Tabitha wished she had a different answer for him, one he wanted to hear. Instead she just admitted, “My mom has a blockage in her heart. She needs surgery, and you know Brett’s not gonna take care of it. She’s got diabetes too, and a whole host of other medical problems that have to be handled.”
Wyatt flinched. The pain showed on his face for one brief moment before he turned his head to look out the side window and take a long, cooling breath. “I’m sorry ’bout your mom.”
Tabitha nodded and considered him. He was so big in person, so overwhelmingly broad and muscular. His wide shoulders were tight, the tension was still bleeding off him to the point that she wanted to reach out and comfort him somehow, but there was nothing to be done. She finally whispered, “I’m sorry too…for everything.”
Wyatt didn’t respond. He just sat there quietly for a few moments and then started the car as if there was nothing else to say. Tabitha hadn’t really expected him to say it was fine that she’d walked out on him less than a week after they’d gotten married, but the deafening silence wasn’t any easier to bear for being predictable.
Tabitha stared out the window as they drove. She tried to worry about her mother, her abandoned car, or even her fear and resentment over being forced back to Garnet. Even the hatred for Brett seemed better to focus on than the pulsing sorrow that was welling up inside her chest and making the rural scenery grow blurry in a way that had nothing to do with the rain.
When he turned down the long driveway that led to the lake house, Tabitha was ready to leap out of the car and run away from the heartache. Wyatt must have sensed her urge to flee and grabbed her wrist gently. He gave her a look that said he expected her to stay put.
Tabitha shook her head in denial, because being with him was ripping her apart on a soul-deep level. She’d rather be back home with Brett than alone in that lake house with Wyatt. “I’m fine. Really, Wy, you don’t have to fuss over me.”
Wyatt opened the car door and stepped out as if he hadn’t heard a word of her argument against it. “Just lemme get the first-aid kit out of the back.”
Tabitha huffed in defeat, knowing how stubborn Wyatt got when he had his mind set on something. She had a ring that proved that. Only now realizing it, she looked to her left hand, seeing the golden band, and felt a sinking horror. Not for Wyatt to see she still wore it, but for Brett or her mother to notice and start asking questions. Why hadn’t she thought of it before this moment?
She pulled at the band, trying to wiggle it off her finger, but the summer heat made it hard to get off. She managed to slip it a little up and saw the deep groove left from thirteen years of wearing a ring she never took off, along with a noticeable white tan line. Too much Florida sun. On or off, it made no difference. Anyone who bothered to look would know she was married.
Her car door opened, and Tabitha dropped her hand self-consciously, hoping to God Wyatt didn’t see her fight with her wedding ring. She grabbed her purse, clutched the blanket tighter, and jumped out of the car before Wyatt could do something like try to carry her again. If he wanted to follow, she couldn’t stop him. Even if he wasn’t sheriff, which made him something akin to God of Garnet, he was still bullheaded.
She fished in her purse for the small set of keys as she walked up to the lake house, that was surrounded by woods and hidden so far off the main road few knew it was still there. It was bigger than she needed, but the only other place Terry had to rent was next door to Clay Powers, and she sure didn’t need that.
“Wow, Terry really did fix this place up, didn’t he? It’s like
Better Homes and Gardens
in here,” Wyatt mused behind her. “I hadn’t really paid attention to it the last time I was in this place, but I surely can’t believe he turned that old, rotting cabin into this.”
“Well, that’s what he does.” Tabitha opened the front door. “Fixes places to work off a lifetime of too much energy. He should’ve stuck to those simple little one- and two-bedroom houses. They’re easier to rent. A place this big is harder to sell and even worse to rent, too darn expensive.”
“You seem to know a lot about what Terry’s been up to,” Wyatt said suspiciously. “Have ya been keeping up with him?”
Tabitha turned to Wyatt, who stood behind her, a backpack over his shoulder, a large white first-aid kit in his hands. An explanation was on the tip of her tongue. Terry was her friend, one of her only true friends from childhood except Clay Powers, whose loyalty certainly wasn’t in her court anymore, but the words were trapped in her throat. She couldn’t make excuses for staying in touch with Terry and spilling her secrets to an old friend while keeping her husband in the dark.
She could always tell him the truth, which was the best explanation of them all, but she wouldn’t risk that. Keeping that secret from Wyatt was the reason she’d left.
“I’m gonna go take a shower.”
Tabitha turned back around and promptly tripped over her luggage still in the foyer. Wyatt dropped the first-aid kit and caught her before she could face plant on the hard European tile. It took amazingly quick reflexes to save Tabitha from herself at this point in the game. She should be impressed, but all it did was humiliate her further. She looked down to the bandages scattered over the floor and felt her cheeks heat.
“Please lemme go.” She closed her eyes, feeling Wyatt’s big hands holding her upper arms through the blanket, and whispered, “I need to go drown myself now.”
“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay alone in the shower?”
Tabitha turned to arch an eyebrow at him, misreading his intentions before she saw nothing but concern shining in his light eyes and softened her defensiveness. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not so sure ’bout that. You’re obviously still shaky. I think you ought to leave the bathroom door unlocked.”
She nodded, deciding it was a reasonable compromise given her track record over the past twenty minutes. “Fair deal.”
Wyatt let her go, and Tabitha wanted to run to the sanctuary of the master bathroom, but she didn’t. She walked—cautiously.
It’d make sense for Tabitha to toss out her clothes. It wasn’t like she couldn’t afford more, but old habits died hard, and she had a difficult time wasting things. She took them into the shower with her, using the hot water to wash the mud off before she hung them over the rack on the wall to toss in the washer later.
She took just as much time on her body, scrubbing until her skin was pink with the effort. Her shoulder burned something awful, and her leg felt worse, but she welcomed the pain to distract her from a wealth of other problems.
It wasn’t until she was out of the shower, wrapped in a towel that was included in the furnishing of the house, that she realized she didn’t bring clothes with her. She had her toiletries in the bathroom because she’d freshened up before heading to her mother’s place, but not a stitch of clothing to change into.
With nothing else to do, Tabitha just brushed her teeth with the same manic enthusiasm she used on her clothes and body. Then she combed her hair, wincing at her reflection and wondering for the first time what Wyatt thought of it so short.
She rinsed off her toothbrush, put it away, and then fingered her chin-length dripping red locks and pondered putting makeup on. As crazy as it was, she found herself wanting to impress him when usually her looks were very low on her priority list. Now there was that small part of her not broken and damaged by life that wanted to be beautiful for the man who still owned her heart.
Coming back to Garnet was a disaster just waiting to happen.
She walked out of the bathroom casually before she lost her nerve. Part of her hoped Wyatt had put her suitcases in the master bedroom while she took the long shower, and she would’ve thought life was finally smiling on her when she spied all her bags in the corner if Wyatt wasn’t sitting on the bed waiting for her.
She stopped in her tracks, losing all sense of nonchalance when she saw the way Wyatt looked at her. Hot and greedy, his gaze ran over her body covered in nothing but a white towel. It made all the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. Her stomach clenched, and for the first time in a very long time she experienced something she thought had died forever.
A wild rush of sexual desire washed over her, and it left Tabitha breathless in the face of it. She’d forgotten how good it felt. For that one crazy moment, it seemed like life had been on hold for all these years, frozen in a nightmare of painful memories and even more agonizing regrets. That one look from Wyatt kick-started her into breathing again.
She actually took a choking gasp of air as she stood there shaking, feeling things that left her terrified and invigorated at the same time. Wyatt had changed out of his sheriff’s uniform and looked much more like the man she’d left behind in a pair of well-worn jeans and a blue shirt that clung to his massive biceps and stretched across his powerful chest. The color made his eyes seem lighter, his face more tan and handsome, and its effect left her standing there gawking at him.
“I, um—” Wyatt cleared his throat, recovering much easier than Tabitha was able to. He held up the first-aid kit and a blue-foiled nutrition bar. “I got ya a protein bar out of the car. I thought I’d doctor your shoulder while you eat it.”
Tabitha just stood there trying to find her voice. He wanted to play doctor with her.
Is he serious?
Their past loomed between them like a malevolent dark cloud, tearing open all the painful wounds that had never healed for either of them. It was obvious Wyatt hurt just as badly as she did, which made everything a thousand times more agonizing. She’d never wanted this for him. She loved him far too much to bear the thought of the pain her life inflicted bleeding into his, but she supposed it’d been inevitable.
She’d warned him, but there’d been a time when Wyatt thought he could be her hero. That he could somehow save her from the difficult existence God saw fit to give her. All his chivalry had done was allow Wyatt to drown with her, and the guilt was almost too much to endure.
Tabitha shook her head. “Wyatt—”
“Sit down.” He gestured to the spot on the bed next to him. “We both got things to be mad at each other ’bout, but right now you’re hurting, and I don’t want you to get an infection. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”
“Yes.” Tabitha swallowed hard and looked down at her leg that had stopped bleeding. Too stunned and shell-shocked to think of an argument, she just walked over to the bed and sat next to Wyatt. “I hurt my leg too.”
“I see.” Wyatt winced and handed her a protein bar. “It’s chocolate. It ain’t half-bad. Good fuel if you’re feeling peaked, which I figured you probably were. Got a good dose of vitamins in ’em too.”
Tabitha took it, having forgotten until just now that high-protein products like shakes and bars were a way of life for Wyatt who lived and breathed for the next workout. It was so distinctly him, she almost didn’t want to open it. She had the crazy urge to hide it in the box she filled with the mementos of all the small, perfect moments in life that were rare and cherished because of it.
“Thank you.” She opened it and tried not to wince as she destroyed the memento. She took a bite. It tasted more like cardboard than chocolate, but she smiled anyway. “It’s good.”
Wyatt nodded, and then he slid off the bed with the first-aid kit, falling to his knees in front of her. Extremely aware of sitting in front of him in nothing but a towel, Tabitha squeezed her legs tighter together and then turned to present her injured calf. She tugged on the towel, making sure it covered everything.
Wyatt smirked as he opened the kit. “I’ve seen it, Tab.”
“Not for a while.” Her cheeks flamed as she looked away from him and took another bite of the protein bar as a distraction. She chewed and swallowed before she added, “A
long
while.”
“Trust me, it’s committed to memory.”
That didn’t help the heat in her face or the dull throb between her thighs that pulsed to the rapid rhythm of her heartbeat. The bizarre collision of the familiarity of Wyatt mixed with the unaccustomed pulse of lust left her feeling almost light-headed. She hadn’t expected being around him to be this easy after all these years, as if a part of her soul recognized the other half of itself and relaxed all her tightly honed defenses.
“This is gonna hurt.”
“Good.” Tabitha squeezed her eyes shut, hating the image of Wyatt on his knees in front of her. Guilt. Want. Loneliness. Loss. The emotions were too much, and she wanted something to wash them away, even if it hurt like hell. “Do your worst.”
If Wyatt thought her reaction was strange, she didn’t see it. Her eyes squeezed tighter from the sear of pain caused from whatever cold, horrible fluid he was pouring over her leg. “Holy shit!”
“That ain’t the kinda language you expect to hear out of a woman who’s famous for writing children’s books.”
The craziest thing happened while she sat there in a towel with her leg on fire as her husband that she hadn’t seen in the past thirteen years played doctor like she’d never left. Tabitha laughed. She had forgotten how easy it was to do around Wyatt.
She brushed the wet hair off her forehead as her giggle turned into a pained moan. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Wyatt’s big, calloused hand slipped around to the back of her calf, his thumb rubbing over it soothingly as he blotted the wound dry. “Your secret’s safe.”
“And they’re not children’s books. They’re more YA. Young adult.”
“I know what YA is. I was just distracting you. I’ve been following your career for the past ten years. I know what you write.”
The warmth started to turn to something else besides the fiery burn of embarrassment. It tore away the last remnants of the strong, almost impenetrable walls Tabitha had built up around herself to help her survive a lonely existence she had never wanted.
Without thinking about it, she reached out and stroked Wyatt’s hair away from his forehead. “I’ve followed your career too.” She wasn’t talking about his career as sheriff, though she heard things about that too. The Wyatt she’d left behind had been heavily involved in mixed-martial-arts fighting, and he’d gone nearly all the way in the sport he was so passionate about in his youth. “I was sorry you had to retire. I know you loved it.”