Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (4 page)

Thunder rumbled soft
ly, like an old man’s grumbling.  Aside from that and the drone of some kind of insect, the evening was unnaturally quiet.  No traffic noises, he realized.  No sirens.  No crowds of busy people.  His own thoughts seemed almost unbearably loud.

The pace was off here, the rhythm not just slower, but different.  In the city, he’d been mostly anonymous, even after he’d begun to make a
minor name for himself.  Just one of the rank and file.

He hadn’t been in Sweetwater two hours before he’d
been singled out and identified as a person of interest.

He supposed he could look at it in one of two ways: as a
novelty, or as an annoyance.

He mostly banked on being annoyed.

As Tucker watched the Spanish moss twitch against a stingy breeze, he imagined the oak outside his window could be considered either romantic or downright spooky, depending on one’s mood.  It was certainly a different view than the brick wall he’d looked at from the desk in his apartment.

He
decided to make this his office.  The atmosphere, the… continuity of using the room as a grown man suited him.  Not quite from cradle to grave, but close enough.

His desk was still on the
truck, one of the few things he and Mason had left for tomorrow.  Not that there’d been that much to begin with.  His apartment had been small, and he’d never been one to care over much about the looks of the chair where he parked his ass.  If he hadn’t gotten entangled with a woman in the business of furniture design, acquiring a few of her pieces, he’d probably have arrived with little more than a mattress and the clothes on his back.

Now he knew where to put the desk, but Tucker didn’t think he was quite ready to settle in behind it. 
There was still too much junk rattling around in his head.  He needed to clear it out, piece by piece, the same way he’d sorted both his and his mother’s belongings.  What needed to go and what had to stay.

He ran his hand over the peeling paint of the windowsill. 
He had enough to do around here in the meantime, anyway.

“In case I haven’t indicated as much to you yet, I’m fairly certain you’ve lost your mind.”

Tucker watched some kind of red bird dart through the twisted branches.  “So you’ve mentioned.”  The entire ride from New York.  “Feel free to leave at any time, Armitage.”

“And miss seeing your head explode
the next time you venture next door?” 

Tucker turned
away from the window. A mocking smile cruised across his best friend’s nearly famous face. 

Tucker
knew he’d overreacted.  But when you were trying to move on, start fresh, you generally wanted to head in a line instead of a circle.  “It caught me off guard.  Sue me.”

Mason pulled away from the doorway and wandered
into the room.  Despite the sweaty T-shirt stuck to his back, the worn floorboards beneath his dusty sneakers, his innate presence turned the empty space into a stage.  “I simply find it odd that you returned to this little backwater that birthed you, and yet seem surprised by the emotional silt that’s kicked up.”

Tucker
looked at the friendly fire trucks, the smiling dogs.  He didn’t know how to explain that he felt… broken.  And for some reason thought he needed to look here for the pieces. 

“
This little
backwater
didn’t birth me.  And anyway, it’s not like I remember any of this.” 

He’d been prepared to remember something.  To feel… something. 
And other than that one brief flash, he’d gotten nothing.

But the bookstore, he hadn’t been prepared for that. 
That was fresh grief, not emotional silt.  After all, he’d practically lived in a bookstore most of his growing up years.  His mother had worked in that store.

Died there.

Jesus.  What the hell was he doing here?

Tired now, more from emotional stress than from the move, Tucker decided he needed some space. 
Between his mother’s friends and co-workers, his own associates and Mason, he’d barely had two minutes to himself since the funeral.  Tucker knew they meant well, but he still felt crowded. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Mason’s hand latched onto Tucker’s arm
as he strode past. “It’s going to take time, mate.”  His expression was sympathetic, the last flicker of amusement having burned out.  “No matter where you stand on the map.”

Because he couldn’t argue with that logic, Tucker
was quiet as he left the room.

SARAH
stepped out onto the new screened porch of her cottage.  She owed her brother big time.  Not only had Noah come through and built shelves, reinforced their porch, ripped out the old tub and added another stall to their bathroom, but he’d thrown up the framework for what had become her little refuge. 

Here, t
he evening air wrapped around her, warm and dark and just a little bit wet.  Thunder rolled, an empty threat, as from the sound of it the storm would pass around them.

Confederate jasmine sweetened the breeze, stirring the damp ends of her just-washed hair. 

She’d drunk her wine, standing up, in the shower.  She figured she deserved it after today.  She’d painted a million yards of trim, inventoried stock, talked to vendors.  A hundred little things that needed to be done before they were operational.

There’d been plenty of progress over the past
couple months.  And a number of setbacks, as well.  But overall, she’d been handling it.  Handling Sweetwater.

Tonight
, memories wanted to stir, old insecurities she’d thought long buried.  Her roots were here, in the loamy soil of this town, and while parts of her had grown, even thrived here, other parts had shriveled.  She hadn’t truly bloomed until she’d left it behind.

Not that her childhood had been
terrible. But it had certainly been humble.  Money was scarce, and she’d felt the sting of it to her pride. Especially after her mother passed, and her father… well, she’d lost her father for a while there, too.

Sarah sighed, not wanting to relive those dark days, even in her mind. 
The whispers, the censorious stares.  And worse, somehow worse, the pity.

I
n a small town, where you grew up surrounded by the same faces year after year, it was difficult to be seen as anything other than the mold you’d been cast in.

And Sarah had desperately wan
ted to be seen as something else.

But s
he’d been too tall, too red-headed to simply fade into the background. And too smart not to know that she wanted more for her life than what Sweetwater offered. 

Her daddy
had been both baffled by her and proud.

John Barnwell
, bless him, had done the best he could with her.  But he was a quiet man, a simple man used to long hours on the water working the fishing boats from which he’d drawn his living, or the occasional lazy afternoon tossing a baseball with his equally laconic son.  He’d had no idea what to do with a bookish young girl with designs on having something... more.

Especially a girl that reminded him
painfully of the wife he’d lost.

Because the o
ld wound ached with unexpected sharpness tonight, Sarah’d picked up a romantic suspense novel for her evening reading.  A few thrills, and some good sweaty sex – even if it was someone else’s – would join the wine and the shower as a kind of hat trick of relaxation therapy.  Looking toward the daybed that hung from thick chains bolted into the ceiling, Sarah anticipated settling in.

Unfortunately, someone else had beaten her to it.
 

“Okay you,” she said to the enormous feline taking up more t
han his fair share of the ticking striped cushion.  “Move over.”

Useless stretched and rolled onto his back.

“You know.” She scratched his tummy.  “You don’t
have
to live up to your name.  You could, I don’t know, look vigilant.  Like if a mouse showed up, you’d know what to do with it.”

Useless closed his eyes.

“Or not.”  Sarah sighed just as a light flicked on next door.

She’
d nearly forgotten about her new neighbors.  Which was amazing, given the fact that Mason… he never had told them his last name, had he?  Anyway, Mason Whosits was the single most beautiful man she’d ever seen in real life, and Tucker Pettigrew was Carlton’s grandson. 

And hadn’t that been a surprise.  The man looked more like a street thug
than the scion of the most prominent family in town. And his behavior hadn’t been much better. 

Who gets upset about living next to a bookstore? 

Smarts weren’t necessary, she guessed, when your fortune was inherited. But for having grown up in New York City – according to Will – he appeared to be a lot more sweat and brawn than spit and urban polish.

Of course
, he
had
been moving furniture in almost ninety degree heat. 

Which was odd, now that she considered it. 
There were professionals for that sort of thing.

And
Sarah wondered what Tucker was doing moving into one of their shoddier properties instead of staying out at River’s End.  The place was certainly big enough. 

But
given the choice between living with that mean old bastard and living in a barn, Sarah would happily bunk down in the hayloft. 

R
eally, the why of it didn’t matter.  Once word about Pettigrew’s grandson got around – and it would get around.  She hadn’t been gone so long that she’d forgotten the way gossip drifted on Sweetwater’s air like dust.  Once it got around, Sarah had a feeling they’d have even more citizens happening by to check out their progress.

And to get a look at
the man who would be Sweetwater’s un-coroneted king.    

Sarah was enough of a businesswoman to
recognize the opportunity, and to have harangued Josie into baking a batch of her regionally famous chocolate chip cookies. Sarah planned to hand them out along with the business cards that had come in that day. 

Stir people’s appetites while feeding their curiosity.

Judging from the morning’s altercation, Tucker Pettigrew was probably going to be wholly unpleasant to live next door to, which was all the more reason to capitalize on the proximity while she could.

Satisfied
for now, Sarah plumped up a denim pillow behind her back.  And pushing the bed into a gentle sway with her foot, lost herself in another world.

The chains creaked, keeping time with the cicada concerto going on outside.
The breeze whispered the night’s secrets in her ear, but what had been so welcome mere minutes ago now lifted chill bumps on her skin.

Sarah looked up, marking her place in the book.

There was an odd, bitter tang to the air, the sweet scent of jasmine having been replaced by something pungent. It took her a moment, but then she identified it.

Cigarette smoke.

Sarah favored the unseen occupants of the house next door with a frown. Apparently the unpleasant next-door-neighbor thing was commencing.

Determined not to let a Pettigrew ruin her evening, Sarah
shook her head, returning her attention to her book. But try as she might, she simply couldn’t focus on the story.

Something seemed… off, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
And it wasn’t just the faint scent of smoke which continued to linger, despite the fact that the air seemed to have exhausted its energy, too heavy now to stir.

E
ven the cicadas had fallen silent.

Shivering despite the languid heat, Sarah peered out through the screen. Moonlight stream
ed through the gaps in the tree tops, casting inky shadows. 

Something hid there.

She had no idea what had caused that notion to pop into her head, but now that it was there, she didn’t seem able to evict it. The little hairs on the back of her neck, dampened with a fine sheen of sweat, lifted.

Motionless except for her eyes, Sarah scanned the clumps of foliage that formed a living privacy screen behind the cottage.  The feeling of being watched was so strong that it was akin to a physical touch.

“You’re being ridiculous,”
she murmured to herself, but her stomach didn’t seem inclined to agree. It had folded itself over in some sort of panic-induced origami
.

Several moments passed in which she debated the wisdom of bolting inside versus calling out some sort of warning. Like… what?
Hey, I’ve got a paperback, and I’m not afraid to use it.

The absurdity of that almost made her laugh, but then h
er eyes were drawn to the broad base of an ancient oak, where one shadow seemed to have detached itself from the others.

“Meow.”

Sarah jumped, dropping her book. It slid off the swing with a clatter, causing Useless, who’d been sleeping, to twitch his tail in annoyance.