Chapter 6 #2
This was the part that was getting dangerous.
The banter. He and Tessa settled into a rhythm of verbal sparring that had nothing to do with friction and everything to do with the fact that she made him laugh.
Really laugh—not the polite chuckle he offered at social functions, but the kind that snuck up on him and burst out before he could catch it.
And she laughed, too. A lot. And she sounded surprised every time.
As if she’d never expressed humor honestly and openly before.
He started going out of his way to crack her composure and get her to throw her head back, exposing the elegant column of her neck, and flashing her perfect teeth as she laughed.
She was deliberately, wickedly funny in a way he suspected most people never got to see because she kept it hidden behind impeccable manners and careful composure. She had a gift for precise, devastating observations delivered with a straight face and perfect timing.
Fern had always said Tessa was scary smart. She'd undersold her daughter-in-law considerably with that observation. Tessa was scary smart, scary observant, and scary funny, a combination that was proving considerably more dangerous to his defenses than her beauty alone ever could’ve been.
The real Tessa kept slipping through cracks in her armor. And he had no business noticing her, let alone enjoying her so much that far too many of his thoughts were starting to revolve around her.
Fridays were the only day of the week that Makayla didn't have an activity after school that lasted until Tessa closed her store.
When Makayla mentioned that she was always home alone on Fridays, he immediately offered to pick her up from school and let her ride with him on his calls.
He made the offer because it was practical—Makayla could learn about animals, and it gave Tessa a few hours to work on the gown business or the store without worrying about her daughter. Yep. Purely practical.
Tessa said yes the first Friday because she had an emergency reshoot of a wedding gown for a big New York sale she and Charlotte were hoping to make.
He picked up Makayla after school, and he was surprised to see she'd changed into her jeans after school. She sat in the passenger seat, her new green boots propped on the dashboard, watching the valley roll past with the same wide-eyed wonder she'd had the day she first touched June's neck.
"Can I please change the radio station?" she asked without warning.
"Uhh, sure." So much for his beloved classic rock. He braced himself for a bout of Beethoven that threatened to bore him into a coma.
She leaned forward and scrolled through the dial until she found a country station and sat back with a contented sigh as a twangy voice crooned about back roads and Friday nights.
Shocked, he stared fixedly at the road. Tessa Lawrence's violin prodigy daughter even knew what country music was?
The next song came on, and this time Makayla sang along.
Quietly at first, like she was testing whether he'd tell her to stop.
When he didn't, her voice grew stronger.
She had perfect pitch and a natural instinct for harmony that was startling—she'd find the third or the fifth above the melody and hold it effortlessly, as if her ear couldn't help building a more interesting version of whatever she heard.
"You've got a great voice," he said.
"My music teacher says I have a good ear." She paused, picking at a thread on her jeans. "I play violin."
"For how long?" he asked with genuine curiosity.
"Since I was three," she answered matter-of-factly. "I'm in the advanced ensemble at the middle school even though I'm only in 5th grade. That's where I go after school Mondays and Wednesdays."
"What do you do Tuesdays and Thursdays?"
"Tutoring on Tuesdays. I'm learning Latin, French, and algebra. Thursdays are violin lessons with Professor Cohen in Apple Pie Creek." A pause. "Mom wants me to audition for the youth symphony in Bozeman next year."
"Is that what you want?"
A long pause. Outside the window, the valley stretched toward the mountains, wide and golden in the afternoon light.
"I want to learn to fiddle," she said quietly. She sounded guilty. As if it was a shameful secret.
He glanced at her. She was staring out the window, her face carefully neutral in a way that reminded him so sharply of Tessa it made his chest ache. This kid had learned how to compose her face and moderate her voice before she'd learned to ride a bike.
"Aren't violin and fiddle the same instrument?"
"Yes." She looked at him with serious brown eyes. "But they're not the same thing."
He understood. More than she could know, he understood. The same tool used differently. The same talent put in the service of someone else's expectations versus your own joy.
"I bet you'd be a heck of a fiddler," he said.
Her voice dropped into the guilty tone of a confession. “I’ve been watching You Tube videos on how to fiddle.” A pause. “It’s really cool.” Another pause. “But there’s some stuff I can’t figure out how to do.”
“Have you asked your violin teacher to show you how?”
Makayla looked horrified. “He’s a classical violinist. He was the concertmaster of a major orchestra in Europe.”
“He also retired in Montana where fiddling is a lot more common than classical violin. Give the guy a chance. He might surprise you. “
She stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then she broke into big grin and cranked the radio louder.
During his next call, a boring examination of a bull a farmer was thinking about using for breeding, Makayla stayed in the truck.
When he came back, she’d drawn him a picture with colored pencils on a piece of notebook paper.
It was a house with a wraparound porch that looked enough like Fern’s to be identifiable.
And on the porch were three people sitting side by side in rocking chairs.
A big one, a medium one, and a small one. A family.
He managed to thank her without his voice cracking, but it was a close thing.
He didn't switch the station back after he dropped her off at home. In fact, before he even got to his next stop, he'd changed all six radio presets to country stations.
And he hung the picture on his refrigerator with magnets.
That night, he ate standing at the counter again. Setting the table for one felt too lonely even for him. While he chewed and swallowed, he tried to think about anything other than Tessa and Makayla.
He was doing it again. Getting sucked into the fantasy that he could somehow have a family of his own one day.
Lexi's voice slithered into his mind, uninvited and unwelcome, the way it always did when he let his guard down. He wasn’t meant to have a family. It went without saying that, if he had no time for a woman, he surely had no time for children.
He was noticing things he had no business noticing.
The way Tessa applied Dolly's medicine three times a day instead of two.
The way she typed notes on her phone with the ferocity of a general preparing for battle.
The way she looked at Makayla through the kitchen window—protective and terrified and proud all at once, a mother trying to hold on and let go at the same time.
Fern had told him Tessa came from money. Old, back East money. She looked like it—classy and expensive. Her daughter wore plaid skirts, velvet headbands, and played violin. Tessa had been raised in a world that looked at men like him as the help.
He knew exactly how falling for Tessa would end. He had the divorce papers in a box somewhere to prove it.
Except . . . Lexi never would’ve patched a fence. Nor given a cat shots nor swabbed medicine on a llama's skin. And Lexi never, ever, would've swallowed her pride for the sake of any animal's health.
His phone buzzed. A text from his older brother, Hank.
Heard from Reno you bought a kid jeans and are making calls to her mom several times a week. Who are you courting?
He shoved the phone in his pocket.
He was not courting Tessa. He was providing veterinary care to animals and appropriate clothing to a child for the environment she lived in. These were professional and humanitarian acts. Nothing more.