Chapter Five #2
She had the sudden, wild idea that she should just tell him. That she should… lay out all her cards on the table, because he was a Lisle after all. The Lisles always liked card games, historically speaking.
But if she told him and he turned her away—even if he did it nicely and easily—she would have her answer. And Matilda didn’t want that answer.
She preferred her crush and the possibility that something might come of it, one day. So there was no good reason to tell him about it, she decided. There was a reason she never played cards. She wasn’t one to take an unnecessary risk.
The only risks she took were necessary, as they usually involved the welfare of animals.
So instead, she smiled ruefully at him. “Well, now that you mention it, I do have an agenda.”
She sighed a little, as if he’d read her like a book, and then she went over and sat down on his sofa. Uninvited. Because this was all uninvited, so she might as well be comfortable.
“I wanted to talk to you about opening up a rescue right here in Cowboy Point,” she told him, gazing at him from the cozy leather embrace of his sofa. It wasn’t that crinkly, stiff leather, either. This leather felt warm the way she thought he likely did, too.
But she needed to focus.
The rescue thing was not a lie. Or not entirely a lie, anyway.
Matilda had been thinking about formally creating a rescue or shelter of some kind for years now.
Rosie had always been exasperated by the number of animals she brought home, and Matilda had to admit that as much as she loved animals of every type, she sometimes also wanted to simply go home. Like last night.
Ulterior motives notwithstanding.
And she’d thought a lot about talking to the various community leaders here to see what they thought, because everything in Cowboy Point was easier when you had the support of the heavy hitters here on the main road.
The Bennetts, the Lisles, Shane Johnson, and the Sheens.
These days she would add Dr. Ramona to the list, and round it out with the deputy sheriff Atticus Wayne and her own cousin, Sara Jane, since a librarian was the closest thing around here to a walking community bulletin board.
“An animal rescue,” Tennessee said.
“Or shelter, I guess,” Matilda added. Helpfully.
“Right. Or a shelter.”
That wasn’t a question either. Tennessee said it as if he should have known that was what she was after. And really, he should have. Of course Matilda wanted to open a place where she could care for all the rescues she found or was called to handle.
It was like these people had never met her.
“Although I think a rescue might be better,” she said, as if he’d offered his immediate assistance already and was drilling down into the details. “Just in terms of how to set it up, and run it, and so on.”
“And when you thought about animal rescues and potential shelters, I was the name that came to mind?”
She frowned at him. “Yes, Tennessee. Since when does anything happen in Cowboy Point that you don’t have an opinion on?”
He looked at her as if she was unfathomable. But to Matilda that seemed like a significant step in the right direction, because it was a step away from unhinged, which was where she thought she normally came in with him.
Tennessee looked at her for a long moment, and she thought he was going to order her to leave again. Instead, he padded toward his kitchen.
She stayed where she was, sitting on his couch, not sure if he intended to come back.
Last night she hadn’t noticed that there was no television in this room.
Just the sofa, the fireplace, a desk against one wall—alarmingly neat, of course—and books.
Lots and lots of books on shelves built into the walls, stacked neatly on his coffee table, and tucked into other shelves that were also side tables with matching lamps.
Suggesting that when she’d come here last night, Tennessee might have been hanging around his living room, reading.
Matilda literally couldn’t think of anything hotter.
He came back in from the kitchen, holding two bottles of beer. He sat on the couch beside her and placed one on the coffee table in front of her. He held onto his own as he settled back against the cushions.
“You read a lot,” she said.
And then, possibly for the first time in her entire life, she felt something like embarrassed. Anyway, she assumed that was what this feeling was.
Because she felt… silly.
She understood that was because that wasn’t what she’d wanted to say, it was what she thought she should say, for some reason. And it was a remarkably dumb thing to say, because she was sitting here in a room filled with books. Books that looked well-read at even a casual glance.
“I do read a lot,” Tennessee said. And then, happily, he did not wait for her to say something else humiliating.
He continued on. “Tell me more about this idea of yours. I thought you already basically had a shelter or rescue or whatever behind your house. Maybe in your house, now, since you have it to yourself.”
“Bold of you to assume that I don’t have a steady stream of lovers at my beck and call who require the house free of animals,” she tossed back at him without really thinking it through.
Though even if she had thought it through, what she wouldn’t have expected was his reaction.
He looked… stricken, for a moment. She was sure of it. That was the only word to describe it.
Then he looked away. “Considering the quality of men in the area, I would factor that into the collecting strays part of your operation.”
She laughed, surprising herself. Maybe him, too. She was sure she saw his mouth curve. “Well. Fair.”
No one had really asked her about this before.
People made comments about her collection all the time, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Usually they were making fun of her in one way or another, which she quite happily had never cared much about.
Let them. But he’d actually asked her to tell him more.
Instead of telling her he wasn’t interested, the way she’d half expected he would do.
So she swiveled around so she could face him, pulling one leg up onto the couch between them.
Matilda picked up the beer he’d brought for her and took a pull. “There are always animals who need help and I think having a more centralized location to bring those animals into could be a benefit to the community.”
She might not have come here to make this pitch, but she meant it.
“I don’t disagree,” Tennessee said. “Especially if it keeps me from having to babysit a surprise litter.” But he didn’t say that the way he had before. There was still that curve to his lips, and something a whole lot less grim about his eyes. “No matter how cute they might have been.”
“They were cute,” Matilda agreed. “And they already have homes, which makes them even cuter.” She studied him, thinking about the people she’d seen him with and how strange that was on a random February evening.
Particularly when she hadn’t heard of any reason the Lisles would be entertaining at this time of year.
Usually, if folks had visitors in town, everyone knew it.
She smiled, hoping that would make her seem less nosy.
“You should have told me you had company in town. I might have let you off the hook with those puppies.”
“Company?” Tennessee blinked. “Oh, you mean the dinner tonight?”
Matilda had grown up in a family of many ruffians, so she knew a thing or two about telling lies.
And how one of the easiest tells was overexplaining.
So she didn’t. She simply exuded the possibility that she might have returned to Mountain Mama Pizza to, for example, pick up a stray mitten she might very well have dropped outside.
That was certainly within the realm of possibility.
There was no need to explain that she’d gone and peered in the window purely to see what he was doing.
He nodded as if the vision in her head made it through to him intact. “Here’s a story for you. You know Helena Patrick, right? She’s the one responsible for the coffee cart next to the diner.”
“She makes the best breve in Montana, in my opinion,” Matilda said at once. “I would follow her anywhere.”
Tennessee frowned. “I don’t even know what a breve is.”
“Steamed cream. Pure joy. Oh, and coffee.”
He shook his head. “Have you ever noticed that Helena looks like someone? Someone you know?”
Matilda tilted her head a little and thought about it.
Helena Patrick was mystifyingly pretty. She couldn’t even put her finger on why.
Aside from the sleek, long limbs and that effortless, just rolled out of bed like this look that was always astonishingly cute.
Plus blue eyes and dark hair, a combination that was always hard to look away from.
Matilda was jealous of that sort of pretty girl, her sister Rosie being one of them—although at least Rosie spent a great deal of time working on the maintenance of her beauty, which made it more tolerable.
Matilda, by contrast, was not sleek in any way.
She was solid, because she needed to be sturdy if she was going to be picking up large dogs and other heavy animals and carting them around.
And she was effortlessly dressed in what she rolled out of bed and found of a morning, but no one had ever accused her of being cute in that elfin, manic pixie dream girl way.
She had always been fine with that. And anyway, he wasn’t asking about her feelings about the pretty girls around town.
“I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that she looks like anyone,” Matilda said after a moment. “Except, you know. That girl. Always an air of mystery and a trail of folks desperate to solve it.”
“Well in this case, it was resolved.” He tapped the side of his beer bottle, almost as if he was nervous.
Or processing some kind of emotion. It was fascinating.
“She’s been here a while, but her two older brothers just came into town last weekend.
And the next time you see her, you might notice that she looks a lot like Cat.
As it turned out, my dad had a whole other family out there. ”
He said that matter-of-factly. But she was sitting on his couch with him and she could see the way he almost… braced himself. Matilda didn’t think. She reacted the way she would if an animal in her care seemed to be in pain.
She reached over and she put her hands on his arm. “Did you know that already?” she asked softly. “I’m so sorry if you didn’t. That must have been such a shock.”
When he lifted his gaze to hers again, she felt it go through her like a lightning strike.
“I didn’t know,” he said, his voice a shade or two lower than before. “But I’m fine. It’s my mother I would have worried about, but she’s known for a while. And the funniest part is, they all seem… shockingly decent, despite it all.”
“I’m not sure that I would have it in me to think well of them, even though I know it’s not their fault, what their father did,” Matilda said quietly.
She shook her head. “I don’t really have it in me to forgive my mother for being her ditzy, hippie self, and I’m not sure she’s ever hurt anyone on this earth deliberately. She’s just selfish.”
And this was another benefit of who they were and where they lived.
They both knew all these details about each other without having to share them now.
She knew all about his father’s attempts to sell the General Store—the Lisle family legacy—and all of his many get-rich-quick schemes.
She knew that no one had considered him much of a husband or father, and that he’d disappeared while Tennessee was a teenager.
They’d found out later that he’d died—or they’d assumed he had.
By the same token, everyone knew Matilda’s father had died too, but her mother remained very much alive, if inaccessible.
She liked to call herself Moonshadow these days, usually dressed only in undyed, coarse sorts of fabrics, considered herself a keeper of light, and lived on a commune farther out in the mountains.
The only thing Matilda liked about her mother, and liked was a strong word, was that people assumed Matilda was just as fluttery as good old Moonshadow when she wasn’t.
It was an excellent way to do exactly what she liked without repercussions.
Tennessee nodded, because he knew all of these things. And probably more, because he was older than Matilda. It was a convenient shorthand. She’d always liked living here, and now she liked it a whole lot more.
“We all decided that we’re going to get along,” Tennessee told her.
“My father pretty clearly never wanted us to meet. So our mothers are determined to become best friends. And the rest of us are going to make ourselves the healthiest, happiest family that ever existed, even if it kills every single one of us.”
The look on his face was intense. More intense than usual, and she thought she probably should have dropped her hands.
But she didn’t, because she was only a girl, after all.
And his arm had all of those muscles and was so hard, and hot through the flannel he wore, just as she’d imagined he would be.
She couldn’t help herself.
But she did scold herself into focusing. “Do you think you’ll have to kill people to achieve this?”
He looked at her, and it was like his features softened. She thought maybe he’d taken a breath.
There was no reason it should feel like she was holding hers.
“Actually,” Tennessee said, “I think it might be less of an act than expected.” He shook his head slightly, like he was baffled by that himself. “I was expecting the worst. But so far, so good.”
“I look forward to meeting them,” Matilda told him then. “And I have to say, I’m not sure how everyone else in Cowboy Point will react. An expansion of Lisles? The natural order will be thrown out of balance.”
She was only partially kidding.
“If we claim Wilder Carey as one of ours, and that’s a big if, we’ll outnumber the Careys.” And that time, when Tennessee smiled, it was a real one and it was directed right at Matilda. It made her feel as if she was flying. “Not that I’m looking for ways to quietly win the feud, of course.”
“Of course,” Matilda said at once.
When she had to drop her hands and sit back and actually force herself to talk about animals in the shelter or rescue she wanted to start—when normally, she had to be forced to stop talking about these things—she held onto that smile of his.
And she tucked it away, deep inside, so she could hoard it forever, like the treasure it was.