Chapter Thirteen
Mike banged his fists on this hood of his truck. When that brought no satisfaction, he tugged at the roots of his hair.
Stupid
, she’d said
.
Fuck. That.
No. This was bullshit. He was not accepting this. He was not going to hide her, was not going to do without her. Period. She was just going to have to get over it.
He pushed off his truck and returned to the back porch only to find it empty. He turned in the yard and backed up to look at the old, weather streaked windows of the second floor. God, this house was in bad repair.
The formally white, beautiful home looked mostly rotted. Two of the five second story windows were broken. Only a single screen remained on one. The roof was missing several shingles. He squinted, seeing something over the roof in sections, some sort of blue patches, but he couldn’t tell what they were. The once tall and beautiful chimney was crumbling.
His jaw hardened. He should have seen this sooner. “Tiffany!”
There was no answer. He searched all the windows as close as he could for shadows, but saw nothing. “Tiffany!”
Still nothing. No. She wasn’t getting away that easy. She’d have to kill him first. He marched up the steps and jerked open the back screen door. The whole damn door ripped from the frame and he stood there, staring at the door in his hand and wood crumbling from the rusted hinges. “What the hell.”
“The house is falling apart. You have to be gentle with her.”
Mike turned around, still holding the door to see Jessie standing there. “I’ll fix that.”
She shrugged and moved up the steps. “Second step on the back porch is iffy. The third step on the front we skip over entirely.”
Mike sat the door aside. “This isn’t safe.”
“It’s home.” She walked in the now open doorway. “Avoid the dining room. The ceiling fan has fallen a bit.”
He peaked in to see the fan holding on by a few wires and the blades were fucking duct taped to the ceiling like they were in a sling. The ceiling itself, was caving from the weight. “Jessie.”
She swallowed. “If you go up the stairs, stay next to the wall. And don’t run. The handrails shake.”
“Jessie, this is insane.”
She turned and shrugged another shoulder. “This is home. It’s the best we can do. Now what did you do to Tiffany to make her run off.”
“She’s being unreasonable.” He followed her into the kitchen, making his steps fast as he passed under the sagging and leaning frame from the breakfast room to the kitchen. It looked like some kind of earthquake damage…only the few quakes to hit this area were so small, you didn’t feel them. “How long has this been like this?”
“A few years. It didn’t all happen at once, of course. Just bits over time. Is Tiffany being unreasonable, or are you?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “She is. She wants to—”
“I know. She wants to take care of you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
She shook her head and pulled a glass from the counter. She lifted a pair of pliers, twisted the faucet on, filled her glass with water and twisted it back off with the tool. “You can either make it right, or I can kill you. There’s not much I can do for her or protect her from, but don’t think for a moment I’ll let someone hurt her and get away with it.”
He eased back a step, not doubting for a second that she wasn’t serious. “I need to find her. Where’s her bedroom?”
“She’s not in her room. She takes walks when she’s upset.” She slanted him a look, a look that said he wasn’t earning himself any favors. “You must have made her cry.”
He swallowed down the knot filling his throat. “It’s not what I wanted. I love her.”
Jessie smiled behind her cup. “Then give her what she wants.”
“I refuse to hide. She’s worth more to me than anything.”
Jessie’s brow rose in response. “If you love her, then you’ll give her what she wants.”
“If she loved me, she’d marry me and that would be the end of it. Time would put her past to rest and everything would be fine.”
Jessie choked on her water. “You asked her to marry you?”
Marry? Had he said that? He sighed, pulling both hands over his face. He had said marry. And he would. He would marry Tiffany McBride in an instant. “No. But she wouldn't marry me anyway.”
“I think it’s only fair to ask and find out.”
“Fuck, Jessie.” He turned in the small kitchen. When he caught sight of the stove missing all but one of the burners and the oven door gone, he turned back to Jessie, unable to take all of this in, at the same time. “She won’t even date me.”
Jessie smiled and placed her glass down. “You don’t have the right ammunition. I’ll be right back. In the meantime, you better start figuring out where she is.”
Mike walked to the back porch and stared at the tree line. Hundreds of acres. She could be anywhere. His pond, maybe? It would be a walk, thirty minutes or so from here to his pond. That’s the only place he knew to start looking.
Jessie moved down the steps and held out a black box.
He took the box and opened up to see a set of wedding bands. One gold man’s band. One slimmer gold band with a modest round diamond set high in the center.
Jessie looked up and blinked, her eyes watery. “Her momma and daddy’s set. She doesn’t know I have them. I told her they’d been buried wearing them. I knew she’d do something like sell them for money otherwise.”
Mike looked up from the pair in the velvet soft box. “Do you know how her father proposed?”
Jessie shook her head. “Not really. I heard it was very romantic and in the woods or something. Anytime they started the story, it turned a little mushy and we ran from the room.”
A memory flashed and he blinked it away, wrapping Jessie in a hug. “I think know where she might be.”
“Where?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead he ran for the woods.
Chapter Fourteen
At the sound of footsteps, Tiffany looked up. And rubbed her eyes. God, she was losing it. She’d sat here crying under this tree long enough, dreaming that Mike would find her and make all this shit go away that she was now seeing things, seeing him coming to her.
He squatted in front of her, looking so real, smelling so real, she dared not breathe before the image would fade away. She reached up and cupped his cheek, the warmth of his skin reached through his roughened cheek against her palm. Lord have mercy, but he even felt real.
“Tiffany.”
She pulled in a quick breath. Sounded real, but he couldn’t be. Nobody knew of this tree. No one would know how to find her. She’d never told a soul of this place. Not even Jessie.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.” Now he would sweep her in his arms, spin her around and tell her that, yes, he would take her and they would hide until after the elections. That she was brilliant and he was so thankful for having such a caring woman in his life that would make such a sacrifice. Not only sacrifice—but
insist!
He nodded. “I love you more than anything in my life, would give you anything you asked of me, but your idea?” He shook his head. “It’s shit and it’s not going to happen.”
Oh, wait.
She frowned and blinked. That was not part of her dream.
He gathered her hands in his and pulled her to her feet. “And you’re just going to have to see that.”
Her mouth opened and closed. She wasn’t expecting this. She needed time to brace for this. “How did you find me?” tumbled out of her mouth.
He smiled and nodded toward the tree. “That tree is right on the border between my property and yours. I walk a lot out here, looking for deer tracks and such. I used to find trash out here.”
“I—”
He covered her lips with his fingers. “Not much. A gum wrapper that probably fell out of your pocket. Little tiny pieces of candy wrapper you’d torn off and the wind likely caught and such. I always wondered where small things like that came from. Jessie just gave me something to give you, I remembered this place and it all just fell together and I knew you’d be here.”
She turned and looked at the heart carving on the tree. “My parents initials.”
He nodded and stepped around her, pulling out his pocket knife. “What I figured.”
He put the blade to the tree trunk to the left and slightly lower than her parents’ and started digging on the tree, scraping bark-off and carving in the tree.
She grabbed his arm. “Stop! What are you doing?”
He flashed a smile. “Wait and see.”
“But…” Her words ended as he started again, drawing the sharp blade along the old trunk and carving into what looked like another heart. She stood back and looked on as he cleaned the heart lines up and swiped away his chippings, then started on cleaning out the center of the heart until it was nothing but smooth bark. He pointed the blade on the top left of the heart and carved a T, then an M. Making quick work, he put a plus sign in the middle and had his initials on the other side just as the sun was setting and the light changed to brilliant orange and red. He stepped next to her, wrapped his arms around her waist and held her tight. He kissed her on the head. “All it needs is a date.”
Bittersweet tears filled her eyes again. The new heart was an exact match to her parents, aside from the date. “Mike, this still doesn’t change anything.”
He turned and dropped to one knee.
Oh, God.
This was too much.
He produced a small black, very ring-sized box. They’d been dating a week! How—when—why would he spend money like that in a week! She looked between the box and his eyes, a mix of fear and hope filling her chest as she waited.
“Tiffany McBride, I love you more than anything, far more than any career.” He opened the box to reveal not one ring, but two. “Will you do the honor of wearing your mother’s wedding ring and marry me?”
And that was the end of it. Her knees ceased to exist. She collapsed. Tears burned and flooded her cheeks. She finally, for the first time in her life, got the hug she’d been needing so damn bad under this tree.
From Mike.
He wrapped her tight, pulled her in so her ear was on his warm chest. His heart thumped against her. “Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you. Just let someone say something to my face about it.”
She sobbed, unable to make words, wondering again if this was a dream. An even better dream than she had imagined.
“You haven’t answered Tiffany.” Even as he said it, he slid her mother’s wedding band on her finger. The clean diamond sparkled under the evening sun. He turned her palm up and dropped her daddy’s ring in her hand, then closed her fingers around it. “We’ll get a gold chain and you can wear your father’s around your neck.”
She shook her head and swiped tears off, only for more to replace them. “No. They’re a pair.” She slid her daddy’s ring on Mike’s finger as if it’d been made for him. “I want you to wear it, if you will.”
“Was that a yes?”
She nodded. “That was a yes, you crazy fool.”
And he kissed her. Kissed her breathless and all the aching pain that had been in her body was happy and pleasurable.
He broke the kiss and tucked her head against his neck. “Good. Until then, you and Jessie are staying with me. That house is not safe.”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t be able to pry Jessie’s cold, dead body out of her Momma and Daddy’s house.”
He stroked up and down her back. “It’s falling apart. I ripped the backdoor off looking for you.”
She winced. “You have to go in the front. The house is fine, it just has a few quirks.”
“I may not be able to get Jessie out, but you are coming home with me.”
She shook her head. “Not until we’re married. I’m not going to make the whole stir up of us getting married worse.”
He hugged her tight. “As soon as possible then. Tomorrow. I don’t want to wait.”
She shrieked. “That’s worse! They’re going to say I’m
pregnant
.”
“Then we won’t start trying for babies for a little until after we’re married. That’ll solve that.”
She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She did both. “This has bad idea written all over it.”
He put his hand under her chin and tipped her up to him. “Usually the bad things are the fun things.”
THE END
Satisfying Her Tastes
Acknowledgements for
Satisfying Her Tastes
Huge special thanks to Tiffaney Phillips who got me in contact with R. Harper Mason. Mason thankfully helped me out with all my geology questions and got me going in the right direction without laughing at me too many times for a few things I wanted to pull. Turns out, he’s from the same area as me and is an author too! http://rharpermason.com/
KJ Reed, as always, thanks for your insight. You help make Apple Trail more by your comments and thoughts. Regardless, this line is too good to not be in this book
somewhere.
So, KJ Reed, I dedicated this to you:
This girl had legs like deep fried drumsticks. Thick at the top, slim on the way down and tanned all over.
*sashizzle*
Thank you to Meredith Webb for helping me out with my heroine’s motorcycle.
Sascha Illyvich for your non-uppity, man drink knowledge.