Walk Away Joe (6 page)

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Sara told herself she had her head back on straight by midnight. At least in regard to Tucker Lambert. She’d even rationalized her reactions to him and fit them into neat little columns to explain them away.

Curled up in the comer of the overstuffed sofa in her tiny living room, she’d sat in the dark and sorted it all out. He’d been a surprise, was all. A bad boy hiding a good heart. A shock to her system. Lord knew her system was ready to welcome a shock. At least a different kind from the ones she was used to dealing with in ER. The kind that had her dodging grisly reality with the void of numbness. She’d gotten good at feeling nothing. So good she’d crumbled under the strain. She recognized that now.

Laying her head back against the sofa cushions, she worked on forgiving herself. Karla had been right. A little time. A little distance. A lot of soul-searching. That would help her get grounded again. Then she could decide what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

In the meantime, Tucker Lambert’s blond good looks and you-don’t-know-what-you’re-missing-grin had snapped that ironclad grip she’d held on her emotions. He’d simply proved that she wasn’t immune to a pretty face and the promise of pleasure. And that she was weary of living in a void. Her responses had been natural and physical.

If she’d been hitting on all four cylinders, she’d have dealt with them, dismissed them, and gone on about her business. She wouldn’t have romanticized the way he’d protected her pride and her integrity. And she wouldn’t have spent the day convincing herself he might be more than he wanted everyone to see.

Toward evening, though, it had been Lana doing the convincing. This no-account cowboy, who wasn’t supposed to be good for anything but grief, walked on water, as far as Lana was concerned. Sara snuggled deeper into the sofa and thought back to their conversation over the supper dishes.

“Tag and I might not be together now if it wasn’t for Tucker. Isn’t that right, sugar?” Lana had cooed as she leaned over the baby, who was happily banging a spoon against his high-chair tray. “I was three months pregnant, sick as a dog, and living in a dingy one-room walk-up in Dallas. I was too sick to work and existing from week to week on the money Tag sent home from his work on road construction.”

Sara had seen the flashback to depression in Lana’s eyes as she remembered that time. Sara had felt for her. Lana had been young, pregnant and lonely. Tag had been trying to do his best by her. He’d kept a roof over her head and food in her mouth, but at great cost to their young marriage.

“Tucker took us away from all that and brought us here to Blue Sky. Even before that, though,” Lana had continued as she handed a plate to Sara to dry, “Tucker had been the only stable force in Tag’s life.”

“How so?” she’d asked, unable to stanch the curiosity and the respect she was beginning to feel for Tucker.

“When the boys’ mother died, Tag was only fourteen. I didn’t know him then, but I guess he went a little wild with grief. Crazy with pain, you know? He’d dropped out of everything that would have been good for him and into everything that was bad. Tucker was only twenty-six himself, but he came back to Lambert and took charge.” She’d paused and smiled fondly. “To hear them talk, it was a rocky road for both brothers.”

When she put it all together, Sara knew it was also a measure of Tucker’s worth that he’d managed not only to get his renegade teenage brother under control, but also develop the close relationship they had today.

“Where was their father during all this?” she’d asked, half suspecting what Lana would say.

“They don’t talk about him much. From everything I’ve gathered, he wasn’t much of a factor in their lives.” Unless you consider the fact that he wasn’t ever there for them, Sara thought with brooding speculation.

She tucked her feet under her bottom and stared into the darkness. So Tucker hadn’t had an easy go of it. So in spite of that, he wasn’t a total bad guy. That still didn’t account for her preoccupation with him, or the disappointment she felt knowing he was probably with another woman right now.

She had no claim on him. In fact, the notion was ridiculous. Yet she felt a low, dull ache of sadness because of it. Maybe it all came down to loneliness. She’d been alone a long time. On her own. Coping. Existing. She’d always thought that was the way she wanted it. But she was beginning to wonder. If she’d had someone to share the ugly, as well as the good, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten into the shape she was in now. Sharing seemed to work for Karla and Lance.

It seemed to work for Tag and Lana, too. Watching them together this past week had started a slow, steady tug on all those yearnings she’d denied for the sake of her career. As young as they were, they were solid in their love. They were beautiful together. Earlier tonight, when they thought they were alone, she’d felt a little like a voyeur, watching them from the darkness of her courtyard. But the scene had been so riveting as they stood outside on their veranda, wrapped in each other’s arms, cocooned from the rest of the world, she hadn’t been able to tear her gaze away.

Lana’s back had rested against Tag’s chest, his broad shoulders had cushioned her head. His lean fingers had spread low across her belly, possessive and prideful, as she’d turned her face to his for a deep, thorough kiss. It had been a sweet and sexy pose. Poignant yet erotic. A man loving his woman. A woman loving her man. The special bond they shared because of the baby growing inside her body was the ultimate completion of their love.

Sara’s inability to stop herself from watching them brought the stark reality of her solitary existence home— and her thoughts back to Tucker, just as the lights of a vehicle swung into the drive.

Her gaze snapped to the clock. For a man who’d left with hell-raising on his mind, Tucker was home pretty early, she thought as she heard the motor idle, then die.

“And for a woman who’s trying to convince herself that in this life or any other Tucker Lambert is not the man for you, you’re a little too pleased by that conclusion,” she muttered under her breath.

Still, she rose slowly from the sofa and, fighting all the reasons she shouldn’t, walked on bare feet to the screen door.

Unlike last night, the sky was overcast, the moon a pleasant memory tucked behind dingy, scudding clouds. Outside the casa, it was dark on dark. Shadow on shadow. And Tucker Lambert was a part of it all.

Her heart stumbled when the driver’s door swung open and he eased his long legs slowly to the ground. His silhouette was as black as midnight as he shut the door, then slumped beside the truck, his head bowed, his elbows propped behind him on the side of the pickup’s bed. And he didn’t move again.

For a full minute, she stood in silence, watching him. Wondering if he was thinking, or sleeping, or just dead drunk. Wondering why she cared.

The screen door creaked as it opened and closed behind her. For a long moment, she stood barefoot on the tile, her arms hugged around her waist, her loose cotton nightgown rustling around her legs in the sweet night breeze.

“You okay?” she finally called out softly. The healer in her, she told herself, made her do it.

No response.

With a glance toward Tag and Lana’s casa that confirmed all was dark over there, she stepped out from under the archway and into the dry Texas dust.

“Tucker,” she whispered when she reached his side. When he didn’t respond, she touched a hand to his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
 

“Fit,” he said, without ever raising his head, “as a freaking fiddle.”

 
He smelled of barroom smoke and stale beer. And cheap perfume.

 
“Rough night?” she asked dryly around a disappointed trip of her heart.

 
He tipped his head back and, bleary-eyed, focused on the sky, avoiding her measuring stare. “Not rough enough.”

 
“You’re drunk,” she stated flatly.

 
He grunted and brought a hand to his eye. “Not—” he paused, grimacing when he touched it “—drunk enough.” Which implied, of course, that he was.

 
She walked around him to the cab and opened the door. The dome light cast just enough light for her to see the right side of his face and the slight swelling above his eye clearly.

 
“Well,” she said, shutting the door and dousing the light. “I suppose I ought to see the other guy.”

 
He snorted.

 
“Come on,” she said, half in disgust, half in resignation as it hit home that he was every bit the rounder and the renegade he’d been billed as. “I’ll take care of it.”

 
“I don’t think I want you takin’ care of me.”

 
The hard edge to his voice had her turning back to face him. The belligerence in his glare dared her to back down.

 
“Tell it to someone who cares what you think,” she said, returning his puzzling hostility with the bite of her own.

 
Telling herself she couldn’t care less if he followed her, she left him in the darkness. Yet somehow she knew he’d show. She was waiting for him in her kitchen when he opened the door.

Slow and surly, he stalked into the room, all broad shoulders, narrow hips and heart-kicking sexy scowl.

His gaze raked her body as she stood in bare feet and her cool cotton gown. In the pale glow cast by the light above the stove, his blue eyes glittered, dark and dangerous and full of sexual heat. In a silence interrupted only by the distant ticking of a clock, her heart echoed out her own awareness.

With a grim determination to patch him up and send him home, she motioned him toward a chair. He sat with a bored, beleaguered sigh and tossed his hat on the kitchen table.

“So,” she said when she’d satisfied herself that the cut was superficial and the worst he’d get out of it was a small scar, “is this a Wednesday-night ritual?”

He flinched when she dabbed a soapy gauze pad on the cut to clean it. “Used to be,” he grumbled, then added, as if it disgusted him, “Guess I’m out of practice.”

For some reason, that small, telling admission pleased her. Not, she tried to convince herself, that she cared what he did or didn’t do with his nights.

“Well, lucky for you the guy who hit you didn’t pack much of a punch.”

He was silent for a long moment before he spoke. When he did, his voice was as hard as his eyes. ‘‘The
guy’s
name was Rita,” he said, clearly intending to shock her, as he watched her face, gauging her reaction. “And it wasn’t a punch. It was a miscalculation. Took a hell of a hit on the headboard of her bed.”

A lump that was more than disappointment and too much like pain dropped like a stone to her stomach. The hand that tended his wound stilled, then went back to work, a little too vigorously, as she tried to deal with emotions she shouldn’t be feeling. Not for him.

“Ouch. Woman, leave some skin.”

She took a small measure of satisfaction in his pain. Realizing how perverse that was, she dropped her hand.

“Just... just let me put a dressing on it and you can go home to bed.”

Bed. Swallowing hard, she tried to block the picture of Rita with the bad perfume and Tucker stretched out across her bed. She reached for the box of tape.

“Lose the wounded look, darlin’.”

Her head snapped around at the dangerous edge in his voice. The night grew agonizingly quiet as their gazes locked under the pale kitchen light.

“And don’t give me that mystified state.” His expression was cold and mean and nasty. “You’re messing with the wrong man here. You’re disappointed, right? You thought ol’ Tucker might not be the big bad hombre you’d heard he was. You thought maybe, just maybe, I might be worth a deeper look.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, humiliated, hurt and exposed. He was right. As right as she was wrong for thinking those things about him.

“Well, what you see is what you get, darlin’. I’m as bad as they say I am. Maybe worse. Hell. I don’t even know Rita’s last name. I only know she had a nice ass and great set of—”

“You’ve made your point, Lambert,” she said, cutting him off and stuffing adhesive and gauze back into the first-aid kit.

“Have I?” In a lightning move, he snagged her arm and pulled her onto his lap. His fingers clamped round her wrist in a bruising grip. “Have you really gotten the message?”

Ignoring her struggling attempt to escape him, he wrapped his arms around her and dragged her roughly against him.

“I’m a user, little girl,” he growled, snagging a handful of her hair in his fist and pulling her mouth within an inch of his. “You give me the chance, I’ll use you up. Or is that what you want?”

She didn’t know what she wanted. But it wasn’t this. She swallowed hard. “No,” she whispered. “That’s not what I want.”

He let out a tired, heavy sigh. “Then you’d better run, little Miz Sara,” he murmured as he loosened his grip on her hair and, with the pressure of his hand on her jaw, tipped her head so that her eyes were on a level with his. “You’d better run far and you’d better run fast.”

His callused fingers stroked her cheek. His beckoning blue eyes were soft and searching and laced with something that looked suspiciously like regret. “Because if you stay round me much longer, there’s not going to be anything left of you to take back to Lambert.”

After a long, searching look, he released her and slumped back in the chair. “Now git. Go run to your bedroom and lock the door.”

4

………

I
F SARA HAD BEEN SMART
, she would have run. She would have scrambled off his lap and out of the kitchen and locked the bedroom door behind her. But she couldn’t seem to move. She just sat there, her hands poised on his broad shoulders, her heart pumping, her head clouded with confusion.

With a slow shake of his head, Tucker closed his eyes, then drew a deep, ragged breath.
 

“Don’t have the smarts God gave a rock, do you?” he concluded wearily. “Not when it comes to taking care of yourself.”

It was then that things started coming together in Sara’s mind—and in her heart. Something wasn’t ringing true here. He was telling her to go, but his touch, his tone of voice, his eyes, were all at odds with his words. He wanted her to stay. And no matter how ugly a picture he’d painted of himself, his blue eyes begged her not to believe it.