“Pete told me that he and Will have had a number of conversations about the two of us. Apparently they’ve been conspiring, trying to manipulate ways to get the two of us together. Like they called my brother Ike. Ike was set up to drive us to the start of the kayak race—but it was the boys who conned him into the night on the mountain, so that we’d have private time together.” He was still looking at her. The same way. The way that made the blood rush to her tender spots, and her lungs suffer from an inability to take in air, and the rest of the room to swim off in some murky distance, while he filled her screen. All of her screen. In surround sound and high definition.
“I kept asking him questions,” Tucker said. “It was hard for me to believe the two of them were matchmaking. Hoping we’d hook up.”
There, now. Garnet thought she was having trouble breathing before, but now she suffered from complete oxygen failure. It went into her lungs. It just wouldn’t go out.
Until that instant, maybe—maybe—she hadn’t been dead positive she’d fallen heart and soul for Tucker. But hearing him talk about the boys matchmaking, the kids thinking they just might belong together…her heart suddenly clutched, tight as a fist. A soft fist. Maybe, just maybe, in that closed door where her heart used to be, she’d been dreaming they got along amazingly well. That she’d never felt as wonderful as when she was with him. That if fairy tales were just true—even though she didn’t believe in happily-ever-afters—she could imagine herself so easily waking up to Tucker. For the rest of her life. And just maybe into the next.
But…there. Her heart stopped hammering and slowed all the way down. He’d brought it up with a smile, like the boys matchmaking was a joke. And that brought a slap of reality like nothing else. She was plain vanilla, how many times did she have to remind herself of that? He was practically South Carolina aristocracy.
And she knew—she knew—how prone she was to make dumb, impulsive mistakes, where she got her heart ripped out and only glued back together with cracks.
“That’s funny, Tucker,” she said with a grin.
“Funny.”
He just echoed the word. Not with a question or a sound of an agreement. Just…said it.
Garnet pressed on, certain she could make him comfortable with the situation. “I’m glad you told me. Petie’s always beyond imaginative. I hope you weren’t embarrassed. Really, I think it’s partly a measure that your whole plan is working.”
“My…plan.”
“Yeah. Your plan. To trade the boys. To have Will find a way to talk easier with females…for Petie to find a way to do more guy things. Easy to see that Pete thinks of you as a father figure. A good guy. A male he can talk to, be honest with. I’m thrilled.”
“You’re not sounding that thrilled.”
“I am. I am. I’m thrilled hugely. I just have to laugh a little. That the boys would think up anything quite that preposterous. I hope your brother wasn’t weirded out by the whole thing.”
“Preposterous. Our getting together. That’s how you’d see it?”
“Of course.” She smiled. Her biggest, bestest, brightest smile.
And then, of all things, he leaned over, swore—even said the really bad thing—and then slammed her head back into the couch with a kiss. A lip-crushing, mouth-sealing, hot-blooded kiss. Tongues and teeth got involved. Her body went limp from the waist down. Her eyes even closed. It was all she could handle, just taking in the whole of that kiss…take it in, his taste, his scent, all of him….
A few hours later—or maybe a few seconds—he lifted his head. Scowled darkly at her. Said, “I’m tracking down Will. We’ll be out of here.”
“Okay, I…” She had to suck in a breath. “Tucker—”
“Don’t say anything to me right now. Not one thing.”
“You’re mad? At me?”
He never answered. He just slammed the screen door on his way out.
She put her hands on her hips, not sure whether she felt more mystified or more upset. She’d been trying to reassure him, not trouble him. And his anger seemed a measure that she’d let him down in some way—but she didn’t know how.
And then she realized, she’d never thanked him about the snake. For being her hero, and leaving his own responsibilities to take care of hers.
* * *
When Tucker pulled up two days later, he still hadn’t shaken his ticked-off mood. Pete and Will did their running past each other, high-fiving in the middle of the driveway. Will hadn’t seemed to notice his ornery moods, and Pete popped into the truck, with a sunshine-big grin and his arms loaded.
“Hey, Mr. T. My mom made you a strawberry rhubarb pie, to say thanks for taking care of the snake. Oh, and there’s a batch of cookies in the other tin. Cherry chocolate chip. You don’t have to share them. They’re all for you. But just so you know, her cherry chocolate chip are the best in the world, even if she’s not so good at cooking other stuff.”
Pies. Cookies.
His favorite pie, not that she could have known that.
Petie’s favorite cookie, which she obviously knew.
But nothing hinting that making love had changed anything for her. They were single-parenting buddies. That was all she seemed to want.
Sex was always a game changer for a woman. Except Garnet. Guys weren’t supposed to fall so fast. Only Tucker had fallen. High and dry.
Making love with her had sealed what he’d already known—that she was special. Unique. They fit together the way no woman had ever fit so perfectly for him and with him.
“My mom said that she and Will cooked up another team challenge. It’s a burger contest. Like who makes the best burger. Like on the day after the Fourth of July, if you can.” Pete switched the truck radio from country to rock. “This’ll be an easy win for us. My mom can’t cook worth beans. Come to think of it, she can’t cook beans, either.”
When Pete kept looking at him, as if waiting for an answer, Tucker said, “Sure. That sounds fine.”
“Mr. T., I have a question for you.” Clearly switching gears, Pete used his most earnest voice. Tucker had heard it before.
“Yeah, you can have a look at my accounting program. But you can’t make changes. Or do anything else, unless you can make it clear to me what you’re doing.”
“Okay, but that wasn’t my question.”
“Yeah, you can use the Excel program to set up a graph for the challenge course.”
“Okay, but you already told me that. In fact, I already started that because I knew you’d say yes. That wasn’t my question.”
“I give. What’s the question?”
“I don’t know how busy you are today. But I was wondering, before I go home, if maybe I could have, like, a half hour with you. Outside. To do something outside, like you’re always pushing me to do.”
Tucker shot the kid a quick, suspicious glance. There was so much virtue in Pete’s innocent eyes that Tucker could smell that he was being suckered.
“I can’t guarantee the free time. You’ve been around the camp. You know emergencies come up sometimes. But I’ll try. What is it you want to do in that half hour?”
“It’s about my mom. I was reading about this area—this mountain, your mountain. And years ago there was gold found in the creeks. And garnets. It was a long time ago. But the quartz you have around here, it’s still the same type of stone, the same geology, that should still have garnets. And my mom’s name is Garnet.”
“I know that.”
“So I was thinking, we could pan for garnets. In one of the creeks. Just see, you know? If we could come up for a stone for her. And then I could give it to her on her birthday. Which is like three weeks away.”
The idea came out of the blue for Tucker. But he thought about it. Particularly since he had yet to find a way to get Petie outside, except for thei
r one kayak adventure. “You know, it wouldn’t look like a garnet if it was just rough rock from the stream.”
“I know. I saw it in pictures. But that’s kind of why I thought my mom would like it. She doesn’t wear a lot of jewelry. She doesn’t spend money on stuff like that. But she puts rocks and stones in the kitchen window sometimes. She really likes stuff like that. Things that are, like, natural. My grandma gives her jewelry a lot. She just puts it away someplace. But a stone that’s her name…don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“Yeah. I think it’s a great idea. And you’re a good kid to think of it.” Tucker shook off his crabby mood. Will was thriving under Garnet’s care. He wanted and needed to be as helpful to Pete.
The afternoon was another heat buster, over a hundred degrees, a group of businessmen spending three days on the mountain. A once-outstanding management team had been beaten up over the economy. They showed up two days before, discouraged and grim…but then, off came the suits. Tucker had a time-honored set of team-building exercises, all of them involving dirt, mud and, usually, a whole lot of laughter. The exercises were, of course, booby-trapped in a fashion that no one was a loser and the whole group won, but sometimes that took some finagling. Even some diplomacy.
Tucker had diplomacy when it was ninety degrees. Past a hundred, he tended to run a little short.
When he headed for the office around three-thirty, his throat was parched; his clothes were sticking to him, and he had some solid break time coming. That was, until he stomped in and saw Pete, who popped up from the desk with a hopeful expression.
Tucker gulped. “No, I didn’t forget.” Sometimes, a guy had to lie. “I just really got tied up with the last group. It’s really hot out there. You sure you want to go?”
“I’m sure. I’m even positive.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll get some gear together. You hit the cafeteria, rustle us up three or four bottles of water. I’ll get some pans. And a colander…” He was thinking as he moved. “We’ll take the Gator. Grab some towels. Maybe a shovel…”
Tucker had no plan to have any fun, but damn. It only took a few minutes before they both started having a blast. The creek bubbled and chased around rocks, with overhanging pines and rhododendron shading the banks from the excessive heat. Neither had brought water shoes, so both peeled down to bare feet.
Tucker shoveled a heap of soil and rock from midstream, poured it in Petie’s pan, then used the colander to sift through their treasure water. Minnows tickled their toes, and both saw the occasional silver flash of a bigger fish.
Pete, being Pete, had to give him a lesson as if he were the elder and Tucker was the kid. “Almandite’s the name of what we’re looking for. It’s a mineral. A common mineral, even. Found in metamorphic rocks, like schist and gneiss. That’s why it could be in this stream. It’s all metamorphic rocks around here. And there’s lots of quartz and magnetite around here, too. I read there were garnets as big as three feet long from this area.”
“Um, Pete? I wouldn’t count on us finding a three-foot garnet.”
“I’m not counting on it. I’m just saying. This is the right mountain for it. And nobody’s probably looked for a long time. So that has to make our chances better, don’t you think? Isn’t this great?”
When Pete laughed, Tucker had to gulp. He’d happily walk a mile for one of those laughs. Pete was easy-tempered, but normally so darned serious. A few splashes and slips, though, and he was as soaking wet as Tucker was. No possible harm. They were both cooled off…and what male ever born didn’t like to get his hands into mud and rocks?
“And they’re not always red, you know. Garnets can be green. Or yellow. Or pink. I’d like a red one for my mom, though.”
By then they’d collected a bowl full of potential jewels. Tucker suspected when their loot dried off, it wouldn’t add up to more than plain old stones…but that was another so-what. Pete was out, getting fresh air, having a blast, just being a kid.
“Okay. That last batch just had nothing to it. I’m going to wade in another foot or so.”
“I have to get out for a second. I’m just going behind a tree.”
“No sweat.” Everybody had a call of nature now and then. Tucker kept an eye out, to make sure Pete didn’t wander too far, but it was only moments later before he galloped back, obviously not willing to miss a second of their garnet hunt. For a few moments, though, he didn’t say anything…and when Petie didn’t have anything to say, something was usually wrong.
“You need help over there?” Tucker asked. They were only a few feet apart, both scrunched on slippery cool rocks, wading in the rushing creek up to their knees.
“No, I’m okay.”
“Find anything good in this batch?”
“Not yet.” A sigh. An old-man sigh.
Now Tucker paid attention. “Something on your mind?”
“No. Well. Sort of. I’ve got something I’ve been worried about. But it’s just not something you can usually talk about.”
End of conversation. Tucker put down his pan, stood up then. Figured he’d sit on the same rock Pete was on, see if working closer together might make the conversation easier for the kid.
“Hey,” he said. “You know the rules. What gets said on the mountain, stays on the mountain. That’s what this great place is about. Being at ease with yourself.”
“It’s just a weird question I have, you know. It’s about size. The size of something. The normal size of something.”
“Size of what?” Tucker asked. He wasn’t just curious now. He was happy Petie felt he could come to him. There wasn’t a prayer in the universe he’d let the kid down.
He felt that. Believed that.
Only when Pete suddenly blurted out, “So could you just tell me what the size of your penis is?”
Hell. It was no wonder Tucker lost his footing.
Chapter Ten
Garnet handed a role of purple satin ribbon to Mary Lou. Will was sitting on the counter, right in the middle of things, swinging his legs and shaking his head.
“I just don’t get it. Why anybody’d want one of those things.”
Those “things” were lavender and rosemary sachets, made fresh in the back room, bundled in small linen sacks, then tied with the ribbon. “They smell great in a drawer or closet,” Garnet told him.
“Yeah. I get that. But who cares what a closet smells like? Or a drawer? I mean, who goes around opening drawers and sniffing? What’s the point?”
When her cell vibrated, Garnet was laughing right along with Mary Lou—who used to be a card-carrying curmudgeon. Will had changed that. Mary Lou got a charge out of the boy like nothing else.
Garnet glanced at the wall clock before opening the phone. It was almost four. It was almost time to trade boys, so she was surprised to see her son’s name show up on the cell.
“It’s okay. I’m all right, Mom,” was how Petie started the conversation.
Naturally, Garnet gulped. Those words were inspired to give any mom a major ulcer. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I’m just gonna be a little late. So you shouldn’t pick me up for another twenty minutes or so.”
“What happened?” Garnet said again, this time feeling alarm climb up her pulse.
“Nothing, really. I mean, nothing bad. Me and Mr. Tucker were out doing something important that I don’t want to tell you about. Only he slipped and fell. That’s all. He’s fine now. He just said I had to call, so you’d know I wasn’t at the house by four.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. It wasn’t me who fell. It was just Mr. Tucker. And he’s okay now. There was just a lot of blood at first.”
Okay. Instant heart attack. “Where are you both, right this minute?”
“Up on the mountain. In this secret place. I got him all
bandaged up, Mom. I knew what I was doing. It’s just getting him back to the house. We’re gonna go slow. We drove the Gator here. Mr. Tucker said I couldn’t drive it, but I think he might let me if—”
“Peter Andrew Cattrell. You stay right where you are. Will and I are on the way to the van right now. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Okay. I’m just saying. Don’t hurry.”
Garnet stared at the phone, disbelieving when her son clicked off. “Will. Grab your stuff. Mary Lou, can you lock up at five? Damn. Where are my keys?”
“Sure,” Mary Lou said. “Is Pete all right?”
“He’s fine, he’s fine.” She patted her front shorts pockets. Her back shorts pockets.
Will said, in the same tone of voice her son used, “Mrs. G. The keys are in the van. You always leave them there.”
“I knew that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you know where Pete went with your dad?”
“I didn’t know Pete went anywhere with my dad today.”
“Do you think my van’ll go off-road okay?”
“No. But I can get you wherever they are on one of the Gators.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, you’re not driving a Gator. Good try.”
“If you’re going to drive this fast, you want me to keep a lookout for cops?”
By then, they were, of course, on the road. She sort of spun the wheels getting out of the drive, and possibly took the first set of curves on two wheels.
“I’m going to slow down immediately,” she told Will.
“Mrs. G., if my dad were bad hurt, someone would have called me right away.”
“Nobody’s bad hurt.”
“So we’re just going this fast for fun, huh?” Will nodded. “I know. You’re worried about my dad.”
“I’m not worried about anyone.”
“Well, you can’t be worried about Pete because you already said a bunch of times that he wasn’t hurt at all. So that means you have to be worried about my dad. And I think that’s nice and all. But I know him really well. Better than anyone else. He’s careful. And he doesn’t do dumb things. And someone at camp will know where he is, because he always leaves word. And he could have used a walkie-talkie to communicate that he needed help. But he didn’t. And he didn’t use a cell phone to call me. So those are reasons you could be sure he’s okay.”
Little Matchmakers Page 13
