Chapter Two #2
Such were the enduring benefits of growing up in a tiny little community like theirs.
She knew entirely too much about this man.
She knew how he treated people. She knew what sort of grudges he held over time—he was a Lisle, after all, and therefore was never going to allow himself to like the Carey family, no matter that his sister had married one of them.
And she knew that he was always there for his brother, Dallas, who’d come back from the military a whole lot quieter and darker.
She knew that he took care of his mother, the way he’d been doing since his father disappeared for good when Tennessee was still a teenager.
Matilda knew he was a good man, and that had nothing to do with her feelings about him. He just was. Grumpy and entirely too gruff, sure. But fundamentally good.
She also knew what he normally sounded like. So the fact that this was different meant something.
It was just that she didn’t know what.
So she focused on the protective overreach instead. “What do you think I ought to do when I get off work late and would like to come home?” she asked him, keeping her gaze steady on his. “There’s only one road to Cowboy Point, Tennessee.”
“Why don’t you have somewhere to stay in Marietta?”
She kept her face blank. “Do you have a second home in Marietta?”
“It’s not safe,” he gritted out. “Especially in that death trap you call a truck.”
“Her name is Clementine,” she told him.
He stared back at her, wearing that confounded expression once again. Scowly and confounded. “What?”
“My truck. Her name is Clementine.” Matilda sniffed. “Obviously. She’s perfectly safe. I see to her maintenance myself.”
“That does not exactly inspire confidence, Matilda.”
The puppies were squirming a little bit more now, and she figured they were getting warm enough and feeling safe enough to remember that they were starving.
She estimated them to be about twelve weeks of age, which was great.
It meant they hadn’t been nursing and wouldn’t need that kind of infant care.
She shifted to put the puppies she was holding on the floor, then crawled over so she could grab her coat and pull it to her, and only realized when she was doing it that she was possibly giving a little too much of a show under the circumstances.
Or just making a spectacle of herself in this man’s living room that he had not invited her into.
But she couldn’t really focus on that.
She pulled out a couple of the cans she always kept on hand in her big, heavy winter jacket, and then came back to the fire and cracked two of them open.
Tennessee wasn’t even pretending not to stare at her. “You just… carry dog food around? In your coat?”
“Some women like weighted vests,” she told him. “I prefer to stock up on wet food, because in moments like this, it’s a lifesaver.”
She set the food down in the little space between them, and all three puppies wriggled their way out of their towels and hurled themselves at the open cans.
Matilda found herself grinning down at them, because really, what was better than puppies?
Especially happy little puppies like this, who were wriggly and soft and adorable?
Long ago, she’d learned not to ask herself what might have become of them if she hadn’t seen one of their little faces in the flash of her headlights. It made her too sad.
When she looked up, there was the strangest expression on Tennessee’s stern face. She had never seen it before and yet something about it seemed to wind through her like a ribbon, a little too bright and strange.
“Look at them,” she said, as the puppies feasted. She ignored how rough her voice sounded, suddenly. “It’s amazing how little they need to be happy. How little we all need, really.”
She wasn’t sure why she’d said that last part. Rather than sit in it, she stood up and smiled down at him. “Is that your kitchen through there?”
“You can see that it is.”
That was an unhelpful and impolite response, in her opinion, but she only smiled wider. “I’m going to get them some water.”
She marched through his neat and comfortable living room and into the warm, inviting kitchen at the back.
Tennessee had moved into this house after high school and the rumor mill had it that he’d renovated the place because he’d expected his high school girlfriend to marry him and live there with him.
But that hadn’t worked out, for reasons Matilda knew better than to ask about directly, and so she always felt she hadn’t gotten the full story.
Knowing Tennessee, it was possible no one had.
But what that information meant tonight was that she knew that Tennessee was responsible for pushing out the back wall, and building a cozier space in the kitchen that looked out over a bit of decking that she was fairly certain offered a view over the seasonal creek that ran through here.
And then married up to the river a little further on when it wasn’t frozen.
Matilda opened his cabinets, which shouldn’t have felt scandalous, but it did. She found a shallow bowl and filled it with water, and while she was at it, swiped the towel that hung neatly on his wide, gleaming, chef-like range.
A big upgrade from the diner, she thought. And wondered how that tidbit had never made it into the gossip mill.
Still, so far, everything in this house was exactly as ruthlessly uncluttered and clean as she would have expected Tennessee’s space to be.
That expectation was based on her observations of him, the state of the General Store on any given day, and how orderly he kept and maintained the diner over the years.
There was no particular reason that she should feel all that like butterflies in her belly, but she did.
Back in the living room, she went over to put the dish on the ground, and found herself laughing again as the puppies tripped over their own feet and stepped on their ears to get to the water.
She squatted down and spread the towel out on the floor, and then smiled blandly at Tennessee when he scowled at her.
“They’re going to have to go to the bathroom, Tennessee,” she told him. Calmly. “I didn’t think you wanted them to do that on your floor.”
“I don’t want them to go on my towel, either.” When she continued to do nothing but smile at him, he rubbed a hand over his face. “Matilda. For the love of God. You can’t just come into someone’s house like a wrecking ball—”
“Puppies are a gift, not a wrecking ball.” She shook her head at him, as if he’d disappointed her.
When really, she was going to be thinking about those sweatpants and the acres of unshaven jaw for a lifetime or two.
She had to force herself to stand up again.
“If you can just keep them overnight, I’ll pick them up in the morning and take them down to the vet in Marietta. ”
“You’re not leaving three puppies here.”
“You used to have a dog,” she reminded him, and only after she said that did it cross her mind that it was a potentially stalkery, psychotic piece of information to have right there at her fingertips. “When you were in high school. He went everywhere with you.”
But maybe he just gave her the small town out on that one, because he didn’t seem to react to the fact she… just knew his family pet situation.
“I haven’t been in high school for some time now,” Tennessee said instead, each syllable deliberate in a way that indicated that he was past exasperated and working toward pissed off.
Definitely time for her to leave.
Matilda moved over to swipe her coat off the floor and shrugged it on.
“Here’s the situation. If I bring them home with me I have a lot of other animals around, and I don’t want to risk giving them parasites, worms, and any number of infections or diseases they might be carrying.
It’s not that I can’t create a quarantine, but it would be so helpful if you could just watch them overnight. That’s all.”
“You do know that I open the diner at five every morning, right? A few short hours from now? But you want me to stay up with these puppies instead?”
“It’s one night,” Matilda said, with a smile he did not appear to appreciate. “And besides, I’ll pick them up before work, which is at nine. So you won’t have them that long. But I promise you, if they make a mess of your tidy little house, I’ll clean it up myself. Deal?”
One of the puppies crawled into his lap. Another was gnawing on the cuff of his sweatpants. The third was chewing her own tail, curled up against the side of his leg.
She would have taken a picture if she didn’t think he’d explode if she tried.
He stared at her. “I keep thinking that this is a nightmare that I’ll wake up from at any moment.”
She laughed at him. He didn’t like that either. She saw something a lot like temper flare in his blue gaze. “Well, Tennessee, if that’s the worst nightmare you have going—three adorable puppies who might kiss you to death in the night—I think you’re doing pretty well.”
She was over to the front door now, where he had a neat little area set aside for the inevitable wet and muddy boots and snow gear, because of course he did.
It only took a moment or two to stamp her feet back into her boots.
And to place the other three cans of food she was carrying on the rough-hewn bench against the wall.
“Matilda,” Tennessee said, in a warning sort of voice.
“Besides, look at that,” she replied, as if he hadn’t spoken.
Much less said her name like that, all growly.
She jutted her chin at the little trio, all curled up in a ball now.
They were already fast asleep—two seconds later—full of food and blissed out on the heat from the fire. “How can I possibly disturb them?”
“Matilda.”
“Thank you, Tennessee,” she said, making her gaze solemn and intense. Or more so than usual. “You really are everyone’s favorite hometown hero.”
And then, because a storm was gathering on his face and she expected it to burst free at any moment, she turned and let herself back out into the snowy night.
Then found herself grinning like a fool, all the way home.