by Amy Andrews
Her heart just about stopped in her chest. What the hell was he saying? Her panties were in his back pocket. She tried hard not to gape—tried hard to keep her heart from crumbling and busting out of her chest into a pile of rubble on the top of the bar. “I…should?
“She should?” Drew chimed in, apparently equally mystified.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Why not?”
Della knew that, somewhere deep inside, this was probably Tucker getting back on his you-need-to-see-guys-your-own-age soap box. And yes, she had told him from the beginning that this was only a temporary thing, and she had meant it—at the time. But they’d been so close these past weeks. Was it really that easy for him to let go?
“I bet Bo can get you an all-areas pass to his next rodeo event,” Tucker said, his expression carefully neutral. “Tick that off your bucket list.”
The only rodeo Della was interested in was a late-night one with Tucker where she put on his Stetson and rode him like a cowgirl.
“I sure could.” Bo beamed at her.
She searched Tucker’s face as she held her heart together through sheer force of will, trying to understand why he was doing this. Offering her to another man. But he just nodded and smiled at her like she’d be crazy to turn this opportunity down, and she was suddenly so angry she could spit. Did he truly not feel anything for her?
What an idiot she’d been, holding out, hoping and wishing for nothing.
Well, screw you, buddy. She smiled at Bo. “I’d love to go on a date with you.”
Bo’s grin was genuine. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Della nodded, ignoring the intense heat from Tucker’s stare searing like a laser into her profile.
“How about next Saturday afternoon,” he suggested. “I’ll come and visit Grams, and then we can go out to the lake for a swim. Maybe come to Jack’s after and get something to eat?”
“Sure.” Della wouldn’t ordinarily say yes to a date in the middle of nowhere with someone she barely knew, but she knew and trusted Rosemary’s recommendation, and there’d be plenty of people enjoying the warm weather out by the lake on Saturday afternoon.
She smiled at Bo because double screw Tucker. “That sounds lovely.”
“Here.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped in the password, and handed it over as he, too, got off his stool. “Give me your number.”
Della complied, deliberately not looking up from the screen as she said, “Bye guys,” to both Drew and Tucker and turned away, heading for the Forbes booth with Bo at her side.
She could feel Tucker’s eyes on her skirt like a heat-seeking missile and hoped his X-ray vision could see every inch of her naked ass as she walked away.
…
Tucker felt a thousand years old as he watched Della and Bo depart, her panties burning a hole in his pocket. Even from behind, they looked like an amazing couple.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Drew demanded.
He glared at his old friend. “Oh, come on, man. They’re perfect together. You have to see that.”
Tucker had felt ill—physically ill—watching them chat and laugh at his bar. They were young and good-looking and fun. They were like couples from stock images that were used to sell everything from new cars to photo frames.
Bo Forbes was exactly the kind of guy Della had been looking for when they started out on this venture a few months ago. He was funny, kind, and interesting, he had a job with the potential to make a lot of money, respected his family, loved his granny, and had been recommended by someone Della trusted.
If Tucker could have drawn her perfect match, it would have been Bo Forbes.
“All I see is an idiot.”
“We were always temporary, Drew.”
“Dude. You’re in love with her.”
“No.” Tucker shook his head emphatically. “I’m not.”
But he was. He knew it as surely as he knew his life was never going to be the same again. He was lousily, depressingly, heartbreakingly in love with her.
Fuck.
Drew snorted. “If your superpower was the ability to shoot daggers from your eyes, Bo Forbes would have bled out all over this bar about a minute after you handed over his beer.”
Tucker rolled his eyes. “You always were the melodramatic one.” Except he was right. Bo’s flirt had been on from the get-go, and it had taken all Tucker’s power not to throw him out on his ass.
“Oh, for the love of…” Drew muttered under his breath. “So what? You’re just going to stand by and watch some other guy scoop her up? Without even telling her how you feel?”
“Yes. Because this is what she wanted. She wanted me to teach her the sex stuff so she could meet guys like Bo and flirt with them and date them. And guess what? Today is graduation day.”
He’d done his bit, and now it was time to step back and let her fly, because while they both may have lost sight of what they were doing, this was what she’d wanted. What she’d asked from him. What they’d agreed on.
It wasn’t her fault he’d gone and fallen in love, and he refused to be the guy who held her back. She’d already regretted what she’d missed out on when she was with Todd, and he didn’t want her to look back and regret her time with him because he’d put his feelings and needs above hers.
“Now order another damn drink or get the hell out of my bar.”
Drew sighed, clearly unperturbed by Tucker’s exasperation. “Christ, you’ve got it worse than I thought.”
Tucker grimaced. Drew had no idea. He was terminal. And the only antidote had just walked away with another man.
…
Della hadn’t planned on coming back to Jack’s, but she’d been sitting at home stewing all night, and she didn’t have to be a genius to know that Tucker wouldn’t be coming to her place tonight to explain himself or otherwise. That little performance at the bar earlier with Bo had been his swan song. It was over.
She’d known it wasn’t forever, but to hell with that. Things weren’t the same between them now as they had been back then—they’d gotten much closer, whether he wanted to admit to it or not. She sure as hell deserved being told face-to-face that they were done, not by passing her off to some other guy.
She sat in the parking lot, her fingers drumming on Jolene’s steering wheel, waiting for the bar’s lights to extinguish and for Tucker to wander out. It might be one in the morning, but she was far from sleepy.
He finally stepped out, and Della saw in the rearview mirror the exact moment that Tucker clocked the presence of Jolene, the only other car in the lot apart from his pickup. He slowed almost to a halt for a beat or two, then squared his big, broad, stupid shoulders and resolutely headed across the lot, his backpack in hand.
Her temper, which had stewed into quite the rage, propelled her out of her vehicle. She slammed the door shut. The night sky was littered with stars as she rounded Jolene and headed for him.
“Tucker.”
Her voice echoed around the empty lot and down Main Street. He barely looked at her as he walked the half dozen paces to his car. “What are you doing here? It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“What, you want to impose a curfew on me now, as well as set me up with random guys?”
The pickup’s door opened, and Tucker tossed in his backpack. The door thunked shut, and he turned to face her. He didn’t let his eyes wander appreciatively over her body like he’d done so freely these past couple of months, he looked straight into her eyes. He was tired, she could tell, but also grittily determined. “What do you want, Della?”
“I want my panties back,” she snapped.
She didn’t want her panties back. Hell, even now, with her heart in pieces, she wanted to ask him to make their stupid temporary deal a permanent one and come home with her. How had this happened? Everything had been going so well, and in
the space of an afternoon it had all flipped on its head.
With his face impassive as granite—those deep dimples totally ironed out—he reached into his back pocket, pulled out the scrap of red-and-black lace, and thrust it toward her.
Della shook her head slowly, tears pricking the backs of her eyes as her heart thudded heavy as a stone in her chest. “Why are you doing this?”
His hand dropped and he stuffed them back into his pocket. “Della…we’d come to the end of us anyway.” His face might be hard, but his tone was gentle.
“Says who?”
“There’s nothing more I can teach you. You’re an A-plus student. Bo coming along was perfect timing. You were hitting it off. You looked so good together. It made sense.”
If her vision hadn’t clouded over with a red mist, she might have paid more heed to the strained timbre of his voice, but she didn’t. “Damn it, Tucker. I get to decide that.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “But sometimes we all need a little push to step outside our comfort zones.”
Della would like to be able to deny his words, but they’d been very true where she was concerned. She’d needed to be pushed to therapy, she’d needed a push to go for her job—and without those things, she’d probably still be in a corner somewhere, clutching a flashlight.
“I wasn’t done yet.” She took a step toward him, but he tensed, and she halted abruptly, stung by his reluctance to be close. “We weren’t done yet.”
Damn it… She loved him. She took a deep breath to tell him, to put the truth out there, but he looked so closed off, so stiff and uncomfortable standing there looking at her with his hands in his pockets, like he didn’t even want to touch her, and she couldn’t bear to hear him say he didn’t love her back.
She was stronger now than she’d ever been, but she wasn’t strong enough to hear that.
“Yes. We were.”
And there he was again. The hard-ass. The guy who had held out against her advances for longer than any saint. Della knew how hard that guy was to reach when he’d made up his mind.
“Why? Because you said?”
“No, because we said it was only temporary.”
“And I need to be playing with boys my own age?” She didn’t even bother to keep the disdain from her voice.
“Yes.”
It might have been dark, but she saw the movement at the angle of his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “Or is it because you’ve never really gotten past me being Arlo’s sister?”
“It hasn’t exactly been easy sneaking around behind my best friend’s back.”
Della stiffened. Right. Of course. Tucker and Arlo had known each other for over thirty years. Clearly their relationship ranked above what she and Tucker had shared.
Of course it did. But she was only human, and that probably stung most of all.
“Well, I guess you don’t need to worry about me being your dirty little secret anymore, do you?” She shook her head at him, not sure if she was more disgusted at him or at herself. “Congratulations, Tucker, you got to fuck your best friend’s sister and get away with it.”
She didn’t give him a chance for a comeback, turning blindly away, the crash of her heartbeat louder than the scrape of her boots against the asphalt as she strode to her car. She opened and shut the door, turned the key in the ignition, threw Jolene into reverse, and hightailed it out of the lot, the dark, lonely shape of Tucker staring after her, getting smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror.
Chapter Twenty
A week later, Tucker was suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms. He hadn’t seen or heard from Della. She hadn’t come into Jack’s. His phone had recorded no calls from her, and their text stream had stopped.
He knew it was for the best, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like crap over their argument in the parking lot and that Della thought she was some dirty secret to him. Sure, they’d kept their relationship on the down low, not because he’d been ashamed of being with her but because their secrecy gave them a level of freedom. Time alone without scrutiny to play and explore, and yes, that included Arlo’s scrutiny.
Time without the constant whispers and speculation around town pressuring them to be something Della wasn’t after and the absence of pitying looks and well-meaning comments when they’d called it quits.
Which she’d wanted, too.
Secondary to that crappiness was more crappiness over matchmaking Della and Bo. The thought of them together was like ants marching under his skin, and he wanted to peel the flesh from his bones to stop the torture. The only thing keeping him from utter despair was knowing Della was better off with someone like Bo.
Sure, it was just a date. But if things developed further and she decided she did want more, then she’d be hard-pressed to find someone better. The younger guy was an absolute go-getter with a bright career and big plans. She could travel all around the country with him and have the life she’d probably never dreamed possible three years ago. And Della had obviously been comfortable with him, laughing and chatting like she’d known him forever.
Most importantly, there’d been none of that manwhore, a-new-woman-in-every-town professional bull rider crap about him. Tucker could sniff that shit out in a blink. So could Arlo.
Nope…Bo Forbes seemed like a really good guy.
And Tucker really, really hated him.
But it didn’t matter how Tucker felt. Nor did it matter that he loved her. He’d been in love with Della for a long time, and it hadn’t killed him yet. There were a lot of things he’d wanted in life that he couldn’t have—that Tony Hawk skateboard being one—and that was just the way it worked.
And sometimes, love meant sacrifice. It meant putting someone else’s interests, their happiness, their future, ahead of your own.
He hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to stay away from her, though. How entrenched visiting her every night had become. How much he enjoyed skulking down the streets from Jack’s to her place. How he counted down the hours and minutes, even looking forward to his nightly visits to Mrs. Doyle’s house to drop off her hush money—or hush pie, as was often the case.
And how antsy he became if anything delayed his departure from Jack’s. Because putting his hands on Della again after a day apart was the best feeling in the world.
And it wasn’t about sex. Sure, the sex was amazing—even more so since he’d taken his foot off the brakes and handed over the wheel to her—but his visits were about more than that.
They were about a deeper connection.
About the way her face lit up when he came through the door. The way they talked—in and out of bed—about the simple, everyday things in life, like the bees in her garden and his pickup needing new tires. The way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t watching. Her joy in her house and the way she loved Jolene and adored Betty.
Put simply, seeing her every night was like refilling his well. Della filled his well.
Which meant he’d been a prize idiot to not realize he was in love with her a long time ago, because the truth was, she’d been refilling his well for a long time. Since those early days, sitting at his bar. He’d looked forward to her coming every night, to the fragile connection they’d forged through brief, stilted conversations and piña coladas.
And now here they were. Ex-lovers.
When he’d pictured how this would end—and there’d never been any doubt in his mind it would—he’d seen a kind of mutual agreement. A happy parting of ways where they both acknowledged it was time to move on and slipped back into their friendship. Maybe they’d shake hands. Or make love one last time.
Yes. Make love, damn it.
That hadn’t happened. Instead, he’d said a bunch of stuff he hadn’t meant, because otherwise he’d have told her he loved her, and that wasn’t the way to sev
er things…
She was going on a date with Bo, which he’d engineered. That was a good thing.
But it meant they couldn’t be a couple any longer—not even a secret couple—so there was no point taking a step backward by trying to hold on. They were over.
And yes, she’d been ticked about it because she thought she wasn’t ready and she wanted to be the one to decide. But he wouldn’t be doing her any favors by becoming another crutch to her. So he’d pushed. And if that had made her mad enough to remember why they’d started this thing in the first place, then good.
“You keep playing like this and that pile of quarters ain’t going to last long.”
Tucker glanced over the top of his cards to eye Arlo. Sitting around from him at the table was Drew. It was a rare Saturday night they could get together, but Drew had informed Tucker that he needed not to be at Jack’s—or home alone—tonight, and frankly he’d been too damn morose to care.
Drew had arranged for Bryce to take over the bar and harassed Arlo about truly taking a night off by handing his pager over to his deputy and hosting a poker game. A proper one with six-pack beer and crap frozen pizza cooked in the oven. Arlo used to host a regular poker night, but then Della had come to stay and it had stopped.
Drew had suggested his place, initially, then changed his mind. Apparently, Tucker was funereal enough without playing poker next to a room full of coffins.
Ultimately, the location didn’t matter as long as it wasn’t Jack’s. Drew was right—he couldn’t have stood on the other side of the bar and watched Bo make goo-goo eyes at Della all night. Or vice versa. So being anywhere but Jack’s was a smart move.
Didn’t stop him from playing shit poker, though.
“Maybe if the dealer wasn’t so god-awful,” Tucker growled as he tossed his nine-high collection of crap into the discard pile, “I’d get a decent hand.”
“Nothing wrong with my hands,” Arlo said calmly.
Tucker snorted. “How convenient.”
Arlo had always been a card shark. He knew all those fancy shuffling tricks and had played a lot of very serious poker during the year he’d been mad as hell and convalescing from his injury. At one point, Arlo had announced his intention to move to Vegas, until Tucker had persuaded him to come home to Credence instead.
