Then He Kissed Me: A Cottonbloom Novel (3 page)

“You don’t think”—he cleared his throat and side-eyed her—“Sawyer had anything to do with the gazebo fire?”

Her smile thinned and her eyes narrowed. “Absolutely not. Who said he did?”

“No one. Well, no one besides Regan thinks he did it.” Nash had a hard time believing someone as smart and level-headed as Sawyer would torch the gazebo, but then again, the man had planned to drop a half-dozen rabbits into Regan’s mother’s prize tomato garden. Regan had caught Sawyer in the act.

“Regan’s motivations are more personal than professional, if you ask me,” she said with more than a hint of antipathy.

Nash would have said the same of Sawyer, but he kept his opinion to himself. Tally looked ready to defend her brother to the death. “Say what you will, but the woman can get things done. Businesses on the Mississippi side of River Street are booming. And she has a solid plan for the contest money from
Heart of Dixie
magazine if she wins.”

“So does my—” A text buzzed her phone on the bar between them. She glanced at the screen, her forehead crinkling.

“Is that your escape text?”

She set the phone back on the bar, facedown. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought all girls had some system in place if some weirdo dude was hassling them. You know, your friend calls or texts you and all of a sudden something very important requires your attention somewhere far, far away.”

“Are you a weirdo?” The worry cleared from her face, her smile making her green eyes sparkle.

“I do get ridiculously excited about
Star Wars
.”

“Really? I pictured you as more of an Indiana Jones fan.”

“Why’s that?”

She raised her eyebrows and harrumphed. “Knights Templar, Holy Grail. I can only imagine what percentage of your classes are female.”

“Professor Jones was an archaeologist.” He took another sip of his Scotch and shook his head. Now that she mentioned it, a good eighty percent of the classes he’d taught as an associate professor at Edinburgh had been female. He stilled. Was she insinuating women signed up for his classes because they might find him attractive? Did
she
find him attractive? Embarrassment followed by a wave of longing incinerated his insides and triggered another spate of coughing.

Her eyes flared before she burst into laughter. This was the laugh he remembered, and he tumbled back twenty years.

“Ohmigod, you don’t even realize, do you?”

“Realize what?”

“Better if you don’t know.” She grinned.

Her cheeks were flushed, and dark hair that had escaped her braid wisped around her face. Unlike most of the women in the bar, she wasn’t wearing a skirt or heels. Her simple blue T-shirt emphasized lean curves, and her dark-wash jeans were tucked into a pair of black motorcycle boots. Smudged black eyeliner emphasized the only thing about her that was soft. In her laughter, her intense green eyes shed their wariness and turned warm and welcoming.

He smiled back and propped his chin up on his hand, leaning in closer. “I can assure you I am stodgy and boring.”

“Really?” Her voice dripped sarcasm, but she mimicked his stance, so they were only a few inches apart, their elbows nearly touching on the bar. “What do you do for fun?”

“I like to explore creepy, cobwebby catacombs full of dead people.”

Her smile faltered. “Are you serious?”

“Yep.”

“I’m pretty sure Cottonbloom is fresh out of dead-body-stuffed catacombs. How are you keeping yourself entertained? Are you dating anyone?”

“Nope. How about you?”

She glanced at her phone. “Not at the moment.”

Even though she’d voiced a denial, his spidey sense tingled at her slight hesitation. A woman as tough and beautiful and smart as Tally probably had men crawling all around her. Had he missed his window already? Or had she and Heath Parsons gotten back together? He forced his voice to stay light and teasing. “What would you suggest for entertainment?”

“You could pull up a chair with the rest of us to watch these festivals unfold. Ten-to-one odds that they’ll get us on the national news—and not in a complementary way. More like a point-and-laugh-at-the-rednecks kind of way.”

“That’s not good. I’ll be implicated if someone starts digging for dirt.”

“How so?”

“I might have been involved in the bunny kerfuffle last month.”

She blinked at him a couple of times before bursting into husky laughter. He couldn’t help but smile back. She’d turned into a beautiful woman, if an intimidating one. He’d had to screw up his courage to walk across the bar and take the seat next to her. She seemed to have some sort of force field around her that repelled men. The vibe alternated between “back off” and “you are beneath my notice.”

He held his hands up. “Are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not … Yes, I am, but not in a bad way. I like the way you talk. It’s cute.”

“
Cute?
Geez, next you’ll be putting ribbons in my hair.” “Cute” was the word any man of legal age dreaded hearing from an attractive woman.

“I didn’t say
you
were cute, you’re…” Her gaze drifted over him.

“I’m what?”

“Definitely something other than cute.”

The way she said it made him think it was meant as a compliment. “What else is there to do?”

“Let’s see … Uncle Delmar and some of his buddies play bluegrass out on River Street the occasional Saturday evening in the summer. Turns into a kind of block party. They built that new movie theater up by the college. An ice cream shop opened this spring on the Mississippi side. And, there’s this charming establishment.” She presented the bar like a game show host presenting a prize.

“Wow. You’re really stretching for entertainment.”

“God, I know. You’re going to regret moving back.”

“I doubt that,” Nash said before throwing back the last of his Scotch.

The front door opened and a breeze gusted around the bar, curling smoke around them. Bands were tightening around his lungs, and he forced himself to breathe slowly. Call it prideful or just plain foolish, but he didn’t want to pull out his inhaler in front of her.

“You could come down to the gym. You look like you’re in good shape. Do you spar?” Her eyes flashed over his body again. Was she checking him out? Or assessing how easily she might kick his butt? Deciphering the ancient scrawls of monks was effortless compared to reading women.

“A little.” Gaining early admittance to college at sixteen had made him an easy target for teasing. The fact he’d been a gawky late bloomer who looked closer to twelve than sixteen put a bull’s-eye on his back, and he’d taken a martial art class at the urging of his counselor.

Martial arts had given him friends and confidence—two things he’d never had in abundance. When he’d moved to Scotland for graduate school, he’d taken up boxing, finding the workout and regimen more suited to his energy levels. It was an outlet for his generally sedentary work and a way he kept a handle on his asthma.

“Why don’t you come down one day after your last class and I’ll put you through your paces.”

“I’m not teaching this summer, actually.”

“You’re not working?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m finishing up a paper on Charlemagne for publication in a trade magazine and catching up on my reading—both academic and for pleasure—and planning for my fall classes.”

Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she sat up straight on the stool, swinging her legs back around to face the bar. She toyed with her still half-full beer glass, but didn’t take a sip. An awkwardness had descended, but he wasn’t sure why.

His nervousness grew in the silence. He’d worked hard over the years to control his ingrained shyness when it came to the opposite sex, but Tallulah was different. He wanted her to like him, dammit. He didn’t want to take her home—not yet anyway—he just wanted a chance to get to know her now that they were grown. The closed-off look on her face made him wonder if he’d already blown it.

“Do you still go down to the river?” He choked off another coughing fit.

She side-eyed him, but didn’t turn to face him again. The connection that had been knitting itself together had frayed. “Not so much anymore. Sawyer bought a house that backs up to the river farther into the parish, but”—she shrugged—“it lost its magic somewhere along the way.”

He coughed again and his hand slipped into his pocket. He wasn’t going to make it much longer. “Listen. I have to head out.” He stifled more chuffing coughs as he slid off the stool. “I’m going to take you up on your offer though. When’s a good time to drop by the gym?”

“Right after lunch is our slow time. Hey, are you all right?”

Squeezing his lips together to stem another round of lung-scraping coughs, he backed away, nodding. He hit the front door and launched himself outside, taking big gulping breaths of humid air. Not caring who saw him now, he fumbled with his inhaler and took a hit.

The medicine coupled with the clean air offered immediate relief. He slid into his imported Land Rover Defender and banged his forehead against the wheel a couple of times. No doubt, Tallulah Fournette thought he was the biggest weirdo on either side of Cottonbloom.

Chapter Three

Tally stared at the door half-expecting Nash to bound back inside. His exit had been abrupt. Had she said something to scare him off? Or maybe it was her in general. She didn’t exactly excel at small talk, although with him she hadn’t even been trying and their conversation had flowed as naturally as the river through town.

Until he mentioned how he was spending his summer reading. Of course he spent his free time reading. The man was a genius to hear his aunt Leora talk. Considering Nash left Cottonbloom for college at sixteen, the woman wasn’t bragging.

The Nash she remembered was a sweet, skinny kid who waded upriver to her house every chance he got. He’d become an integral part of her life and her best friend. She rarely allowed herself to dwell on that time, because of the mish-mash of emotions it invoked. She’d gone from being the revered and protected baby girl to a student failing in school to a parentless child struggling to survive her grief, all over the course of one year.

Nash was wrapped up at the core like a spool holding all her memories together. But then both their lives fell apart. His mother finally succumbed to the breast cancer that had spread through her body, and her parents were killed by a drunk driver. By the time she’d emerged from the comalike state of grief, his aunt had whisked him away to her stately gingerbread Victorian house on one of the oldest, richest streets of Cottonbloom, Mississippi, and enrolled him in the elementary school across the river.

With Nash gone, she began a slow retreat into herself, acting like her struggles with reading and near-failing grades didn’t bother her, but each cutting comment by a teacher or classmate was another ding to her self-confidence. It didn’t help that both her brothers were near-geniuses themselves, even though Cade had been forced to drop out to take care of the family. The constant comparisons to Golden Boy Sawyer had grated.

She had drifted in with a group of tough kids who smoked weed, partied hard, and generally rebelled against anything resembling authority. But between her parents and Cade, right from wrong had been drilled into her, and while the other kids kept to the path that would land most of them on the wrong side of the law, Tally could see beyond high school. She dreamed big—just like Cade and Sawyer—and like them, she was a risk-taker.

Her phone vibrated, and she tapped her finger on the back, but didn’t turn it over. Nash hadn’t even asked for her number. Did she want him to ask for her number? Why? So they could hold hands and sing “Auld Lang Syne”?

She slid off the stool. Her lips twitched up thinking about Nash’s lopsided grin. The night hadn’t been a complete waste after all. Would he actually come to the gym? Her stomach tumbled with a combination of anticipation and nerves. She tucked her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and headed toward the door.

A man holding a pool stick stepped into her path. “What’s up, Tallulah?” He said her name as if he were making a joke. “My boy’s been looking for you. Wants to talk.”

Bryce was her ex’s butt-kisser and an all-around jerk. They had been fraternity brothers at Ole Miss until they’d both flunked out. It would be easy enough to flip the stick up and rack him in the balls. But she didn’t.

“I’ve said all I have to say to him. Next up is a restraining order if he doesn’t leave me alone. How about passing that tidbit along?” She kept her voice low.

Bryce glanced over her shoulder toward the door and chuckled before dropping to take a shot, the balls clinking off one another but none falling into a pocket. The back of her neck burned and her heart jumped around in her chest like a rabbit on speed.

She turned to find Heath standing inside the door, effectively making sure she had to go through him to exit. His hair was dark, his eyes flinty, his biceps huge. After two months of dating, she hadn’t discovered a gooey center underneath his frowny, tough exterior. Although he had been born a ’Sip, after Ole Miss sent him packing, he settled over the line in Louisiana, working a variety of blue-collar jobs. Most of his time, energy, and money went into training for amateur MMA fights with the hopes of making it big.

She approached him, attempting a serene, unaffected expression. “Excuse me, I’m heading home,” she said in a honeyed voice her brothers had learned long ago signaled danger.

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

She wanted to tell him no, but they had already become the center of attention. The buzz of voices in the bar had diminished, and a glance around showed a fair number of people looking their way. She didn’t want to give anyone fodder to take back to Sawyer or, even worse, Cade. In his eyes, she would always be his ten-year-old little sister who needed his protection.

After Cade took off when she was nineteen, she’d handled things herself and didn’t like to rely on anyone. She’d made decisions and dealt with the fallout, in her business and personal life. It had taken two months of pep talks and internal negotiations for her to call Cade and ask him for a loan to start the gym. Her business success only highlighted her string of personal failures, Heath being the pinnacle.