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Little Matchmakers
Jennifer Greene
The Great Parent SwapTucker and Garnet were single parents who believed they were giving their sons all they could ever need. But a meeting with their boys’ teacher had them realising what they really needed was each other.Since Tucker’s boy craved a woman’s influence and Garnet’s son would benefit from some outside experiences, a trade seemed to be the perfect solution. So one day a week they’d swap kids. And maybe just see one another in passing. This was just for the boys’ sakes, of course.But when two intelligent kids decide they want to be brothers, heaven help the parents who didn’t see this plan coming. Because a couple of little matchmakers were about to launch Project One Big Happy Family.



“Not sure of this?” he murmured.
“You too? I’m afraid we’ve invited a disaster on each other.”
“Yeah. I saw their expressions. Well … we’ll retrade around six-thirty?”
“Sounds right. I’ll bring Paul earlier if there’s any problem or he wants to go home.” She lifted a hand.
He got it, she wanted to touch-knuckles. They were, after all, in this project together. So he leaned forward to touch her knuckles, and again, she looked straight at him.
Just like that, it happened again. A wildfire of emotion, torching through his veins. Need, coiling like a snake. Wanting, whispering like silk through his witless mind.
If their sons would just go along with their crazy plan, he’d have chances to see her again. To be around her. To see if she ever peeled off that careful, friendly veneer for a man … or if she could be coaxed to.
Dear Reader,
I love writing stories about a man and a woman who are positive they couldn’t possibly end up together. She knows it can’t happen. He knows it can’t happen. But then comes love … and all their preconceptions are blown to smithereens.
Although this kind of story is always fun … behind the scenes, I believe it touches on something very serious and true. There is no perfect time to fall in love—no convenient time to find the right mate. The more challenging the circumstances, the more two people have to conquer obstacles in their path, and the more tested and strong their love will be.
In this case, I added two boys—partly because I love writing children characters—but also because kids are brilliant at throwing obstacles in their parent’s way. Of course, they think they’re helping …
Hope you enjoy!
Jennifer Greene
www.jennifergreene.com

About the Author
JENNIFER GREENE lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and an assorted menagerie of pets. Michigan State University has honored her as an outstanding woman graduate for her work with women on campus. Jennifer has written more than seventy love stories, for which she has won numerous awards, including four RITA
Awards from the Romance Writers of America and their Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Awards.
You’re welcome to contact Jennifer through her website at www.jennifergreene.com.
Little
Matchmakers


Jennifer Greene




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Cathie, Jimmie, Susan, Suzette, Julie & Margaret.
You know why! Love you all!

Chapter One
Tucker MacKinnon took the sharp curves of Whisper Mountain at daredevil speeds. Typical of a June morning in South Carolina, the sun burned hotter than a bad temper and the humidity was claustrophobic.
His mood was just as miserable.
Anyone in the MacKinnon family could testify that Tucker had never owned a temper. He was the go-to guy in a tornado. He’d handled rattlers and black bears. Hell, he’d made a career of handling people no one else could get along with—kids with attitude, adults in trouble, personnel wars in small companies. Those challenges were downright fun. But not this.
Nothing was fun about this.
He braked for a stop sign at the base of the mountain, and then it was only a skip and a jump to the elementary school parking lot. His stomach immediately began pitching nerves. Today was the last day of school, as witnessed by the squalling behavior of honking cars and chattering parents. He had to scramble to find a parking spot. Kids were leaping and shrieking as they bounded out the door, free for the summer … except for the few hanging tight in the school entrance.
Those few kids had been singled out. They weren’t allowed to get their report cards until a parent talked to their child’s teacher.
Tucker’s ten-year-old son was one of those hovering in the doorway … until he spotted the familiar silver truck, and then he galloped straight for his dad. Will had his father’s genetic build, which pretty much meant he came out of the womb looking like a beanpole, long and lean. For certain he was the tallest kid in elementary school, but right now, his usually sun-brushed skin was pale, his first words gushing from a pent-up dam.
“I didn’t do anything, Dad. Honest. Whatever Mrs. Riddle says, it wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been me. I don’t even know what it’s about.”
“Hey.” Tucker cuffed an arm around his son’s neck. “Would you quit worrying? Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
“I keep trying to think what I did wrong. I’ve been racking and racking my brain. I can’t always answer her questions, so maybe that’s it. But she never calls on me when I raise my hand. She only calls me when I don’t. I mean, how could she be mad at me about that?”
Tucker had no idea why the infamous Mrs. Riddle had held back Will’s report card, but he was hoping—for her sake—that she had a damned good reason. He walked into the cool, dim hall, and felt his stomach churn another stress ball. Everyone in the MacKinnon family was a major academic achiever except for him. He’d never liked grade school. Or middle school. Come to think of it, he’d never liked school altogether—and schools had never much liked him. He was thirty-one now, of course. Only two things really mattered to him in life. His work on Whisper Mountain.
And above everything else, a hundred times over, was his son.
Mrs. Riddle had better not be unfairly picking on his son, or some major fur was going to fly.
“How about if you just hang by your old locker? Stay inside where it’s cool. And you’ll be able to hear me if I call.”
Will slumped off, and Tucker rounded the corner and trekked down the long hall to the last classroom. Not that Mrs. Riddle had a reputation for being a sharp-nosed martinet, but all the other teachers had ditched the place as fast as the kids. Her doorway was the only one with a pair of parents still waiting.
Right off, Tucker recognized the woman just ahead of him.
She was Petie’s mom.
He could only see the back of her. Didn’t matter. A bad marriage was supposed to cure a guy of believing in hopeless causes. Didn’t matter. His son was and needed to be his whole world right now.
For darn sure, that mattered. But that didn’t stop a guy from admiring the view.
Her hair—the color of lush dark honey, ribboned with sun streaks—swayed past her shoulders. He’d often seen her in the same “uniform”—a yellow polo shirt with dark green shorts. The top had a Plain Vanilla logo over the pocket. It was the name of her store, a fresh spice and herb shop tucked in a curve of Whisper Mountain. By any logic, the shop should have failed; the location was obscure, and who’d travel out of their way for a spice or two?
His opinion, not for the first time, had proven dead wrong. Everyone on Whisper Mountain knew the place, shopped there, heaped praise on her for what she was doing.
Tucker wouldn’t know tarragon from paprika, but that wasn’t to say he didn’t appreciate spice. The fit of her shorts, for example. The shape snugged over the cup of her fanny, and led straight down to unforgettable thighs and calves. She worked outside and it showed, from the sun-golden tint of her skin to her trim, tight body.
She had a major flaw, seeing that she was as short as a shrimp. He doubted she could reach five-three unless she was standing on a rock.
The rest of the package intrigued him every time he saw her. She was … interesting. Natural, earthy. No pretensions to her. Sensual.
A parent left Mrs. Riddle’s classroom—a mom, flush-faced and exiting at a fast jog. Petie’s mom drew a breath, and then headed into the classroom to brave the dragon, leaving him still thinking about her.
Her name was Garnet. Garnet Cattrell. She’d captured his attention last September, the first day of school, but he never seemed to capture hers. She always answered a “hi” with a “hi” back and a smile, but two seconds after initiating conversation with her, she always found a way to move off.
She wasn’t unfriendly exactly. It was more like … she didn’t see him. He could have been a lamppost. A brother. A catalog in the mail. An entity that was easily ignorable.
Naturally, Tucker had backed off. He was in no hustle to make any more mistakes with the female gender. Maybe she didn’t like six-three guys with blue eyes. Maybe she had an allergy to size-fourteen feet. Maybe his voice was too low, or his hands too calloused.
Whatever.
The only thing that mattered right now was her being here. Because if her kid had a problem with Mrs. Riddle, it must be time to start counting animals and climb on the ark. Armageddon couldn’t be far down the road.
Tucker leaned back against the cool cement wall, not planning on eavesdropping, but damn. It was so easy. Voices carried through the open door. Mrs. Riddle’s voice had a high nasal quality. Garnet’s—like the gem—had a rich, quiet softness to it.
“I can’t imagine what problem you could have with my Pete. As far as I know, he’s been getting all As—”
“Of course he is. He’s a very bright boy. I’m going to miss having him in my classroom,” Mrs. Riddle said stridently. “But I’ve called in all those parents who, I believe, need some guidance. Middle school is not an easy transition for some children. There are things you might try over the summer to help Peter adjust more comfortably.”
Tucker couldn’t hear—or see—Garnet bristle. But for the first time, he heard something stiff and testy in her voice. “Do you have some reason to think Peter won’t do perfectly fine in middle school?”
“I think he’ll do perfectly fine academically. But possibly not socially. Peter is an academic,” Mrs. Riddle said authoritatively. “But he’s left out whenever it comes to sports. Nor does he ever ‘hang out,’ as they say, with a male peer group.”
“But … he seems to get along with other kids. He’s never mentioned a problem with anyone. He just isn’t a highly social kid.”
“He’s an old soul,” Mrs. Riddle explained. “And his nature is on the quiet side. I understand all that. But I suspect you have quite a time getting his nose out of a book, or off the computer.”
Tucker heard nothing for a minute. Then Garnet again. “That’s true. But it’s not as if I haven’t encouraged him—”
“Mrs. Cattrell. I’m not criticizing you. And you can take my advice or leave it. But I strongly suggest that you use the summer to find some outdoor or athletic activity that he might like. Give him the opportunity to develop a skill in something outside the academic arena. It doesn’t matter which sport. The issue is widening his world, giving him confidence. Kids can become merciless in middle school. You don’t want Peter singled out.”
They talked for a few more minutes. Not long. When Garnet strode from the classroom … Tucker would have talked to her, said something. But she moved past as if not seeing him or anything else, her expression looking something like a kicked puppy. Stricken. Hurt. Worried.
And then, of course, it was his turn to get beat up.
Mrs. Riddle was holding court from behind a desk older than sin—the elementary school was less than ten years old, so she must have brought the scarred-up thing with her. Her hair was steel-colored, springy, her eyes a gray-blue, like flint. Nobody messed with Mrs. Riddle.
She started right in with the stick-up-the-behind tone of voice. “Mr. MacKinnon. For once, your Will had a decent semester.”
“All homework in on time. Studied for tests. Kept his nose clean.”
“Yes. Well, we won’t go so far as to call Will a saint, now, will we? But he’s a good boy. The other children all like him, particularly the boys. He’s a fine young athlete. I’ve enjoyed having him in my classroom. If I needed help with anything, I could always count on Will to volunteer.”
“Well … good.” Tucker scratched behind an ear. He wasn’t about to relax, but if all she was going to report was good news, he was even more confused why he’d been summoned in here.
“But here is the issue, Mr. MacKinnon. Will is going to enter middle school next year. And he has much more physical maturity than most boys his age. If he hasn’t noticed girls already, he certainly will soon.”
Tucker was still waiting for a headline. No news so far.
“Let me be frank, Mr. MacKinnon. I don’t know your situation, as far as Will’s mother, but I believe he seriously needs a helpful female influence.”
“Wait. Why?”
“Because he’s become afraid of girls. He turns beet-red when any of the girls talk to him. He walks into walls. He stumbles over his own feet. At the start of the school year, he was fine. But I believe some hormones have caught up with him at this point.”
“Well, yeah. I’m sure they have. But …”
“You work primarily with men, don’t you, Mr. MacKinnon? Men. Or boys. There are very few women in your business.”
“That’s true. But it’s not because I planned it that way,” Tucker said defensively. “It’s just that the nature of my retreat and adventure programs seem to appeal more to males than females. And it’s not as if there’s never a woman around—”
“Women who Will has frequent occasions to talk with? I don’t mean family. I mean women, where he’s had the opportunity to form some sort of relationship, even if it’s only casual.”
“Well, sure he has.” He hesitated. “I think. Well, maybe not.”
“I thought not. So my suggestion to you, over the summer, is to arrange some activities where Will is more exposed to some female presence. A sport that both genders play. Chores where both genders are involved. Something to ease that nervousness he feels around females.”
“Is he that way with you?”
Mrs. Riddle sighed, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “Mr. MacKinnon. Do I strike you as the nature of woman who would make an adolescent boy stutter?”
Tucker readily recognized there was no possible way he could answer that. Admitting she looked like an army tank didn’t seem the right thing to mention. She ruled with an iron hand. Kids came out of her class thrilled to be free—but by reputation, they all considered they learned the most from her compared to the “easy” teachers. Anyway … he had to admit he understood what her concern with Will was about.
Tucker abruptly recalled the last time they’d stopped for burgers and fries. Will had tripped over a chair looking at a pigtailed tween on the other side of the room. So yeah. The kid had turned into a bumbler with girls.
Tucker got his son’s report card and clipped out of the classroom, feeling edgy and frustrated. How was a father supposed to fix something like that? Sure, Will had a shy side with girls. But he was ten. Every boy had a bumbling stage around girls when they started adolescence.
Still, there was a nick of truth that bugged him. Will really didn’t get exposed to many females, because of their lives, and Tucker’s job, and where they lived. That never seemed to matter before. Will was a happy kid. Now, though, Tucker could see how a guy-dominated environment could add up for Will—particularly since the only relevant female in his life, his mother, was hardly a role model.
Still … how to approach this topic with his son? And what would he tell Will about the meeting with his teacher?
He whipped around the corner—and charged smack into someone leaning against the wall. Or … not someone. Her. Petie’s mom. Garnet.
While Pete needed a stop in the boy’s bathroom, Garnet leaned against the cool wall and closed her eyes. She replayed every second of her conversation with Mrs. Riddle. Then did it all over again.
The lump in her throat refused to disappear.
She’d always been a marshmallow. A soft, peace-loving marshmallow. Confrontations always gave her nightmares.
Still, where her son was concerned, Garnet could change from happy wallflower into riled-up mama porcupine in two seconds flat. Nobody hurt her son. It was hard for her to hear even the smallest criticism of Petie for the obvious reason.
He wasn’t just the best thing in her life. He was the best kid in the entire universe.
For Mrs. Riddle’s sake, the teacher was lucky she hadn’t picked on Petie.
Instead, she’d picked on Garnet.
Normally Garnet was braced for criticism. Lots of people had found fault with her—particularly in her own family. Lots of people claimed she’d disappointed them. But no one had ever suggested that she wasn’t a good mother. At least before today.
Garnet still had the lump in her throat, the stab in her heart. Mrs. Riddle hadn’t exactly said that she was an inadequate mom, but she’d implied it. A boy needed male role models. She’d failed to provide them. And that didn’t bite just because the teacher said it. It bit because Garnet had worried about the same darn thing for eons now.
Absently she lifted a hand and immediately discovered a ragged cuticle.
Dang it. She loved working with dirt. Dirt, herbs, spices, flowers, plants of all kinds. But she always wore gloves when she was working outside—not because she was vain about her hands, but because of this. The instant a nail split, or a cuticle got ragged, she couldn’t stand it. She had to fix it. She couldn’t think with a frayed cuticle.
She was just biting the offending cuticle when a Mack truck ran into her.
The air whooshed out of her lungs. Her head hit the cement wall at the same time the Mack truck tire connected with her foot … the vulnerable, naked foot in the green Teva sandals.
“Aw, hell. Aw, hell. I’m really sorry. I wasn’t looking—are you all right?”
If she were unconscious and in a coma, she’d have recognized that low, wicked baritone. Tucker. Tucker MacKinnon.
It just wasn’t fair. Being hit with a real Mack truck, she could have coped with. Freight train, no problem. Bulldozer, ditto. Anything or anyone but Tucker.
He was undoubtedly trying to help, by steadying her, then rushing his hands down her arms, his gaze searching, seeking any injuries. She certainly had some. The back of her head was gushing something warm and wet, and so was her right foot.
None of the injuries were lethal. She was just going to be stuck with a couple of bruises. He was big; she was small. That was the total equation. It’s just that if she had to have an accident, she wished it could have happened with anything but Tucker. Anyone but Tucker.
“I’m fine,” she said. Although temporarily she was pretty sure her right foot was broken in fifty or sixty places.
“You can’t be fine. You’re not fine. Damn. The back of your head’s getting a goose egg, and there’s blood.”
Undoubtedly. She’d scraped her head against the cement wall. Something had to give, and it hadn’t been the wall.
“Let me see.” His eyes were suddenly close enough for her to experience that electric-blue color close up. “The school’s so deserted I just wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. I was waiting for my son, thinking, not looking where I was going. Listen—”
After checking out her head, his hands cuffed her shoulders again. He was still squinting. Still searching for injuries. She was still dying, but more from embarrassment by then, particularly when he hunkered down.
“Broke your big toenail.” He winced in sympathy. “Just hope I didn’t break a toe. Or two.”
He had. But who cared? Once the football hero of the county—there was no one in the county who didn’t know the MacKinnon name—and he was kneeling at her feet. “I’m sure you didn’t.”
“How about if you just sit down right here, in the hall. I’ll run into the office. They have to have some Band-Aids and first-aid supplies around here.” Again, he tilted her head, not to look for injuries this time. He met her eyes. “Garnet, I couldn’t be sorrier.”
“It’s okay. Honestly. Don’t bother. I’ve got first-aid stuff at home.”
He’d always made her nervous. It wasn’t his fault, nothing he did. It was her. She’d always felt goofy around him. Drawing attention to herself over a hurt only made it worse.
“Nonsense. You don’t want to trail blood into your car. And I think we should get some ice on your head. Just hold up. I’ll be back in two shakes.”
He’d barely taken three strides before Pete charged out of the boy’s bathroom, saw her and sprinted over. He seemed to recognize Tucker as an afterthought, and immediately frowned. “Mr. MacKinnon. Did you hurt my mom?”
“No, Pete. Well, yes. I mean, I did, but it wasn’t intentional—”
“Pete, I’m totally okay.”
Pete, even if he was built on the small side, could turn more protective than a marine. He pushed his round glasses higher on his nose and faced Tucker. “Why would you hurt my mom? What happened?”
The commotion must have been heard from a distance, because from the office hall, Tucker’s tall son suddenly charged into view. “Dad. Hey. What’s going on. Mrs. Cattrell, how come you’re bleeding?”
“Your dad hurt my mom,” Petie informed him.
Will’s jaw dropped. “No way.”
“Just look at my mom if you don’t believe me. She’s bleeding all over the place.”
“But my dad would never do anything like that. That’s dumb.”
Tucker had to raise his voice to be heard. “Boys. Both of you. Go to the office. Ask for a first-aid kit and an ice pack.”
Both boys laid out an “okay” and galloped together down the side hall, looking a lot like Mutt and Jeff. Garnet wanted to echo again that she was fine, and just wanted to go home, but it was like arguing with a freight train.
Tucker hunkered down again. “I know. You’re going to live. But it won’t kill you to have those two places disinfected and covered up.”
“I know. I just hate—”
His tone changed, turned quieter. “Garnet. I heard what Mrs. Riddle said about your Petie. And this is obviously a poor time to pursue the subject. But I think we might both benefit from talking together.”
“Talk about …?”
“My Will. Your Pete.” He hesitated. “It’s probably easier for me to get away than you. I could steal an hour around seven tonight. You free then?”
Free was a relative word. Like the song said, freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose, and looking at Tucker, Garnet knew perfectly well that she had a ton to lose by spending any time with him. Her dignity … although she’d already lost most of that, by bleeding all over the school hall. Her pride … though, she still had her pride. Something she’d guarded tighter than gold for the last few years.
“I just want to talk about the boys,” he said. “A half hour? Your place?”
The boys. Truth was, she wouldn’t mind talking about Petie. If there was an alpha male in a three-state radius, it was Tucker. After Mrs. Riddle’s comments, Garnet really wouldn’t mind hearing his opinion.
“A half hour,” she conceded uneasily.
He smiled. A smile that knocked her common sense to its knees.
And then the boys descended on them, carrying a pan of water, most of which sloshed onto the floor, an ice pack, a brown bottle of betaine and a giant first-aid box. The principal and school secretary trailed right behind the boys.
Garnet closed her eyes and wished she could click her heels together three times and land in Kansas. How much worse could a bad day get?

Chapter Two
Apparently the day could get much, much worse—but Garnet couldn’t guess that. Initially the drive home from school lifted her spirits.
On the third turn, she saw the sign for Plain Vanilla. A quarter mile later, blacktop turned to gravel, and the hot, brilliant sun disappeared, turned into the fragrant shade of pine forest. One more turn in the road, and her pride and joy came into view.
Petie scrabbled from the old van in a flash. Once he’d seen his report card—all As except for a C in gym—he never asked another thing about her meeting with Mrs. Riddle. School, schedules and the Mrs. Riddles in his life were now completely forgotten. All those academic As had earned him the right to download the latest game he wanted.
Garnet climbed from the van more slowly. Her right foot was still smarting, her head doing an annoying little throb—but she didn’t really care. She took a long, lazy moment to cherish the view.
Her five acres had been scrap-scrub when she bought them six years before. No one thought she could make anything of it—especially not her parents, and heaven knew, she had a long, long history of disappointing her family.
Plain Vanilla had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It had almost broken hers.
Four customers were parked below the shop—not bad, for midday on a Thursday. Nothing about Plain Vanilla was fancy. The building had shake-shingle siding, with a long overhang for a traditional country-style porch. Unless a serious storm threatened, the double screen doors were kept open and welcoming. Pots of herbs and flowers added color.
The parking lot was known to get a little weedy, but she could already inhale the scents emanating from the shop. Basil and chives. Lavender and vanilla. Scents hung low in this tuck of valley. So, of course, did the heat.
Her bungalow was invisible from here, behind the shop, but to the right stretched open ground—the hodgepodge of raised beds and climate-controlled greenhouses where she grew her own herbs and spices. Two years ago, she—and the bank—had added horizontal blinds that could be opened or closed, to protect the plants from too much sun.
Except for the fancy blinds, she’d made everything herself. There’d never been money for professionals … but she’d had two staff from the start, primarily because she couldn’t work 24-hour days and handle Petie, especially when he’d been little.
And from inside the shop, she suddenly heard two women’s voices … and suspected her son had tattled about her being hurt, because two bodies hightailed down the porch steps faster than she could run for cover.
Mary Lou was somewhere between fifty-five and ninety-five, tougher than beef jerky, and looked it. Her health was precarious, not that she’d admit it. Garnet had “discovered her” five years ago, when Mary Lou had shown up at the back door, fixed her with a scissor-sharp scowl, said her husband was dead, she was bored out of her skull, and she needed to work, no wages needed, just a job.
Garnet had hired her and never looked back. If a thief ever came around, Mary Lou would probably scare him to death, and heaven knew she was a worker.
“Garnet! Peter said you were hurt! Who did what to you, you tell me right now!”
“It was just a couple of bumps, absolutely nothing.”
Mary Lou frowned, but then immediately went off on her own bumps that day. “Well, this morning was a blinger. First off, the postman forgot to leave me stamps and I was going to pay bills. Then Georgia Cunningham, she came in, bought fifty dollars’ worth of all kinds of things, put two twenties on the counter and left. Just like that. I was going to call the police, but then I thought I’d wait until you got home. But I think she should spend the night in jail, myself. Ten dollars! She cheated us of ten dollars! I never …”
Then it was Sally, striding right behind her. “Peter said there was a man who knocked you down—”
“It was a complete accident. No biggie. What’s wrong?”
Sally had dark caramel skin, hair done in dreads and a perpetual frown that did a great job of concealing a gorgeous face. She had two kids and a no-good husband. She worked like a fiend, loved the plants as much as Garnet did and could stand up for herself anywhere she needed to—except at home.
Garnet could tell when her jerk-water husband had done something because Sally’s hands would start jittering; she couldn’t stand still.
“I got a rash on the lavender.”
“Which one?”
“The French blue. They’re just speckles on the leaves, but they weren’t there yesterday. I’ve been trying to look it up. We don’t want it spreading. But you know me and reading those stupid manuals—”
“I know. It’s okay. We’ll go check it out.”
And that was how it went, one crisis after another all afternoon. Early on, she hustled home to talk to Pete—and to make sure he’d had lunch. But of course, being Petie, he’d made himself a sandwich, cleaned up and naturally parked in front of his computer … a water-cooled system that he’d put together himself last Christmas.
She ruffled his mop of brown hair—hair so luxuriously thick she was jealous of it. He was scrunched up in his computer chair, imitating a human pretzel. “Hey. I didn’t get a chance to tell you what Mrs. Riddle had to say.”
“Not now, Mom. I’m at level four.”
“Okay. We can talk about it later, I guess.” She hesitated. “Mr. MacKinnon’s coming over for a little while after dinner.”
“You mean Will’s dad? That Mr. MacKinnon?”
“Yes.”
“Is Will coming over, too?”
“I don’t know. He might.”
Okay. Whatever.”
No “why” or “what for?” He didn’t care. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose, then bent his head to the game again. She couldn’t resist giving him a fast smooch on his forehead. Now that he was ten, she had to steal kisses, kidnap hugs.
“Mom. I’m creating an alternate universe right now. It’s really hard.”
“Okay, okay.” She smiled … but the smile faded in seconds. This was exactly what Mrs. Riddle had implied. Petie was all too happy alone. Everything he loved had always been inside. He’d just never been the kind of kid to play outside, getting into scrapes and mud with playmates.
So, she told herself there was no reason to get nervous about Tucker stopping by. It was a good idea. Single parents had problems that two-parent families just didn’t have. As different as their sons were, it’d be nice to talk to someone else who lived with a ten-year-old. It wasn’t like a personal meeting. Or a date. Or anything remotely like that.
She couldn’t imagine Tucker looking at her that way.
The women in her family were bred to be hothouse Southern belles, Charleston style, women who could do the debutante thing and have dinner for forty—with fresh flowers and crystal—prepared in an hour’s notice. Garnet wasn’t adopted, although when she was eleven, she’d checked to make sure. Something had gone wrong, anyway. Her sisters and mom—even her grandmother—had gracious beauty and poise without even trying.
She’d been born plain vanilla. Always had been, always would be.
The point, though, was that she never got back in the house until nearly six. She’d wanted a shower and clean clothes and a major spiff-up before Tucker got there. Instead, life just kept interfering. Sally needed help with updating Plain Vanilla’s website and Facebook page, which Garnet loved on a par with triple taxes and bee stings. And then Mary Lou cornered her in the backroom, where new herb and spice recipes needed a taste test and review.
By the time Garnet finally charged back home, Petie had made dinner—peanut butter and banana sandwiches, one of his specialties, followed by fresh brownies. Brownies were one of Petie’s favorite creations. This time he’d added raspberries, blueberries and marshmallows. She never knew what he was going to put in next.
“Hey, I’d have made you dinner,” she told him.
“Yeah, well, you were busy and I was starving for peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Mom …”
“What?”
“You know that crazy-looking cat that’s been around for the last week or so?”
“The black-and-orange-and-white one?”
“Yeah. I think she’s pregnant, because I saw her on the window sill about an hour ago, and her stomach was, like, huge.”
“No,” Garnet said.
“I never asked you anything.”
“You were going to.”
Petie shot her a look, one of his most endearing. “I understand why you said no. You have to feel like you’re the one in charge. We’ll talk about it later.”
She chased after him with a dish towel. “Sometimes you sound older than Methuselah.”
“Just because I’m smarter than you?”
“Petie. We can’t adopt every single animal who wanders on our porch!”
“Yes, Mom.”
“I’m still recovering from the ferret you took in.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“And the raccoon babies.”
“Yes, Mom.” He said consolingly, “It’s okay for you to say no. Really. I won’t feel neglected or deprived or anything like that.”
She couldn’t shoot the kid. He was the best thing in her world. She loved him more than life. But he was getting a mouth, and their teasing took another twenty minutes off the clock. She charged into the bathroom, took one look in the mirror and knew she didn’t remotely have enough time. She needed a shower, a hair wash, her foot rebandaged, a haircut, a hair style, a wardrobe refurbishing, shaved legs, time to buy some makeup in town, maybe some jewelry and new sandals.
She also needed to clean her bedroom—not because anyone was going to see it, but because so many things were strewn all over the place that she couldn’t find anything.
A few minutes after seven, Petie yelled from the living room, “Hey, Mom, Mr. MacKinnon is here!”
Well, at least she’d progressed from being naked. The cream linen shirt was ancient, but it was softer than silk and had a band collar. It was her lucky shirt. Her feel-safe shirt. Her hair was still wet, but she’d made a makeshift fat braid, used a tortoiseshell comb to pin it off her head. The capris were clean. And that was the end of her grooming.
She’d have put sandals on, but they were by the back door. She’d put on lipstick, but hadn’t gotten around to the dishes. She’d bandaged her foot, but the coffee table was still heaped with folded clothes that—yet again—refused to put themselves away.
When it came down to it, just showing up was the best she could manage.
Petie was doing a far better job of taking care of their guest. He was sprawled on top of the couch as if he was an afghan, lazily slinging a dirty bare foot in the air. He’d served their guest a sweating glass of grape Kool-Aid and opened a package of Oreos.
“My theory,” Pete was explaining to Tucker, “is that when school’s out, you should get to forget about it. You should get to do stuff you like. Summer should be about not worrying … Hey, Mom. Mr. MacKinnon’s here.”
“I see him. And I heard when you called me the first time. Welcome, Tucker.”
He stood up, not the polite way a boarding-school kid learned to stand when a lady entered the room. It was more of a long, lanky stretching up. He went from a nice, reasonable-sized man sitting in a chair, to a six-three hunk of space that instantly stole all the oxygen in the room.
There was nothing manicured about Tucker. His eyebrows were the same scruffy brown as his hair … and the stubble on his chin. The shirt was clean, no more wrinkled than his cotton pants, and his slow smile looked as lazy as the rest of him. The blue eyes were sexy blue. Laser-riveting blue. Dizzy blue. Or maybe that was just how she reacted to him.
It certainly wasn’t Tucker’s fault he made her knees want to buckle. She should have matured years ago. She kept meaning to. As soon as she had time. For now, unfortunately, he was the only man in a blue moon who had inspired a completely ditzy, unreasonable, irrational crush.
“You’ve got quite a place here,” he said easily.
“It’s a work in progress. Would you like me to show you around?”
“Sure. That sounds good. Pete, you want to come with us?”
“Do I have to?” Pete asked her.
“Nope. Up to you.”
She wished he’d come. She wanted a chaperone. Not to protect her from Tucker. To protect him from her. She was likely to make a damn fool of herself around him.
But showing him around the place gave her something to do, something to say. She started with the shop, because the bombardment of scents and textures usually pleased everybody—men as well as women.
“Wow. How’d you come up with all this?” he asked, almost the minute they walked in the door.
Naturally her pride swelled like a balloon. All this time, she’d never been able to talk to him, and now she couldn’t stop. First, she explained how she’d arranged the shop, and why. Her herbs were all in pots, set in antique porcelain sinks, located so they’d get east light. The old porcelain added to the country-comfortable atmosphere, but also enabled her to set up a water-spraying system so the herbs could easily be misted.
Across the room, the west side held cubbyholes with books on medicinal and culinary uses for herbs and spices, with handwritten recipes that Garnet had started but her customers had added to. Color photographs identified what the herbs looked like in different seasons. The north wall had the least exposure to sunlight, so it was a natural spot to put counters and shelves for bottled or burlap-packed spices and herbs, with fresh samples displayed on small trenchers so a customer could smell and taste.
“Obviously the fresh samples aren’t there now—we clean up at night. But lots of customers don’t know the difference between cilantro and basil. That’s why we have the samples and the books and the recipes … to give them ideas about how to use them.”
“So what’s back here?” Tucker motioned to a wooden half door leading to a space in the back.
She unhooked the gate to the half door and motioned him through so he could see. “We have classes back here … Sometimes we’ll cater a lunch for a small group, or we’ll use recipes to show folks how to use their herbs. This is also where we pot and arrange the plants. And there’s one more room in the far back ….”
She led the way ahead of him. The back room was her favorite, possibly because of its spectacularly wonderful messes. A board-plank table functioned as a work area, but every inch of space was used. Herbs dried from the ceiling and cubbyholes held rolls of ribbon and linen bags and string, while potting soil and tools and pots took up another heap of space. “And this is one of my serious treasures.” She motioned to the climate-controlled aquarium that took up one complete wall. “I created this for a teaching tool. It’s just a miniature woods to show some of the endangered species in our area. Like this plant, Gray’s Lily … and the Glade Splurge here … and this is Mountain Bittercress….”
Her voice trailed off. She completely lost her train of thought. She glanced up and found him watching her. Until that instant she hadn’t realized how close he was, how tall he was, and damn, if he didn’t have the most wicked eyes. Alarm thrummed in her pulse. It was one thing to admit she had a crush, another to fool herself into believing he was looking at her with interest. That kind of interest.
She covered the awkward moment with a sudden quick laugh. “Well, I’ve been talking your ear off, haven’t I? You didn’t come here to hear about all this.”
“Only because I didn’t know what all you were doing here. I knew about the shop. Everybody does. But I didn’t know you did all this interactive stuff with your customers. I mean, all the hands-on learning, side education, the whole shebang.”
Garnet could feel a flush climb her neck, embarrassing the devil out of her. She just rarely heard praise.
“Well, isn’t that similar to what you do?” she asked swiftly. “I know, you don’t have a shop. But you have some kind of private school …?”
“Not a school. A camp and retreat center. I sort of fell into it. Had to do something with my mountain … I mean, there’s some real beauty up top, a small lake, waterfalls, creeks, rocks, woods. It’s too damned special not to share. So I take in groups. Boys in trouble. Companies having trouble with employees getting along. People wanting to start a new venture, make sure the whole new staff can cleave together.”
“And then …?” She ambled back outside with him, exiting from the shop’s back door. A slatted roof covered the breezeway to her bungalow, which provided shade but no mercy from the heat. Tonight, though, the oppressive temperatures had finally eased. A pale haze was stealing across the sky, softening the bright edges of the day.
“Well, what I do after that depends on the group,” Tucker said. “I tend to start them out with some exercise—not work exercise, something fun. That gives me a baseline to work with. I get a picture of what the group can do—what the group might want to achieve together. I don’t teach. I wouldn’t know how to teach. But it’s a little like what you created here. I try to expose people to things they haven’t seen and done before. Hope to challenge them, to engage their natural interests. When something works, I build on that. Garnet …?”
She’d been listening, but when he said her name in a question, she lifted her head.
“I’d like to see everything you’ve got going outside, but maybe another time? I can see you’re favoring that right foot. How about if we find a place to park for a few minutes?”
She wasn’t going to deny her sore foot again. “You have no idea how well the limp’s been working for me. I’ve been playing it up all day, making everyone else do the work, while I do the lazy Queen of Sheba routine.”
He grinned. “Somehow I believe that, like I believe in the tooth fairy.”
He had an odd way of making her feel comfortable … when she’d never imagined being comfortable around Tucker. He gravitated toward her front porch, where he probably spotted the old Adirondack rockers nested in the shade. It was a favorite spot for her. She couldn’t see the road or the shop; she just had her private view of the mountain … and the acres she’d cultivated with greenhouses and raised gardens.
Tucker took it all in, as if the view were sipping whiskey. “Wow. You’ve got a lot to do here. Major work.”
“It’s taken a long time to get it this far. But I love it,” she admitted.
“Is that a padlock I see on the far greenhouse?”
“Yes … it’s pretty much the only thing I keep locked around here.”
“For a special reason?”
“Oh, yeah. My vanilla plants are in there. It’s the specialty of the whole place … not that I’m doing anything so brilliant. But it’s a strain of vanilla I developed, so I need to guard it.”
He’d cocked up a leg, started a slow, lazy rock. “Speaking of stuff that smells beyond irresistible—like vanilla—what’s the thing I’m smelling around the porch?”
She motioned to the pots around the doors and steps. “Mint. It takes over if you just let it grow, but in pots it’s easy enough to contain. They’re not such pretty plants, but according to folklore, flying bugs and insects just don’t like the smell, so they stay away.”
For a second—just a small, small second—a silence fell. Because she’d never had the brains God gave a goose, she suddenly thought of a local folklore legend. Old-timers claimed that Whisper Mountain got its name from a “whispering wind” that only lovers heard.
In that small, small second of silence … she heard it. The whisper. The silken-soft whisper in the air. The achy sweet hum of yearning.
How stupid could she be? Annoyed with herself, she stabbed the porch floor with a heel and set her rocker at a creaky pace.
Tucker broke that dangerous silence. “How bad’s the head?”
The bump on her head wasn’t a problem. The brain inside her head was the problem, particularly if it was going to continue to respond to him like mush. “Our sons,” she said, and thankfully the words functioned like a trigger to remind him why he’d stopped over.
“Yeah, I figured we’d better get into that.” Tucker sighed, scratched an ear, made a comical face. “Mrs. Riddle scares the devil out of me, has from the first day of school. She makes me feel like I’ll end up standing in the hall for some unknown wrongdoing. Anyway, she had a problem with my Will. Said for the last few months, he’s become painfully shy around girls. Really miserable. Sweating, stumbling, can’t talk.”
She had to smile. “Don’t you think all kids go through that?”
“Yeah, I do. But Will hit a massive growth spurt this year, shot up four inches, and I expect the mountain of hormones hit him before I was ready.”
Out of nowhere, a cat showed up at the corner of the porch. Garnet instantly recognized it as the feline Pete had mentioned, because it was a she. A very, very pregnant she. There was some invisible sign on her property that invited only the critters who were pregnant and hungry. The cat was the color of mud, with a little Georgia red dirt thrown in, and eyes as gold as topaz. She started washing a paw, as if it was her porch and she’d always washed a paw there.
“Your cat?” Tucker asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said firmly.
As if the cat sensed she was the subject of discussion, she twitched her tail and ambled over to Tucker’s side. She hesitated for all of a millisecond, and then leaped on his lap.
“You’re sure it’s not yours?”
“Trust me. That cat will never be mine.”
“Hmm. She doesn’t seem wild.”
He probably got that impression because the ornery, hardscrabble cat sleepily closed her eyes and started purring loud enough to wake the dead. Tucker shot her an amused look. He also gave the cat a long, soft stroke under her chin.
“Do not laugh at me. I’m learning to say no to Pete. It just doesn’t happen to be a skill I’m particularly good at. But we simply have to stop adopting strays.”
“Uh-huh. So how long do you think before she makes it into the house?”
All right. He made her laugh. “A week. At least I hope I can hold out that long.” And then, because she was starting to feel comfortable with him in spite of herself, she asked carefully, “I don’t know your circumstances, Tucker. I mean, I know you’re a single parent like I am. But as far as Will’s being extra nervous around girls … is there no mom in his picture?”
“There is. But she isn’t what you’d call a helpful female influence on Will.” Tucker sighed. “Angie’s her name. We married before we finished college. My parents, her parents, everyone thought we were the perfect pair. For damn sure, she was the prettiest girl to ever graduate from Ole Miss, and back when I was twenty-one, I thought that was all that mattered. We’ve been divorced for around five years now. She got physical custody from the beginning, but Will never actually lived with her.”
She frowned. “How’d that happen?”
“I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Angie decorates rich folks’ houses in Atlanta. She’s great at it. She claims she’s putting all the child support money I send into a college fund for Will. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I just know that Will’s happy with me, and there’s no trouble as long as I keep sending the full quota of child support.”
The picture Garnet formed of his ex-wife wasn’t pretty … not that it was any of her business. “Will knows this? That she actually has physical custody even though he really stays with you?”
“Not exactly. I don’t like lying to a kid, any kid … but I can’t see telling Will something that would only hurt him, and for no possible purpose. She schedules four weekends or so a year to see him. And some holidays. She loves him. But … well, I think she was in a hustle to get married and have kids, but once the ring went on her finger and we had a kid, she was like a snail without a shell. The new role didn’t fit. She never grew out of wanting to be a full-time Southern belle.”
Garnet mulled how much he’d revealed of his life, and how easily. But he was already talking again.
“I didn’t want to bore you to death with all that background. But I figured you might need to know … if you’re inclined to go along with my plan.”
“A plan?” she echoed.
The mottled cat leaped to the ground, washed another paw and then, as if she’d been asked, leaped up on Garnet’s lap. Garnet firmly ignored her.
“I didn’t hear all of what Mrs. Riddle had to say about your Pete. But I heard some. And I got this idea … that we could try trading kids, a few afternoons a week.”
“Say what? Trade kids?!”

Chapter Three
Tucker had to grin. She looked pretty startled at the idea of swapping kids. At least he’d gotten her attention.
For darn sure, she’d gotten his. The business she’d set up was amazing. The shop, the grounds, the house. He’d never thought of her as a lightweight, but what she’d created here was downright remarkable.
And so was she.
“I didn’t mean literally trade kids. But I got this brainstorm of how we could help each other. Starting with my Will … Just looking around here, I can see you’ve got plenty of manual work. He loves messing with dirt. And he’s too young to have a ‘real’ job, but maybe you could find something helpful for him to do a couple afternoons a week?”
She didn’t immediately answer, but he could almost hear the wheels turning in her mind as she considered the idea. She had to be concentrating mighty hard, because her right hand was instinctively stroking the cat on her lap—the cat she’d claimed wasn’t hers and never would be. Finally, she came through with a worry. “Tucker, I’m not sure I’m the kind of feminine influence Mrs. Riddle thinks your Will needs.”
“Are you kidding? You’re perfect.” He leaned forward, serious now, just struggling to find the right words to explain. “You’re not froufrou. You’re common sense. You clearly don’t mind hard work. You’re creative and interesting and smart, but not threatening. I think Will just being around you would help smooth out some of his current rough edges. Give him some confidence that all women aren’t like his mom. That everyone without that Y chromosome isn’t petrifying.”
Hell. He’d said something wrong, but he wasn’t sure what. The warm glow in her eyes turned abruptly cool. She stopped rocking. “Well, in some ways you’re certainly right,” she said swiftly. “I’m not remotely a froufrou kind of woman. Much less the kind of girl who’d fit into a sorority at Ole Miss.”
That was the thorn? He thought he was giving her a major compliment. But he never had a chance to respond, because she took the conversational ball. “I’d be happy to have Will around here … but what if he doesn’t want to? Maybe he won’t like me, or the things I’m doing here.”
“Well, I put a question to him at dinner. I’ve always had a heavy work schedule in the summer, and he’s always spent those summers with me. We have a good time. But I just asked him if he’d like a change, like a chance to spend a few afternoons a week somewhere else. Do something different, learn something different. Help someone out. I didn’t put your name out there, I just put out the general idea. And he leaped on it. I think he’d really like it.”
Before she could say no—and Tucker could smell when a woman was about to tell him no … God knew, he’d heard it enough—he added, “And I’ve got a plan for your Pete. And for you.”
There. Mention her kid, and her face lit up with warmth again. Tucker tried to remember the last time he’d been this captivated by a woman … and couldn’t. Talking to her only snared his attention more. For darn sure, he couldn’t stop looking at her.
She was wearing a sort-of-white linen shirt, not sheer, but still light as sunlight, a soft caress of a drape on her shoulders, her breasts, a long, low V-neck revealing a delicate expanse of neck. She wore a tiny gold chain. Nothing glitzy or blingy, nothing like formal jewelry. The chain was just the thinnest collar of gold that glinted when she moved, drew attention to her sun-kissed skin beneath.
And then there were legs. For a pipsqueak, she had amazing legs. Slim calves, shapely thighs … Hell. Her knees were even cute.
Naturally he was attracted to her boobs and fanny—he was a guy. But her mouth revved his testosterone switch, too. Her lips looked vulnerable, bare, softer than satin. Maybe her mouth was a little wide, but that just made her smiles and laughter bigger, showed off those pretty teeth. It was a kissable mouth. Probably, on a scale of one to ten, it rated a fifteen-plus for kissability.
Not that he still played those immature scale games.
It was just … he hadn’t let a woman close enough to think of those old immature scale games … in a blue moon.
“About my Petie …”
He straightened up. “Yeah. Here’s my thought on Pete. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard part of what Mrs. Riddle said to you. She thinks Pete needs a sport, something outside of academics—”
“It’s not that he doesn’t get along with the other kids,” Garnet interrupted, immediately defending her son. “She was just making a point that middle school is tough on all kids. And she thought he’d fit in better with the boys … if he had some kind of athletic skill.”
Tucker nodded, then wedged a little closer. “I heard from somebody—probably another parent—that you were a widow?”
Her voice picked up a careful cadence, making him pretty sure—damned sure—she was giving him the spruced-up version of the story. “Yes, that’s right. Johnny and I ran off, got married right out of high school. It’s no secret I was pregnant at the time. He thought the best way to earn a living was to go into the service. Unfortunately, only a few months later he was sent to the Middle East. He came home on every leave, it’s not as if we never saw him, but he died when Pete was barely three. He just wasn’t around to be a male influence.”
“I take it there’s no other family close? Your parents? His grandparents from the other side?”
“John’s family moved to Oregon years ago. They send presents, cards, but otherwise haven’t tried to be part of Petie’s life. And my family’s originally from Charleston. Two sisters. No brothers.”
When she didn’t add anything further about her family, he thought, ho-kay. Obviously there was a sore spot … which made Tucker conclude that she’d never had much backup coming from family.
“So,” he said slowly, “I don’t care what Mrs. Riddle said. What do you think? About whether Pete needs a sport, or to develop some kind of athletic skill, or just some guy time?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t see why every boy should be inherently great with sports … any more than every girl plays with dolls. Pete’s smart as a whip. He can cook better than I can. He built his own computer. Sometimes he’ll come out and work with me, so it’s not like he’s afraid to get his hands dirty. He just seems to like being inside more.”
“What sports have you tried?”
“Well … swimming. Hiking. I know, that doesn’t sound like much … but it hasn’t been that easy. I’m really tied down with Plain Vanilla. I have two regular employees, but that’s it. On Sundays, especially during the school year, we often take off and do something. It’s just … Petie would rather do a movie or prowl around a computer store. Sports never seem to make it on his want-to-do list.”
Tucker nodded. “That’s kind of what I thought you’d say. So here’s my plan. Let me take your Pete, while you have my Will. Same setup. Trade kids a couple afternoons a week. Pete can just hang with me … I’ve got a range of groups coming in over the next few weeks. It’ll be easy to give him a chance to try new things. At his size, I’m guessing you’re not real hot on the idea of contact sports, so we’ll concentrate on the other kind. Kayaking, archery, rock climbing. Not that he has to try anything. He’ll just get the chance. No push. No bribery. Just see if he shows an interest, and if he does, I’ll work with him on it. I mean … if he goes along with the idea.”
“That sounds good,” she said slowly. “Better than good. I’d really like to give it a try—if our boys are for it.”
A silence fell. At least for Tucker, it felt like an elephant suddenly plunked down on her front porch. They’d been talking easily, naturally, but once the topic of their sons was over, Garnet stiffened up.
“Well,” he said, “I should be getting back.”
She vaulted from the chair as if spring-loaded. “Me, too. I still have things I have to do tonight.”
He got it. She wanted him to leave. And hell. He did need to get back to his place. But standing next to each other, he felt like a bear next to delicate crystal. He said slowly, “It bugged me all day. That you were hurt because of me this morning.”
“That’s silly, Tucker. It was a complete accident. No harm done.”
Yeah, he’d heard all that before.
“Yeah? Well, I’ve watched you a couple times reach for the back of your head. How big’s the goose egg?”
“It’s nothing,” she said for what seemed like the zillionth time, but he was all through buying that malarkey.
He was already within touching distance. One step closer, and he could ease a palm around her neck and gently push her head into his chest. She didn’t fight him as he felt for the scar. In fact, she seemed to quit breathing altogether. The texture of her silky hair, tangling around his fingers, tangoed with the fresh smell of her shampoo and caused the obvious physical reaction in him. He ignored the arousal. He wanted to see the cut, for Pete’s sake.
And he found it. It wasn’t actually a goose egg, but looked more like a burn mark. Buried in her hair, but looking raw and fiery. “Ouch,” he said. “What’s wrong with you, that you haven’t been whining and yelling? Take advantage. Heave on some guilt.”
He stepped back, so she’d quit worrying he was going to jump her. He wanted to. Really, really wanted to. But obviously he was going to have to earn her trust by baby steps. A zillion of them. And when he stepped back, he won a reluctant grin … possibly because she liked his joking tone.
“I admit, it still smarts.”
“I’ll bet it does. So I owe you. You just have to think about what and when you want to collect.” He was using his best teasing tone, but abruptly realized that his fingers were still in her hair, drifting through that soft, silky sea, no longer looking for hurts and scrapes, just … feeling.
He dropped his hand, but all that provocative feeling was still there. Electrified because she was looking at him. Because their eyes met and neither could seem to break the sudden sharp connection between them. He could smell that raspberry shampoo of hers. See the pulse in the hollow of her throat. Hear the worry and tension in her scattered breath.
He’d known it’d be like this. Or he’d hoped it would. All he’d wanted was the chance to spend some time with her, be with her, do something to make her notice. Not notice him. But notice that something had a chance of firing hot and bright between them.
But he figured, for now, he’d pushed enough. He smiled, made a slow, easy business out of fishing the truck keys from his side pocket, letting her see that he was leaving. A little worry was fine. A few nerves were fine. But she really did seem like a fawn, standing in bright headlights, ready to bolt and flee.
He had no idea what made her so wary, but now, he just might have a chance to find out.
“How about trying the plan with the boys, say, next Tuesday afternoon?”
“Sure. That sounds fine.” But her eyes hadn’t left his. Her voice still couldn’t muster more power than a whisper.
“I think we’ve got a good idea. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t. But no harm in giving it a try.”
“I agree. I appreciate your coming up with the plan.”
He shot her an easy smile, took one step off her porch. “You know the old legend about Whisper Mountain, don’t you?”
She started to speak, then seemed to correct herself. “I heard a really foolish story, about when the wind’s coming from a certain direction, people can hear the sound of voices, or something like that.”
She wasn’t getting off that easy. “The legend is that it’s a lovers’ wind. That only lovers can hear the mountain whisper.”
“Silliest thing I ever heard,” she said.
“Yeah. That’s what I think, too,” he concurred, and with another grin, strode off toward his truck … just as the sky opened with a noisy crack of thunder.
Well, fine, Garnet thought irritably, as she yanked on a yellow slicker and fumbled in the back hall for a flashlight. Hard to imagine this day getting any more upsetting. First there’d been the stomach-knotting talk with Mrs. Riddle, then the foot and head scrapes that hurt the whole darned afternoon, then behaving like a goose with Tucker … and no, of course she had no illusions what’d been going on there. He’d been kind. Looking at her sore head.
She was the one imagining his interest … when she knew perfectly well she was invisible to men. Always had been. Always would be. Particularly with powerhouse alpha guys like Tucker.
And now, an unexpected torrential rain put a sharp cap on the day. “Petie!” she called from the back door. “I’m going to check on the greenhouses!”
She heard a distant “okay,” then pelted outside into the deluge. The rain was warm, coming down in sheets, making the ground slick and blurring her vision. Her plants—all of them—loved rain more than well water, but a downpour like this could erode the soil and smash down delicate leaves.
She unlocked the door to her precious vanilla house first, then checked the other greenhouses at a run, ending up at the raised garden beds closest to the shop. The raised beds all had “shade curtains”—mesh that rolled out twelve feet above ground. The curtain protected the plants from too much sun as well as allowing rain in—but not this kind of gully-washing rain. She cranked out the roll of curtain, which shouldn’t have been hard … except that her hands were wet and her eyes blinded with rain.
The whole task shouldn’t have taken fifteen minutes, but by the time she charged back into the house, she was soaked to the bone and trailing more water than a river. “I’m back!” she called, so Petie wouldn’t worry.
She peeled off the slicker and shoes, exchanged the rest of her clothes in the bedroom for a long robe, grabbed a brush and started tracking down her son.
Likely he’d be near either a TV or computer screen, but that hardly limited the possibilities. Her bungalow was built in the old-fashioned Southern style, with all rooms having a window view, and storage located in the windowless center of the place. The back side—the woods and mountain sides—had her bedroom, a den/TV room and Pete’s bedroom, which she checked first.
His sanctuary had walls of cracked pine, with a built-in desk and shelves. Unlike her bedroom, Pete’s bed was tidily made and his clothes put away. The only noise in the room came from a pair of hamsters, furiously running their wheels. She spotted Pete’s bare feet propped on the bed, but she had to lean over the bed to find the rest of her son. Petie was nestled in a down comforter on the floor, reading from a Kindle.
“Well, if this isn’t petrifying,” she said. “Is the sky falling? Your laptop’s shut down. The TV’s off.”
“Mom. There was some thunder. I had to turn everything off.” Behind glasses too dirty to see, Petie’s eyes looked hopelessly mournful.
“But it looks like you found a book to read.” She perched on the bed, resisted the urge to tickle his feet.
“Actually, it’s boring. And how come Mr. MacKinnon came over, anyway?”
She was ready for the question. “We were trying to think up a plan to torture you and his Will.”
“If you can’t think up a better story than that, I’m going back to my book.”
“I’m serious! We came up with the idea that you and Will might like to trade places for a couple afternoons.”
Pete marked the spot in his Kindle and shut down. Now his eyes were suspicious. “Why would we want to do that?”
“Because summer vacations are fun. But they can also be boring.”
He crossed his skinny arms. “Mom, I’m about never bored. You know that.”
“I do. But Mr. MacKinnon has a gorgeous spot on top of the mountain. There’s a lake up there. Cliffs—”
“I know. We had a field trip there a couple years ago. It’s pretty awesome.”
“That’s what I thought—”
Pete interrupted her. “Just tell me straight. Is this one of your schemes to make me ‘go outside and have fun’?”
She tried to think of a way to color up the truth. Couldn’t think of any. “Sort of,” she had to admit.
Petie emitted one of his old-soul’s sighs. “Listen. You need me. If I’m not here, you can’t find your car keys. And you put the milk in the cupboard. And sometimes you forget it’s dinnertime. And sometimes you need me to help with the plants and stuff.”
“That’s all true. I do need you. And you’re wonderful at being responsible and taking care of things,” Garnet agreed. “But that’s not a lot of fun for you.”
“Mom. I don’t know why you can’t get it. I have fun all the time. It’s just not noisy fun.” He sighed again. “This is about something Mrs. Riddle said to you, isn’t it? She says I never cause trouble. She says it’s not natural. So she got you all worried that you’re not a great mother, right?”
It scared her. If he could out-think her at age ten, how could she possibly cope when he was a teenager? “Not exactly.”
“Okay. We’ll go through this again. You’re a great mom. Even if you forget and put the peanut butter in the fridge. Even if you dance around like a goon when you’re making cookies. But this is like when Grandma and Grandpa call. You get all upset. You start scrubbing floors. You gotta quit listening to other people. Listen to me.”
“Peter. Sometimes you need to remember that I’m the parent, and you’re the kid. Sometimes I actually know a little more about life than you do.”
“When?”
“Hey. That wasn’t funny. It was mean.”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Okay, okay. I’ll go over to Mr. MacKinnon’s if you want me to. It’s not like it’s terrible there. He’s a good guy and all.” His tone conveyed that he was caving, but she’d better realize she was going to owe him forever for agreeing to this.
“I just want you to try it a couple of times. See if you like the setup there. That’s all I’m asking. For you to check it out.”
“Okay, okay. I said I would.”
She escaped while she was ahead, aimed for the kitchen and the end-of-the-day cleanup. There wasn’t much. Crumbs here, a quick sweep, a couple glasses to pop in the dishwasher, and last, scouring the sink. Garnet knew perfectly well she was the worst housekeeper in the universe, so heaven knew how she’d picked up an obsession about a clean sink, but there it was. Another character flaw.
By the time the sink had a blinding gleam, her mind had skidded back to Tucker. How she felt around him. How she didn’t want to feel. How every single thing that happened today had been … unsettling.
MacKinnons were blue blood in this part of the country. So was her family … but not her. She was plain vanilla all the way, went to bed with the first boy who asked her, got instantly pregnant, married Johnny because she was wildly in love with him—but he chose to fight in the Middle East rather than live with her. She wasn’t just an underachiever in her family.
She was the one who always made the wrong choices.
Tucker, with his background, had understandably been attracted to—and married—a sorority girl from Ole Miss. So the marriage hadn’t worked out. Eventually he’d find another woman with the beauty and grace and class of a traditional Southern belle, because that’s what MacKinnons did.
And Garnet would still be working in the dirt, struggling to make an ordinary living, to just raise her son and do a good job at it.
Nothing wrong with that.
But she’d made enough bad judgments. Her heart was impulsive and unpredictable. Her life had gone much, much easier since she’d just kind of abandoned men. And that resolve hadn’t changed just because she had a major zing thing for Tucker.
She’d had zings before. They always turned out wrong.
A razor-sharp blade of lightning knifed the sky, followed by an angry growl of thunder … as if she needed a reminder that she and nature didn’t always get along.

Chapter Four
Tucker glanced at his watch. What was it about Tuesdays? He’d been chasing his tail all morning, and now it was almost 1:00 p.m. “Hey, Will! Get the lead out!” he yelled, as he hiked toward the truck.
A group of fifty high-school kids were scheduled around five, and before they arrived, there was still a ton of prep to do. The camp cook needed a sort-out of the menu. The truck bringing supplies and freezer goods for the week was overdue. The camp counselors needed one last run-through of the week’s activity plans before the new gang arrived.
He’d volunteered to drop Will at Plain Vanilla—and pick up Pete at the same time. But running this late, he just needed to get the show on the road.
Will lumbered outside, shot his father a look, then lumbered into the truck. Tucker recognized his son’s “delinquent” face. As soon as they were buckled in, he turned the key. “What’s the silent deal? I thought you were on board with this idea.”
“I was. Until I got a stomachache.”
“When did the stomachache hit?”
“About an hour ago.”
About an hour ago—if Tucker remembered right—Will had taken off right after an early lunch with a fly rod. He’d come back whistling, changed clothes. Now, the silence.
Only one road led down from the mountaintop. One corkscrew turn followed another. Each bend and twist showed a different vista—a flash of mountain cliff, the velvet of green wooded shade, a burst of sunlight. Tucker had driven the road a million times, never tired of it. He wouldn’t use the word magical because that was too corny. But he’d never been able to put an anxious childhood behind him until settling on the mountain for good.
Growing up a MacKinnon had made Tucker determined that Will’s childhood would be different than his.
“Did you change your mind about working with Garnet?” he asked his son.
“No. Not exactly.”
“But you’re bugged about something.”
“Not exactly.”
“Could you maybe pin down some ‘exactlys’ for me?”
Will scowled. “Her place is kind of interesting. She’s okay, too. I mean, she was at school a lot. So I know she’s okay.”
“But …?” Sometimes communicating with his son was like trying to prod a bear out of hibernation.
“But she might not want me around, Dad. I don’t want her to be stuck with me.”
Because Tucker didn’t have a temper, he didn’t want to wring his ex-wife’s neck. He just calmly, rationally considered how much damn harm the woman had done to their son. “Garnet asked if you were willing to help her. She’s not even as tall as you, Will. Probably doesn’t weigh nearly as much. And there are no guys around there. She was just hoping you might be willing to do some guy-type projects with her.”
“I told you. I like that idea. In fact, I was really charged to go this morning. I don’t even care if she pays me. It’s just …”
Tucker waited. Waiting had always been fun for him. Like poking a needle at a toothache.
“… I just don’t know if I’ll know what to say to her.”
His son was worried about that? Hell, Tucker didn’t have a clue what to say to her, either. It’d taken several years of their sons being in the same class for Garnet to even recognize he was alive. And then he’d practically had to knock her down to win some conversation.
Less than ten minutes passed before they pulled into her drive. A half-dozen cars were parked in front of the shop, a variety of customers wandering around outside. Still, he noticed her first.
Her hair was bunched under a straw hat. She was wearing a sleeveless tank with the Plain Vanilla logo, shorts, sandals. She was laughing with a customer. The sun sheened on her bare shoulders and toned upper arms.
She shaded her forehead when she saw the truck, left the customer and immediately strode toward them with a smile. A smile, Tucker noted, that was for Will rather than him.
“Hey, guys.” She had a no-nonsense stride, pure girl, but still lithe and easy. “Man, am I glad you’re here, Will. I have a problem you could really help me with. It’s a secret that I just can’t share with anyone here. So I need somebody I can trust.”
“I can keep a secret,” Will promised her.
“Great. You don’t mind getting a little dirty, do you?”
“No. It’s okay. I like getting dirty.”
“No kidding?” Garnet shot Tucker a quick wink, but really, she hadn’t noticed him yet. She was still all about straight eye contact with Will. “I figured by midafternoon, we’d both need a break. But I wasn’t sure what you liked to snack on? So I got a couple different kinds of juice, made some fresh chocolate chip cookies …”
“I really like cookies.”
“Oh, thank heavens. I wasn’t sure.” She shot Tucker another wink, but unless he stood on his head, he doubted she was ever going to look at him directly.
The screen door to the store banged open, and out came Pete. Tucker wanted to scratch his neck. Petie had the same expression as his Will had had this morning. The Christian-entering-the-Romans’-lion’s-den look. The long-suffering look. The I’ll-do-this-but-you’ll-have-to-kill-me-to-have-fun look.
“Hey, Pete,” Tucker said.
“Hey, Mr. MacKinnon.” The kid was dressed appropriately. Sturdy shorts. Short-sleeved shirt. Running shoes. His hair looked like a cap, as if it’d been cut with a bowl, and framed his face, showed off his round glasses … and the half-dozen freckles on his nose.
“I’m glad we’re trying this trade thing,” Tucker said genially. “Your mom said you’re pretty good with numbers, organizing things.”
“Yeah. I am, sometimes.”
“I’m not sure anyone can organize me, Pete. Grown men have tried. But I sure could use some help if you’d be willing to give it a shot.”
The face looked a little brighter. Still five shades of glum, but not quite so miserable.
“Well, hop in and we’ll take off.”
Petie did … and for all of three and a half seconds, Tucker had Garnet’s attention. She came closer to the truck door, took off the straw hat. Her hair shivered and shook in the sun, finally freed from confinement, making him think that’s how it’d look when she woke up in the morning. Or after a nap.
Or right after making love.
That thought came from nowhere. Tucker punched his inner censor, smiled at her like a normal human being instead of the lovesick idiot he was turning into around her. “Not sure of this …” he murmured.
“You, too? I’m afraid we’ve invited a disaster on each other.”
“Yeah. I saw the expressions. Well … we’ll retrade around six-thirty?”
“Sounds right. I’ll bring Will earlier if there’s any problem or he wants to go home.” She lifted a hand.
He got it, she wanted to touch knuckles. They were, after all, in this project together. So he leaned forward to touch her knuckles, and again, she looked straight at him.
Just like that, it happened again. A wildfire of emotion, torching through his veins. Need, coiling like a snake. Want, whispering like silk through his witless mind.
His response was adolescent and annoying as hell.
But it was real.
If their sons would just go along with their crazy plan, he’d have chances to see her again. To be around her. To see if she ever peeled off that careful, friendly veneer for a man … or if she could be coaxed to.
Garnet was late—not for the first time—but there was no speeding on the twisty curves near the mountaintop. She breathed a sigh of relief when she finally saw the hand-carved sign reading MacKinnon Breakaway.
Next to her, Will immediately piped up, “Yeah, that’s us. The house is on the right, Mrs. G.”
She pulled into the driveway and braked. The plan was to drop off Will and pick up Petie—and immediately skedaddle. Her son had to be starving. She sure was.
Still, she soaked in the view for a few moments. She had to admit she’d been curious about where Tucker lived.
“The house started out as my great-grandpa’s,” Will told her. “But my grandpa just called it the lodge. But when we moved here, my dad built cabins for all the campers and retreaters to stay. He didn’t want strangers underfoot right where he lived. That’s what he said, anyway.”
“It’s really cool,” she told him.
“Yeah, I know.” Will opened the van door and hit the ground running. She followed more slowly, still studying the sprawling log home. It wasn’t really as big as a lodge, more set up as a country place that could accommodate a big family or family gatherings. Gabled roof. Two stone chimneys. Old, majestic shade trees. A veranda on the second story, wrapping around the whole house.

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