Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (6 page)

“
Josie’s a culinary genius.  Y’all are going to sell these like hotcakes.  I bumped into Darryl Tolliver – looking pretty dang cute in his police uniform – and he told me you were passing out free samples.  Nice way to get people in to have a look around, as if they weren’t all dying for an excuse to poke their nose in anyway.  A bookstore.”  She polished off the snicker doodle and winked at Sarah.  “I should have known.  God knows you forced enough of them on me as a kid.  ‘Course, I’m planning on being a teacher, so it’ll come full circle soon enough.  Y’all need any part time help?”      

Feeling like
she’d just been steamrolled, very gently, Allie blinked at Sarah, who started to laugh.  Her long curls coiled like copper springs as she threw back her head.  “I think we’ve just conducted our first job interview,” she said to Allie.

“Since I transferred to the local university branch, I’ll be living at home.”  Rainey rolled her
dark eyes.  “But I’ll be free most evenings and weekends.  And come on, books?  Coffee?  Cookies?” She snagged another one.  “Who wouldn’t want to work here.  Is something burning?”

“Oh, shoot!”  Allie scrambled to grab an oven mitt. 
She must have forgotten to set the timer.  The blackened chunks of sugared rock she pulled out weren’t even good enough to feed Sarah’s cat.  “I’ll just…” she waved off the fumes, made a vague gesture toward the back door.   “Maybe the birds will eat them.” 

She carried out the baking sheet while Sarah and Rainey discussed
the younger woman’s potential employment. Allie marveled at how casually Rainey had come in, chatted, and asked for a job.  Allie’d never been that… easy with people.

She tossed the burnt cookies off of the porch.

“Ouch!”

Allie glanced up to see Mason ducking under a hail of
projectile pastries.

“Oh no
.”  She felt like an idiot.  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“No, no.” 
He reached up to brush blackened crumbs out of his thick blond hair.  “My fault entirely.  I should have… are these biscuits?”

“What?  No.  I mean yes.
At least, they were supposed to be,” she said as a charcoal corpse dropped onto his dusty sneaker.

“Ah… if you’re still in the way of looking for opinions, I think these might be a touch overdone.”

The smile that moved her lips quivered like a muscle long out of use. But when he looked up, an answering grin spreading across his face, she slipped into what she realized must be her default mode when it came to him: stunned stupid.

“I
’ve been watching people come and go all day, and I have to confess that I was coming over here to shamelessly beg.”  He looked at the detritus around his feet.  “Although this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

It took her a full minute to realize it was her turn to speak.  “I’m sorry.”  Crap, she’d already said that.
  And when he merely continued to smile at her like a patient adult with a slow witted child, added “I burned them.”

“You don’t say.”

Because she was making an even bigger fool of herself than she had the first time she’d met him, Allie told herself to get a grip.  So he was good-looking – okay, he was flat-out
gorgeous –
but it wasn’t like she was in the market for a gorgeous man.  Or any kind of man, really.  And even if she were, men who looked like Mason didn’t bother with women like her. 

“
There are more cookies in the kitchen,” she told him, because at least she still knew how to be gracious.  “I’d be happy to make up a plate for you.  And maybe a cool glass of lemonade to wash them down?  It’s awfully hot today.”

“
Ah, Tucker has had me scraping paint all afternoon.” Mason grimaced at his filthy jeans and sweat-stained T-shirt.  “Perhaps I shouldn’t come inside…”

“Don’t be silly.
I’d love to have you.”  Too late, Allie realized how that sounded.  “Inside, I mean.”  Her cheeks flushed as his lips twitched.

“
And I’d love to be had,” he said blandly.  “Inside.”

The heat traveled from her face to a region farther south.

“Allie.”

Everything that had begun to
warm inside her chilled at the sound of the familiar voice.  Turning away from Mason, she looked toward the other end of the porch.

“
Hello, Wesley.”

He looked… good, was all she could think.  His
light brown hair freshly cut, his lightweight suit crisp and neat as always. 

But it was the
distance in his brown eyes that made her yearn to hide.  Just fold herself away into smaller and smaller compartments until there was nothing left for him to see.

Because she couldn’t, Allie firmed the lip that wanted to tremble.  And calling on every bit of
the dignity that had been drummed into her since birth, forced a congenial smile to her face.  “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“I heard voices back here.”
 

And
given the way his gaze flicked over Mason’s disheveled, sweaty clothes, it was clear he wasn’t impressed by what he was seeing.

Well, screw him.

“I need to speak with you.  Alone.”

She
flashed back to the last time he’d said those words. The Beaufort County Bar Association Christmas party. Then, she’d been wearing a Chanel suit and Wesley’s engagement ring.  “I’m afraid you caught me at a bad time, Wesley.”

“I understand you’re busy.” He
frowned at the baking sheet, the apron she wore over paint-stained shorts.  “But it’s important.”  

Allie had thought, at one time, that if she could just get Wesley alone
again, just talk to him,
that they’d be able to resolve their differences.  But that had been heartbreak and desperation speaking. And while her heart might not be whole, she was no longer desperate.  She didn’t want to be alone with Wesley.

But nor, she thought, as she slid a sideways glance at Mason, did she want to
have this conversation in front of a virtual stranger.  Particularly this one.

“Alright.” She mustered an
other smile.  Maybe if she faked enough of them her face would simply freeze in that position.  “Sarah is in the kitchen, Mason.  I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to get you those, er, biscuits.”

His
answering smile was pure appreciation, though it dimmed considerably as he looked past her shoulder.  “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

Giving Wesley one last glance, Mason climbed the steps and faded into the kitchen.

“That was rude.”  She turned on Wesley
, and had the pleasure of seeing shock replace the look of superiority on his face.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mason is a friend.”  Sort of.

“
Well then, I see your taste in friends continues to decline.”

“My friends are lovely.  It’s my taste in
lovers that seems to be lacking.”

Fury leapt into those mild brown eyes, but h
e put his hands up as if to calm himself down.

“
Look.  I didn’t come here to get into all this again.”  Taking a deep breath, he bent to pick up his briefcase.  When he stood back up, his face was a mask.  The same mask he’d worn the day he’d broken their engagement – and her heart – just weeks before their wedding.  “I heard down at the courthouse that your brother’s divorce papers finally came through today.  And someone said they saw him at McGruder’s.”

Oh… Harlan.  He hadn’t said a word. “Wesley –”

He swiped a hand through the air.  “Forget it.  I just thought you’d want to know.”

Allie
watched him walk away.  And considered that she’d spent too much of her life doing just that.  Trying to do the right thing.  And watching the people she loved leave anyway. But when she turned toward the kitchen to get her keys, she saw Sarah standing at the door.  

“I’m
sorry.”  She shrugged helplessly.

Sarah simply held out her hand, dangling Allie’s keys.
  “He’s an asshole.”   

Allie closed her eyes, because it was too hard to see the
absolute understanding in Sarah’s.  Her friend was the only one who knew exactly how far she’d fallen after Wesley broke it off.

“I have to go get Harlan home before he does something stupid.  I don’t want Will to have to put him in jail.”

“Go.” The keys were pressed into Allie’s hand.  “Call me if you need any help.”

TUCKER
loaded the last of the five gallon paint buckets into the bed of the pickup.  He’d never seen himself as a truck person before – hell, he’d never seen himself as a vehicle person before, considering he’d never owned one – but he had to admit that the shiny black Ford he’d leased after turning in the moving van the other day made something essentially masculine hum through his blood.

Almost like having your first woman, he thought ruefully, running his palm over the tailgate as he locked it into place.  It gave you
a little thrill of possession whenever you felt her vibrating beneath your hands.

Because he felt ridiculous, at his age, to be getting mooney-eyed over a hunk of metal, Tucker wiped the sweat off of his brow
before fishing in his pocket for the key.  Damn, it was hot.  The big oak trees that spread over everything blocked the worst of the sun, but there was only so much trees could do.  Especially when the air was wet enough to swim in. 

If he’d given any consideration to the fact that his parents’ – his – house didn’t have
central air, he didn’t recall it now.  But spending the past several nights tossing and turning on damp sheets while various bloodsucking insects came through his open windows made him realize that he was either going to have to invest in a couple of those window air conditioners or at the very least, some screens.  Otherwise Mason would wake up one day to find him exsanguinated in his bed. 

Maybe he should cut both himself and Mason a break tonight and
find a nice, cool bar to hang out in for a few hours.  As long as he could convince Mason to keep his wandering eye – and other body parts – to himself. 

He’d managed to keep
his friend too busy to have any leftover energy to vent, because Tucker didn’t feel like dealing with the fallout that would end up his problem when Mason headed home.  Because women – even sensible, sophisticated women – tended to want a repeat performance.  And Mason was rarely interested in an encore.  Tucker had had to run interference with more than his fair share of jilted, angry females over the years.  So while he was here, Mason could damn well keep it zipped up.  Tucker already had enough crap to wade through in this town.

As he was wondering where the
popular hangouts were in a place like this – so that he could hopefully avoid them – Tucker spotted a flickering beer sign in a window down the street.  The building was squat, brick and dumpy, an ugly duckling in a town filled with charming swans.  There were only two cars in the gravel parking lot, both of them pickups considerably less sparkly than his.  One of them had a gun rack. The other a decal of the confederate flag.

As Tucker considered that
that particular establishment might not be the best choice for a Yankee transplant and a man who wore stage makeup in his nine-to-five, a dark green Jaguar pulled up next to the dusty pickups in the lot.  And he watched, with some surprise, as the little dark-haired woman from the bookstore – Hawbaker’s sister – climbed out. 

Christ, she was tiny. 
A little on the wan side, too, with those huge blue eyes almost swallowing her face.  She appeared harassed – so harassed, in fact, that she didn’t shut her car door all the way before heading inside.  The thick plank wood of the bar’s front door nearly smacked her in the back of the head after she’d finally wrested the thing open.

Tucker looked at her car, then at those pickups, back toward the dingy windo
ws of the ugly bar.  And got a little itch on the back of his neck that he recognized. 

Desperate to ignore it,
he told himself that this was not his problem.  And managed to climb into the cab before the guilt set in.

His mom had been small
like that. A single mother, living in the city, with only her wits for protection.  Not that her wits had been anything to sneeze at. But Tucker remembered the fear on her face when she’d come into their apartment after work one night.  She’d stopped by the market, then cut through the alley because it had begun to snow.  He could still see the dusting of white on her dark jacket, the flakes the same color as her skin. 

Because
two punks had mugged her as she’d cut through that alley.  Luckily they hadn’t done much more than scare her before making off with her purse and what little cash she’d had left. 

He’d been eleven
.  Too young, too damn small to make a difference. 

But he’
d grown. Hardened. And because he’d never forgotten his mother’s face, he’d also never stood idly by whenever someone smaller or weaker than him needed assistance.