Two men wearing plaid shirts and fishing caps turned toward us, and as they did, I saw the massive sign in front of the tables. Glossy black letters on a white background.
Kissing Booth Closed! New attraction coming.
"What the hell," I muttered, glancing around. There was no one in front of or behind the table. No sign of Tucker anywhere. The entire thing was draped in white from top to bottom. The weirdest part of all was the line. I was early—plenty early—and at least fifty people were waiting in front of the booth.
All different ages, most of them had turned to stare at me unabashedly.
A young girl holding on to her mom’s hand smiled at me, and I did my best to smile back. It didn’t take me long to recognize her from Donner Bakery. She’d come in with her Grandpa, and I snapped a photo of them sharing a cupcake.
“Belle, what is going on?” I asked.
Before she could answer, the little girl whispered something to her mom and smiled at me again.
“Why is it closed?” I asked out loud. To Belle. The men. Who even knew at that point? I just wanted answers.
“Sold out, maybe?” the guy next to me said.
Belle scoffed. "Well, who bought all the tickets?"
One man sighed. "I heard it was Jackson James."
"I heard that too," the other one said. "Heard Maxine Barton made him wear the chicken suit this year, so he shut down her kissing booth on accounts of it being a horrible idea."
"That doesn't make any sense," I said. "Why would he buy the tickets, then? Why is it closed?"
There was a tug on my hand, and when I looked down, the little girl was there, grinning up at me with the gap-toothed smile that had caught my attention in the first place.
“You take really good pictures,” she said, then ran off with a flip of her braids.
“What the hell is going on?” I whispered.
A deep voice chimed in behind me. "I'm guessing whoever closed it found a better use of the space."
The breath caught in my chest, and I pressed a hand to my fluttery stomach. Belle squeezed my hand and grinned up at me. When I turned, Tucker was there, in a white T-shirt and dark jeans, hands tucked into the front pockets. Hooked on the front of the shirt were those mirrored sunglasses, the same ones he wore the day I met him.
Tentatively, I smiled at him. "Hi.”
One measly word, and I tried my best to imbue all sorts of different thoughts into one word comprised of two letters.
Please, please don’t screw up whatever this is.
I’ve been miserable.
I’ve missed you.
I love you.
He gestured toward the display. “Can I show you something?”
Like I’d say no. My mind raced with the possibilities of what it could be.
Then he held out his hand and the racing stopped. Everything went still.
The breath caught audibly in my lungs, and I quickly glanced around at the crowd still milling around us. The entire line in front of the covered display was staring at us. The two men in their hats started conferring immediately, and Belle’s face split into a wide smile.
I nodded, sliding my fingers along his palm. As soon as I did, he wove his fingers through mine and led me past the gaping crowds to the space formerly known as the kissing booth.
That one simple gesture had me feeling like the Grinch on Christmas Day, because my heart tripled in size in the span of a single breath. A family waiting in the mystery line shifted so that we could pass through, and Tucker stopped before pushing aside the white covering.
Over his shoulder, he glanced at me, so much feeling in his eyes that it almost knocked me to his knees. He didn’t even need one word with two letters.
I really hope I don’t screw up whatever this is.
I’ve been miserable.
I’ve missed you.
I love you.
Maybe the last one was my imagination stampeding off wildly, but I felt it, just from the way he looked at me.
Tucker smiled, a gentle, crooked lift of his lips, and my whole body inhaled with anticipation of what he’d done. The hand not holding mine pulled back the curtain, and he stood to the side to let me in.
I had no choice but to drop his hand, because my own flew up to cover my mouth.
My pictures.
Big and beautiful prints of my pictures framed on a stark white background, exactly as I imagined them.
Each one told a story, and with trembling fingers, I reached out to touch the sign on an easel in front of me.
Green Valley: Portraits of Southern Life
a photographic collection by Grace Buchanan
And beneath it, something that made me laugh under my breath.
Special fair preorder pricing: $19.99 per copy
Book release TBD (assuming Grace doesn’t murder Tucker for doing this)
“Tucker,” I whispered. My tear-filled eyes could hardly take it all in. The space had tripled from what we discussed. He must have worked around the clock. Each image was large, done in black and white, as I’d intended them.
Scenes from my time here, in the exchanges of families and friends and neighbors. And then … oh … and then, scenes from him and me that I never expected to see in such stark detail.
The shot of him before our first kiss.
My breath caught again, and I lost the very first tear, felt it fall quickly and silently down my cheek, because in the middle of the entire display, was me and him.
Smiling, wrapped up in each other, on his deck watching the setting sun. A quick snapshot that was never supposed to see the light of day.
But here, like this, it was a declaration.
I covered my face in my hands and cried quietly, because everything felt so big. The way he’d done this so unexpectedly. The proof that he saw me so thoroughly. Knew what would mean the most to me.
Gentle hands cupped my shoulders and turned my body toward his, where he folded me in his embrace. I wrapped my arms around him and breathed in greedily.
Three days had been an eternity. The fact that I’d gone so long of my life without knowing him a borderline tragedy.
“H-how did you do this?” I smoothed my hands up his back, trying to touch as much of him as possible.
“Your brother hacked your computer,” he said sheepishly.
With a shocked laugh, I pulled away to look up at him. “What? When?”
His eyes searched my face, and he used the edge of his thumb to wipe at the tears on my cheeks. “Yesterday morning.”
“You did all of this in one day?”
“I’ve got a lot of coffee running through these veins,” he admitted.
I grinned. “I’ll bet.”
Even though his smile matched mine, it fell quickly. “Grace, I did so much wrong, I don’t even know where to start.”
I hugged him again, pressing my forehead to the center of his chest. “I don’t need a list, Tucker. Not as some form of punishment, okay?”
He kissed the top of my head and lingered there, like he was breathing me in just as greedily. “It’s not. That’s not the right word.”
Lifting my head again, I spread my hand over the side of his face, the short hairs of his beard tickling my palm. “What is then?”
“Reparation. An apology. It’s letting you know that I heard you,” he said, low and urgent. “I heard you and I see you and I choose you.”
“Will you kiss me now?” I whispered.
He took my mouth with a groan, as he lifted me off my feet, as my arms went up around his neck and my tongue twined around his. He kissed me until I couldn’t breathe, so he gave me his breath. He kissed me until my head spun, and he was my anchor. He kissed me until my heart almost thrashed angrily from my chest, and he kept it safely in place.
“You done yet?” someone called from outside the curtain. “Belle is trying to steal my place in line.”
I broke away from the kiss, setting my forehead onto his as we laughed. “Someday
, we’ll be able to kiss without being interrupted.”
“We have forever to practice,” he vowed.
He set me down as he said it, and I kept my hands gripped tight to his arms. “Do we?”
Tucker tucked my hair behind my ears and nodded. “Yeah.” He kissed me again, this one light and sweet and quick. “I hate feeling rushed because everyone is too excited about your photo book.”
“About that,” I drawled.
He smiled. “I may have passed out some flyers about it this morning to the people waiting for the fair to open.” From behind the easel, he produced a bright yellow sheet of paper. When he handed it to me, I saw his nerves.
It was simple. No fancy graphics or sleek fonts. The same information on the sign was in bold black letters in the middle. But along the bottom, was a new addition.
Be the first to own the debut photographic collection of Green Valley resident, Grace Buchanan. A stunning and insightful look into the southern way of life.
“I can’t believe you did this, you presumptuous little jerk,” I said with a smile. I couldn’t not smile. I went on tiptoe to kiss him again. “I love it.”
He exhaled heavily. “Good. I had a brief moment of insanity where I thought about trying to print a book, but I figured you’d want to do that.”
“Smart man,” I murmured. My eyes kept going back to all the prints on display. “I hope they like them.” Then my gaze stopped at the one in the middle. “All of them.”
He saw where I was looking and rubbed my back. “They will.”
“You didn’t have to put that one up too, you know. I would’ve accepted this as a pretty epic gesture without it.”
Tucker’s face was serious as he answered. “Yes, I did. Because if we’re showing people what life is like here, then that includes you,” he kissed me sweetly. “And me.”
“Okay,” I replied shakily.
“The truth is that until the day you showed up, I’d never taken a true risk in my entire life, Grace. No matter how unhappy I might have been, I couldn’t see a future that was worth risking what I did have, all those perfectly fine things. But falling in love with you,” he said, tracing the edge of my lips, “and being apart from you, I realized that nothing else comes close to deserving that word, the only thing that does is trying to imagine life without you.”
He lifted me easily as my mouth found his, though I could hardly kiss him around the wide smile on my lips. My legs went around his waist and I hooked my boots together.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I said in between breathless kisses.
His hands held me so tightly, one strong arm under my ass, the other across my back.
“I love you too,” he breathed against my mouth. He paused, and I pulled back to look at him. “Oh yeah, we need to have a little talk, Angry Girl.”
At the nickname, I smiled. “Am I in trouble?”
Tucker raised an eyebrow, but the deep brown of his eyes was happy. “Oh yeah. You’re going to tell me your version of this curse thing once the fair is done.”
My mouth fell open.
That’s when Maxine pulled the sheet back and smiled a cat-like smile at the way he was holding me. “If y’all don’t mind, we’ve got a line of people out here who want to see some pictures.”
Tucker gave me a questioning look, and I nodded. “Yeah, we’re coming.”
“Hopefully by tonight, at least,” he murmured. I burst out laughing as he set me down.
He was holding my hand tightly as we walked back toward the sound of chattering people. Then he stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“I forgot to ask, why’d you bring my Aunt Belle with you?”
I laughed. “Oh that.” I ran my hands up and down his forearm. “I paid her a visit yesterday, bribed her with a peach pie from Donner Bakery, and asked if she’d take my spot in the kissing booth.”
“That so? How come?”
I hummed. “Because the thought of kissing anyone but you from here on out sounds like a crime against the universe, if you ask me.”
He leaned down and nipped at my bottom lip, smug, male satisfaction rolling off of him in waves. “I like that answer, Pretty Girl.”
Maxine popped her head back in and sighed. “Good Lord Almighty, keep it in your pants, Haywood. I’ve got a stack of twenties out here and no one told me I’d be playing cashier.”
“For what?” I asked, pulling away from Tucker with a laugh.
Maxine rolled her eyes. “For you, young lady. Everyone wants the famous Green Valley photographer’s book. ‘Course they also just want to see if they’ll have their picture in it. Bunch of prima donnas.” She held up a crisp twenty-dollar bill. “But I’d like you to know that I preordered the very first copy. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
My smile was so wide, it felt like my cheeks would split right open.
Tucker wrapped an arm around my shoulder, laughing with me as we heard Maxine yell, “Oh calm your feathers, she’s comin’.”
He held my hand again, and we pulled down the curtains together.
Epilogue
Grace
One Month Later
“Another one?” he asked.
I scrunched my nose. “Is there room?”
“We’ll make room.” Tucker leaned forward and kissed me, or as best he could with a giant box of books in between us. He shifted his grip on the cardboard as he backed away and went to add it to the stack in the guest bedroom of his house.
It was still his house, even though I was there just about every night. Every time Tucker tried to politely coerce me to move in, I told him that I needed just one meal with his parents where his mom could get through it without apologizing again for meeting me the way she had.
Once the ‘interrupting during truck sex trauma’ was behind us, and not the first thing she thought when she looked at me, I could cross the bridge of cohabitating with her son.
And even though I wasn’t living under the same roof as Tucker, my newest babies were. The book that he’d announced at the fair had, for lack of a better term, blown the hell up.
Everyone in town, it seemed, wanted one for their bookshelf, their coffee table, as a present for their friends or family. Once the fair wrapped up, I had so many preorders that it still made my head spin. And that was nothing on how many people asked me whether I was available for weddings and engagements and maternity shoots.
I hit the ground running, working for days upon days to perfect the shots that would go in my book. Work on the layout of the pages so they were exactly the way I envisioned. And Jennifer Winston, though she’d been smart not to hire me for my abysmal baking skills, had loved the idea of displaying my artwork along the walls of both Donner Bakery locations, each one labeled with a small price tag.
“Do you want me to count these?” he asked from the spare room. “You know they shorted your last order by three copies.”
“Yeah, go ahead. Check the spines too. I wasn’t happy with how they packaged them.”
I settled into the corner of the couch and dragged my computer onto my lap. Instead of working on my own project, tonight was work for a completely different client.
Tucker’s hands landed on my shoulders, and I looked up. He was peering at the computer screen as his thumbs started some delicious pressing along my spine.
“Oh yes,” I groaned. “Right there.”
He increased the pressure, hitting a spot that made my toes curl. Not like the typical ‘sex with my boyfriend was always earth-shattering’ toe curl, more along the lines of ‘I’d been hunched over my laptop for too long’ toe curl.
“Keep making those sounds, Angry Girl, and you won’t be getting much more work done,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss along the line of my neck. I arched so he could find my lips with his, which he did.
After a moment, sweet and slow and simmering with passion that I could hardly believe existed, I pulled away with a happy exhale. “I can’t afford to
ignore this job, either. Such high-maintenance clients,” I teased.
He pinched my side, and I shrieked.
“I like how it’s coming along,” he said. “Did you show Grady?”
“A few of them.” My fingers tracked along the mouse pad as the screen scrolled down. We’d spent the afternoon hiking and fishing, but in a professional capacity.
Tucker was officially in league with my brother, though he was only helping in a part-time, as needed capacity at that point. But they still needed pictures for a website, and that’s where I was a very convenient helper.
“I like that one,” I said. Tucker was baiting a hook, Grady casting his line out onto a winding river that was catching the light perfectly. The trees behind them were red and orange and yellow, the kind of fire that I remembered discussing with Tucker, back when I had no idea what he could come to mean to me. “You should put it on your home page.”
“Home page,” he mused. “Seems like we’ve got a million miles to go before this turns into something real.”
“You guys are off to a great start. Didn’t Grady just find some office space?”
Tucker hummed. “It’s got great storage too, which he’ll need for all the gear. I told him he needs to find an office manager though. I love your brother, but he is not the most organized person I’ve ever met.”
I grinned. “That is unfortunately true.”
“I’m gonna go finish counting books,” he said. “Need anything while I’m up?”
My eyes widened innocently. “Yes.”
The innocence didn’t fool him. He grinned that sexy half-grin that I loved, and when I fisted my hand in his shirt to tug him down for another kiss, he growled against my lips.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he said in between kisses.
“Gimme ten minutes,” I promised as I caught my breath.
He sucked at the skin on my neck. “You have eight, Angry Girl. Then I’m coming to get you.”
As he walked away, a spring in his step and a whistle coming from his lips, I smiled widely.
Batter of Wits: An Enemies to Lovers Small Town Romance (Donner Bakery Book 5) Page 26
