Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (15 page)

The bitterness in
his tone nearly had Tucker’s lips quirking.  Until he thought back to that night.  He’d been leaving the construction site late.  They had a deadline to meet, and the contractor wasn’t what you’d call flexible.  As he’d been walking down the stairs he saw the woman through the window.  Pretty.  Dressed for a show. Looking rushed and distracted with it, she’d cut down an alley.  Another flight of stairs, another window, and Tucker had seen the man – not so nicely dressed – following her. 

He sighed.  “So I don’t
like to see women getting hassled.  You got me.”

“You thou
ght Allie was going to get hassled in McGruder’s?”

“Pretty woman pulls up in a fancy car, walks into a
redneck dive.  Seemed like a possibility.”

“
Sounds like the plot for a Patrick Swayze movie.”

Tucker gave up and laughed.

“Are you interested in my sister, Tucker?  Romantically speaking.”

The laugh died a quick death.  “What?
No.  Not that she isn’t lovely,” he added, and saw Hawbaker’s lips twitch. 

“Didn’t think so.  But just so that we’re clear.”

“Clear that you wouldn’t want her involved with me?” Annoyance made his words clipped.

“Clear that I wouldn’t want you to play my baby sister against her best friend.  Hello, Mrs. Burgess.”

Before Tucker could disabuse him of that notion, an older woman dressed in a linen pantsuit and pearls came toward them, car keys in her hand.  “I’m sorry.  I guess I didn’t realize that this wasn’t part of Allison’s property.”

Hawbaker turned to
speak to her, an easy smile on his face.  “It’s no problem,” he said, patting her wrinkled hand.  “Just a little misunderstanding.”

CHAPTER NINE

THE
voices outside his open window woke Tucker up.

He’d been up un
til well after three a.m., trying to find the groove he’d been bumped out of after wrangling over the cars parked on his lawn, and whatever o’clock in the damn morning was entirely too early to have to deal with this crap.

Ironic, considering he’d lived with – and slept through – sirens, traffic noises, and the general audio chaos of the city from the time he was four years old.

Not to mention that there’d been millions of people in New York, and some of them had lived a hell of a lot closer to him than Sarah did now.  But none of them – not one – had gotten under his skin in such a consistent manner.

“This coffee sure
’s good.” An older male voice served up the words with what Tucker thought of as an extra slice of yokel.  “What’s this dark stuff sprinkled on the whipped cream?”

“Those are chocolate shavings.”  Th
en there was Sarah’s voice, dripping with a warm, smooth honey that somehow scratched at his nerves like nails. 

Tucker
grabbed an extra pillow to put over his head.

“
I really appreciate you coming out this morning, Bodie.  What would it take to move this cottage?  You think it can be done?”

The pillow stalled midair.

“Well, it ain’t brick-clad, which makes it easier.  Wood siding’ll transport without taking it apart.  Plus, Talbot Hawbaker built this here structure himself. It’s rock solid.”  There came a sound like a fist rapping on wood.  “And the whole thing’s small enough to fit on a flatbed truck.”

“What about the porches?” The redhead sounded concerned
, and Tucker shoved the pillow under his head instead.  The conversation was getting interesting. 

“
Noah just put these on for me.  I hate to think how he’s going to react if I tell him he did all that work and I’m just going to turn around and rip them off.”

“
And fine work it is, too.  You can tell him I said so. Don’t you worry.  Each piece’ll get labeled so we can reassemble the porches on the new site. Then we’ll get the main part of the structure up on the cribs, put the hydraulics under the framework and –”

As the old man rambled on about unified jacking systems
and other technical terminology, Tucker chewed over the fact that it sounded like Sarah was moving.  Or her house was, at any rate. 

Part of him
– the part that liked, and had made a living, working with his hands – wanted to casually stroll on down there, strike up a discussion with the contractor.  For clearly, despite the yokel in his voice, the man knew his business.   And relocating a whole structure was something Tucker had heard of, but never seen done.

The logistics of it
fascinated him.

Part of him – the part that had been so annoyed with being awakened – wanted to celebrate his impending good fortune.

And part – a part he was trying very hard to dismiss – wondered who the hell this Noah was
.  And if he was the asshole who’d put that bruise on Sarah’s arm.

“Gonna have to take out that big pine there to make
the move,” the man named Bodie was saying.  “A tree that size is going to cost ya. Seems a shame you have to go to all this trouble and expense just for some extra parking.”

“Yeah, well,
maybe it won’t come to that.  But if it does, I don’t see that we’ll have much of a choice.  We can’t expect to be packed like we were last night on a regular basis, but if we don’t have enough parking, we’ll lose business.  Lose business, you lose money.  Sometimes you have to spend it to make it.”

“Ain’t that the truth.  Ran into Sally Fremont
at the post office this morning.  You know she’s kin to Eileen Burgess’s husband. Said the Pettigrew boy had young Hawbaker make Eileen move her car last night.”

“Th
at’s one of the main reasons I called you,” she agreed.  “I’d hoped to put this off for a while, but after last night, I can see that the problem’s a little more immediate than I thought.  It’s hardly conducive to business to have our customers hassled by the police.”

Hassled
? Tucker thought, annoyed.  The only police hassling that had gone on last night had been directed toward himself.

“
Maybe he’d sell or lease you girls that little piece of his land, seein’ as how it butts right up to your space there.”

She laughed. 
“He’s a Pettigrew, Bodie.  As much as I’d like to have that land, I’d rather keep my arm and my leg.”

S
omething like outrage began to swell in Tucker’s chest.  Sarah had to know his window was open, and that he could probably hear every word they said. 

The fact that she was painting him with the brush of his grandfather’s greed struck him as particularly u
nfair.  Tucker might be a Pettigrew, and he might be a bastard, but he’d busted his ass to get to where he was.  He could have taken the easy way out, if he’d only sold his soul. But he’d managed to drum up enough integrity to tell the old man to shove it.

It was time he and his neighbor had a little come-to-Jesus talk.
 

Tucker’d flung off the sheet and was halfway to the door before he realized he was naked. 

“Bet she’d enjoy that,” he muttered as he scooped up pants from the wood floor. 

He stalked past Mason’s room to see his friend sprawled face
down on the iron bed, and amused himself by banging on the door.

“Christ!”  Mason shot up, eyes wild and Tucker said “My bad” before stomping down the stairs.
On his way through the kitchen – which was the heart of any home, and therefore justified his attention, no matter what Mason had to say – Tucker noticed that the damn Brit had come home with another plate of goodies last night.  He glowered at the leftover crumbs, at the cold coffee pot sitting on the piece of plywood currently serving as counter.  Damn kitchen was ugly as hell, and that coffee pot may as well have been a flower pot, considering every cup he’d brewed tasted like dirt.

Tucker
hit the back porch just as Sarah was opening her front door.  The old man had disappeared.

“Hey!”

That got her attention.  He was grimly pleased when she spilled a little of her coffee.  Why should he be the only one who was caffeine deprived?  Her hand tightened on the doorknob, but she didn’t have the sense to go inside and lock the door.  No, she raised her pointy chin instead.

“Nice outfit.”

Tucker didn’t even glance at his bare chest.  It wasn’t like she hadn’t already seen it.  “I can’t sell it.”

“Well, I can understand why.  Your body’s
good, but your personality probably scares the hell out of potential customers.”

Because the heat of temper
had begun to simmer, his next words fell like chips of ice.  “The house, the lot.  Any of it.  It’s all tied up in a trust.”

“
Bully for you.  I gather you were listening in on my conversation.”

“No, I was sleeping.  Your conversation assaulted my ears.”

“You were sleeping?”  Her eyes went wide with fake remorse.  “Gee, sorry to have woken you at” she glanced at her watch “nine a.m.  That’s the problem with us working stiffs.  Up and at ‘em before noon.”

“
And some of us,” he said between his teeth “were working until after three last night.”

“Watching
someone else scrape paint must be a real chore.”

T
he sense of injustice was a whetstone that honed the edge of his tongue.

“Did you ask me?” His tone was silky, lethal.  “Did you ask me about selling
or leasing that front piece of my property?”

She looked ever so slightly taken aback.  But then fire leapt in her eyes and she stormed down off
the porch.  “Did I ask if you’d lease, or sell?  No
.
” She aimed a coral-tipped finger at his face, smelling of good coffee and misplaced indignation.  “And gee, I wonder why.  Could it be because last night I
asked
if you’d overlook a few cars parked on your property for the space of a couple hours?  We saw how well that turned out.  But then, as they say, money talks and bullshit walks.  I guess I should have offered to pay you.”

He
wouldn’t stand for being confused with his grandfather any longer.    

“Tucker.” 
He grabbed her finger and jammed it into his chest.  “Not
Carlton.”

The raw sizzle of anger snapped, leapt in the breath of air between them.  And as their eyes met, locked, edged into a kind of heat that was less welcome.

Tucker stepped back, and Sarah’s next words came out shaky.  “Yes, well, it doesn’t really make a difference, does it?  You already said you won’t sell.”

“Not won’t. 
Can’t. 
I told you, there’s a trust involved.  If I tried to sell, or even use the property for commercial purposes – like, gee, a parking lot – it reverts back to Carlton’s estate.  I’m sorry about your dilemma, but I’m not letting that happen.” 

“Why not?  It
’ll all be yours eventually.”

The scope of her misapprehension had the hackles rising on his neck.  “There’s a little saying about assumption.  In this case, however, I’m pretty sure the only ass here is you.”

The heat that ignited in her eyes this time had nothing to do with lust.

“You are
such
a jerk.” She ground her finger back into his chest.

“At least I
don’t make sweeping presumptions instead of just stating my business to someone’s
face
.
”

He hadn’t realized how loud his voice had grown until a door slammed, and the old black woman came out onto the bookstore’s back porch.

“Sarah?”

“I’m fine, Josie.  Just having a little neighborly discussion.”

The woman pinned Tucker with a menacing glare before she headed back inside, muttering under her breath, and the skin on the back of his neck prickled. Mason was right.  The old lady was a little scary.

“Okay
.”  Sarah drew his attention back to the conversation.  “I made assumptions.”  Her chest rose and fell beneath her long-sleeved T-shirt, and Tucker refused to notice that it was magnificent.  The chest, not the shirt.  The shirt, he suspected, was worn to cover up that damn bruise.  “Although let me just state for the record that I might have spoken with you directly if you’d been even the
slightest
bit approachable.”

Tucker opened his mouth
to argue, but was forced to admit that she was right.  Never sociable under the best of circumstances, he’d been even more introverted and curmudgeonly since he’d come to Sweetwater.  A point Mason had been all too eager to make last night.

Not to mention that
since he had the kitchen skills of a… he had no kitchen skills.  Living in New York, with a restaurant or a vendor on every corner, it just hadn’t been necessary to learn to cook.  An argument he’d stood by, even when his mom had tried to coerce him. 

But here, in the wilds of South Carolina,
he hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee in weeks.