Chapter Thirteen
Tucker
It was a big reaction to a small thing, and I realized it even as I was making the appropriate calls to get Sam out of Libby’s hair. But still I moved forward, gathering up Olivia and Libby and taking them to the ranch to stay with my family for a few days. I left them in the inestimable care of my parents and older brother, Daniel, and headed back into town to talk to the property managers.
They were full of empathy and compassion, and ran me around in circles until they inadvertently gave me a full name with their correspondence. Once I had a friend at the Austin Police Department stick his name in the system, it was easy enough to find out that, Sam Newton was a man with almost no priors, aside from a few bar fights. He was a former Marine and had been honorably discharged—that was the word from another neighbor lady who liked to gossip—and he now worked in construction.
I was more disappointed than I was willing to admit that the guy wasn’t a pervert. Libby obviously wasn’t going to file a complaint against the good-looking guy across the street just because he didn’t like me taking her out. I cursed to myself and called her at the ranch to check in. I asked if she was willing or wanted to talk to the community management company with me, and file a complaint. She asked me to hold on, and started talking to someone about watching Olivia. I heard the distant sound of my mother’s voice in the background, replying to her. It made my chest ache to hear the woman I had grown to love talking to my mom like they were old friends.
With Libby safely tucked away on Lago Colina, it was easy for me to imagine a life with her by my side, with weekends on the ranch with my family, and Olivia being raised to be a master horse woman. In my fantasy future, Libby had her own successful business, and my life of condominium living was over, replaced by a house with property, and a few horses of my own. But Libby saw me as my profession first, a phantom of her ex-husband second, and in a distant third place, sometimes she saw me. Under those circumstances, we had no chance of a future together.
She came to an agreement with the women of the ranch, and agreed to meet me at my place while Mom and Patty and Rachel took Olivia on an adventure ride somewhere out on the property. We said our goodbyes, and I glanced around the mess of paperwork and take out-boxes and empty beer bottles that made up the current décor of my apartment.
Kennedy was so unused to seeing me clean anymore that she ran to the bedroom to hide once I started picking up my garbage and throwing it away. The sound of glass breaking against glass caused her to bark loudly from the safety of the dark, dusty space beneath my bed.
By the time the front desk buzzed Libby up, the place looked half-decent and no longer smelled like a frat house—so long as we didn’t open the door to the guest room. I started some sweet tea brewing and filled a pitcher with ice, and propped the front door open so Libby could let herself in, wondering why my palms were clammy. I breathed to control my heart rate, which was steadily climbing as I tried to keep myself busy. I was concentrating so hard that I flinched when I looked up to see her standing there, her eyes wandering over my home.
“I’ve never been here before,” she mentioned as she peeked around the corner to see more of the place.
“Well, I’d encourage you to look around, but the guest room is a mess of things I need to organize and I haven’t picked up in a while,” I apologized lamely.
“It’s a lot tidier than I’d imagine for a single guy, living alone. I can’t imagine….” She broke off as Kennedy, hearing her voice, finally came out from under the bed and raced to her, yapping, and grinning so big her tongue was lolling out.
“It wasn’t thirty minutes ago,” I confessed. I handed her a glass of sweet tea across the counter, and motioned for her to sit, but she leaned against the counter and kicked up a leg on one of the barstools. The silence was uncomfortable, not the easy way we usually were with each other.
“Your family’s ranch is really beautiful,” She said, forcing a wry smile as I came around the wide counter and half-sat on the barstool next to her.
“It is. I miss it. Sometimes I wish I had more excuses to visit so I could spend more time out there.” She scoffed at me.
“I didn’t know you needed a reason to spend time with your family. I wish I had that liberty,” she said in a scolding tone. Both her parents were gone, and I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her to be surrounded by people who just wanted to make her happy.
“They’re good people, aren’t they?” I asked, as she flashed me a grin, before her face grew pensive.
“It was hard to leave, even to come home and take care of business,” she admitted. I laughed and saluted her with my sweet tea, the ice clinking pleasantly in the glass as I brought it to my lips.
“Your hearing is next week, and now this guy is being a creepy stalker. How do you stay so calm? My blood pressure is through the roof, and I’m sweating like a pig, and it’s not even my life we’re talking about.” I dabbed at my forehead and face with a towel from the island counter top, as she chuckled at me.
“Well, I don’t know why you’re so upset. You said he wasn’t a creepy stalker, just a former marine who seems to find me interesting.”
“It doesn’t stop me from having the urge to scoop you up and hide you in my bedroom until this is all over.” She rolled her eyes at me and shook her head.
“And that’s why we can’t date, Tucker. I don’t want to be hidden away. I want to be propped up when I start to fail, not sealed into a box so I can never succeed.”
“You think my desire to keep you safe is going to prevent you from succeeding?” I huffed, drained my glass, and slammed it down on the counter harder than in had intended. “It doesn’t make me a Neanderthal to want you to be safe from men who don’t like ‘no,’ or to want you to win this contestation,” I ground out, frustration adding gravel to my voice. “Did you ever consider that I want those things so that you have financial freedom to build your business, and that you matter to me, that Olivia matters to me?” I paced in front of her, my arms folded across my chest, trying to stay angry. Kennedy had begun to pace with me, heeling perfectly like we’d been working on recently.
I stopped pacing and looked down at my sweet-faced little girl, her tail going as she sat and patiently waited for her reward. Libby watched me, her face set in stubborn pride.
“I don’t belong to you, Tucker. We aren’t a couple, and I’m okay with other men finding me attractive. I think you need to step back and understand that.” She sighed and rubbed her temples.
“So, my friendship means nothing to you.”
“No, your friendship means everything to me. But this isn’t friendship. I want to be your friend. Darn it, when you aren’t trying to run my life, I want to be more. But you’re making that impossible. I can’t live like I did before. I need to know that I can make it on my own. Because sometimes the bottom falls out, and you can never understand how low rock bottom was for us. I need to know that if I’m with a man, and I lose him, that—bottoming out—will never happen again.” I hated myself for the tears in her eyes as she traced her finger over the condensation on her glass and avoided looking at me.
“I hope you still take your time out at the ranch, just because it’s a great place to take a break from life.” She picked up her keys from the counter and slid off the barstool.
“We’ll be back home tonight. I can’t stay there and impose on your family any longer just to appease you. Thank you for opening your family’s home to us. I will see you in court next week. Until then, I think I need to be alone for a bit.” I nodded, an apology stuck in my throat. She wasn’t the woman I remembered, the one who was timid and afraid of her own shadow.
But I couldn’t imagine what she had been through, and she’d done it all alone. I wasn’t about to lose her because she thought I had some archaic belief about women. I had a boulder in the pit of my stomach, making me feel sick and weak.
How could she think I didn’t believe in her, when the truth was that I liked myself so much better when I was with her? I walked her to the door and she bent down to rub Kennedy behind the ears. She was literally walking out of my life, and I was at a loss as to what I could say to make it better.
“I’ll see you later, Tuck,” she sighed, and I held out my arms for a hug. She pressed her body against me, her cheek against my heart, and I fought the hot sting of unmanly tears. I held her for too long, but when I released her, she kept her arms wrapped around me. “Tucker James Hargrave, you better figure yourself out. I didn’t make love to you on a whim, and I expect you to have enough respect for that to work it out and show me what you’re capable of.” She let go abruptly and walked away without another word, and I watched her until the elevator doors opened to her.