Lily wrinkled her nose. “Did you have to climb into the Dumpster?”
“I grabbed his belt just as he was diving in and pulled him back out. It was real ripe too. Smelled like Rick had just thrown out some expired bait. If I’d had to jump in there and get covered with fish eggs and dead crickets, I’d have been pissed.”
She couldn’t imagine running in work boots and gear. She was in good shape, but probably would have passed out after a hundred feet. “Was he from around here?”
“Odessa.” Tucker looked at the scratches across the back of his hand. “He was scrappy for such a skinny guy.”
Lily moved toward him and took his hand in hers. “How’d this happen?”
“He didn’t want to be cuffed very badly, and I scrapped it on the concrete trying to dig his arm from underneath him.”
She raised his hand to her mouth and lightly kissed it. “Better?”
“Yes.” He looked back into her eyes and nodded. “He tried to kick me in the balls too.”
“I’m not going to kiss your hairy balls, Tucker.”
He chuckled like he thought he was real funny. “Didn’t hurt to mention it.”
She dropped his hand and thought for a moment. “Well, maybe if you got them waxed.”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Do men do that?”
“Some men.” He looked so horrified it was her turn to chuckle. “They wax their whole bodies. It’s called manscaping.”
He set his mug on the counter. “No one is going to put hot wax anywhere near my balls.” He ran his hands up her arms and pulled her close.
“Don’t be a baby.” She set her mug on the counter next to his. “I get waxed.”
“I noticed.” He grinned. “I like it. It makes going down on you real nice and neat. I can see what I’m doing.”
Her eyes widened and she felt color creep up her cheeks. “You looked at my . . . my crotch.”
“Of course. My face was down there. I don’t know why you’re embarrassed. You’ve got a real nice . . .” He paused as if searching for the right word then gave up. “I don’t like the word
She didn’t know. She supposed it was a compliment, but it had been a while since she’d been involved with a man. She couldn’t recall if they talked so free and easy in the beginning or if they saved their real thoughts for later—after they reached that comfortable stage. Or was it just Tucker? “Have you always talked this way to women?” Or maybe guys Tucker’s age where just more direct.
He looked up toward the ceiling and thought a minute. “No.” His gaze returned to hers. “I used to have a filthy mouth. When I was in the Army I talked a lot worse. I had to work really hard to get the f-word out of every sentence. I couldn’t even ask for the ketchup without dropping it at least twice. In the military, swearing is not only a way of life, it’s an art form.” He slid his hands across her shoulders to her neck and his thumbs brushed her chin and jaw. “Living with a bunch of guys for months on end in a bunker in an Afghanistan outpost will turn anyone into an animal. You get shot at every day, live in dirt, and the food’s shitty. Inventive swearing is just something to do to pass the time and impress the other guys.”
“You must have liked it. You did it for ten years.”
“I loved it right up until the second that I didn’t.”
“What made you decide you didn’t love it anymore?” She put her palms on his flat belly and brushed her fingers across the fabric of his shirt. She knew he loved it when she ran her hands all over him. Her touch seemed to soothe even as it excited him. And she loved the feel of his hard muscles and tight skin beneath her hand and mouth.
“The last time I took rounds, I got shot five times. Four were stopped by my ballistic plates.” Her fingers stopped and she raised her gaze to where he pointed at the scar on his forehead. “The fifth got me here and I decided I didn’t want to be taken out that way. I’d given the Army enough. It was time to do something else. When my enlistment was up, I got out.”
She stared at his forehead, horrified. “You could have died, Tucker. I bet your family was worried sick.”
“I didn’t die and I’m here with you.” He kissed her upturned mouth. “I like having you here when I come home. You should come over every morning.”
She settled against his chest. “I can’t every morning. I have to work.”
“What time do you work today?”
“I have to be there by noon.”
He raised the big watch on his wrist. “Then why are we out here wasting time?” He reached for her hand, led her out of the kitchen, and through the living room. She got a quick impression of wood and leather and real art on the walls—no nudie posters or dogs playing poker painted on velvet. He had a big screen TV and books. They continued down the hall and she looked in a bathroom that appeared surprisingly clean. She hadn’t known what to expect, but not this. Not this grown-up house, with big-boy furniture. It just didn’t fit her preconceived image of him. “Do you play Xbox?”
“I’m thirty, not thirteen.” He stopped next to a bed with a real headboard. “I’m only too glad to show you I’m a grown man. Although, after our sexual three-peat the other night, I’m surprised it’s even in question.”
During the next few weeks, Lily snuck through the back fence several more times after she took Pippen to school. There were some women, she supposed, who would have qualms about sneaking around. That would feel uneasy or guilty or that she was doing something wrong. Lily wasn’t one of them. She liked Tucker. She liked spending time with him. She was wildly attracted to him and he made her laugh. He seemed to have his head on straight and he was good to her son. He was also very good in bed, and she didn’t want to stop sneaking through the fence to spend time with him.
The more time she spent with him, the more she discovered things about him. Like that Tucker recycled old wood. He made a coffee table out of an old door and a chair and his entertainment center out of wood he’d reclaimed from a demolished ranch house near Houston. She also learned that he ran five miles on a treadmill and lifted weights, which was good because he liked a big breakfast before he went to bed in the morning.
While he ate, she sipped coffee and answered questions he asked about her life. He himself gave up little about his own, though. He talked about his job and who he’d arrested and on what charge, and he talked about playing basketball with Pippen while she was at work. He talked a little about the men who’d served with him in the Army and his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that after he got out of the Army, he was closed off but wasn’t anymore. For a guy who didn’t consider himself “closed off,” he would only go so deep into his life, and when she asked about his family, he told her they were all dead. Case closed. End of story.
Conversely, he asked a lot of questions about her family, and like him, she only went so deep. She told him about growing up in such a small town and that she’d fallen for Rat Bastard Ronnie Darlington because Ronnie owned a truck and looked good in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She talked about her low expectations and lower self-esteem. She talked about Ronnie leaving her with a two-year-old and a drained bank account, but didn’t mention the part about driving her car into his house.
On the third Monday they both had off, she told him about the time her sister Daisy had tried to kick Ronnie in the crotch outside the Minute Mart. Of course, she didn’t mention that she’d been involved in a hair-pulling fight with Kelly the Skank at the same time. Let him think Daisy, the responsible one, was the crazy sister.
They spent the next few hours in bed, and when she got up and dressed he stacked his hands behind his head and watched her.
“When are you going to come to my front door?” he asked.
She looked across her shoulder at him as she hooked her bra behind her back. “I can’t do that.” She’d been the subject of gossip and speculative gazes most of her life, but she hadn’t given the people of Lovett anything to talk about in a long time. She planned to keep it that way. “People will talk.”
“Who cares?”
She reached for her blouse and threaded her arms though the sleeves. “I do. I’m a single mother.” She pulled her hair from beneath the collar. “I have to be careful.” And if and when their relationship ended, no one would
