”
“Not divorce?”
Hattie shook her head. “No, Neil doesn’t believe in divorce. If we parted, we’d have just . . . parted.”
“Oh. That actually seems very civilized. Better than staying in a marriage to spite your partner.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Hattie cocked her head, really looking at the woman that sat across from her. “Trevor is a lot like his daddy. He loves fiercely. He loves true. He’s not going to bullshit you or sugarcoat something that needs to be said, no matter how much it might sting at the time.”
Charlotte chuckled. “Yeah, you got that right.” Hattie laughed.
“Oh, I see you’ve experienced that little perk of his personality already, huh? He’d never maliciously or consciously
injure anyone he cares about, but if he thinks things need to be said, he’ll say them regardless of whether it hurts your feelings or not. But he has a big heart, the biggest I’ve ever seen, and he has so much love to give. Be sure you’re going to give him some back, Charlotte. The biggest risk a man like Trevor can take is to give every ounce of himself away without keeping anything in reserve. Now, I don’t know you, and I won’t profess to know what it was like for your growing up, but I can guess that you’ve not had a lot of what’s really important given to you. People have been stingy with you, giving you everything except themselves, and you probably don’t even realize that you’re taking much more than you’re giving. Don’t let Trevor empty himself completely into you. Make him keep some of you for himself. You can break his heart, and with a heart like he’s got? It’ll never mend.”
Charlotte nodded. “I won’t, and I will. I promise.”
“Good. One other thing: babies.”
“Babies?”
“You want babies?”
“No. I don’t want babies,” Charlotte blurted, relieved to confess that to someone, even if it was the mother of the man she was sleeping with.
“Good. Trevor can’t give them to you; you know that, right?”
“Um,” Charlotte stammered. “Well, I didn’t know that. No.”
“Well, you do now. Go ahead and keep using condoms because it’s always good to be safe. . . .”
“Mama. I know I did not hear you talking about safe sex with Charlotte.”
Hattie and Charlotte swiveled their heads toward Tig’s disgruntled voice to see him glaring at his mother, hands on hips, beet red in the face, furious.
“Trevor, I was just . . .”
“Mama, stop. Just . . . stop. Oh my Lord.” Tig stomped through the house, muttering.
Hattie shrugged. “He can get mad in the same pants he got glad in. I’m not going to guess how happy he’s gotten in those pants since you’ve come into the picture.” Hattie winked at Charlotte. “Come help me with breakfast, girl. Trevor said you didn’t really cook; we’re going to have to rectify that. You gotta keep my boy fed.”
“I . . . need to call my father. He’s expecting me to be at an event in a few hours.”
Hattie laughed. “Honey, you aren’t going anywhere. The river’s over the roads; it’s way too dangerous.”
“What?”
Tig came back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “Mama’s right. I talked to Floyd, and he said it was bad out there and to not try to get back up to Atlanta until at least tomorrow. Probably a good thing that it’s a long weekend, huh?”
Charlotte pressed her fingers against her eyes. She should have known better than to take a trip when she had an event the next day. This is what being spontaneous got her.
“Charlotte, sweetheart, you okay?”
Charlotte opened her eyes to see both Tig’s and his mother’s concerned looks.
She sighed. “My father is . . . difficult . . . when things don’t go as he planned. I need to call him now. Um . . .”
Hattie nodded at Tig. “She can use Floyd’s study.”
Tig grasped her hand. “Come on, baby.”
Charlotte huffed a laugh. Baby.
She had so many questions after her talk with Hattie, but she did not want to bombard him because it looked like he was already on edge, so she just followed him to the other end of the house and into a small, dark home office.
“Take as much time as you need, sweetheart,” Tig whispered and gave her a sweet kiss on the neck and the cheek, and then he left the room.
Charlotte took three deep breaths and then pressed the number her father helpfully had programmed into her phone. She paced while it rang, desperately hoping that this would be the one time that her father would not pick up and she could leave a message on voicemail.
But, of course, she did not have that kind of luck.
“Montezuma? With the Mennonites? Why the hell are you there?” were the first words out his mouth, and the conversation went downhill from there. By the time Charlotte finished listening to her father, she was shaking. She sat in the dark office for a few minutes to gather herself, taking deep breaths and letting her eyes fall shut. Finally, she hauled herself out of the chair and went back into the kitchen.
“You okay, Charlotte?” Tig’s voice told of his concern, his face showed it even more so, and his mother’s mirrored Tig’s. And Charlotte decided then and there that her father could shove it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”
Tig gave her another look, but she took a deep breath and smiled genuinely at him, and he gave her a small nod and a wink.
“So, what’s on the agenda today?” Charlotte said brightly.
Hattie laughed. “You’re not good with winging it, are you?”
“Not really,” Charlotte admitted. “I’m a planner.”
“Well, first, we’re going to have a good breakfast, and then we can make some decisions. Sound good?”
“Sounds good.”
“Whoa. Holy fuckin’ shit.”
“Trevor, honey, you need to mind your manners,” Tig’s mother said in low voice. Tig cleared his throat, embarrassed that his mother witnessed his gawking at Charlotte’s shapely bottom.
Hattie grinned as she turned away. “I’ll have some lunch ready for you when you get back from your ride. Be safe.”
Charlotte stood up and turned around, and Tig was even more thankful that his mother had gone in the house.
“Charlotte, what the hell do you have on?”
She wore a too-small shirt of Hattie’s and compensated for its skimpiness by wearing it open but with one of Tig’s singlets underneath, the material of which stretched across her ample bust and showed off the fuchsia satin and black lace of her bra. The fact that she had her hair back in two tight braids did not help—not one little bit.
He was instantly, ferociously hard, and if he wanted a little taste of Charlotte Markham before, now he wanted to gorge on her.
“Your sweet mother let me borrow a top so I . . .”
Tig crossed the barn in three long strides to slam her back against the rough wooden wall.
“Tig, what do you think you’re doing?” she huffed.
“I’m gonna kiss you.” He leaned his elbows against the wall, boxing her in. “That is, if you’ll let me.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Tig took off his hat and slanted his face to place a soft, hot kiss on Charlotte’s mouth. He leaned into her, adjusting his stance so he could press his hips into the soft swell of hers.
“Ohhh,” Charlotte breathed into his mouth. Without thinking or realizing, she looped her arms around Tig’s waist, hooking her thumbs into his back belt loops.
Tig moved closer, rubbing his body along hers, the big brass belt buckle he wore skimming a delightful chill across her belly where the singlet rode up. He kissed his way along her jawline toward her lovely neck.
“Damn, girl, it’s a good thing you’re not wearing a skirt.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’d be buried so far in you, I’d not come out for a week.” He rocked his hips into her, a small groan escaping his mouth. “Holy shit, you feel good like this, and I’m not even in you.”
“I thought we were going to go for a ride today,” Charlotte whispered.
“Oh, honey, I’ll definitely take you for a ride if you want it.” He bumped her a few times, making her gasp and groan.
Charlotte touched Tig’s jaw, feeling the rough stubble under her fingers. “Oh, Tig . . .” Charlotte shifted, bumping into his belt buckle. “Oof. That thing’s dangerous.”
“You want me to take it off?”
Charlotte laughed. “Oh boy. No, I think you need to have as many layers as possible over that area. It’s too tempting otherwise.”
The spell broken, Tig stepped back and cleared his throat. “I thought we might ride down to the arena and go see some of the other horses. You can ride Mama’s horse. She’s a
sweetheart—nice and docile.”
Charlotte smiled. “I’d love that.”
*****
Tig was quiet on the ride to the arena, which suited Charlotte just fine. The storm had cleared the pollen out of the air, and she was enjoying just riding and being outside.
She rode back from Tig a bit and took the time to really look at him. She admired the way he rode, his big shoulders squared yet relaxed. He caught her looking at him and grinned.
“Hey, pretty lady. What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Just looking.”
Tig huffed a laugh and then blew out a breath.
“So, this is my biological father that we’re going to see.”
“Oh, okay.”
They rode in silence, each lost in their own thoughts until a round pen came into view, a lone horse and man inside. The man stood beside the horse and appeared to be having a deep conversation with the beautiful creature. Both the man and the horse looked up when they heard the two visitors approach.
Charlotte could instantly tell the two men were related. Tig’s father was shorter and heavier than he was, but the stance and build were identical.
Tig looked at Charlotte, whose rapt attention was on the horse his father was leading toward them.
“Neil.”
“Hey, Tig. I didn’t expect you up this way this weekend.”
“We were up at the grove and the fields yesterday but got caught in the storm last night. I thought since we were stuck here for the time being, we might see what you were up to. This is Charlotte Markham. Charlotte, this is my father, Neil Tuohy.”
Charlotte tore her attention from the dappled gray horse to find two sets of cornflower-blue eyes looking at her.
Charlotte bobbed her head. “Nice to meet you.” She looked from one man to the other. “Boy, you can sure tell you two are related.”
The horse snorted and nudged Neil’s back. Neil rolled his eyes. “And this is Whistlebritches.”
Charlotte grinned again. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s a pain in the ass is what she is,” Neil said with a laugh.
