Lost in Tennessee (42 page)

“Why did you do that?” Tom’s voice.

“It was an accident,” Kate answered.

Butch started to jog, a bad idea on dark and unfamiliar land. The idea of her in a tree with a gun…what happened when their target shot back?

Jeb crossed a small swale where grass reached past their knees.

“I’ve had enough of this. Get out here. Now.” Another shot fired and Jeb fell to the ground. “Down. I’m hit.”

“What!” Butch crawled to his brother, desperate to see the wound. He never would have believed it if he weren’t there himself. Kate and Tom shot Jeb. He rolled Jeb, and an odor as pungent and offensive as he ever smelled filled his sinuses.

Jeb coughed, struggling to sit up. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

“It’s you. I think. I can’t find a hole, but there a wet spot on your shoulder.” He inhaled deeply and instantly regretted it. “Oh yeah. You’ve been skunked.”

“Son of a—” Jeb tore at his shirt. “Thomas Riley. Kate Riley. Get down here. You have to the count of five before I arrest you for assaulting an officer.”

“I
told
you it was Jeb.” Tom’s voice. “Can’t you lip read?”

“It’s dark. I thought it was our bitch. It was a warning shot. I missed.”

Butch followed the fence another fifty feet to a twisted willow tree. The trunk of the willow stood inside the fence, but many of the thick branches hung over.

“You said you knew how to fire it.” Tom’s voice again, annoyed.

“I do. You pull the trigger. Nothing to it.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said about the chicken parmesan.”

Butch chuckled at the banter. God, he missed this. “Y’all better come down. Jeb is riled. You don’t want him coming up for you.”

A bear’s growl came from behind him. “Did you find them, Butch?”

“Yeah. At the big willow.”

Tom handed Butch the modified paintball gun and dropped to the ground. Butch reached to help Kate, but Tom bodied him out of the way and set her on the ground.

K
ate moved away from Butch, keeping Tom between them. She couldn’t breathe with Butch so close. She was over him, she reminded herself. He had the woman in the red dress, and she had her work. She told herself she was moving on and to act normal. Fake it if she had to.

Jeb stomped into view. “What. Were. You. Thinking.”

Kate leaned toward Tom. “It’s never good when each word is its own sentence.”

Tom stepped forward. “We talked about taking added steps, Jeb.”

Jeb pointed a finger in Tom’s face. “Like getting dogs. Like hiring security.
Not
sitting in a tree and taking pot shots at folks. What the hell did you hit me with anyway?”

“It’s a homemade stink ball.” Tom sounded proud. “We took paintball shells and filled them with a skunk-sulfur-tuna fish mixture suspended in an oil emulsion. It’ll take days to scrub off.”

“What? This isn’t coming off for days?”

Tom stepped closer to inspect Jeb. “It really does smell, doesn’t it? Yeah, I think you have some splatter. Use tomato juice and Dawn. Treat it like you’ve been skunked.”

“I have been skunked!”

Butch snickered and stepped closer to Jeb. “I’m glad we didn’t take my truck. You probably should strip before you get in the car.”

“You guys like cloth seats down here, right?” Kate avoided eye contact with Butch and hoped her voice sounded steadier than she felt. She fumbled with the gun, setting the butt on the ground. “You should definitely strip before—
pow
—shit, didn’t mean to do that.”

The rifle discharged a stink ball straight up. They scrambled for distance, having no idea where the stink ball would land.

Plop.

Jeb grabbed the gun from Kate’s hands. “Give me that. And your ammunition.”

She handed over a small bag with a dozen balls.

“You, too.” Jeb held his hand out for Tom’s rifle. “Give.”

Tom handed it over.

“We are not done talking about this. Tomorrow morning. Bright and early. Both of you. Got it?”

“Fine,” Tom said. “It would have worked, Jeb. We would have been able to find the woman in the dark.”

“I’m done with this tonight. Go home, and stay put.” Jeb arranged the rifles and ammo so he could still walk. “I may have to burn this shirt. Twelve years of college between you two, and you’re sitting in a tree skunking people.”

Kate felt like a chastised child. “When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous. Big brains and overactive imaginations. God, this smell is never going away. Give me dumb, boring criminals any day.” Jeb huffed out a heavy breath. “You need a ride back?”

“No. We left the truck close.” Tom boosted Kate into the tree then climbed the fence.

Relief made Kate twenty pounds lighter. She worried she’d have to sit in a truck with Butch. She’d done her best not to look at him, but she felt his presence. Her heart squeezed at the familiar banter she’d not realized how much she’d missed. She loved him. She didn’t know if there would ever be a time she wouldn’t love him. But it didn’t matter. He’d ended it and sealed the deal by cuddling up with the stranger. Her father was right, a man like Butch had a woman in every city.

“You were right,” Kate said, needing lighter thoughts in her head. “We should have electrified the fence.”

B
utch lay in bed, the morning sun sneaking in around the edges of the window shades. A week ago, he’d had Kate satisfied and sprawled across his chest. He’d listened to her breathe, inhaled that scent. He’d followed her down the stairs for coffee with the family.

If he closed his eyes, he could still smell the coffee.

Actually, with his eyes open, he could smell the coffee now. Butch slid out of bed and went downstairs. In the kitchen, bright with sunlight, Jeb sat at the kitchen table.

Jeb crossed his legs and tied his boot. “I thought you gave up the early hours.”

“I thought…” Butch looked around, but it was just the two of them.

“Tom gave me the recipe. Do I still smell to you?”

Butch walked behind his brother. Sniffed. “Do you want the truth?”

“Son of a bitch. I am going to get them back. I don’t know where. I don’t know when, but one day. Boom.” Jeb tied his lace and stomped his boot on the floor.

Butch closed his eyes, holding back his laughter. Jeb didn’t talk this much. Jeb didn’t say “boom.”

“I know you’re laughing back there.”

“I’m not,” Butch denied, but the laughter fell out of him. “Did you see the two of them up in that tree?”

Jeb chortled, tying his other boot. “Tom nearly fell on his head. Now
that
would have been funny. What are you doing today?”

“Rehearsals. Finch has some details he wants to review. I’ll probably grab dinner in Nashville.”

Jeb stood, sniffed his own shoulder, and opened the back door. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Butch closed the door behind Jeb and took his coffee to the living room. Everything looked the same and nothing did. Then something caught his eye. A white tube sat propped in the corner between the piano and the wall. Butch opened the top and pulled out the sketches for his house.

He remembered Kate working on it on the table. Jeb made dinner than night, and Butch and Kate set the table. She rolled up the plans and set it aside. That was forever ago. Before he proposed. Before California.

Butch rolled the long sheet out. Three-feet wide by two-feet tall, the pages held ink drawn by Kate’s hand. Pencil shadowed the background along with notes and figures by a different hand. Tom’s. Butch laughed at a note that said, “Subject to gravity.”

Over the front door, a small sign had been sketched in. The words were written on the bottom of the sheet with an arrow to the right place. “Live. Love. Laugh.”

Pain racked Butch’s system. An emotional pain as real as any physical one he’d ever had. Who was he kidding? Staying away from Kate wasn’t keeping her safe, and it was killing him. He needed to talk to her.

Thirty minutes later, Butch stood outside the site gate and argued with a man on a chair.

“I’m sorry, Mr. McCormick, but you’re not on my list.” The elder gentleman took his position as gate operator seriously.

“Kate Riley knows me.”

“I reckon everyone knows you.” He spit on the ground.

Butch could see the trailer and Kate’s truck. All he needed was five minutes. Five minutes to apologize and win her back. “Can you call her? I’m sure she’ll add me to the list.”

The old man closed one eye against the sun. “Tom Riley made the list. Would he add you to it?”

Would he? “Of course.”

Boots on gravel had both men looking into the sun. “Well, speak of the devil,” the old man said. “Mr. McCormick was just asking to see Kate. I told him he wasn’t on the list.”

Butch hadn’t noticed how intimidating Tom Riley could be. He had the size and the strength, and right now, he had hate in his eyes.

“Why don’t you take a break, Mr. Anderson? Paula has some homemade lemonade in the trailer.” Tom stayed quiet until Anderson departed. “You here to see Kate?”

“Yeah. Look, Tom, I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have broken things off. I…I just need to talk to her.”

“No.”

Butch waited for a moment, waited for more, but it didn’t come. “Come on, Tom. You can’t tell me I can’t talk to her.”

“I can. She’s my little sister where it counts. I told you when you asked to marry her that if you broke her heart, you’d have problems. You’re a good man, Butch, and I still consider you my friend, but you’re a bad bet. No way am I letting you within a mile of Kate. If you really care about her, stay away. It only hurts her to see you. Go on your tour, she’ll be gone when you get back. Clean and simple.”

The gate stayed closed, and Tom turned his back.

“Tom. Just…let me talk to her for five minutes. Three.”

Tom turned around. “No.”

“She’ll have to come out eventually. I can stay here all day.”

“It’s your day.” Tom stalked toward the trailer without another backward glance.

Butch wanted to be mad, but he couldn’t get there. He needed to figure out how to get to Kate. “The willow tree.”

K
ate drove the perimeter of the project site. These little patrols were the newest part of her routine. She did it for the safety of the people working. She did it for her own sanity. Not that she had much sanity to protect right now. Seeing Butch last night had hurt. She didn’t expect to see him, let alone when his brother was dressing her and Tom down like disobedient children.

Maybe she was wrong to come back. Being busy couldn’t compete with the sights and sounds and smells she associated with Butch McCormick.

Kate parked the truck to inspect the drainage swale. This place, in her expert opinion, gave the easiest entry. The ground fell away eighteen inches in a vee, leaving a gap under the fence. She could wiggle through without much difficulty.

“Katie.”

She froze. Her first hope was her imagination was viciously toying with her. She dreamed about Butch and him calling her name.

Then he appeared along the fence, traipsing over tall grasses. “Katie. We need to talk.”

Kate stepped back. “There’s nothing to talk about.” She turned and walked quickly to her truck. She wasn’t running, she told herself. She had no reason to run.

“I’m sorry. For everything. I’m so sorry.”

Kate stopped and looked over her shoulder. He looked just as she dreamed him. Jeans, soft T-shirt, long hair blowing in the breeze. His fingers curled through the fencing.

“Yeah. Me, too.”
Walk away. Turn and walk away before you cry.

“Can we talk?”

Kate shook her head and ran for the safety of her truck.

“Katie? Katie, please.”

Kate drove as fast as she dared to the most remote section of the site. Engine still running, she dropped her head to the steering wheel. The pain of rejection led the way. She did as he asked. Against her better judgement, she let herself care about a man she barely knew. Likely sex clouded her brain. Yeah, that had to be it. Orgasm-induced temporary insanity. Well, she was sane now. She wouldn’t fall for the same trap twice. He wasn’t for her. She pictured the image of Butch and the red-dressed woman. Not then. Not now.

Kate turned the radio on, blasted it, and cried.

B
utch had gone into Nashville and worked. His sets were flat and uninspired. That happened when you didn’t give a fuck.

“Snap out of it, Butch.” Landon Finch sat on the leather couch with a concerned twist to his mouth. “You play like that on stage, and I might as well book you into Fort Nowhere’s Funtime Jamboree.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” He knew it was. “It’ll be fine with a live audience. That bar near Chattanooga thought it was fine.” Butch stood, stretching legs that itched to go somewhere. “Is there anything else you wanted to go over?”

Finch closed up the file he carried. “I think that’s it. How about a bite?”

Butch’s phone buzzed with a text.

Come to Sly Dog.

There was only one reason he would be interested.

K there?

Yes

Nashville traffic slowed Butch down, giving him time to rehearse. “Kate. I understand now that loving someone…no. Katie, I tried to do the right thing but, damn it.” He still didn’t have the speech down when he pulled into the Sly Dog’s parking lot. He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Act casual. We don’t want her running again.”

Casual was slow. Casual greeted people. Casual went to the bar and ordered a beer.

“Hey y’all. I need your attention for a minute.” Butch knew the man on stage. He worked in a factory making tires during the week and arm wrestled on weekends. A mountain of a man without an ounce of fat, he looked nervous up there, hunched over a microphone set too short for his height. He cleared his throat, his deep bass voice resonated without the electronics. “I’m a little tea pot short and stout. Here is my handle. Here is my spout.”

The bar lost it. Man, woman, young, old, barked out in fun-filled laughter at the big man’s expense.

“Sing it, tea pot.”