Chapter Twenty-Three
Tucker
My parents weren’t as enthusiastic about my decision to put my career on the line in the name of honor as my brothers had been, but Mom instantly demanded I spend my time away from work on the ranch. Danny had turned his ankle falling from a mustang he was breaking, and with Dad’s back getting bad, it was all hands on deck.
My brother Logan had just finished a stint out on the fences, and I was happy to take his place so he could get back to wander the corners of the world taking pictures of impossible things, like spiders big enough to eat birds in Australia, and fish that had been declared extinct centuries before washed up on the shores of Africa.
I certainly wouldn’t have any exciting stories for the men like Logan would have told, but I worked a lot faster, so I figured they wouldn’t mind, too much, that I replaced him. The hardest part of being out there was that I wouldn’t have a way to contact Libby. I knew that was pretty much the point of it all, but everything in me balked at leaving her without anyone to lean on, if things got tough.
Kennedy bounced all over the bed and suitcase while I packed. There had been a time when I left a closetful of clothes in my old room, but I always felt bad about all the room they took up in what should have been a guest closet, so I’d had Danny’s wife donate them when they took over the big ranch house. Now, I was forced to pick through my closet for jeans that would hold up to a couple of weeks of hard labor riding the fences and taking care of whatever projects Danny would be trying to do even in a giant foot brace.
“Ready to go chase cows, little mutt?” I teased. She tilted her head to one side, and one long, silky ear flipped inside out. I set it right again and rubbed down her neck to the base of her spine. She kicked her leg and grinned at me in pure canine bliss.
I swung my suitcase closed and dropped I it by the door as my phone bleated at me. I tried to ignore it, but I knew it wouldn’t stop until I picked up, and with a glance to make sure the flat was ready to lock up, I accepted the call.
“Carl, you know you aren’t supposed to be calling. What makes you think you’re surprising me by using company landlines?” The phone was slammed into the receiver, making my ear ring. The only good piece of information that I got from his juvenile phone call pranks was that he had not been suspended from Cripke, Cripke, and Stokes. Well, that and, from the things he had yelled at me before hanging up the day before, I was the only focus of his anger.
He was the other reason I worried about leaving Austin proper. The ranch wasn’t so far away that I couldn’t get back to Libby if I was needed, but it felt like the other side of the world— and if I was out in the middle of God’s country with no cell service, then Libby was completely on her own. Carl Jameson had started this. For years, he’d put profit before ethics, and I had been told to look the other way because he made the firm money.
In Kristy, he’d finally got himself someone to take advantage of who was young enough, and primed enough by her controlling husband, to do whatever she was told. He had no qualms about it, even if it meant hurting a woman and a child he didn’t know to line his pockets. Or so he’d thought.
I went into my phone and blocked the secretaries’ landline from my phone. Unless he managed to use Mr. Stokes’ personal line, which was separate from the rest of the company, instead of just its own extension, he’d burned every individual phone line at the firm—not to mention his own cell phone. I wished I believed it would make him stop. Instead, I felt like warning Libby and Kristy that he might come for them instead, and to avoid strange phone calls from strangers.
I put Kennedy on her leash and hit the “call” button from Libby’s contact screen. “Better safe than sorry,” I thought to myself as the phone rang on the other side. I had emailed her after I’d been called before an emergency grand jury hearing to decide the fate of her case, based on the ethics issues, and told her the judge would be waiting two weeks before deciding the case, simply to allow time for any other evidence to be presented, considering the confusion Kristy had created with her allegations of inappropriate, possibly illegal behavior from Mrs. Peele Senior, Cripke, Cripke, and Stokes, and Jameson in particular.
I looked at my watch as the phone switched over to voicemail. She was still at the preschool, and I would have to settle for a message. Instead of leaving her a worrying message, I told her that I missed Olivia terribly, and hoped they were doing well. It was easier and less frightening to for her to get a text that explained the circumstances. I also texted her the list of blocked numbers from my phone before jamming it into my pocket, irritated that I hadn’t been able to talk to her.
Libby had taken over every sleeping thought, and a good number of my waking ones, too. I had always appreciated the value of not being tied to just one person, and my relationships after my failed engagement a few years before had been casual and short-lived by design. Now, I was stalling with leaving. On the ranch, there was no “accidentally” bumping into Libby like I had in the past. No driving past the school, just to catch a glimpse of her smile on my way to work, or spontaneous lunches.
That woman had always caught my attention, even when I hadn’t wanted to feel that attraction, back when she was married to my best friend. Clichéd as it was, I hadn’t acted on it, because I was a Hargrave, and Hargrave men didn’t need to ruin other people’s relationships to get attention. But she’d always been there, so sweet, and funny, and ethereal, that she was impossible to ignore. Just thinking about her long slender legs and the soft curves they led up to made my pulse bump up.
I cursed myself for setting the Ethics Committee on Carl. The isolation was getting to me, and I was horny and frustrated because no other woman was going to satisfy me, and I wasn’t sure I’d get another chance at the one who did. I thought about calling again, asking her to meet me so I could touch her one last time. It could be so easy—hot, even. Any seedy motel would do, and there was one behind Shelley’s, the truck stop bar on the edge of town, not too far from the ranch.
The image of her twisted up in the sheets in a dingy motel made me hard so fast my pants pulled tight across my stomach and pressed my zipper painfully into me. No icy lake water swim would be enough to cool the heat that threatened to burn me from the inside out. I made it to the car without calling her, but the next thing I knew, I had driven towards the Sunshine Days Academy, instead of taking the entrance for the interstate.
I let the car idle in the parking lot across the street while I called, and when she picked up, told her where I was. Seconds later, she was at the road, glancing around before jogging towards me, her sundress fluttering around her legs and pressing against her body, the outline of her under the sheer fabric making my fingers itch to trace the line in created.
“Hey, you okay?” she panted as she reached me. Without a word, I crushed her to me, holding her up as she sagged against me, opening her full lips to my searching tongue. I delved into the wet sweetness of her mouth, tasting her as she pressed herself against the bulge in my pants.
“God, I want you. Come with me, one more time before I go. I can’t stand the thought of being so far away from you for so long.” She nipped at my jaw as I cupped her rear in my hands and pulled her to me even harder.
“I thought you were only gone for a week or so,” she said, a worried look in her eyes. “Has something changed?”
“No.”
“So, what do you want from me, exactly?” She teased, rocking against me, and running her fingers through my hair, giving me gooseflesh.
“I know you don’t want to be a couple. I get it,” I sighed, trying to focus on anything other than the soft, clean, floral scent of her skin. “But we are so good together, and I can’t stop thinking about you.” She pushed back and looked up into my face, her eyes sparkling with silent laughter.
“You want my body.”
“Oh, God yes. I thought that was clear long ago,” I scoffed.
“I could let Olivia stay for the afternoon class,” she laughed softly. “I’ve missed you.” She slid her hands down my arms and the hair stood on end.
“But we’re not a couple,” I reminded her.
“Hasn’t stopped us yet. I don’t want anyone else, Tucker, I’m just not ready to belong to a man again.” I kept my face as blank as I could, but I could see the hurt in her eyes. I didn’t want to own her. But how could I not be frustrated, when I was finally ready to take that step, and the only thing standing in the way of my future was her past?
She pulled my head down to her and kissed me, but the fire that I’d felt all the way here had been doused in ice water. It wasn’t fair for me to keep demanding her body, when she couldn’t give anything else. Libby wasn’t that kind of woman. It was one of the things that made me want her so bad in the first place.
“Please be safe while I’m gone. No strangers in the house, and if you start getting weird calls, don’t wait to call someone—and call Snell and Wilmer even before you call the police.”
“You’re just going to leave now?”
“Until the Ethics Committee can establish that I didn’t file the complaint against Carl to help win your lawsuit, we don’t want to be seen snuggling in public.” Libby folded her arms under her breasts and glared at me. “I missed you, Libby. What should I say, that I’ll control my feelings so all I want is sex, and never think about you any other way?”
“I’m not being fair. I get it. Please don’t be angry.” Even in the shade of the tree I’d parked under, I could see the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“This is the worst timing ever, and I’m not angry. Sometimes I wish I’d fallen in love with you when I was twenty-one, instead of being such a school-focused nerd.”
“Best-looking nerd ever. If you had liked me, my whole life would’ve turned out differently.” She smiled when she said it, but I knew she wasn’t kidding. Even if we hadn’t ended up together, she probably never would’ve dated Andrew, let alone married him.
“Olivia seems more than worth it, though.”
“She’d be just as special if she was yours, Tuck. But in the end, I’m sort of a package deal. That’s got to be something you aren’t just ready to deal with, but what you really want.” She kissed me on the cheek, and turned back towards the preschool.
Thoroughly deflated in every way, I watched her until she disappeared through the glass door of the school. She wasn’t wrong, and I knew it. But I wasn’t wrong either. We both deserved happiness. I knew she was mine. I hoped she realized that I was hers before it was too late. I’d lost her once because I hadn’t been confident enough to reach out to her, and it had taken ten years to be back where we started. I wasn’t about to wait another one. One way or another, when I came down from the mountain, I was going to make her see things my way.