Chapter Five
Seeing this much of Tennessee in less than twenty-four hours made Matilda feel a little bit giddy.
Maybe a lot giddy, she corrected herself as she put her blanket on the bench inside his front door, actually hung her coat up this time—because she wanted to match the tidiness pressing in on all sides, and stepped out of her boots once more.
She did not look at him as she did these things.
She thought that would be a step too far.
Particularly when she was pretty sure that he really didn’t want her here.
That it wasn’t just more of his typical grumpiness, that thing he did while helping everyone and getting involved with everything and generally being indispensable.
While scowling, though. To make sure everyone knew he was terribly fierce and solitary and might bite at any moment.
He was a lot like a rescue dog in that way.
And the look on his face as she made herself at home again was nothing short of… confounded.
Matilda had delivered the pizza to Rosie and Ryder the way she’d taken to doing at least once a week since the babies had been born at Christmas.
They sat around in the living room in Rosie and Ryder’s comfortable cabin, mostly on the floor.
That was where Matilda got to play with her rowdy little toddler nephews, Eli and Levi, who delighted her more every day.
She also got to cuddle her sweet, brand-new, two-month-old baby girl twin nieces while Ryder and Rosie sat back, ate pizza, and usually shook their heads at each other a lot.
Like… what have we done?
Though they always did it smiling, and usually holding hands, too. Meanwhile, Holly and Ivy were perfect in every way. Matilda had gotten to snuggle them, and kiss on them, and then run around outside with her nephews, too, to burn off some of their endless supply of wiggles.
She’d gotten to watch Ryder Carey effortlessly prove what a terrific father he was, and it still made her heart jump around in her chest. Because Matilda remembered what it had been like for Rosie the first time, when she’d had those boys on her own.
She’d flatly refused to tell anyone who the father was, and she’d insisted she could handle it all herself.
They hadn’t let her, of course. Rosie had been so tired.
Matilda and all the rest of her family had stepped in, keeping up a kind of informal duty rotation to make sure there was always someone on hand to help Rosie out.
Without letting Rosie know, of course. Because no Stark liked charity.
It was hardwired into their bones—and was probably the reason that they were all so boneheaded and stubborn.
Then again, what family that had been in Montana for generations wasn’t? It was kind of a requirement to live here and keep on living here.
After dinner, she’d driven back toward Cowboy Point, driving right past the turn to her house.
Because she’d promised to clean up after the puppies, hadn’t she?
She’d parked her truck by the General Store and then had wandered across the road to peer through the windows into Mountain Mama Pizza.
Because she just wanted to see, she’d told herself.
If he’d still been there, which she’d doubted. Because when did Tennessee go out?
But he was there, shockingly. More than that, he’d actually been laughing as he sat around a table with some people Matilda didn’t recognize from behind, plus his own brother and sister.
She hadn’t seen Tennessee laugh that much before. So she decided she liked those people, whoever they were.
Then she’d gone and waited in her truck with a hot chocolate she’d made at Rosie’s house and carried with her in a thermos, because Rosie always had made the best hot chocolate in the family.
When she’d seen Cat Lisle Carey come out of the pizza place arm in arm with Helena Patrick—interesting, she’d thought—she’d eased herself out of her truck, grabbed her heavy, wool blanket from the backseat, and had gone to settle herself on Tennessee’s front porch.
With her cleaning supplies in tow, of course.
Since she was here for very virtuous reasons.
It felt like a kind of late-winter Christmas carol to sit there with the quiet of the night all around her.
It was cold, but the wind wasn’t particularly high, and she liked that.
She almost felt that if she listened hard enough, she could hear the way the stars shined down.
Bundled up, she felt as if she could have stayed outside forever, though she knew better than to try.
And then she’d gotten the distinct and extreme pleasure of watching Tennessee walk toward her in the dark.
He was surefooted, which was no surprise.
He walked on the ice and the snow as if he didn’t notice it, his lean, muscled body hidden away behind his winter coat, and the hat he wore tugged down on his brow.
Not a cozy knit hat, like hers. But one of those wool cowboy hats that men around here wore in the winter.
She could feel her body react to that. To him. She was surprised she didn’t steam up the front porch. Sometimes she thought that there had to be something wrong with her, that she could feel as intensely as she did about this man when he didn’t seem to notice.
But that was the thing about last night. She’d spent all day thinking about very little else. She’d gone over every moment.
He did notice. She was sure of it.
He just didn’t want to notice, was the thing. If she had to guess.
But if Matilda had spent any time at all over the course of her life concerning herself with what people wanted, well. She would have been someone else. And she had no desire whatsoever to be someone else, because she greatly enjoyed being herself.
Particularly right now, she thought, with quite a bit of satisfaction, because his house smelled like him.
She took a deep breath and then she padded over toward the fireplace in her socks, carrying her bucket with her.
And without a glance in his direction, she set about spraying the floor in front of the fireplace, and everywhere else that wasn’t covered by one of his throw rugs. Each of them dark and richly colored.
She got down on her hands and knees, and methodically, efficiently, scrubbed it all up. Wherever she’d sprayed.
Then, aware of Tennessee in her peripheral vision but not committing herself to look at him directly, she stood up and looked around the room instead.
“Where are all those towels? I’d be happy to run some laundry for you.
I’ll bring the other towels back up the hill when I deliver the puppies to their new homes. ”
“You’re not running my laundry.”
She did turn and look at him then, and as always, looking at him full on took her breath away. He had shaved at some point, so there was no impediment—she could look at that remarkable jaw of his all she liked. He looked grumpier than usual, or maybe sleepier.
And he was looking at her the same way he had last night. As if she was completely off her rocker. The good news was, she was used to that look. She got it all the time.
“You did me a huge favor,” she argued. “I want to do one for you in return.”
“The favor you can do me, Matilda, is to leave my house and not return. Ever.”
She’d been getting some mileage out of ignoring the things he said and doing as she liked, and so she had a split second of indecision then. She wondered whether she should continue along that line. As it was effective, and to her mind, entertaining.
But instead, this time, she let herself blink. She let her eyes go a little bit wide. Not exactly forlorn, but not solemn, either.
“That was very mean,” she said quietly.
And then she just looked at him.
She watched him… seem to be absolutely unable to take that on board.
Tennessee was still over by his front door. He had taken off his coat, yet was regrettably not dressed in a T-shirt and gray sweatpants, both of which she imagined would haunt her for years to come. Tonight he wore jeans and a flannel, which was a typical uniform around Cowboy Point.
Even his socks looked deliciously masculine to her. Thick gray wool and no visible holes, of course.
He pressed his palms against his eyes for a moment, and he looked something like tired when he dropped them. And Matilda knew exactly why he was tired, didn’t she? That was her fault. She really should have felt guilty.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to be mean. I am trying to figure out how I’ve seen more of you in the past twenty-four hours than in the previous… I don’t know, decade?”
“Good luck?” she suggested.
“It seems to me you have an agenda,” he replied.
Matilda felt her whole body shiver into something like alarm. Or wariness, anyway. She wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Was he actually going to admit that he knew how she felt about him?
Did she want that?
She might have decided that her crush was actually love, no matter whether he loved her back. But that didn’t mean she wanted to have a discussion with him about it. Especially when he was looking at her as if he saw ulterior motives stamped across her forehead.
Not exactly a time for tender declarations.
“What agenda do you think I have?” she asked carefully. Very, very carefully. “Aside from saving puppies, that is?”
“You tell me,” Tennessee said. “I’ve known you for your whole life, I think I would have heard if you made a habit out of barging into people’s houses, forcing them to babysit puppies, and then coming back to haunt them—pretending that you have the burning desire to clean.”
“I wasn’t pretending anything.”
“I’ve never heard any stories, so that makes me think it hasn’t happened.
” Tennessee shook his head, that blue gaze seeming to swallow her whole.
“No such thing as a secret in a small town, Matilda. You know this. There’s just the countdown to it being public knowledge because everything is always public knowledge, sooner or later. ”