Chapter 4 #2
I nodded and tried to laugh it off as I released my grip on his arm. It was almost always this way. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it wasn't the creepy stalker. But that one percent—the one time it actually was—had a way of rewiring your brain.
A pickup was parked a few rows to the side of where we sat idling.
I hadn’t noticed the pickup because he’d been behind us before we turned.
Ben–Tate’s oldest brother and an endearing prankster through much of his life–made his way toward the swather, carrying something with a delighted look on his face.
Tate sighed before he leaned across me, his arm brushing my legs as he did so, and opened the door while his brother climbed up the ladder.
“Whatever he says, just ignore it,” he told me before Ben’s cheerful face popped into view.
He looked so much like Tate it was almost eerie. He wore a bit of scruff on his face, but both had dark hair, though Ben’s was a little longer on the sides. Both had striking eyes, but currently Ben’s were looking mischievous in a way that was noticeably absent from his brother’s.
He held out a large pillow resembling a donut toward Tate. “I just stopped by Mom’s to grab a bite real quick, and she told me you forgot your fanny pillow at home and asked me to run it out to you. So, obviously, I got here as quick as I could. I don’t want you to re-damage the goods.”
He tossed the pillow at his scowling brother before he turned to me, his eyes shining. “Hey, Liv. You sure grew up.” He nodded toward Tate. “Is he treating you okay?”
I found myself enjoying Ben’s visit immensely. “So far.”
“He’s been a stiff old bear lately. You just need to warm him up a little. Then he’ll be eating out of your hands.”
“Bye, Ben,” Tate said loudly, revving up the engine.
Before he left, Ben looked pointedly at me. “It’s your job to make sure he sits on that thing. He’s going to try to act tough for you, but that butt needs princess treatment, and don’t let him forget it.”
My grin widened while Tate revved the engine again, this time moving us a little, giving a warning to his brother. Ben only laughed and waved goodbye before he hopped off the ladder and made his way back to his truck.
We rode for a long moment in silence. Tate seemed obstinately obtuse as he sat beside me, the donut pillow flung behind him.
“So…I’m supposed to ignore that?”
“Yup.”
“That’s pretty hard to ignore.”
At his look, I carefully wiped all traces of my smile off my face and said, “Just sit on it. Please.”
“I don’t need it.”
My eyes narrowed. “Did you use it yesterday?”
There was a slight pause. “Nope.”
“You did.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. If you need it, then you should use it. Don’t be uncomfortable on my account.”
He snorted, and I thought I detected the slightest upward movement of his lips before it disappeared.
“If I wasn’t here right now, would you be sitting on it?” I asked, sneaking a glance at him. For such a tough guy, he had eyelashes I would pay money for.
“If you weren’t here, I’d be in the loader, moving bales for the straw maze.”
“Why aren’t we there instead?”
“Because there’s only one seat. Unless you’re wanting to get a jump on our undercover assignment?”
His blue eyes crashed into mine just then. A jolting vision of two bodies sharing one seat sparked a flicker of heat in my cold, dead, unromantic heart, which I couldn’t allow.
“No, thank you. I can’t force you, but remember…you don’t want to re-damage the goods.” I couldn’t say it without a soft laugh, though I didn’t risk looking at him.
“Are you coming on to me right now?”
I stilled as heat bloomed on my cheeks. I was ready to defend myself when I stopped. He raised his eyebrows in a ‘gotcha’ kind of way, but his face definitely showed traces of amusement.
“‘Cause if your undercover work is anything like last time, you might need some practice.”
“What?! I was good.”
To be honest, I couldn’t have been great.
Trying to keep up with Tate as he touched and flirted and teased was a full-time job in and of itself.
That combined with trying to remember it was fake and to NOT read into it all was a whole different ballgame.
I had not been prepared for casual flirty Tate, and it showed.
“I carried us,” Tate said.
I nudged his leg, which resulted in a soft laugh from him. The sound of it brought a smile to my face. Too bad that moment was short-lived.
“Alright. What happened with your stalker?”
If there were ever words that reminded you of your purpose in being somewhere, those were them. I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. I didn’t want to talk about this. But I felt the shift in the air the moment he asked the question. Officer Walker was now on the clock.
“You mean Leroy?”
Tate turned sharply toward me. “I thought that wasn’t his real name.”
“It’s not. At least, we don’t think it is.”
“Why do you call him that?”
“So I have a name for my Christmas card list.”
I was rewarded with a hint of a smile and a head shake before he continued.
“Will said he left you alone for a while?”
I sighed. “I didn’t hear from him again for a long time after Will’s wedding. I thought it was over. And then about six months ago, he made his move.”
“What happened?”
“That’s classified,” I teased, curiously awaiting his reaction. I could feel myself relaxing beside him. There was something about earning his hard-won smile that kept me wanting to try. It brought me back to the old days, and that was more enticing than I had remembered.
“Tell me,” he said.
I sat there, lost in a memory that seemed like the beginning of a bad dream. The kind of bad dream that happened in movies or books, not in real life.
“There was a coffee shop by my house and I used to go there a few days a week to write. One morning, a barista left me a drink on my table and pointed out a guy sitting in the corner. I didn’t recognize him at first. Before I knew it, he came over and sat next to me at my table.”
“Did he pay with a card?” Tate interrupted.
“Cash. Will already checked that out.”
He nodded. I could feel my body tensing as I thought of that morning. I’d been peacefully tapping away at my computer when all of a sudden a man sat beside me, crowding my space.
And not just any man. Him.
He sat next to me on the bench seat and angled his body to face me—trapping me in my booth.
The problem was, Leroy had the kind of face that was forgettable.
Ordinary. In my screenplays, I always gave the bad guy a scar, or a scowl, or a leering grin.
Something to mark him. But Leroy had nothing physical to set him apart.
He was completely average all across the board.
Average light-brown hair combed very neatly.
An average nose. His eyes seemed too close together, but I couldn’t recall the color.
I hadn’t even noticed him in the shop until he was right in front of me.
The perfect face to blend in however and wherever he wanted.
“What happened?” Tate asked, his voice calm and full of quiet authority.
I shrugged. “At first, I was polite. The coffee shop was crowded, and I…wasn’t sure how else to act.”
I shot a glance at Tate when I said that, but he only rubbed his face and motioned for me to continue.
“He kept referencing our first date. He was ultra touchy. Uncomfortably long eye contact. Talked about our future plans together. He even mentioned you.”
Tate looked interested. “What did he say?”
“He said that he hated how you forced me to dance with you at the wedding, and how he thought about stepping in. He said he could tell I didn’t want to be with you, but he didn’t want to cause a scene or hurt you in front of me.”
“Clearly you weren’t selling it. You should have kissed me,” he teased softly, before motioning for me to continue.
“But the longer he sat there, the more I felt sick. He knew details about my life that he could have only known if he’d been watching me for a while.
He said how much he loved seeing me in blue, and he asked me if I liked my Honda better than my RAV4.
” At his questioning gaze, I added, “That was the car I owned just before my new car.”
He nodded, turning us in the field once more. Thankfully, no more men dressed in black greeted us.
“And then he kept getting ahead of himself. He started talking to me like we’d already discussed everything. About what we wanted to do when we got to the villa he was going to reserve for us in Mexico—for our honeymoon after the wedding.”
Tate seethed out a breath. “Jeez.”
“Yeah. Up until that moment, I had been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was confused? Or had a mental illness? And then he called me by my full name, grabbed my hand, and told me that he’d come to get me when he had all his ducks in a row for our wedding.”
I became lost in the moment, the feelings all coming back to me in a rush.
The way his cloudy eyes remained serious but very delusional.
The way he’d pressed in close and his serious expression when he said he’d be back to get me.
For a moment, I wondered if this was a prank for a TV show.
But no director popped out from behind a hidden camera.
It was just a regular day at the coffee shop–everyone else rushing around, making small talk, and grabbing their coffee on their way to work.
All around me seemed so ordinary; Leroy felt like just a bad dream.
“How’d you get away?”
I blinked and glanced over at Tate, who was watching me with a measured expression across his face.
“I told him I needed to use the bathroom. And I took my purse and laptop with me and climbed out the window.”
“Why didn’t you just go out the front door?”
“It was next to where we were sitting. I didn’t want him following me home. I didn’t realize at the time that he already knew exactly where I lived.”
Tate nodded. Will had probably already told him what he needed to know, but he had opened Pandora’s box.