Chapter Nine
Matilda was well used to her spontaneous, not-even-remotely-thought-out decisions having consequences. That was the price of spontaneity. On balance, she usually felt that it was worth it.
But a consequence she had not thought to prepare herself for, and could not possibly have imagined preparing herself for, was… suddenly finding herself in some kind of thing with Tennessee.
Matilda couldn’t allow herself to name it. She hardly dared believe it was happening, much less in a way that required categorization.
She expected to wake up that first morning and find him gone, but he was still there when she opened her eyes in the darkness of the wee hours.
Sleeping beside her in her bed, wrapped up with her as if they’d spent many nights just like this.
Right there in the bedroom where she had spent a whole lot of time making up stories about him in her head.
For years.
She could hardly be blamed for throwing herself on him and waking him up in a manner that had him calling out her name and gripping her headboard like he wanted to break it in half. And he nearly did, before he returned the favor in kind.
That had all been deeply satisfying.
It wasn’t even dawn yet when he left, which in some circumstances she might have felt was him sneaking out. But this was Tennessee. He did not sneak anywhere.
Matilda reminded herself that he had to get down to the diner before five, just like every morning, and he certainly wouldn’t want anyone to see his truck parked up here at this hour.
That would start the kind of gossip that Matilda might have been used to, given her eccentricities that so many people liked to comment on, but Tennessee was different.
Folks didn’t whisper about his personal life too much these days.
They whispered about his accomplishments, his mood, and whether or not they thought he would support new ventures in the valley.
There was no way that he would be a fan of speculation about his social life. It wasn’t personal, she told herself as she stood at the window and watched his taillights as he drove away. He was used to being a little more private, that was all.
She hadn’t given him her cell phone number. That had been deliberate. If she knew he had it, some part of her would be waiting to see if he used it. That was only natural.
This way she couldn’t torture herself, waiting for him to call.
When the old landline rang that night, she assumed it was the usual spam callers. She liked to answer those and pretend to be a variety of different people for her own amusement, so she swiped up the old handheld—
And was not at all prepared to hear Tennessee’s voice on the other end.
“Come over,” he said, his voice low, and impossible, and urgent.
And every single thing she might possibly want to hear.
“Okay,” she managed to say.
She might even have giggled. Giggled. A sound she was sure she had otherwise never uttered in all her life.
He hadn’t told her to pull in around back, behind the General Store so her truck couldn’t be seen from the street, but she did. No one needed to know where she was. No one needed to know anything about this.
Whatever this was, it was theirs alone.
When she walked onto his porch, he was already opening the front door to let her in. And they didn’t make it much farther.
And it turned out that when she was in his arms, Matilda didn’t really care if the whole world knew. She thought that maybe she might shout it out the windows, as a matter of fact, though she restrained herself.
They lay in front of the fire for a long while. He made her a very late dinner, or maybe it was more of a snack, and then he carried her upstairs into his bedroom and laid her on the bed there.
“This is not as monastic as I expected,” Matilda said, looking around at the quiet, comfortable furnishings.
The leather chair in one corner with another bookshelf and a reading lamp.
The color scheme that was tame by her standards, but also wasn’t neutral white, suggesting he’d painted this all himself.
The overall effect was soothing and kind of brainy at once.
He just kept getting hotter.
“Why would it be monastic at all?” Tennessee asked, frowning down at her—but now when he frowned at her, he usually smiled. It was a whole different kind of exchange. She usually felt it sizzle its way through her, and now was no exception.
“You know. Your whole…” She waved a hand at him. “Thing.”
“My thing is that I’m neat and orderly, like a fully grown adult who likes and takes care of what he owns,” Tennessee said in what sounded to Matilda like repressive tones.
She grinned at him. “Of course. You in no way have control issues.”
“Only people who lack control think others have too much of it,” he retorted.
Matilda laughed. And when she insisted that it was her turn to mess him up until he lost a little of that control he was so proud of, he laughed right back at her. Then he crawled on top of her and had her forgetting her own damn name.
March continued to storm and stamp its way toward spring, and Matilda expected every day that this would end. But they kept going.
It had been a few weeks, maybe even a month, when Matilda stopped pretending and started asking herself if she was really in some kind of relationship with Tennessee.
Though she never used that word.
Not even in her own head.
But they saw each other almost every night.
One of them would go to the other’s house late and leave early.
They both had pretty early mornings, though Tennessee’s was always the earliest, so there was no need to discuss it.
She would drive home from work, feeling shivery—and not in the way she normally did when going over Copper Mountain in the winter.
In fact, she was far more impatient than normal, when she knew how careful she had to be in her little truck.
Driving through town to get to her cottage was torturous.
She just wanted to go to Tennessee, but she couldn’t.
Her life involved a great many animals, by choice, and there was no getting around that.
She didn’t really want to get around it, though sometimes she had to remind herself of that in these heady, wild Tennessee days.
She went home and spent time with her pets. She cared for all her rescues. And sometimes, she had to deal with her own family, too.
Those nights were the hardest, because family dinners almost always meant she’d be sleeping alone.
Matilda loved her family, and she loved the dinners that Jack liked to have up in his caretaker’s cottage at the Lodge.
But she was only really happy again when Tennessee was coming to her front door the next night, or when she slipped down the hill to see him.
She wasn’t sleeping much, but Matilda thought it was worth it. After all, she didn’t expect this little fever of theirs to last.
They’d been sneaking around for a full month and change when Tennessee told her that, unbeknownst to her, he’d been working on her rescue idea all along. When she would have bet money on him never mentioning her name in public, in case someone read the truth on him.
“Of course,” she said, trying to look serious and not… shocked. “The rescue. The reason we got together in the first place.”
They were in his house that night. She was wearing one of his T-shirts, and had broken him enough that he brought her food to eat in his bedroom. Matilda didn’t need him to tell her that this was not something he normally permitted himself. She could tell.
He had made her a rich, hearty stew to ward off the latest snowstorm.
It had simmered all day, he’d told her when she’d arrived and had breathed in all that deliciousness in the air.
And now he served it with a bit of crusty, yeasty bread that she was fairly certain he’d baked himself.
When she’d complimented him, he had scowled at her—without a smile—and had told her that if he couldn’t provide her a decent meal, then he might as well close the diner and leave town. For good.
She had no idea that men—or rather, Tennessee, the most perfect of men—could be so dramatic. Matilda knew better than to say that to him, but privately, she was delighted. She loved all these clues that really, they were the same.
“I didn’t forget about your rescue,” he told her, and here in private, he touched her all the time.
Like it hurt him to live through all the hours they were apart during the day and couldn’t touch her like this.
She was familiar with that quiet little agony.
Tennessee leaned over to kiss her on the nose.
“I’ve been talking to old Mrs. Bonney. You know who she is. ”
“Of course,” Matilda said at once. “Mrs. Bonney was a schoolteacher here for a long time. Back when there was only one teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, if I’m remembering right. I’m pretty sure she knew my grandparents. She might even have taught my father.”
“More than likely.” Tennessee smiled. “She’s an institution. She also owns that strip of land right there at the bottom of the hill below the Lodge. More important for animal rescue purposes, she also owns that big, old barn that all the tourists take pictures of.”
Matilda stopped shoveling the stew he’d made into her mouth, which was hard, because it was outrageously good. She fancied herself something of an artisan soup maker in cold weather, but she had nothing on Tennessee.
Yet she wasn’t sure she could allow herself to believe what he was telling her. Or what she thought he was telling her.
Slow down, she told herself. You’ve made up enough stories about this man in your life as it is.