Elle kissed Tucker—her husband—goodbye and gave him a smile. “Well, we didn’t think this through, did we?”
“Nope. That was the whole point.” Tucker lingered in her doorway though, looking like he wanted to haul her butt back to bed. “I’ll call you when I get off work.”
“Text me when you get to work,” she said. “Or I’ll worry.” It was an odd thing to fret about a man she’d never worried about before. Tucker could take care of himself. But now it was all so much weightier. They’d gotten married that morning, the day after Christmas, and now Tucker had to go back to Starkey for his afternoon shift.
For a man who had never been impulsive, she seemed to have brought out the wild side in Tucker of late. She liked it. She liked to think she kept him from being too serious, and he kept her from being emotionally unavailable. It was a fair trade. But now they had exchanged vows in a five-minute ceremony and were stuck spending their first night as husband and wife apart.
Tucker smiled. “Since when do you worry? It’s kind of nice to have the shoe on the other foot for a change.”
“Ha-ha, you’re hilarious. You should be glad I care about you.”
“I just said it was nice.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled, looking happy and lazy.
He had said that. Elle smiled back, feeling ridiculously happy herself. “Well, shit, I guess you’re right. Drive safe.”
“I always do.” He kissed the top of her head.
Elle realized he did that because he was so damn tall. What she used to see as a symbol of friendship now seemed a more genuine display of affection. She wrapped her arms over her chest and leaned on the doorframe to watch him. “Love you.”
“Love you too, Mrs. Tucker.” He smiled and waved, then walked down the hall while she stood there watching him.
Mrs. Tucker. Holy shit. Did he really expect her to take his last name? They hadn’t talked about it and she hadn’t really considered it because she called him Tucker ninety percent of the time. How could they both be named Tucker? Besides, Mrs. Tucker was his mother, and Elle had never been close with her. She didn’t feel old enough to take over her title.
At the end of the hallway Tucker turned around. “Go inside. Lock the door.”
That made her grin. She saluted him. “Yes, sir.” She did as he asked and went straight for her cellphone to call her sister.
“Hey, Elle. How’s pregnant sex?” Jolene asked cheerfully.
“It’s amazing.” There was no point playing coy. Not only was she doing Tucker, she’d married him. “We got hitched this morning.”
“Shut up. Really? Now, that’s good sex.”
Elle laughed. “The sex is only part of it.”
“Because of the baby?”
“Yeah, and because, you know, I have a thing for him.” Elle sank onto her couch and drew her knees up. She couldn’t help but sigh in pleasure.
“Duh. I kind of figured that out. But I seem to recall you losing your shit on him the other night when he brought up marriage.”
“Yeah, well, I was embarrassed. I might have overreacted.” For all her bluster, she had to admit, she liked take-charge Tucker. He was one sexy bastard when he showed her what she had wanted all along. Yum. She got warm just thinking about it.
“You think?”
“I wanted him to want me, not want me because of the baby. But I think we’ve come to understand we really do love each other.” It was a delicious, wonderful understanding.
“So, well, geez Louise, I guess I need to say congrats! I’m happy for you, I truly am. Tucker is a good man. You’re a good fit.” Jolene sounded sincere.
Elle knew her sister had always liked Tucker as a person so she knew the sentiment was genuine. Their mother would be thrilled. Shane would be happy if she was happy. “Thanks, sis. That means a lot to me.”
“I don’t mean to be a scene stealer, but I have news too. Can I tell you or should I wait?”
“Go for it.” Elle reached for the water she’d left on the coffee table and took a sip.
“I’m pregnant. So we’re both married and pregnant now.” Jolene’s excited voice rushed through the words.
“Seriously?” Elle grinned in her empty apartment. “That’s fantastic! I’m so happy for you and Chance. And now my little rug rat will have a cousin to play with.” Besides, now she could complain about how hot and miserable she was to someone who would understand. She wasn’t truly miserable yet, but she was having some body temperature issues. She was either burning hot or freezing cold.
“Exactly! Good, I’m glad you’re happy. I don’t want you to think I was trying to steal your thunder.”
That made her laugh. “I didn’t get pregnant to be popular or get attention. I didn’t even get pregnant on purpose, let alone with a purpose. I’m excited. We can swap maternity clothes. Or rather, I can borrow all your designer crap.”
“As long as you like sequins.”
Elle made a face toward her phone. “Never mind.” They had never had the same style despite being sisters. “Is Chance happy?”
“He’s a little wrecked about the whole thing. He cried, he was so happy.”
“Tucker just said ‘What the hell’ about twelve times.” Elle glanced down at her stomach. The way she was sitting made her feel like she could be squishing her baby. She dropped her legs back to the couch. “But he’s ridiculously pleased with the whole thing now.” It was adorable to watch him touching her stomach, discussing their baby. It made her love him even more. God, she was pleased too. She couldn’t wait to see the child they had created.
“So how are you two doing this? Are you moving to Starkey and becoming a stay-at-home mom?”
The very thought made her recoil. “Oh, hell, no. I guess he’s moving here. We haven’t really talked about it.” Perhaps that hadn’t been wise, now that she thought about it. She suddenly realized she was petting her belly. She mentally rolled her eyes at herself. She had become a belly stroker. Geez.
“I think y’all might want to square that away sooner rather than later.”
“I know.” She did, and she didn’t like being reminded of the fact that maybe they should have ironed a detail or two out first before standing in the courthouse and saying “I do.”
“Where is Tucker now?”
“Going back to Starkey. He has to work tonight.” It hadn’t seemed like a big deal thirty minutes earlier. They had made arrangements for her to go there the following week. But now she felt lonely. Uneasy. And Jolene wasn’t reassuring her in any way.
“He can move to Nashville. That shouldn’t be a big deal.”
“No, it shouldn’t.” Except that he had told her before he didn’t want to move to the city. He was entrenched in the county they’d grown up in and his career was important to him. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Because that was going to solve the problem. Not.
“Okay. Y’all will sort it out. Listen, are you still going to be able to do my makeup for New Year’s Eve? Don’t worry if you can’t. I just need to line somebody else up.”
“No, I’ll be there.” Jolene was going to perform on a huge network show with multiple artists. It was an honor for Jolene to be asked to participate. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Elle had made a commitment to her sister and she would be there.
Of course, she probably ought to let Tucker know and see what his days off were. Now that they were married and all, she needed to learn how to consult him on topics that mattered. Suddenly her cheeks felt hot. The learning curve on this shit was huge.
“So why the rush, if I can ask? To get married, I mean. The baby isn’t due for seven months.”
Her sister didn’t sound judgmental. Just curious. But how did she explain that when she was with Tucker lately, she forgot why anything else mattered? That being with him felt like the finish of a promise. There was something else too though that she wasn’t sure she could admit even to herself. It lingered in the back of her mind, ugly and embarrassing.
The fear that Tucker would find someone more suitable for him. Another Misty. That he would realize Elle wasn’t capable of being a great wife and mother, that it wouldn’t come naturally. She wanted him locked in as hers. Tucker was nothing if not loyal. But she couldn’t tell Jolene that. It made her cheeks hot with shame. She should be more independent, more secure and mature than that. She knew how to love. She loved fiercely, with all her heart and soul. It was why she didn’t spread it around a whole lot. So didn’t that qualify her to be a good wife and parent?
She settled for the very fringe of the truth. “I got impatient.”
It was true. She had. But it was so much more complicated than that. She missed Tucker even more, an ache in her chest. He understood her, because he had been there, in the beginning. When she was a scrappy grade-school kid in thrift store clothes with a daddy who was a drunk and a falling down shack of a house. He knew her fears and he eased them. “That’s all it was,” she repeated. “I got impatient.”
“That sounds like you,” Jolene said.
It sure did.
By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around five days later, Tucker wanted to crawl out of his skin. He was antsy, restless, annoyed. All he wanted to do was get back to Nashville to be with Elle but he couldn’t. He had to work. She had to work. They had made plans for her to come down on the third but three days seemed painfully long after the five days apart they’d already endured. Plus he didn’t like the idea of her driving north in the dead of winter. He worried.
But even though he was impatient with being at work, as he waved to the desk clerk and several deputies and headed out, he realized it was better to be there where time flew by than sitting at home alone knowing everyone else in America was out celebrating a new year being ushered in. So when River called him he answered.
“Hey, dickhead, what’s going on?” he said, crossing the dark parking lot.
“Fuck you,” was River’s response. “What are you doing tonight, you loser?”
“Nothing.” Tucker had yet to tell his cousin or his parents he had married Elle. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was waiting for, but he didn’t want to answer questions about why they weren’t living together. Or why they had jumped the gun and gotten married before they had sorted out their living arrangements.
“Yep. Loser.”
Tucker wasn’t sure he could argue with River on that point. “What are you doing? Going to a dive bar and drinking yourself into a stupor?” It wasn’t like Starkey was full of upscale dining establishments or hipster watering holes. Your choices were honky-tonk or dive bar, which, contrary to popular belief, were not one and the same. It suited Tucker though. He felt out of his element in Nashville, which was trendy as hell these days.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I have it on good authority that all the hot women in town will be at Ace’s tonight.”
“Oh, Jesus. That sounds appealing. Not.” Ace’s was like a fraternity house in a town that had no college. Tucker was about five years too old to deal with that bullshit. But River was younger than he was and embracing being single so it made sense he would want to go there.
“Think of it as your last hurrah before you’re saddled with a kid.”
“I don’t really need a last hurrah. I’m good.” Tucker unlocked his truck, glad to be getting out of the wind. It was a sharp, biting gale force.
“No way. I’m not letting you sit at home. What are you, a thousand years old?” River snorted. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Tucker started up his truck.
“Save that charm for the ladies, bro.”
That made Tucker laugh. “No ladies. I happen to have a wife and I don’t think she would appreciate me flirting with strangers.” There was no choice. He had to tell his family about his marriage and this would prevent an awkward conversation later in the evening.
“Wait, what? Why do you have a wife?”
“I married Elle. Right after Christmas.”
There was a pause. “I thought y’all were friends with benefits. Not like happily ever after shit.”
“I’m hoping for the happily ever after shit.” Tucker pulled out of the lot and headed for home. He couldn’t read River’s reaction but he didn’t really care all that much. He was happy. He just wished he were going home to Elle, not an empty house.
“Dude, you move fast. Weren’t you still with Misty a hot minute ago?”
“She broke up with me at Billy Hart’s funeral.”
“At a funeral? That’s cold.”
“It wasn’t really her fault.” It wasn’t. He had been trying too hard to make it into something.
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t your type anyway.”
That surprised him. “Really? You don’t think so?” He would have tried to make it work with Misty if Elle hadn’t been pregnant, so he was curious what his cousin’s opinion was.
“She’s very sweet and all that, but she’s too passive for you. You need a woman who pushes you a little. Elle can do that.”
“That is true.” She pushed him constantly and he liked it. He truly did. He had also been learning to push back, especially in bed, and she clearly enjoyed his dominance. They were a good fit. No question about it.
Which was why, buzzed and lonely as hell despite being surrounded by a hundred people at Ace’s, Tucker was texting Elle at midnight while everyone around him was yelling or making out with someone.
I miss you.
She texted back immediately with a kiss emoji.
I can’t wait to meet our baby. Then I want to get you pregnant all over again.
Okay, so he was definitely drunk. He would be taking a cab home for damn sure. River was kissing a blonde a few feet away under a disco ball.
Whoa. Slow down there, Sheriff. Let’s get this one raised up a little first.
I’m drunk.
I figured. Be safe. Happy New Year! Xoxo
Tucker stared down at his phone in the crowded bar, wishing he was holding his wife. This long-distance shit had to go. It just had to. He couldn’t do this. Maybe there was a way she could move to Starkey and go up to Nashville once a month or something.
I love you. Happy New Year.
Elle wanted to cry. She was going to blame it on the hormones. But mostly the truth was she wished like hell she were with Tucker instead of standing at the ready with a powder brush for a bunch of country music stars. Some of whom were pleasant, others not. She was tired, on edge.
Tucker was drunk and she wished she were with him to take in the amusing sight of a man who rarely gave up control to be three sheets to the wind. There were probably all manner of hilarious confessions she could drag out of him. Instead, here she was cooling her heels in the dressing room offstage for visiting performers, known as “The Ladies Room.” It was a pretty room, with lots of purple hues and plush fluffy throw pillows, but it just wasn’t where she wanted to be. Alone with the manager of rising teen star Amanda Solo, Elle thought what she had often thought over the years—that she was on the fringes of this world. Jolene belonged here. But Elle was on the periphery. Like these throw pillows. You wanted them there at the ready, but you gave no thought to them.
She didn’t belong in Starkey either. She never had. She had been one of the children people wanted to pretend didn’t exist, because everyone in town knew Billy beat his wife and was a drunk, but no one wanted to intervene. Elle had also thought maybe they looked at her and she made them feel guilty for their unwillingness to get involved in the drama down the street.
As an adult she understood it. People needed to protect their own families. But as a frightened kid with little or no food on the table at times, she had hated everyone whose lives seemed easier. Better. She also knew she would never have turned her back on a child she thought might be living in an abusive home. But that was neither here nor there. It just meant she didn’t want to go back, not even for Tucker. She would shrivel up and die if she had to live there with the full weight of her past pressing down on her.
But neither did she really envision Tucker moving to Nashville and into her world. He didn’t fit in with the Music City rich and famous. She didn’t either. So what the hell were they supposed to do? No answers, only questions.
And a drunk husband a few hundred miles away. Happy New Year to her.
Jolene came into the room, looking flustered and excited, pressing her hands to her cheeks. “Holy hell, sis, Chance and I just got invited to become members! This is the biggest honor ever.”
Elle jumped up off the couch. “Wow, that’s awesome!” It was a milestone in a career to get that invite. Elle was happy for Jolene. “I’m so proud of you.” She reached out and gave her a hug. “Was it a total surprise?”
“Total surprise!” Jolene’s cheeks were pink. “Dang, this is crazy. Everything is just perfect, sis. I can’t ask for anything to be better, I really can’t.”
That was what she had always admired about her sister—she worked her butt off for what she had. She had come to Nashville with a sweet voice and a big old head of blond hair, like a thousand other girls, and now here she was twelve years later. On top.
Elle could be on top as well. She could have everything she’d ever wanted—a loving husband and a family and a career—if she could quit worrying and complaining and just sort it out. Take action.
As Amanda’s manager offered Jolene congratulations, Elle glanced over at the mirror with the dressing room lights flanking it. She caught a glimpse of her reflection. She looked pale in the harsh lighting, uncertain. Not like herself. She straightened her back. Tucker always said he admired her sass. He was about to get reacquainted with her sassy side.
As soon as her sister left the dressing room, Elle sent a text message.