Chapter Twelve
“I thought you didn’t call,” he finally admitted, chuckling wryly. “It didn’t surprise me, someone like you with more letters behind your name than the alphabet. But I really wanted to talk to you.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Had a proposition for you.”
She exhaled and air quoted. “The mysterious proposition. Come on, stop already. You got what you wanted.”
“No, I didn’t,” he argued, and her eyes widened with surprise.
“No, I mean, yeah, I did when it came to that, but-but—” He was putting his giant boot in his mouth now.
“Look, what I mean is I really did want to ask you to come jam with me and Jack and Bo. Maybe practice with us and come to our gig tonight.”
Silence.
“You know, a trial run. Maybe fill in for Hunter so we can enter the Homegrown Awards in Austin. But you kept surprising me, kept making me want to know you more.” Making me insecure about guys with records.
“And I didn’t know how to ask, because you’re all accomplished and shit, when I’ve been on my own since sixteen. ”
“Sixteen?” she said softly.
He exhaled, slouched his hands on his hips, and glanced away. Jeezus, he was getting all open and stuff with her.
“Your little girl ain’t safe right now on the side of a back road. Let me help you. I wasn’t gonna leave you. We can let bygones be bygones. I know you probably only called because I pressured you, anyway. Deal?”
She looked up into his eyes. Searched back and forth.
Swallowed. “Thaddeus—”
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped.
She flinched back. Dammit, he didn’t want her doing that, not from him.
“Look, everyone who thought I’m just a fuckup Thaddeused me,” he enunciated.
“Every teacher, my parents, every employer. And I get it. I was a rabblerouser, not Harvard material. I don’t have a string of acronyms behind my name like you.
Probably can’t spell acronym without spell check.
Couldn’t even finish high school. Kicked out.
Didn’t matter that I couldn’t read right and didn’t know how to cope. ”
“And yet you’re a wordsmith,” she murmured, still staring at him with wonder. “A poet.”
There she went again, seeing something good in him…
“I just, uh, do not want to be Thaddeused from my favorite mouth.” His thumb kept brushing across her lips, his gaze locked there on his throaty whisper. “It’s a bad word in my book.”
She shivered. His favorite mouth? It was, he realized. It was the first mouth to encourage him in a long time. He pushed her lips out of shape, wishing he could turn back time. Make different choices. Be worthy.
“You’re wrong,” she said, as if his opinion caused her real pain.
“I ain’t wrong,” he replied.
She palmed his cheek, noting his rough inhale as his thumb on her lip pressed harder. Caressed harder.
“It’s a beautiful name. Courageous heart.” She brushed her thumb across the crinkle in his brow to smooth it. “Gift from God.”
He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing, his gaze bouncing back and forth between hers. “How would you know that?” his gravelly reply came.
“Thaddeus Haenke, the famous botanist.” Her thumb kept caressing.
He leaned into it, his blood racing.
“A type of orchid. Cattleya Thaddeus.”
That visceral hatred soothed, as if her thumb brushed a balm on wounds.
“Thaddeus Welsh’s famous nasturtiums paintings. When in doubt, I look to my favorite thing.” She shrugged, smiling wanly. “Flowers.”
She dropped her thumb, but he caught it. Bringing it up to his lips, his words hoarse and throat feeling thick because no one had ever made his name sound beautiful before until this paleobotanist just had. “Flower Girl,” he whispered.
“Trouble…”
“Maybe Thaddeus then,” he breathed, kissing her thumb, still captured in his grip. “To you.”
“You really think I’m good enough to play with you guys?”
He grimaced now. How could she sound uncertain? “Fan mail’s been off the charts wanting to know who you are.”
She hadn’t conceded a deal about him fixing her car, but he maneuvered around her to her open hood anyway.
“Triple A said they couldn’t be here for three hours,” she said, following him as he stripped off his plaid shirt, jamming it into his back pocket like a grease rag, and cocked back his beat-up Stetson.
He felt her gaze scrutinizing his profile as he ripped a strip of tape loose with his perpetually stained fingernails—it didn’t matter how much he washed them. Years of manual labor had taken their toll—tore it with his teeth and let it dangle from his mouth as he tore off another piece.
Finding the hole easily, he reached in and began twining the duct tape around it.
“What’s that gonna do?” She, too, leaned in, her flat tummy he’d once lavished with kisses and traced stretch marks with his tongue grazing against his elbow.
Goose bumps shot up his arm. “Sheal the bushted radiator hoshe.” He spoke through the tape still clenched in his teeth as his fingers deftly maneuvered the tape around the hose.
“Huh, duct tape really does fix everything,” she said in mild awe.
He took out the piece from his mouth. “It’ll get you parked somewhere safe, but that’s about it.”
She was still scrutinizing his face. He could feel the caress of her gaze everywhere, firing his blood.
“Okay, yeah, if I can just get it home, three more miles, I can start shopping around mechanics on Monday for a rate that won’t break the bank—”
“Let’s get’er out to my place now. I’ll drop it off in your driveway first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You can’t do that,” she argued. “It’s one in the morning. You’re going to work all night just to fix it? And how will we get home? Don’t you need to sleep?”
“I can change one of these over my morning coffee with one hand tied behind my back.”
She leveled a disbelieving glare at him.
He doubled down. “An easy fix. Scout’s honor.”
She shook her head. She hadn’t bought that scout bullshit the first night, either. “You’re just going to fix it for me? You just have random spare radiator hoses for Rovers sitting around?”
He had access to all the parts he needed, but the passenger door creaked open.
Charlie abandoned her face-off and dashed around the vehicle. “Daisy. Get back in.”
“What’s wrong?” the girl said.
“Just some car trouble, nothing to worry about but get in because we’re on the side of a highway, Dais—”
“It’s Mr. McClintock!” Daisy exclaimed.
The girl’s face split into a grin, and she threw herself at him, flinging her arms around his waist.
T.R. laughed and draped an arm down around her. “Hey, girlie, you know my middle name is Rex? So it’s T. Rex to you.” He made dino claws.
“T. Rex!” Daisy crowed.
So damn cute, her ponytail mussed from sleep bobbing up and down.
“Like the paleontology my momma teaches.”
He fist-bumped her.
“Whatcha doing?” Daisy pushed up on her tiptoes to look at the engine.
“Stay back, Daze.” Charlie worried, reaching for her, but T.R. drew her in closer.
“Look here. That’s the radiator. Cools your engine when it’s runnin’ hot. The hose busted open, which means a bunch of coolant sprayed onto the engine and looked like smoke.”
“Cool,” she said.
“Naw, sweetheart. Hot.” The girl giggled as he shook his hand, pretending he’d burned it. “Hey, you wanna be my wing-girl?”
“Yes!”
“Alright … you can be the official hat holder.” He plopped his Stetson on her head.
It tipped over her eyes. “Holding your hat isn’t actually helping, T. Rex,” she scolded him with a smirk just like a mini-Charlie. “That’s just something a grown-up does to make a kid feel important.”
He cocked a brow at her as Charlie shook her head with amusement, resting her hands on her hips.
“Is that a fact,” T.R. shot back, standing upright. “All right, miss thang. Your momma can hold it.” He plopped it on Charlie’s head instead as if a dare.
Relished how honest-to-God gorgeous she looked in it, like she wore his colors and he of all people who’d sworn never to settle down had staked some primal claim.
“And you can help me patch the…” When he noticed Charlize’s oversized T-shirt under her work shirt, with that tiny hole in the stomach and rust stain streaked across the side…
His old undershirt? The one he’d forgotten at her place?
He reached out and fingered it. That call from her ex that morning really had spooked her somehow, but she’d been honest. She’d liked him. A girl didn’t wear a guy’s shirt otherwise, and he … liked thinking he might belong to her, might like wearing a ball and chain.
“I need another strip of duct tape,” he said to Daisy, his eyes not leaving Charlie’s shirt as he held the tape out to the girl, tingling sizzling through his blood at the revelation.
He turned back to Daisy who took the roll and tore a tiny piece.
He suppressed a chuckle. “That’s it. I’m gonna lift you up now.”
“Here.” She held the tape out to him.
“Naw, girlie. You’re gonna do it.” He scooped her up around the waist.
Propped a boot up on the bumper so she could kneel on his thigh, then wrapped an arm around her to hold her steady.
“Let’s put it right … there.” He jabbed a black stain on the hose that in the shadow of the spotlights was hard to decipher. “See that spot?”
She eyed him questioningly.
“Press it right over that spot.”
Daisy’s tongue stuck out a touch as she concentrated.
“Don’t touch that metal. That’s hot as hades. That’s it … right … there.”
She pulled back up; her forearms smudged in auto grease where she’d rested them on the frame.
“I did it.” Daisy grinned.
“Sure shootin’ you did.” He set her back down and held out his palm. “Skin it.”
Daisy wound up for a stinging slap and delivered the crack.
He laughed and shook his hand. “Dang, Daze, not for real.”
She giggled, then wrapped her arms around his waist. “I wish my dad was like you.”
He froze. Eyes snapped to Charlie who’d sucked in hard, returning his gaze with a deep pain in her eyes, when she mouthed, sorry, and gently peeled her daughter from him.
Sorry? The highest compliment in the world just paid him, being likened to a dad, was an honor not an insult, one in which a lot of dads didn’t earn. Like his.
Never gonna amount to anything!
Why can’t you be more like your sisters and give a damn, Thaddeus! His dad’s favorite.
What are we raising, an idiot? Who really fathered you? Sure as hell couldn’t have been me.
Get out of my house! I warned you you’d be gone if you got in one more fight! Quit making our lives hell. His sisters screams for him not to go, screams at their parents to take it all back echoed in the canyon of his mind.
Maybe there was something to Tyler’s suggestion, that Charlie was scared when her ex had brought Daisy home…
He returned to his truck bed. Hauled out a water drum.
It wasn’t coolant but it would do the trick to get her Rover down the road and distract him from the warmth that Daisy’s comparison and Charlie’s reverence of his name was spreading in his chest. Using his flannel, he twisted off the radiator cap and poured in the water, letting it glug.
There. He’d dragged this out as long as he could as he swung the drum back into his truck bed. Locked up his truck box. Charlie was biting her lip again when he walked back to them in the bright light, a car whizzing past on the back road.
“What if it breaks down again? Doesn’t make it home?”
“D’you know how to drive my stick?” He eyed her, wiping his hands on his plaid shirt and chewing his cheek as he slung it over his shoulder, playing with fire.