Tennessee almost told her that, because he thought she’d react badly to it, and that might have been entertaining.He wanted to point out that the fact these grizzled old men whose lives revolved around getting the exact same seat at his counter every morning thought she was hitting on himprovedhow ridiculous her behavior had been, but he couldn’t.Because he kept getting stuck on the fact that she was sopretty.Something Carter had treated like an objective, obvious fact.
This morning, probably because he hadn’t slept all night, that she was pretty was all he could see when he looked at her when normally, it was what she was wearing and how she was wearing it that drew the eye.
Today she was in a different pair of scrubs.This morning they were a deep magenta color and she had that wild strawberry-blonde hair of hers in plump golden-red braids that she’d pinned to her head so she looked like she really belonged on a Viking ship.Her gray eyes looked silver blue when she laughed, particularly if she did it in firelight, and he hated that he knew that.
He hated that his body appeared to remember it in real time, like it was happening now.
A truth Tennessee didn’t like to think about too much was that he’d always been perfectly aware that Matilda Stark was pretty.It was just that he’d managed to avoid the grand mess of her for years.During any odd conversations that he couldn’t avoid, he’d always focused on thedisarray.The wildly colored, ill-fitting clothes that made her look like she’d rolled out of someone’s attic, dressed in their rags.The hair that was either in those braids or half out of them, sometimes for days.All the animals, all the time.Her distinct oddness, in that she never seemed tocarewhat she looked like or what folks said about her.She only smiled at them and carried on doing as she liked.
Last night, when he’d actually looked at her—herwhole bodyinstead of just her truck from across the road or that insistent gray gaze of hers—he hadn’t much cared for his response.
That he had one at all, and that it was far more intense than it should have been.
Far more intense than he wanted to admit, especially because he did not dointensityof any kind.Intensity was just chaos, only more pointed.No, thank you.
But here he was, in the sacred space that was the kitchen of his diner, and she had barreled in with all her wildness again.
Makinghimfeel like a mess when she looked like one.If not quite as messy this morning—it was more the sense of a gathering hurricane she carried with her, making all the hairs on his arm prickle like they wanted to stand on end.
Tennessee told himself it was just because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a woman in his house he wasn’t related to in some fashion.That was all.He might have been the sort of man who prided himself on his discernment, but his body had a mind of its own.
Apparently.
There was no other reason that he should have found himself lying awake, little snoring animals crashed out all over him, remembering the shape of Matilda Stark.
Now he found himself angrily cooking up hot breakfasts for a pair of truckers in one of the booths while Matilda took down contact details for each of the patrons who’d claimed they wanted a puppy.Shane Johnson and Carter Redmond among them.He knew that she was making a list not because she didn’t know where they lived—as well as their names and probably their entire life histories—but because she was making it official.So they wouldn’t back out and even if they did, she might just show up at their house with a hard-to-refuse cute puppy in tow.
Everyone knew Matilda’s guerrilla adoption tactics.
But Tennessee didn’t understand why he was paying attention to the things she was doing on a level like that, so he blamed that on sleep deprivation too.What else could it be?
“You little sweethearts are in luck,” Matilda was saying, and Tennessee didn’t realize she was talking in that soft, warm voiceto the puppiesuntil he turned to look at her in what he assured himself washorror—and found her circling back around the counter to look down at the cute little balls of fluff.
But she was.She wasn’t looking at him at all.It was like she’d forgotten that he existed, and he could admit that he… didn’t like it.
Just like he didn’t like it when she simply picked up a cardboard box and propped it on that hip of hers that he’d been better off not noticing.She grinned at him like they were in on this together, which they absolutely were not, which he’d been intending to make clear to her.
He opened his mouth to do that, but she was singsonging a farewell as she sailed back out the door of the diner, making the bell ring as she went.
And no matter how he tried to ask himself why he was soundoneby a girl he’d known for her entire life, he couldn’t really come up with an answer.He, who always had all the answers, couldn’t come up with a thing.
“She’ll be back,” said Carter Redmond, grinning like he knew something.“Mark my words.”
“If you don’t stop with that, I’m going to ban you,” Tennessee grunted at him.“For life.”
And since he wasn’t known for idle threats, that brought about the peace he was looking for.At least until the garrulous old man contingent heaved themselves off into the rest of their days.He wasn’t sure what to do about his own head.
When the breakfast rush was over and he’d cleaned up to his satisfaction—which was to say, to a high level that his family had been known to callobsessive, but no one asked them to cook anything, did they—he wandered through the private passage to the General Store, where his brother Dallas had just opened.Assuming he’d rolled himself down the hill in time, Tennessee thought uncharitably, like his brother was still sixteen.
He wasn’t, of course.He was a grown man and he was right where he was supposed to be today, but old habits died hard.
Dallas lifted his chin in greeting, but didn’t say anything while Tennessee moved around him and into the area behind the counter in the store that served as the general office for the Lisle family enterprise.Or at least, the supplemental office to the one Tennessee kept in his house.
“Why are you in such a mood?”Dallas asked after a while, kicked back with a to-go cup from the coffee cart outside.The coffee cart that was now a staple, since Helena Patrick—their sister—had made the whole town obsessed with her fancy espresso drinks before she’d revealed her identity.
That wasn’t Tennessee being grumpy, though he knew he was often grumpy.If that meant people stayed away from him, great.Less drama for him to handle.The Helena thing was just a fact.What he was surprised by was that he really hadn’t noticed how much she looked like Cat.
Well.Maybe not that surprised.Tennessee had never had a fancy espresso drink in his life, and he also didn’t spend much time studying women.Mostly, he cooked and he cleaned and he handled the books and he tracked inventory and he kept all the various Lisle concerns running.
