Chapter 14
Autumn
We make it back to the hotel an hour and a half before the welcome party is set to begin.
Summer tears across the lobby and throws herself into Jane’s arms. “Janie!”
“Summer!”
Jane presses her lips into my sister’s shiny hair, her fingers catching up handfuls of my sister’s T-shirt. Both women visibly relax in each other’s arms.
“I was so scared you wouldn’t get here in time.”
“I was scared, too.”
Jane’s a little taller than Summer, with long reddish-brown hair she mostly wears pulled into a single braid and a love of vintage clothing like the 1970s bell-bottoms she’s sporting.
I adore her not only because she’s funny and sharp and kind but also because she takes such good care of my sister, and it lets me relax a little, knowing someone else has the wheel.
After we met Jane at Arrivals, she conked out on the way here, and I curled my body toward the window and closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep.
I didn’t think Tucker would ask me any more questions, but I didn’t want to risk it.
Because I didn’t know how I would react, what that strange pressure would become if I opened my mouth again.
Summer releases Jane now and turns to Tucker. “What’s in the box?”
“Joe’s doughnuts,” Tucker says. “You want ’em?” He holds it out.
I suddenly realize I didn’t see him eat any of them. “Did you buy a whole box of doughnuts you weren’t planning to eat?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I told you. Family tradition.”
“You don’t like them, but you stopped to buy them?”
He shrugs again and pushes the box toward Summer.
She takes them, big eyed with gratitude. “If you’re sure…?”
“I’m sure,” he says gruffly.
“Thank you.” Her voice is husky. “For the doughnuts, but also for Jane.”
“Of course.”
It’s short and to the point, but I feel like through Summer, I’m seeing a warm side of him I think he sometimes hides.
“Oh!” Summer says suddenly. “While you were gone we had a little kerfuffle with rooms. Cousin Fay brought the kids, so they needed a room with two doubles, and for some reason they got booked into a room with one king. So I told them you’d swap with them.
Here’s Fay’s number—you can text her when you’re ready to do the swap.
I think the sooner the better, though, because the kids are running around the hotel like hooligans and all the elder relatives are losing their shit. ”
There were a lot of words in that speech, so it takes me a moment to latch onto the important ones: with one king.
As in one bed.
As in one bed for Tucker and me.
“Can’t they swap with anyone else?” I ask.
Summer gives me a wounded look. “I thought you two would be thrilled to have a king,” she says.
Tucker and I exchange glances—mine, at least, trying not to give away the trepidation I feel at the idea of sharing a bed, however large, with this man.
There’s a look in his eye I recognize—it’s the hurt that went along with Sienna’s calling him scary, that lurked behind the question when he asked if I thought he was scary.
“We are!” I say, bubbly, reaching for Tucker’s hand. “Of course we are.”
What I wasn’t expecting was that Tucker’s hand would be reaching for mine, too, and I wasn’t expecting the bigness of it, the thick, calloused fingers or the heat of his skin, or the sudden chaotic firing of every nerve in my suddenly way-too-sensitive fingers, up my arm, spidering out into the most tender, needy parts of me.
I resist the urge to jerk away like I’ve touched a hot stove.
“I’ll text Fay right now,” I say.
“And then get dressed, because it’s almost party time!
” Summer says. “And hey—I don’t think I said it earlier, but you guys are the best. You totally saved the day.
” She throws her arms around me, a quick, fierce hug, and then hugs Tucker, too.
I watch Tucker stiffen, then soften in the hug, and something in me softens, too.
Summer chases off after Jane, leaving Tucker and me standing side by side in the lobby, flummoxed.
“So there’s…only one bed.”
“I mean,” he says, “in fairness, it’s a big bed. And there’s probably a couch. I can take the couch.”
Eyeing him, I gauge his height against the imagined length of a couch. And wince. There’s no way he’s getting any sleep on a couch.
I’ll sleep on the couch.
I text Fay, and we head for the elevator. We’re quiet on the way up to our room, probably both trying not to think too much about our upcoming sleeping arrangements.
Fay meets us with her husband, Geoff, and their two (wound-up) boys, Dido and Ethan—five and seven respectively. Thankfully housekeeping’s been there, and the beds are freshly made. We pack our stuff up in a rush, get Fay and her crew settled and swap keys, and then head for our new room.
The second elevator ride is no livelier. Tucker checks his phone. I watch the floors light up in succession, wondering if it’s the slowest elevator in existence.
He follows me down the hall, several paces behind. I try not to wonder if he’s looking at my butt. Of course not. He likes guy butts.
I beep the door open and push in.
He steps in next to me, and we both stare.
No couch.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Neither of us looks at the other. We stare at the bed. Then I say, “Do you have a side preference?”
“That one,” he says, pointing to the right.
“Good,” I say, pointing at the left. “I like that side.”
Okay. That’s done with. Next up: “If I change in the bathroom, you could change out here, and I could wait to come out till you said you were done.”
Tucker gives me a look that says he thinks I’m way overengineering this situation. “You’ve already seen me with my shirt off,” he says.
Yes, and it almost killed me.
“I don’t need to see you in your underwear,” I say, trying very hard not to picture it. “And you definitely don’t need to see me in mine.”
One of his eyebrows goes up, and heat flares through my bloodstream. He says nothing, though, leaving me to wonder what words he would use if words were his things.
“I’ll just—” I say and gesture toward the bathroom.
He grunts.