Chapter Seven

Tucker’s breath practically stopped in his chest as her gaze fixed on his lips. His lips. And not in a you-have-something-stuck-in-your-teeth kinda way but with…interest. With heavy eyes and a parted mouth.

If it was still raining, Tucker couldn’t hear it.

“I…haven’t had any complaints.”

Which was not what he should have said. He should be shutting this down. He should not be here with Della like this, talking about kissing.

But it was dark and warm and private with the windows fogged and the rain a steady drumbeat. Every fiber in his body pulled taut in anticipation, and this thing that he’d been trying to ignore for so long stirred. The way she stared at his mouth told him that maybe something was stirring in her, too.

That should have been enough to pull him out by the roots of the hair, because Della was not a woman he should be making out with in a car, but her arm was brushing his and she smelled like cupcakes and hell if he didn’t want to anyway.

“I don’t doubt it.”

Her voice was low and husky, but he heard the hitch. Yeah, he heard that right down to his toes. Hell, he heard it deep inside his balls. His aching balls.

Tucker’s throat was dry as dirt, and he dragged his eyes off Della to stare blindly out the windshield. His heart was pumping hard, like he’d just chopped a bunch of wood instead of sitting on his ass in a car next to a woman who was looking at his mouth like she wanted to take it for a test drive.

“The rain’s easing up,” he said.

It was still coming down, but he could actually hear himself think now, which was a bonus. Maybe he’d start using his big head instead of letting his little one call the shots.

“Tucker?”

“We should be able to go soon,” he continued, refusing to look in her direction. Hell, if he’d been in the driver’s seat, he’d have just started the engine and hightailed it out of here already. “Don’t want Arlo to get antsy and come looking for us.”

He wouldn’t put it past Della’s brother, and the last thing Tucker wanted was Arlo in a cop uniform shining his flashlight into this fogged-up cab.

“Tucker. Look at me.”

No fucking way. He groped for his phone, remembering he’d been checking out the radar, and consulted it again with a feeling akin to desperation, clutching at straws for something to do, something to look at other than Della. “Another ten minutes.”

“Tuck.”

It was the soft reproach that did it. He shouldn’t be able to hear something not much more than a whisper over the rain, but his body was utterly attuned to the pitch of her voice.

Against his better judgment, he turned his head.

Her eyes sought his, and he was lost as twin blue searchlights probed for God knew what. And then they drifted again to his mouth, and any hope he had of tearing his gaze away, of maintaining some kind of control and keeping his distance from her, evaporated.

“What?” he asked, exasperated at his inability to deny this woman anything. This woman he had no business having feelings about.

“You’ve never looked at me like that before,” she said, her voice still low and husky.

Tucker swallowed. “Like what?”

How had he looked? Deep down, he’d always known he felt things he shouldn’t for this woman—things he couldn’t articulate aloud—but since becoming her wingman, they’d been getting harder and harder to ignore, and maybe that was spilling over onto his face.

Was that what she was seeing? These feelings that were getting too big to deny? Because if she was, he needed to work harder at his poker face.

“Like I’m a woman.”

“You are a woman.” His voice came out all gruff. “How else would I look at you?”

She smiled. “Like Arlo’s sister.”

“You are Arlo’s sister.”

“I know.” She smiled again. “But I really like it when you don’t look at me like I am.”

Yeah, well…Tucker didn’t. Tucker was more than happy when he could keep her in that box, but the universe—and Della’s desire to dip her toe into the dating waters—had other ideas.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

And then, in a stealth move he really didn’t see coming, even though the air was ripe with the possibility, she kissed him. It happened quickly. One moment she was sitting in her spot, looking up at him, the next, her face was coming closer and her mouth was making contact.

Light as a feather. Startling as a slap.

He wasn’t actually sure it could be classified as a kiss. It was barely a press of her lips, really. She didn’t move to deepen it or to explore. Neither did he, his body going deathly still. And then it was over as quickly as it had begun. It lasted seconds. That was it.

But still, he felt it everywhere.

Tucker dragged in a breath as she pulled away, cupcake crowding his senses, his pulse like a washing machine in his ears. Her mouth was still a little too close for his liking but not on his anymore, allowing him to at least perform basic functions.

She blinked at him, saying, “Sorry, I…” Then her gaze dropped to his lips just like it had before, and she closed the gap between them once more and kissed him again.

This time, her lips were not passive. They shifted. Moved. Not a lot. Just a little. Just enough. They didn’t open, they…brushed. Gently. Along the contours of his mouth as if she was mapping it, reading him like braille.

His body wasn’t so still this time. Things stirred and crashed and thrummed. And when she let out this soft little noise somewhere between a sigh and a moan and pressed herself closer to him, there was hardening.

Rapid hardening. Quick-dry-cement hardening.

Oh fuck no. Tucker pulled back abruptly, his breath a rough kind of pant as he sucked in the oxygen his lungs demanded. “What are you doing?” Which was possibly the dumbest question ever uttered by a guy being kissed by a girl in the front seat of a truck.

But this was not happening.

“I’m…kissing you?” She frowned like it was some kind of test and he’d just asked her a trick question.

But why, for fuck’s sake? “You shouldn’t do that.”

“You didn’t like it?”

Didn’t like? In the grand scheme of kisses, it was not the flashiest or most technically challenging he’d ever experienced. In fact, it was fair to say Tucker had been the recipient of kisses that would have been perfectly at home in a porn film.

This kiss wasn’t like that.

This gossamer brush of mouth on mouth? And that little noise. Like it was enough and yet nowhere near enough at the same time. This kiss belonged in a movie. The non-porn type. The kind where the music swelled at the end and the lovers kissed for the very first time and even though the credits rolled there was no doubt the couple was about to get it on.

And he’d liked it too damn much.

“That’s not what I said.”

The little v between her eyes disappeared and a smile touched her lips. “You did like it.”

“Della…whether I liked it or not is not the point.”

“It isn’t?”

Tucker shook his head. “No.”

“But…you must have an opinion?”

“Nope.” Hell no. He’d already gotten himself into way too much trouble with that damn sexy dress, and he wasn’t heading back down that rabbit hole. “Other than that this”—he pointed back and forth between the two of them—“is not an option.”

She folded her arms and huffed out a breath. “You said I should make out a bit.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Isn’t making out in cars a part of the whole dating experience?”

“Not with me.” Tucker didn’t exactly yell, but he did poke himself in the chest a lot harder than he should have as he tried and failed to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

Della, on the other hand, had no such compunction as her arms dropped. “Why not with you?”

“Della.” Tucker gaped at her. Was she for real? “You know why not.”

“Because of Arlo?”

“Yes, because of Arlo,” he snapped. “Because you’re my friend’s sister.”

“Because of some dumb bro code?” she demanded.

“No. Yes. No. Because he trusts that I’m taking you for a driving lesson. Not…making-out lessons. And because I just…don’t think about you like that.”

A flash of lightning illuminated the world outside the fogged windows, reminding Tucker that telling a big fat lie in the middle of a biblical-ass storm was probably not the best idea, even if they were on rubber. But the lie hit its mark, if the way she stiffened was any indication.

Tucker felt lower than a rattlesnake’s ass, but it was better that she hated him, anyway.

“And even if there wasn’t the sister stuff,” he continued because he was going in boots and all, “I’m eleven years older than you. Which makes me feel like some kind of dirty old man.”

“You’re thirty-six, Tucker. Not eighty.”

He shook his head. He knew it might seem like a flimsy argument, but he’d cling to any argument, no matter how flimsy, to keep his distance from Della. “I don’t fool around with women who were playing with Barbie dolls when I was backpacking around Europe.”

“I didn’t own any Barbie dolls.”

Tucker sighed, exasperation burning like a trail of lit gunpowder through his veins. “The point is, Della…you really should be playing with boys your own age.”

Even if it did kill him to have to watch from the sidelines. Especially now that he’d heard that little sigh-moan. It was bound to play on repeat in his head. Probably forever.

“Are you serious right now?” She glared at him. “For starters, you don’t get to tell me who I should or shouldn’t be playing with. And secondly, now you think I should be playing with the dick-pic generation?”

Tucker grimaced. When she put it like that, he could see why Della didn’t seem to have a problem with their age difference. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find you someone whose genitals are camera shy.”

“You know Todd was my age, right?”

The thought of Della’s ex burned him up. Thinking that men like Todd and Della’s father—or the man she grew up thinking was her father, anyway—had been her only masculine role models until she’d come to Credence made him want to break things.

“That didn’t work out so well for me,” she added.

“Not everyone’s a Todd, Della.”

“I know that,” she said quietly, her shoulders sagging as she huffed out a breath. “You’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” The thought was abhorrent. “And there are plenty of guys your age who aren’t, either. And I’m going to find you some.”

If it killed him. And it probably would.

“Yeah?” She smiled a little then.

Tucker returned the smile. “Yeah.”

“Pinkie promise.” She held out her crooked pinkie like it was an olive branch.

He glanced at it. “You know I’m a dude, right?”

“Don’t worry.” She lowered her voice. “I won’t tell anyone.”

But that wasn’t what he was worried about. The charged atmosphere from before may have dissipated, but he wanted nothing more than to wind his finger around hers and yank her much, much closer.

Clamping down on the ridiculous urge, Tucker hooked his pinkie around hers. “Pinkie promise.” His voice was more unsteady than he wanted, and he unhooked his finger after no more than a cursory joining and forced himself to look out the window. Wiping at the fogged glass, he assessed the conditions outside as if he was conducting a meteorological survey. “Rain’s slowed to a patter. We should get back.”

She didn’t speak, and for long moments Tucker’s words hung in the air. He actually held his breath as he waited for her to say something.

“Sure. Okay.”

But Tucker didn’t breathe properly again until she’d moved back behind the wheel.

…

The kiss was all Della could think about the next morning at work. What had possessed her? She hadn’t planned on kissing Tucker. Sure, she’d thought waaay too much about doing just that on numerous occasions this past year, but it hadn’t been something she’d specifically set out to do when she got in his car. She’d just been going for a rainy-night driving lesson, which was a sensible, responsible thing to do when a person was learning to drive a car.

But it’d been dark and warm and secluded in that cab, and they were talking about kissing, and he was all big and strong, looking like Disneyland, the Kennedy Space Center, and Margaritaville all rolled into one. Looking at her like she wasn’t Arlo’s sister for once, and he never looked at her like that.

So she’d thrown caution to the wind and done it. Kissed him. Twice.

She wished she’d kissed him deeper now. Explored what he’d tasted like, stuck around long enough to see if he might make the kind of noise that had slipped from her throat completely of its own volition. If she’d known her window of opportunity was going to slam shut, she might have.

It was obvious from the mix of surprise and mortification in his expression that Tucker had been shocked at what had happened, and he’d made it very clear he was not up for any messing around.

I just don’t think about you like that.

That hadn’t felt good to hear. Add to that his non-opinion of her kisses, and Della was discouraged to say the least. But he had told her she looked sexy in her date dress in Denver last week, and he definitely had looked at her in a way last night he’d not done before.

She’d felt that look in her damn ovaries.

So maybe he did think about her like that—a little bit. Once in a while.

Her problem was she already had two strikes against her name. The first was the best-friend’s-sister thing. It was just her luck to have developed a crush on a man who couldn’t untangle the woman from the sister. And then there was the whole age-difference thing, which seemed so incredibly stupid to Della. In the grand scheme of age differences, eleven years wasn’t much.

And did that kind of thing really matter when both parties were mature adults?

So maybe it wasn’t about that at all. Maybe it was code for something else? Or an excuse.

Maybe Tucker was hiding behind the age difference because getting intimate with a woman who’d been through what she’d been through came with a bunch of stuff that was messy and complicated.

Della came with baggage, and maybe Tucker didn’t want to have to work that hard? She certainly couldn’t blame him if that was the case.

And why the hell was she even contemplating this? She’d told Tucker she wasn’t after anything permanent, that she didn’t want a relationship. That she just wanted to date and have fun. And that wasn’t something she could do with Tucker. Not without making it weird and awkward between them after and therefore making it weird and awkward for him and Arlo.

If they lived in separate towns, didn’t share friends, and didn’t see each other much, it might be okay, but none of those things was so, which meant any messing around could impact their friendship. Could impact Tucker and Arlo’s friendship.

Maybe somebody worldly and sophisticated could pull it off, but she doubted she could.

She just hoped she hadn’t blown it already.

Della was mulling that over as she knocked on Rosemary’s door. Mrs. Devlin had been worried that Rosemary hadn’t showed for their Pilates class, and Della had volunteered to go and remind Rosemary the class was about to start. There was no answer to her knock, and Della frowned at the sock on the handle, pulling it off as she turned the knob and called, “Rosemary?”

The door swung open, and Della was confused for a moment to find Rosemary still in bed. Lying in bed. At almost two in the afternoon. Both hands clamping tight at where the covers bunched high on her chest. Was she ill? She hadn’t been in the dining room this morning, and that wasn’t usual.

“Oh…Della?” Rosemary’s voice was somewhere between alarmed and guilty.

A lump in the bed lower down—one Della had not clocked when she’d entered—suddenly moved. It was a…head? A head that had shot up. A head attached to a body that was now moving, caterpillar-like, rapidly upward. Within a few seconds, Ray Carmody popped out from under the covers near Rosemary’s armpit like a gopher from a hole, blowing at the sheet to clear it from his face.

“Afternoon, Della,” he said cheerily, looking over his shoulder at her before he glanced at Rosemary. “I think we’ve been busted, Rosie.” Not that he looked remotely guilty.

Della blinked as her brain put two and two together and got four. “Oh God…I’m so sorry.” She backed up a little as her cheeks flooded with heat and color. “I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t…”

What? She didn’t think she’d find two eighty-somethings knocking boots in broad daylight. Sure, Rosemary had certainly hinted she wanted to have a physical relationship with Ray, but…it was two o’clock.

“I thought you locked the door, Ray,” Rosemary chided.

“I went one better.” He grinned down at her. “I put a sock on the doorknob.”

Della looked down at the sock in her hand and held it up like it was exhibit A in a courtroom because she was still too mortified to bring anything useful to the conversation.

Rosemary laughed. “Darlin’,” she drawled, “millennials don’t know what that means.”

They both glanced at Della, whose face was so hot now it must be bright red, for confirmation. Rosemary and Ray, on the other hand, were looking pretty damn pleased with themselves. In fact, Della was sure Rosemary’s eyes were twinkling all the way across the room.

Giving herself a hard mental shake, Della pulled herself together. “Rosemary…Ray…I’m so, so sorry. I was distracted. I should have waited for permission to enter.”

“You’re fine, dear,” Rosemary dismissed with a smile. “That was our fault. We should have locked the door. I’ll do it next time.”

“No.” Della shook her head. “Interrupting your private time like this is…unforgivable.” Just because they lived in an aged facility didn’t mean they weren’t entitled to their privacy.

Rosemary made another dismissive sound. “Did you want something?”

“Oh, yes. Mrs. Devlin was worried you were missing the Pilates warm-up. She thought you might have forgotten.”

“Well yeah.” Rosemary laughed, grinning at Ray. “It did kind of slip my mind.”

“Tell her I’m taking care of the warm-up,” he said with a chuckle, rubbing his nose against Rosemary’s.

Ooookay. Time to go. “I’ll tell her you’re…occupied.”

Ray dragged his eyes off Rosemary to glance at Della. “Don’t forget to put the sock back on the doorknob.” And he waggled his eyebrows.

Definitely time to go.

“Absolutely.” Della nodded.

In fact, she was still nodding as she backed out of the room and pulled the door shut. Turning, she sagged against it, pleased for its solidity as she let out a breath. She heard laughter then—loud, lusty gales of it, both male and female—permeating through the door.

A bubble of laughter rose in Della’s throat, too, and she slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle it as she skulked away from the villa.

…

“You have a date tonight?”

Della nodded at her therapist. “I do. With Joel.” She leaned forward, passing her phone across the desk to show Selena.

“He’s a looker.” She read his bio. “And a humanitarian. Sounds ideal.”

“Yeah. We’ve been messaging. He seems nice. I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

“No food pics?”

Della laughed. She’d just finished telling Selena about Bailey. “No food pics. No pics at all. Just chat.”

“You’re going to the same place?”

“Yep.”

“Tucker waiting across the road?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How’s that working out?” Selena handed the phone back. “Him being your wingman?”

Della shifted her gaze to the phone as she took it from Selena. “It’s good.” She made a production out of putting the phone away in her bag. When she looked up again, Selena was eyeing her with that frank gaze.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time together in the last month.”

“That won’t be necessary anymore, now that I passed my test.”

Della was now the proud owner of a driver’s license. She still got an excited little squirm in her belly whenever she thought about it. No more lessons with Tucker. Not that she’d gone for another one since the kiss. In fact, driving to Denver today had been the first time she’d been in his truck since that night. She’d gone out with Arlo a couple of times instead—which had made him super happy—and had generally avoided Tucker altogether.

But she couldn’t avoid him today. Arlo was an option, as was taking the bus, but she wasn’t confident enough on dates yet to give him up as her wingman. He’d been excellent, and she certainly wasn’t substituting her brother for him. Molly or Marley would have probably done it—Winona for sure—but she felt so unsophisticated around her confident, take-charge friends.

She didn’t feel unsophisticated with Tucker. And she loved having the male perspective.

“You don’t want to spend time with him?”

“I…” Della paused for a moment, deciding how much to reveal. She felt like an idiot even saying it out loud, but she’d shared worse things in this office. “I kissed him. Last week.”

“I see,” Selena said in her usual unruffled tone. She leaned back in her chair. “You want to tell me about it?”

Della sighed and poured out all the grizzly details of the incident. From the rainy driving lesson to the fogged up windows to the kiss and the next one. How shocked Tucker had looked and how he’d told her she shouldn’t have done it.

Selena listened, nodding her encouragement whenever Della faltered. “You like him?” she prompted when Della ran out of words.

“Yeah.”

“I mean you like him, like him.”

Della nodded. She might as well get it all out, and frankly, unburdening her secret felt good. “I guess you could say I’ve had a…crush on him for a while now.”

“How long?”

“Maybe the last year?”

“And do you think that’s reciprocated?”

“No.” Della shook her head emphatically, laughing at the absurdity of it, but stopped abruptly as she reconsidered that look they’d shared. “He told me he didn’t feel that way about me. But…”

“But?” An elegantly shaped eyebrow arched in inquiry.

“He looked at me differently. Just before I… There was a kind of…I don’t know…vibe between us, and he…looked at my mouth. He definitely looked at my mouth. I mean, it lingered, you know?”

“And that’s why you kissed him?”

She cringed. “Yeah.” Man had she read that wrong.

“And now you regret it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you do like him.”

Depressed by the thought, Della nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“And you’ve not considered him as dating material?”

Frowning, Della sat forward in her chair. Was Selena suggesting what Della thought she was? “Well, yes, of course. But…apparently he doesn’t feel that way about me.” She winced inwardly just repeating those words out loud.

“Do you think you read it wrong?”

“No.” Della shook her head as she sifted through the images in her mind again for the minutiae of that moment. “But…” Who knew? She was hardly an expert on this stuff. “I’m not really practiced at reading men.”

“In my experience, women who’ve suffered at the hands of a violent partner are exceptionally good at reading men.”

Selena made a valid point. Della had gotten very good at gauging Todd and his moods. Sometimes just a word or a look would have her antennae pinging wildly. Have her scrambling for ways to defuse things before they went to bed.

Sometimes it had worked.

“I guess I don’t really have a lot of instincts where men are concerned anymore. I think maybe I never did.” How else had Todd slipped past her radar?

Selena nodded. “That’s common for someone who’s been through what you have. But instincts never really go away—just our faith in them. Maybe you should start trusting them again?”

There was silence for long moments while Della absorbed that information. Silence was one of Selena’s favorite tactics. In the beginning, Della used to hate the silences. They made her nervous, and she’d rush to fill them up. Now she was comfortable with letting them stretch.

“It’s just a crush,” she dismissed. “I wouldn’t be the first woman in the world to have a crush on her brother’s friend.”

“No.” Selena smiled. “You would not. But that’s okay. You’re allowed to have feelings for whoever you want. Actually, having romantic feelings toward this guy is something of a breakthrough.”

Della blinked. “It is?”

“Sure. You remember three years ago when all you felt was numb? When you couldn’t see yourself as feeling anything but numb?”

“Uh-huh.”

Selena smiled. “Breakthrough.”

“Yeah?” Her recovery had seemed so slow, like she was always going to feel frightened and wary. Used up and empty all at once. Coming back into the light had been such a crawl, and no one moment had felt that significant.

But with Selena smiling at her, this suddenly felt like a leap. Sure, she’d had a crush for a while now, but she hadn’t realized the significance.

“Yeah.” Selena laughed. “You’re not magically cured. It’s just another step in your recovery, but still…gold star for you.”

Della laughed, too. Gold star? She’d rather have Tucker wrapped in a bow. Her laughter ebbed. “It doesn’t really matter though, does it?” She searched Selena’s face. “It’s never going to get any further than that.”

“Because he doesn’t feel that way about you?”

“Yes.”

“And what if he’s not being honest with you?”

Della frowned. “He was pretty convincing.”

“What do your instincts say?”

Della looked deep inside, reliving that quick but definite lingering look at her mouth. Remembering the static charge in the air during that moment. “I think he felt something.” She let out a breath at the admission. But she knew Tucker too well. He was an honorable man, and he’d put her firmly in the friend zone. “It doesn’t matter, though. It’s not just about whether he has feelings for me or not. There’s other stuff complicating things.”

“Arlo?”

“Yes. And he thinks I should be playing with boys my own age.”

Selena shrugged. “He’s not wrong about either of those. Getting romantically involved with his friend’s sister could have major blowback on his relationship with Arlo if things don’t go well with the romance.”

Yeah…Della had already come to that conclusion. She wasn’t going to ruin a good thing for either Arlo or herself because her libido was getting bossy. She had a whole catalog of Tinder guys to fool around with—she wouldn’t ruin something good in the search for some quick thrills.

“And statistically,” Selena continued, “there is a higher breakup-slash-divorce rate in relationships with big age gaps. When people are at different life stages, expectations can be difficult to manage in the long term.”

“So… What should I do?”

“You know I’m not here to tell you what to do, Della. What I’d advise is for you to start listening to your instincts again. Let your gut be your guide. And take things slowly.”

Della gave a soft snort. “I could get that from a fortune cookie.”

“It’d be cheaper, too,” Selena said with a smile.

Della rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. I’ll start”—she mimed air quotes—“listening to my gut.”

“Attagirl.” She grinned. “Anything else happen you want to tell me about in the last ten minutes?”

“I walked in on Rosemary and Ray in bed together last week. At two in the afternoon.”

Selena’s lips twitched. “Were they watching television?”

Della shot her shrink a funny ha-ha look. “No.”

“Doing sudoku?”

“They were doing it.”

Selena laughed, obviously delighted at the news. “I love that there are eighty-year-olds out there having nooners.”

“I do, too,” Della said. “I just don’t want to be the one walking in on it. He was…under the covers all the way—” She dropped her gaze to her lap before flicking it up again. “Down there.”

Selena dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper. “You mean he was performing cunnilingus.”

Della squirmed a little at how easily that word rolled off Selena’s lips. “I assume so, yes.”

“And you don’t approve?”

“What? No. On the contrary. I’m jealous there are people fifty years my senior out there who have more in their sexual repertoire than I do.”

The first book of Winona’s she’d ever read had featured a steamy scene in which the hero had gone down on the heroine, and it had gotten her very hot and bothered. Todd had never given her cunnilingus. In the beginning, they were both ridiculously inexperienced. They’d been each other’s firsts, and sex had been a series of quickies in backseats or school toilet cubicles whenever they could snatch some time away from their respective domineering fathers.

It had been fast and furtive, about racing to the finish line—his finish line—more than the journey. And then she was pregnant. They’d married, and Todd had treated her body like some kind of divine receptacle. Not for sex or pleasure. But for a higher purpose. And she’d felt treasured and revered.

Worshipped.

After the miscarriage, he hadn’t touched her for months. Had left her alone to grieve and worry in their marital bed while he drank, smoked pot, and raved and blamed himself. And then the abuse had started. Him supposedly punishing himself for losing the baby by hurting her.

Selena reached across the desk, sliding her hand over Della’s. “You’re young. There’s plenty of time to add it to your repertoire.”

Della hoped so. As of now, it was going to the top of her bucket list.