Just Down the Road (16 page)

“You were too drunk to drive.” She swallowed her first coffee of the day and frowned at how strong he’d made it. “Just a regular Saturday night for a man like you, I’m guessing.”

“Oh, right.” He raised his eyebrow. “Not to mention bleeding and passing out from loss of blood.”

“Must have been a real hit to your ego that I didn’t stay to tuck you in.”

Tinch frowned. “Wait a minute, Doc. How did we get off on the wrong foot this morning? Do you always wake up in rattlesnake mood? If so, I swear I’m never speaking to you again until after noon.”

“Forget it,” she snapped, more angry at herself than at him. As she passed him, she patted his arm, wishing she could erase away her words. She had no business running down his lifestyle. He hadn’t broken any rules last night.
“We’ve got more important things to worry about than your conquests and fights at the bar.”

She stared out the window, refusing to look at him three feet away. After a long silence, she whispered, “I’m not a morning person, I guess.” He was right; all he’d said was good morning and she’d jumped on him. She barely knew the man. He had a right to live his life any way he wanted. It was nothing to her if nightly orgies went on at the farm next door. “I’ve had a long week.” It wasn’t an apology, just a statement.

“And you didn’t sleep worrying about the boy,” Tinch said as he stood and moved just behind her.

“How do you know?” She crossed her arms over her breasts, suddenly feeling the cold as she leaned against the window frame.

“Because,” he whispered, now even closer. “I was awake watching you try to sleep. Every time you relaxed and almost drifted off, you’d jerk awake as if some internal alarm went off.”

“I wanted to make sure the boy was safe.” She didn’t add that she knew, with all the excitement, if she’d allowed herself to sleep, she’d be letting her guard down.

“I was right there. You were both safe.” He stood so near she could feel his words against her ear.

Closing her eyes, she leaned back into his warmth. Just for a moment she wanted to believe she could lean on a man without him trying to take control.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his warm chest. For a while he just rocked her gently in his solid arms.

“We’ll figure it out, Doc. We’ll protect the boy until the sheriff knows no one is looking for him. You don’t have to do it alone. I don’t have to do it alone.”

“Can we protect him?” She wasn’t sure, and the boy’s life might depend on her. “My almost-fiancé back home said I didn’t have a mothering bone in my body, so children wouldn’t be part of our bargain. He …”

Tinch whispered in her ear. “He was an idiot.”

“What makes you say that?” She tugged a few inches away and faced him. Everyone she’d ever known had always bragged about what a wonderful man Glen Davidson was. Top of his class. The best in his field. Destined for greatness in research. No one had ever called him an idiot.

“Because,” Tinch whispered. “He let you go.”

“No,” Addison shook her head. “He’s waiting for me to answer his proposal.”

“You don’t love him.” Tinch brushed a strand of loose hair back behind her ear.

“What makes you say that?” Logic told her she should put more distance between them, but she didn’t step back.

“Because, Doc, if you loved the guy, you’d answer him and he wouldn’t be an
almost-fiancé
.”

Then, as if he’d done it many times, he raised his hand and moved his fingers into her hair. When she didn’t protest, he closed the distance between them and kissed her lightly on the mouth. The shock of it rattled her all the way to her toes.

She’d wondered once if she stood on a train track and saw a train barreling toward her, would she jump or freeze? This morning, Addison learned the answer. She’d be flatter than a pancake on the tracks.

Addison just stood there as his hand gently curled into her hair. He tugged her to him and kissed her again with the same tenderness of a first kiss. When she swayed toward him, his arm moved around her and held her solid against him.

Closing her eyes, she went with the perfection of the kiss. She drifted in pure pleasure as his heartbeat pounded against hers. Never had a kiss affected her so. She’d been kissed with purpose, with passion, as foreplay and as routine, but never like this. Tinch kissed her as if there were no world other than right here, right now. He wasn’t saying hello or good-bye. He wasn’t starting something or ending something. He was simply and completely kissing her as no one from her first kiss in fourth grade to Glen’s good-bye ever had.

Tinch pulled away so suddenly, she almost fell. Before
she could get her bearings on what had happened, he was half a room away.

“I’m sorry.” He grabbed his hat. “You’re right. I am wild. Not even housebroke, apparently. You’d be wise to stay as far away from me as possible, Doc.”

Like a man on fire, he shot out of the house, yelling that he’d be back in an hour with clothes for the boy.

Addison walked to the porch and watched his pickup flying down the dirt road. Apparently Tinch Turner hadn’t planned on kissing her and was more upset about it than she was.

Until this assignment, she’d followed every detail of a life her parents organized for her after she’d come home from her train wreck of a marriage at nineteen. She’d sworn she’d listen to her father from then on. The right schools, the safe vacations, the sensible friends. One heartbreaking six months was enough pain to last her a lifetime she’d convinced herself.

When she’d signed on for Harmony, Texas, for a year and packed her bags, she’d known this would be her last escape before forever settling for what was expected of her.

She was eating breakfast with Jamie and the kittens a little over an hour later when Tinch’s pickup flew back up the drive.

He hauled in two huge bags. He smiled at Jamie but didn’t even look at Addison.

“I got you some clothes, buddy,” he said as if the kid were alone at the table. “If you’re going to help me with the horses, you got to be dressed for it.”

“Aren’t you afraid someone in Harmony will notice you suddenly buying little-boy clothes?” Addison had worried about that last night. Harmony was too small; anyone buying clothes might be noticed, and that would somehow spread to the wrong people.

“They probably would have, only I drove over to Bailee. The guy who checked me out at the Walmart was still half asleep. He wouldn’t have noticed if I’d bought a tank and a dozen grenades.” Tinch still didn’t meet her eyes as he set
the one bag in the center of the living room and the other on the kitchen counter.

“You don’t have to keep replacing the food you eat,” she said, guessing what was in the kitchen bag.

He didn’t answer as he pulled clothes out of the second bag. “Underwear, socks, jeans. I got two sizes, hoping one will fit, and a belt if neither does.”

Jamie looked at the new clothes carefully, as if he’d rarely seen anything with a tag still on.

“This stuff is for me?” he asked.

“If you want it,” Tinch said. “I’m new at this uncle thing, but I think uncles are supposed to buy clothes. I read that rule somewhere.”

“Oh.” Jamie nodded slowly.

“I bought several shirts. You pick the one you want to wear today.” He spread them out on the coffee table. “I forgot pajamas. Men don’t sleep in them, but I thought boys might.”

Jamie shook his head. “I can sleep in my football shirt.”

“That sounds good.” Tinch propped a baseball cap on the boy’s head, then took it off to adjust it.

He took his time letting the boy pick out what he wanted to wear, then handed him a new toothbrush and comb. “Can you take care of this?”

Jamie nodded. “I’m four years old.”

“I thought so.”

When the boy left the room to brush his teeth, Addison asked Tinch, “How’d you guess his shoe size?”

“I measured it against my hand while he was asleep.” Tinch didn’t look at her. “They didn’t have boots, but I’ll get him a pair as soon as we know it’s safe for him to go to town.”

Addison moved into his line of vision. “Look, Tinch, about what happened before you left. It was just a kiss. I’m sure you’ve kissed a hundred women. It just happened, that’s all. I’m not mad about it as long as you understand I have no interest in a repeat performance. I know we’ve kind of been tossed together, but there’s no reason we—”

“You think I’ve kissed a hundred girls?”

Addison almost laughed. “No man kisses like you do
without a great deal of practice. I’ve never—” She broke off, not wanting to tell this man any of her private life.

“It won’t happen again,” he said quickly. “You’re right. It never should have happened in the first place.”

“Good,” she managed as she began helping him pick up the clothes. Wanting to get back to the polite strangers they’d been developing, she added, “You did a good job of picking out the kid’s clothes.”

He seemed to understand what she was trying to do. “I don’t have any kids, but on my mother’s side I’m kin to all the Mathesons in town. Which means I get invited to at least one or two birthday parties a month. Lori Anne always used to want to take clothes as gifts…. Of course, since she’s been gone I just send a gift certificate.”

“Lori Anne was your wife?” Somewhere in the back of her mind Addison remembered one of the nurses saying that Tinch Turner’s wife had died of cancer.

“Yeah,” he said, looking away from her. “I bought a phone.” He changed the subject abruptly. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s a way for the sheriff or you to get hold of me if you need me.” He looked at it as if he had no idea how to use the thing. “I’ll try to remember to keep it with me.”

Addison took the small phone from his hand. “If you’ll see how Jamie is doing, I’ll program the sheriff’s number in along with my cell phone. There’s a house phone here still working, but I’m not even sure of the number. All you have to do is push two for me, three for her, and hit the green button.”

While he helped Jamie lace up his new shoes, Addison used her phone to text the sheriff Tinch’s number and add him to her list.

“If ever you need me, just push the button and send.”

“I won’t call unless it’s an emergency.”

“I understand. I’ll be on my way when I pick up.”

Tinch looked at the phone, then at her. She expected him to say something funny, like he now had a doctor on call, but he didn’t.

“Thanks.” He met her gaze for the first time since the kiss. “I’ll do my best to keep up with this.”

Tinch knelt down to the boy’s level. “We’re going next door to my place to work for a while. No matter what’s going on, the horses need to be fed.”

Jamie shook his head. “I don’t want to leave my angel. Can she come too?”

Tinch looked up at Addison without smiling. “She can if she wants to, and so can the kittens, but I’m sure the doc’s got lots to do.”

“I usually go in and work on paperwork on my day off.” She had no idea if she was helping or hurting his plans. “But I might come back from town around lunchtime and bring you two a box of tacos.”

Tinch frowned, and she guessed she’d said the wrong thing. He’d probably hoped for a day without her.

Jamie slipped his hand into hers and smiled. “I don’t like onions, or lettuce, or tomatoes on mine.”

“Got it.” She turned to Tinch. “How do you like yours?”

One look told her he wasn’t thinking about lunch. He took a deep breath and said in a low voice, “Any way at all is fine.”

R
EAGAN SPENT THE MORNING MOVING
F
OSTER AND HIS
wife into their new home. She could have thought of no better use for the little house her uncle owned in town than to give it to the two people who’d stood beside her all during his illness. Foster was a good nurse and he’d find other work, but for now, at least, he and his wife wouldn’t have to worry about a roof over their heads.

Midafternoon, she drove back to Jeremiah’s little farm on Lone Oak Road. Only it wasn’t his anymore. It was hers. It had been for a long time, but as long as her uncle was alive she always thought of it being his even if he had put her name on the deed. Jeremiah had slowed down last year, but he never stopped working in the orchards. He had one old stand of trees near the border to the Matheson place and another a few hundred yards behind the house. The second one he’d started for her, and it would bear fruit next fall. He’d also overseen the building of a new barn to
hold the equipment Reagan wanted to help in the packing and shipping of apples. Their apples were perfect for making jam and pies. She planned to sell their crop to small-time canning houses within a few hundred miles, until someday she’d be shipping across the states.

As she drove home, she thought of her uncle and how everything he’d done since the day she stumbled onto his place had been to ready her to be able to take over.

Even the business degree she was working on, he’d suggested so she could read and understand legal papers. “Never let anyone handle your books,” he’d said. “Always write your own checks.”

When she reached the house, she noticed Noah’s truck was back, but Big was probably still at work. She’d put them down the hall from her, since they’d both decided to keep her company for a while. To her surprise they’d gone to bed without a fight. Knowing they both were near helped her sleep, though she couldn’t imagine enduring Noah’s suggestion that they all three sleep in the same bed.