Lost in Tennessee (43 page)

“I got your handle right here.”

“I like my tea sweet.”

The big man continued. “When I get all steamed up, I just shout, tip me over, and pour me out.”

Clap clap clap.
Whistle
. Really, loud
whistle
. “Encore!”

“Hell no.” The man leaped off the stage, landing with a thunderous noise. He stomped to the bar, determined to ignore the fans clamoring around him. “Cuervo. Straight. A double.” He slammed the shot. “Damned woman.”

Butch drank his beer, smiling about the “damned woman” who’d gotten the better of the big man. “What did you bet her?”

“A beer. I win, I buy her a beer and a table to drink it at. Gimme another Cuervo.” He slammed it. “Bat shit crazy woman.”

Butch stood tall. “She beat you fair and square. No need to insult her.”

“It’s not an insult. It’s a fact.”

Butch shoved the arm as thick as his leg. “Apologize.”

“You dumped her crazy ass. What do you care?”

“Apologize. Now.”

The mountain stood tall. “Or what?”

Butch figured he had one shot. Better make it count. The trainer he worked with was a former fighter and taught Butch a thing or two. Butch struck fast, ringing the guy’s bell. “Apologize.”

The mountain sat hard on a stool, swayed a bit. “Shit. Sorry.”

Butch shook his hand out, helping steady the man. “Appreciate it. Let me get you something for that. Cuervo on me.”

“Butch. What the hell are you doing?” Jeb crossed the room fast, looking ready to back his brother up.

“It’s on me, Sheriff. I said something I shouldn’t have. We’re square.” The mountain looked at Butch. “Good luck, man.”

Butch saw Kate through the crowd. A splash of red with startling blue eyes. “Yeah. ’Scuse me, Jeb.” Butch moved quickly, but he lost her. He rounded a corner to the dart boards and came up on Tom.

Butch tightened his fist again. “Where is she?” Butch stepped to the right, and Tom mirrored him.

“She’s not for you. I bet half the single women in here would go home with you. Let me buy you a beer. We’ll find one for you.” Tom spoke congenially but without flexibility.

Butch looked Tom in the eye. “I want Kate.”

“You can’t have her.”

Butch shouted in Tom’s face. “I love her.”

Tom shouted back. “You should have thought of that before you fucked up. You made this bed, so you lie in it, alone. Leave her out of it.”

Jeb pushed his way between the two. “Easy, boys.”

Tom backed toward the door. “She’s not for you.”

C
larity did funny things for a man, Butch thought as he crouched behind the dumpster. Clarity showed him that his life would be a tragically empty wasteland without Kate. Clarity also showed him that if he bribed the guy at Kate’s favorite pizza place, he’d know when she’d be picking up her twice-weekly order.

She pulled the Mustang into the lot, parked, and went into the restaurant. Butch crept behind her car, watching, watching, watching. Out she came with two boxes. She walked around to the passenger side and…

“Gotcha.” Butch tossed the boxes aside and wrapped Kate up in his arms.

“Are you nuts?” She fought to throw the elbows pinned to her arms. “Let me go.”

“Not until we talk. I’ve been trying to talk to you for days. Now is the time.”

She fought again but got nowhere. “Fine. Talk.”

“Not here. Where are your keys?” His hand slid around her hips, finding the keys dangling from her pocket. “Get in and stay. I will chase you down.” Butch let her go slowly, expecting her to make a break for it. She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue but got in the car.

“You didn’t need to ruin my dinner.”

He started the car and took off out of town. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Don’t bother.” Kate put her window down and rested her elbow on the top of the door. “What is the point of all this?”

He’d practiced his speech for days. All the reasons she should forget about everything he’d said and listen to him now. “We’re stuck in the middle of our story. We need to talk to move on.”

“We’re at the end of our story. The very end. The epilogue where the hero and heroine say it was fun while it lasted, have a happy life, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

Butch drove past fields, letting the quiet do its job.

“It wouldn’t have worked.” She spoke quietly, with a resignation that said she’d thought about this a lot. “It was one thing when we were two horny rabbits, but when things got hard, we collapsed like a house of cards. With the lives we lead, we would have just ended up hurting each other worse. Better to find out now.”

“I love you.” He needed her to believe he did.

“I think those words mean different things to us.”

“What does it mean to you?” He turned off the main road to a cinder road barely wide enough for two cars.

She turned toward Butch, taking her time before speaking. “Loving someone means trusting someone completely. Knowing they’ll be there for you. Willing to do what it takes to make them happy. Knowing what they need even when they don’t. Putting them before you.”

Butch turned onto a path with more grass than road.

“This car isn’t made for this kind of road. Where are we going?”

“I have something to show you.”

K
ate dropped her head back on her seat. “Can’t we just end this?” She looked out the window, staring at a house that looked a lot like the big house. The pond with its wooden pier came into view on her right. They were on the dirt road that went around the farm. “What are you doing?”

Butch drove around the scorched earth that had been the barn and around a broad, squat building to the front of his house.

“Oh. Oh my God. What did you do?”

“Come see.” Butch ran to her side of the car, opening the door with a bow. “Welcome home.”

“It’s…it’s your house.” Kate’s gaze poured over the house that matched her drawings. Her mouth opened and closed. She covered her mouth as her eyes swept over the details that had only existed in her imagination. “How?”

Butch led her through a door and into the courtyard behind, where she laughed.

“It’s a movie set.” Kate spun in a circle. Where the front was fully trimmed and painted, the back was plywood framed and braced on two-by-fours. “How did you do this? Why did you do this?”

“I want this for us. The real thing.” Butch captured her hands and held them to his heart. “I love you in exactly the way you described. If anything, that was the problem. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being hurt because of me. I understand now that the only thing that will keep you safe is finding who’s behind this.”

“What you did hurt me more than any crazy bitch could.” Kate turned away. As much as this gift overwhelmed her, her heart still bled.

“Look at me. Please?” He waited until she did. “I know I messed up. I am sorry beyond words. Let me spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

Her soul leapt with joy, shouting a resounding yes, but her heart and her head hesitated. A tear ran down her cheek.

Butch knelt on one knee. “Love me again? Make a life with me?”

She retreated a step back. “I can’t. I can’t be happy in a relationship where I’m one of many.”

Butch frowned, worry crowding between his brows. “One of many what?”

“Women, Butch. I know about the other woman.”

Butch scrambled to his feet, his hand over his heart. “I swear, there has been no other woman since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“The one in the red dress. Someone sent me a photo.” Kate walked away from him, thinking. She expected him to look guilty, caught red handed. Instead he looked confused and maybe a little desperate. “Looked like you and she were pretty intimate to me.”

Butch chased her down, spinning her until she faced him. His narrow eyes and the color on his cheeks showed him as a little worried, a little desperate, a little frustrated. “I don’t cheat. I don’t know who was in a picture, and I don’t care. This is about me and you.” He rubbed a hand through his hair.

She wanted to believe him. Oh God, she wanted to believe, but it was hard when every breath still stung with betrayal and rejection. She refused to settle for being anyone’s second choice. “Well, you looked awfully cozy with her in that booth, sitting side by side so close you were almost wearing that tight, red skirt with her. Her necklace had an
A
hanging between her breasts. Ring any bells?”

Recognition flashed in Butch’s eyes. “Abbey.”

Kate swallowed the sick lump in her throat. “Now you remember her?”

Butch laughed, his face free from the worry she had seen.

“And now this is funny?” The hurt flared. Kate resisted the urge to throw something and stomp her feet like a child. No matter what, she would act like an adult. She would leave with her head held high.

Butch reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “No, not funny, but in a way it makes me happy.” He drew her closer. “You told me once if it looked like you were moving on, that you were just passing time, waiting for me to come back. You being jealous over Abbey McNeil means you haven’t moved on yet. You still love me.”

She didn’t deny it, but loving him didn’t change where they stood. “I may be stupid enough to still love you but won’t spend the rest of my life wondering who is in line ahead of me. You insisted on the whole exclusive deal. Why? What did it do for either of us?” She tried to pull away from him, needing distance to shore up her defenses. He held her too close, smelled too good, felt too right. It would be easy to step back into life with him.

Butch tugged a squirming Kate fully into his arms. “I didn’t cheat on you.” At her snort, he softened his tone. “She was a reporter gouging me for material on my breakup with Fawn. Remember, we left the Sly Dog that night when she showed up. She was waiting for me after rehearsal the next day. Finch has been after me about keeping on the good side of the media, so I had a drink with her. That’s all it was.”

Kate blinked back tears, afraid to hope. “Really? Why didn’t you mention it to me?”

“Because it…she is meaningless. The moment I stepped out of that bar, there was only one woman on my mind.” Butch released his hold on her and took her hands, planting kisses on both palms. “I may have my flaws. I’m stubborn, I like to sleep in late, and I can’t fix a tractor, but I’m not a cheater. I didn’t cheat on you that day, and I won’t ever cheat on you. I just want the chance to make up for all my mistakes.”

Kate’s tears flowed freely, her heart and her head locked in a fierce battle.

Butch cupped her face, capturing her eyes with his own. “If you can honestly say you don’t love me, I’ll let you go. You will never hear from me again.”

Her lips trembled. “It’s not that easy. You hurt me. Badly. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Let me.” Butch again took her in his arms, kissing her with the desperation of a drowning man. Holding her tightly, he showed all he wanted to give her. “I broke us. Let me fix us.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

B
utch nearly wept with joy when she kissed him back. “Sending you away was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

“And one of the stupidest. Give yourself some credit.” Kate snuggled closer, nuzzling against his neck. “No more protecting me. We’re in this together, okay?”

“We’re in this together, but I’m going to do everything I can to protect us. We’ll put up a fence, start locking the doors. Start carrying guns. Hell, we’ll move if we have to. Start a life of our own in a place of our own.” Butch pushed her back until he could kiss her lips. “Will you wear my ring?”

“Let’s take some time. We’re together, and that’s what matters. We can take our time with the rest.” Kate leaned her head on his chest, looking toward the fields. “I can’t decide which looks more out of place: the hole where the barn should be or that steel monstrosity with a grand piano sitting in the middle of it.” She stepped out of his embrace and walked toward the oversized shipping container parked on a spot of flat land.

On a level piece of ground sat a thirty-by-twenty-foot, corrugated-metal box with a wide, sliding door. A forest-green, pitched roof sat atop straw-yellow walls. The furnishings from the California house Butch had tagged on that first trip with Trudy had made the long haul across the country.

Now that it was here, Butch didn’t know what he was going to do with it all. “Looks like I wasted my time painting the barn.”

Butch stood close, holding her hand.

“And you don’t have a hay loft anymore.”

He kissed her bare left hand. “Guess you’ll have to add that to the plan.”

Trudy came out of the back door to stand with the couple and linked her arm through Butch’s. “I like the piano. It is so shiny. Can I take that little curio table?”

“What are you doing here, Trudy?”

“Checking on you, Butchy. You know I worry.”

Butch looked down at Kate. “You can stop. I know where I am. But take what you like, whatever makes you happy. I have everything I need.” Butch sighed, looking up at the scraps of his life. “Tom did me a big favor, getting that up so quick.”

Kate frowned at the eyesore. “That’s an engineer for you. Functional. Fast. Fugly. We’ll do better. Good thing we have an expansion plan.”

“Clyde, I hope you have sense enough to hold on to that woman this time around.” Jeb stepped through the cutouts. “Might be harder than you think. Tom’s on a rampage with Kate disappearing.”

“Oh!” Kate dug into her bag. “I didn’t think to call him.”

“Looks a little late for that. He’s behind me.”

“Kate!” Tom’s voice shouted from the other side of the facade. The cheap door opened, and Tom poured through, snorting like a bull. His gaze raked the scene until he found Butch. “I told you to stay away from her.”

Tom ran at Butch. Kate jumped in his path, Jeb right behind her.

Kate planted her hands on his chest. “Stop, Tom.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Don’t, ’cause then Jeb would have to arrest you, and your future nieces and nephews wouldn’t have a daddy or an uncle.”

Tom stopped dead and looked down at Kate. “What?”