Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 26

Next time, I’m making him tell me.

The thought ran through my head for the fifth time. I still hadn’t decided what to wear. The location of my date with Buck was a surprise. Vague instructions to “dress warm” were why I was standing in front of my mirror in my underwear with two very different outfits in my hands.My sweater dress would be warm-ish but the wind could cut right through. Layering my woolen tunic shirt with my leather jacket could keep me blazing hot.

And what do I mean, next time?

I’d acquiesced to one date but was I really open to a second? I should have set a boundary around friends with benefits when I’d had the chance. Realistically, that’s all it could ever be. No man wanted to date a woman with a newborn, and no new mother wanted to date. I’d called the sperm bank for a consultation but their first availability was in six months, plenty of time for whatever this was to run its course.

I’m entitled to have a little fun . . .

I reduced it to that in my mind even as I remembered how it had felt. Buck had worshipped me. The fact that I couldn’t remember feeling so connected told me my heart would end up a little broken. But Buck’s lease was up in two months and my whole life was about to change.

The doorbell rang and my gaze darted to my nightstand clock. I’d stayed in indecision for too long. With no other choice, I dropped option number two. I could have the one-piece sweater dress on in twenty seconds. If I wanted to layer, I could bring my cute puffy vest.

“Buck!” I tried to sound more breathy than frazzled. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Buck stood with a cellophane-wrapped basket in one hand. In his other was an enormous stone jug. I hadn”t seen him in jeans since the first day we went to Hinckley. I would never get tired of how they sat a little low on his hips, and how nicely he filled them out.

“Didn”t seem right to bring you flowers.” His voice was quiet and deep. “The ones you grow are prettier than any florist’s bouquet. So I brought you a gallon of corn liquor.”

“What?” I half stammered, half laughed.

“I know you like to make use of things you grow in your garden. And I know you like to fix drinks. This here’s a spirit infusion kit. And this here’s Mad Marly’s Moonshine, the best corn liquor in Tennessee.”

I blinked in delighted surprise but took the proffered basket and waved for him to come in. He followed me to the kitchen, where I unwrapped what turned out to be an elegant set—a fine glass bottle for infusing, a brass-colored funnel, and other barware to match.It was one of the most thoughtful gifts I’d ever received.

“I’ll treasure this.” I beamed up at him after running my fingers over the items he’d procured.

“Don’t thank me now.” He threw me a charming smile. “Just share in the fruits of your labor. Serve me a moonshine cocktail one night on the porch. Moonshine goes well with charcuterie. I could bring over a real nice spread.”

I laughed a little. He was good at making me do that. “Buck Rogers, did you just ask me out on a second date when we’re not even five minutes into our first?”

I expected his reaction to match my humor. If anything, his face sobered and he gave me an earnest look. “I sure did. I’ve got plans for us, girl.”

An hour later,we were passing the entrance sign for Anakeesta, a well-known mountaintop park. The ride up had been easy—flowing conversation over the smooth hum of Buck’s engine. He’d driven Carolina—who he clearly loved—in lieu of his truck. We parked, and Buck did the thing where he jogged around the car to help me out. I was getting used to this kind of treatment, just as I was getting used to his protective stance. When his hand wasn’t on my back, his fingers were threaded in mine. When his arm wasn’t around my waist, it was slung over my shoulders. It made no sense, how normal it felt.

Anakeesta was set up like a little village on a mountaintop that overlooked the Great Smoky Mountains and Gatlinburg. A chairlift—the same kind you used for skiing—could be ridden to the summit. Shops and restaurants were the central attractions, though miles of trails could be followed to lookout points.

The season found the landscape dotted with autumn trees. The afternoon sun looked an hour away from setting. Though most folks seemed to be calling it a day, we’d arrived later. All the better to have the place to ourselves.

“I’ve always wanted to have dinner on top of a mountain,” I admitted as he helped me out of the lift.

“There’s something I want you to see first.” Buck steered us toward a path that led away from the village. Hands clasped, we oohed and aahed at the views below us. Never once did he let me go.

The farther away we got from the village, the fewer people we encountered. By the time we saw a sign that read Treetop Skywalk, we were alone. The sounds of the village had faded; the night air was cool and fresh; the small forest path we turned onto made me feel like we were in our own little world.

And then, the most spectacular construction came into view. The crissing and crossing of footbridges between the treetops was nothing less than breathtaking. Walkways hung from tree to tree were made of wooden slats. Handrails made of rope upheld safety nets that flanked each side. The railings were strung with glowy white lights that revealed the vastness of the skyward world, its own village some sixty feet above ground.

“This is magical,” I gushed, my gaze still washing over the maze of bridges.

“Come on. Let’s take a walk.” Buck urged me to go first so I would have the best view.

Each tree was encircled by a platform to stand on and rest while taking in different views. Walking from one to the next made me feel like a tree-dwelling mammal. Perched in the canopy and looking down from above, I thought about all the awkward cocktail meet-ups I’d endured—all the times I’d eaten at the taco truck. But this... this was a first date.

Some platforms were smaller than others, but we’d closed in on the biggest one. It had been built between the trunks of two trees and a small log hut had been built atop it—a tree house, as the sign above its door announced. But a path to that landing wasn’t open. We encountered a blocking rope, and a sign.

“It looks closed,” I lamented.

“What would give you that idea?”

I threw Buck an are you serious? look. “The sign that says, Restricted Area: No unauthorized personnel past this point.”

He returned a devilish smile. “So let’s break in. Can’t be your first time, you being a PI.”

“Is that what you think I do?”

“I’m telling you, Loretta. The view from that deck is worth it.”

“Buck.” I looked at him like he’d lost his sense. “We’re sixty feet in the air. What if all of this is closed because one of the structures is unstable?”

Buck walked around in front of me and put his arms around my waist. “What if I could guarantee you the bridge won’t fall?”

“You can’t guarantee that.”

A glint of knowing came into his eye. “What if I already did? What if we’re the reason why there’s a sign telling everyone else to keep out?”

“How would something like that be possible?”

He gave a smug smile and repeated words I’d said to him on half a dozen occasions. “I know a guy.”

I let him unlatch the rope and usher us across the bridge, stunned that he’d gone to all this trouble. He’d timed it perfectly—the sun was about to set. We would have privacy as we took in the idyllic view.

“You hungry?” Buck asked as we came to the end of the footbridge.

“I am,” I admitted. “But this view’ll be worth the wait.”

I was sure that we would open the door to the tree house and walk through to the other side. But the tree house wasn’t empty as I’d expected. In the middle was a table set for two, with china and cutlery and glasses. Short candles in high glass pillars were arranged around the benches in the center, setting the room aglow. The doors on the opposite end opened to a patio on the back end, giving us a clear look at the mountains.

“No need to choose between dinner and the view,” Buck said softly as I took it in. “I figured you might like it if I gave you both.”

He strode to the table and pulled out a chair for me to sit, then served us from a chest that had been stowed under one of the benches. Soon, the table was covered with a handful of specialties from a restaurant in the village. He’d shaken and poured a pre-mixed cocktail. We toasted to the beauty of the sunset and settled into a reverent quiet as we caught the last of its light dipping beneath the horizon. This was the stuff of dreams.

“Now that we’re all settled, I can admit, I’ve got an agenda.”Buck’s voice was low and smooth.

I pretended to think. “It can’t be to seduce me. You’ve already done that.”

“If I recall, it was you who showed up at my door half naked and invited yourself into my shower.”

“If I recall, it was you who charmed me out of that same robe the very next day.”

“So we’re even on the seduction. And, you’re right—that’s not it. I want to know half as much about you as you know about me.”

He had a point.I’d seen the man’s birth certificate and knew his family’s dirty laundry. I’d spied on his mother in her hometown. I knew all about his childhood, but had never spoken of mine once.

“I struck out on my own at seventeen. Never regretted my decision.” The same refrain I always gave creaked a little, rusty from disuse.

“So what’d you leave behind?”

“A mother who didn’t know how to stop running. Living on borrowed time. Moving from place to place.”

“So you’re not from Green Valley?”

It still hurt to admit the truth about my upbringing. Knowing that Buck’s life hadn’t been a picnic made it easier to tell the truth about mine.

“I’m not from anywhere. My mother made her living as a high-end house sitter. I grew up all over the place.”

Buck’s gaze softened, but his attention didn’t feel like pity. “So what was it like?”

“Sometimes, like a fairytale,” I remembered with a smile. “Some of the places were so majestic, it was like being a princess. My mom fed the fantasy. We used to play dress-up and gather for tea. We pretended we were the ladies of the estate.”

His voice was deep and curious and quiet. “That sounds magical for a little girl.”

“It started out that way. But it lost its luster the older I got. I never got to have sleepovers in middle school. I never got to throw a rager or sneak in a boy.”

“So how did you get out?”

“The summer before my senior year, we moved here to watch a house out on Bandit Lake. I’d never even been to Tennessee. School had just gotten out for the summer, I had no car, and I didn’t know anybody. I stayed home while my mom worked the day shift down at Donner Lodge.

“You can imagine what kind of attention I drew. A seventeen-year-old girl alone, reading outside on the deck of a lake house, with all the rich boys drinking beer and driving around in their boats.”

Buck looked like he didn’t want to imagine.

“One of those little rich boys wasn’t as bad as the others. And we fell in love.”

What I didn’t say was, I still believed that what Floyd and I had at the beginning was real, a pure kind of love that came with the innocence of youth. I still believed he took me in and married me in good faith. Trouble was, he did it before he grew up.

“Let me guess.” Buck finally spoke up. “It came time to leave at the end of the summer and you didn’t want to go.”

I tried to keep my voice steady. “Worse than that. She left me here.”

“What do you mean, she left you here?” He seemed appalled on my behalf.

“She found her next house-sitting job, then told me I wasn’t coming—told me I ought to finish out high school and hope things worked out with Floyd.”

Buck’s jaw actually dropped.

“The thing you have to realize about my mom is, she saw herself as grooming me for a better life. As teaching me to become accustomed to the standard I deserved. She thought she’d done me a service by placing me in a position to land a wealthy man. You know what she said to me on my wedding day? You’re welcome. She’s not a bad person. And it wasn’t all on her. Floyd was my knight in shining armor. He promised me the one thing I’d always wanted: a home I could stay in and never have to leave.”

“I’m sorry wanting a home came at that price.”

I shrugged. “I’ve made peace with it. I am who I am and it is what it is.”

“So what happened to your momma?“

“She came into town for Floyd’s funeral. Said some things I didn’t appreciate. I said some things back. I don’t regret standing up for myself. But I do regret not having a relationship with the only family I had.”

Buck just nodded, listening, but not judging. Sympathetic, but not offering advice.

“On that note...” Now that I’d made things awkward, I wanted to switch gears. But his hand was on my arm before I could get out another word.

“I can relate to that.”He seemed completely serious.

“To being abandoned by your mother?”

“No. To the part about wanting a real home. I grew up on the mayor’s estate, then the governor’s mansion—in all these borrowed houses full of artifacts, like a museum. Growing up, I used to love going to my friend Robbie’s house. His mom made Hamburger Helper and Jell-O. They all watched TV after dinner and he had a paper route and it was all so normal.”

“We lived in a house with a garden...when I was ten,” I rejoined. I hadn’t told this story to anybody. “Taking care of it was part of the job. Keeping that garden was how I discovered I had a green thumb.”

“Sounds like a nice memory.” Buck gave a smile.

“It was, until we moved to the next house. And the next. All I wanted at each new house was to plant a garden. My momma having to remind me how much around me wasn’t mine to even touch...it woke me up to how little we really had. So when I met a boy who told me he loved me, and that he’d let me plant anything I wanted...”

Buck finished my sentence. “You married him.”

I nodded.

“So why aren’t you raising your garden behind a big house in Bandit Lake? I’m gathering that Floyd’s passed.”

I regarded him skeptically as I took a long swallow of my cocktail. “You really don’t know?”

He shook his head. “I really don’t.”

It struck me then that I’d never actually had to tell the story. At the time it happened, it had been the talk of the town.

“Floyd didn’t just die. He died of a heart attack while he was in bed with a nineteen-year-old college student. I was the crime scene processor called to the scene.”

Buck winced sympathetically.

“I thought it couldn’t get any worse than me finding him and the whole town knowing. Then, I went to claim his life insurance. Turned out there was no life insurance because he was fired from his job. He was leaving the house to gamble every day instead of going to work. We were months behind on bills, yet—somehow—he could afford an apartment for his mistress. He’d been leading a double life.

“The assets were in his name, so the house was the first thing to go. The morning of the funeral, they repossessed my car. The week after, it was the boats. I mean—” I paused long enough to laugh bitterly. “We lived in a big house on Bandit Lake. Floyd hadn’t even let me have a paying job. Back then, I worked for the department as a volunteer. Folks in town knew Floyd as an important man and me as a wealthy woman. All of a sudden, I didn’t have a penny to my name.

“After that, I got obsessed. I needed to know who he really was. Finding out the truth about my own marriage was what made me want to help other women understand their own marriages. That’s why I became a private investigator. But I also needed to heal myself. That’s why I started COO. Because it wasn’t just about what Floyd had done. It was about my role in letting him. I had to teach myself all the things my own mother never taught me.”

When I realized how long I’d been talking—how much I had dumped on Buck—I cringed. “Guess I’m a real catch, huh?”

Buck’s eyes softened at my self-deprecation. “You are a catch, Loretta.”

“Forty-five seconds after we met, I tased you. A week later, I told you off. Two weeks after that, I nearly got you into a bar fight. You’re the only man I’ve ever told I’m a private investigator with a specialization in catching cheaters. You should’ve run screaming by now.”

“Maybe I just like dangerous women.”The corner of his mouth crooked up.

But I frowned. “I’m serious, Buck.”

I half expected him to give another placating response or issue another disarming smile.

“I’m not like other people, Loretta.” Vulnerability seeped into his features. “I have never fit in anywhere—never fit in at school, never fit into political life, never fit into my family outside of loving my momma. Being so many places I don’t fit in, and meeting so many people who aren’t my people...it’s made it so I latch on to people quickly when I feel a real connection.”

I quieted, not having expected anything so heartfelt, knocked down by how easy it was to believe. We were alike in ways I’d never given us credit for.

“And you’re right, Loretta. I do trust you, even though I don’t trust easily. Every new day I see you tells me my instincts about you are right.What you told me just now grew my respect for you exponentially. Just look at all you’ve survived.”

Well, shit.

Buck’s answer knocked the wind out of me. I hardly knew what to say. So I defaulted to humor—a weak joke.

“So is that why you did all this to impress me? Because you thought I was such a good catch?”

“That, and I wanted to show you I’m not like other twenty-six-year-old guys.” For a second, he looked insecure. “Is it working?”

But I was still breathless, still unable to form a coherent response given all he’d said about me. So I spoke the only word I could manage at the moment.

“Yeah.”