Stop The Wedding!: Night Driving / Smooth Sailing / Crash Landing

2

Tuesday, June 30, 1:00 p.m.

BOONE STOOD OFF to one side of Tara’s driveway clothed in an army-green T-shirt and camouflage cargo shorts, his muscular arms crossed over his chest, supervising the movers like a high school principal monitoring the hallways. His brow was knitted in a dark scowl, his right leg encased in a heavy metal brace.

“Hey, Toliver. You oughta get a patent,” Tara teased as she breezed past him, her arms loaded with boxes.

“Patent?” he growled. “For what?”

“That broody frown. James Dean and Marlon Brando combined got nothing on you.”

His glower deepened.

“Yup, watch out, you’re heading for Darth Vadar territory.”

“Darth Vadar wore a mask.”

“Exactly.”

His face relaxed. Just a bit. “Total mystery.”

“What is?” Tara loaded the boxes into the back of the U-Haul, turned and wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of a hand.

“You.”

She smiled big, pleased.

Boone shook his shaggy head, two months past the point of needing a good haircut. But that was okay. Overgrown hair gave a stylist something to work with. She canted her head and imagined how he’d look in different cuts—slicked-back undercut, Brit-rock indie, men’s quiff. Who was she kidding? He’d probably spoil her fun and insist on a military buzz.

“It’s not a compliment,” he said.

“What are you so prickly about?” She dusted her hands against her back pockets.

“I hate this.” He hissed the last word through clenched teeth.

“What?” She studied him. He was in so much pain—both physical and mental—that it wrenched her heart. But she also knew he had no use for pity. How many times had he rebuffed her when she’d tried to help? Boone was one of those proud protector dudes who thought he was invincible. He hadn’t handled life’s curveball very well. Poor baby.

“Having to stand here and watch you carry boxes when I should be the one doing it.”

“Oh, so you’re responsible for the whole world? Good to know.”

“Not the whole world, just my slice of it.”

“Newsflash, Hercules. I’m not part of your world and I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own boxes.”

“If I were healthy you would not be carrying your own boxes.”

“If you were healthy, I wouldn’t be driving you to Miami. Besides, I’m not some helpless damsel. I know how to take care of myself.”

“You sure know how to wound a man, Duvall.”

“I’m not in the military. You can call me Tara.”

“Okay, then let the men I hired do the heavy lifting…Tara.”

The sarcastic way he muttered her name didn’t get to her. She knew he was a big softy underneath all the gruffness. She’d seen Boone tenderly cradle their neighbor’s new baby when Mrs. Winspree had brought her infant over to show him off. She’d seen him struggle not to shed a tear at his father’s funeral. Had watched him drive his friends away because he was too proud to admit he needed help. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, she was the one person who kept him from disappearing into himself completely, even though he did his best to keep her at arm’s length. What would happen to him once she was gone? Probably turn into a hermit and holler at kids for walking across his lawn.

Tara smiled sweetly and gently bumped Boone with a playful hip as she walked past him on her way to the house for another load of boxes. It was her way of telling him everything was going to be okay, but she wasn’t prepared for the blast of pure heat that shot through her at the contact or the low, throaty masculine sound of alarm that he made in response.

Quickly she sprinted off, her heart bounding erratically. She was in such a rush that she ran headlong into one of the movers. Reflexively, the guy wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Slow down there, sweetcheeks.” The man possessed a chest like a brick wall, a Tom Selleck mustache and a red bandana wrapped around his bald dome. “Is there a fire someone didn’t tell me about?”

“We’re on a tight time schedule,” she said. “Have to get a move on.”

“Let me just check my magic watch.” He pretended to consult an imaginary wristwatch.

“What?”

“It’s telling me that you don’t have any panties on.”

“Yes I do,” she blurted, then belatedly realized it was some stupid pickup line. Duh, how could she be so gullible?

His grin widened and he made a big show of shaking his imaginary wristwatch and holding it up to his ear. “Damn, it must be ten minutes fast.”

Ha-ha. She got it. He was suggesting that in ten minutes he’d have her panties off.

“Dude.” Tara fake chuckled, rolled her eyes and pushed back against his embrace. She was about to tell him he needed a course in how and where to pick up women, but she never got a chance.

Boone was there, clamping a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Let go of her,” he said in a voice as ruthless as the sound of a .45 Magnum round being chambered.

Instantly, Bandana Head released her, stepped back and raised his palms in a gesture of surrender. “Chill, man. Just a little harmless flirting. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Get out!” Boone commanded and pointed toward the door, his expression deadly.

“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t know she was your woman. I swear.”

“She’s not my woman, but that still doesn’t give you the right to manhandle her.” Boone’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. Boone was big, but the bald guy was bigger and Boone had a bum knee.

The guy puffed out his chest. “She ran into me.”

“Look, look.” Tara winnowed her way between the two men. To Boone she said, “I did run into him. It was my fault.” Then to the bald guy she said, “Dude, cheesiest pickup line ever and borderline offensive.”

“Borderline!” Boone snorted.

“Okay, it was offensive, but I’m sure…” She waved a hand. “What’s your name?”

“Rodney.”

“That Rodney meant nothing by it.”

“Didn’t mean a thing.” Rodney raked a lascivious glance over her body and Tara regretted her snug-fitting T-shirt. She’d worn it for Boone’s sake, knowing that it clung to her curves. She never thought twice about being too provocative for the moving men.

“Out.” Boone pointed toward the door. He plucked his wallet from his back pocket, peeled off two onehundred-dollar bills and a fifty and thrust them at the man.

“Hey, the deal was for five hundred dollars.”

“That was before you insulted Miss Duvall. You’ve only done half the job, that’s all I’m paying for.”

Rodney looked like he was going to protest, but then he shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’re gonna have fun loading up that van with your gimp leg.” He turned, hollered to his partner who was in the back room packing up Tara’s home office, “C’mon, Joe, we’re outta here.”

“Wow,” Tara said to Boone as the front door slammed behind Rodney and Joe. “That’s one of the best jobs of shooting yourself in the foot that I’ve seen in a long time.”

“What? I was supposed to stand by and just let him grope you?”

“He didn’t grope me.”

“He was inappropriate.”

“He was, but it’s not your place to defend me, Boone. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

He snorted, folding those steely arms over his chest, blocking her out.

“What’s that noise supposed to mean?”

“I’m not going there.” He limped over to the kitchen counter where boxes were stacked, half-filled with the dishes Rodney had been packing up.

Tara wasn’t going to let him get away with that. She scurried after him. “Where aren’t you going?”

He turned to face her. His dark eyes flashed a warning. “You can take care of yourself, huh?”

She squared her shoulders, drew herself up to her full five foot four. “Absolutely.”

“Your faucet leaks.”

“So what?”

“At the end of the month you’re chronically low on cash from helping out your free-loading friends and you’re forced to subsist on ramen noodles and food sample giveaways at the grocery store.”

Tara cringed. It was true. “Times are tough. I can’t turn my back on people in need.”

“Not even when you’re one of those people? I know that worthless boyfriend of yours cleaned out your savings before he left town.”

A sick feeling settled in her stomach. “How do you know that?”

A rueful expression softened his angular mouth. “Mrs. Levison likes to gossip.”

“It’s not really any of your business.”

“And yet you’re always trying to meddle in mine. Face it, Duvall, you’re too generous for your own good.”

She notched her chin up. “I consider generosity a positive trait to have.”

“Not at the expense of your own welfare. Do you know how hard it is to sit across the street watching you making the same mistakes over and over?”

“No. How hard is it?” she asked impishly, hoping to get him off her case by embarrassing him. Humor was her weapon of choice.

It worked. Boone’s face flushed. “Time’s wasting,” he mumbled.

“And you just made things worse by running off the movers.”

“Hell, if you hadn’t been so flirty, I wouldn’t have had to run them off.”

Oh no, he didn’t just say that! Outrage shoved a cold barb down her spine. Chuffing out her breath, she sank her hands on her hips. It took a lot to piss her off, but seriously? He was making this her fault? “Excuse me?”

“You know what your problem is, Duvall?” he asked.

“You mean, besides being too generous?” Her tone was as cold and brittle as a Montana winter.

“You have no boundaries.”

His criticism stung, but it wasn’t the first time she’d heard something similar. Well, fudge crackers. She was who she was and if he didn’t like her, he could kiss her derriere.

Her mind flashed to an image of Boone’s lips planted on her bare backside and she instantly grew hot all over. See? No boundaries. The man made a good point. Damn him.

“You dress too provocatively. No wonder the mover was eyeing you like chocolate candy. Your shorts are too darn short.”

Her head shot up and she caught Boone checking out her legs.

Holy ham sandwich! He was jealous!

Hmm. Tara suppressed a grin, touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. “Sorry. I’m not going to wear a snowsuit just to suit you and I don’t appreciate you making me feel badly about myself.”

To his credit, Boone looked chagrined, but then he went and ruined it by saying, “I’m not responsible for how you feel. I’m just calling it like I see it.”

“Hey, you’re not my big brother.”

“Thank God.”

“Why do you say that? I’m a good sister. A great sister, in fact. I can play shortstop and I don’t scream when my brothers put bugs down the back of my shirt, and I have cute girlfriends for my brothers to date and I—”

“Because if you were my sister, I’d be arrested for the thoughts I’ve been having about you.”

“Oh.” She blinked. Grinned. “What kind of thoughts?”

“Illicit thoughts.”

Imagine that. She sidled closer. “Real-ly?”

Boone stepped back, shook his head. “Duvall, you have no boundaries.”

“I have five siblings,” she explained, not knowing why she bothered other than the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he wanted her. For months, she’d been trying to charm him, but he’d been immune. Or so she’d thought, but apparently he put up a good front. Yet here he was admitting he liked her when she was moving thousands of miles away. What lousy timing.

“Five? That’s quite a brood.”

“Three brothers, two sisters. When you grow up in a crowd, it’s a free-for-all. Try riding in the back of a minivan where you can’t move an elbow without smacking someone in the eye and you wouldn’t have any boundaries either.”

For the briefest moment, he smiled. “Hey, I was in the military. I can relate to cramped quarters.”

“So why do you have a problem with no boundaries?”

“Because it feels…” He trailed off.

“What?”

“Where are you in the birth order?” he asked, changing the subject.

She let it go, even though what he had not said whetted her curiosity. “Third youngest or fourth oldest, however you want to look at it.”

“Stuck in the middle, huh? That explains some things.”

Tara frowned. “Yeah, like what?”

“The outrageous clothes, the way you change your hair color every time the wind blows, the in-your-face cheerfulness. It’s all a bid to stand out from the pack.”

“Seriously? We’re doing this? Because if we’re pointing fingers, boy, do I have some stuff to unload on you.”

“I wasn’t pointing fingers. Merely making an observation.”

“Guess what? I have eyes. I’ve observed a few things about you, too.”

His eyes narrowed and darn if he didn’t looked amused. “Yeah? Let’s have it.”

She ticked off his faults on her fingers, one by one. “Testy. Controlling. Rigid. Hypervigilant. I’d take no boundaries any day over brooding stick-in-the-mud.”

“That’s the worst you can do?” He arched an eyebrow, made come-on-let’s-fight motions with his fingers.

“Oh,” she said, new understanding dawning. “I finally get it.”

“Get what?”

“You think you deserved to be punished. That’s why you resist my attempts to draw you out. Sorry to break it to you, but I’m not going to be the one to crack the bullwhip against your back.”

“Huh?” He made such a disgusted face that she knew she’d nailed him. Boone hadn’t forgiven himself for coming home. Survivor’s guilt. She didn’t know much about the details of his injury, only snippets of local gossip, but clearly Boone was still torturing himself over it. Her heart went out to him.

Being a hairstylist gave her a peek into the human psyche. People spilled more confidences to her than to their therapists. There was something about having your hands deep in someone’s hair that made them talky. An odd intimacy developed between a stylist and her clientele. A lack of conventional boundaries. It was one of the things she liked about her profession.

Boone’s dark-eyed stare seared her skin, making her feel as naked as the day she was born. Things normally rolled right off her back, but for one split second she was tempted to jump into her car and drive away in the half-loaded U-Haul.

“We better get to work,” she mumbled and reached for one of the boxes sitting on her kitchen table. “Without the movers this is going to take us twice as long.”

He didn’t say another word, just moved over to reach for a second box. In the process, his arm accidentally brushed against hers and a tingle of awareness shot straight to her groin. Instantly, her nipples tightened. Hello, soldier, pleased to see you.

Involuntarily, Tara sucked in her breath.

“What is it?” Boone asked. “Are you all right?”

“Just a catch in my back,” she lied and set the box down.

“Where?”

She splayed a palm over her lower back, inched away from him. “It’s all better. Gone already.”

“Sounds like a muscle spasm.” He came closer.

“I’m good.” She’d never been able to get away with the occasional white lie—which was why she rarely told one. Falsehoods invariably came back to bite her in the butt.

He kept coming toward her. The closer he got, the more Tara’s throat tightened. She would have kept backing up, but she was hemmed into the corner between the refrigerator and the stove.

“Let me see,” he said.

“No need,” she croaked.

He took her by the shoulders, slowly turned her around and didn’t she just let him like some silly, awestruck teenager meeting her rock idol. His hands were warm and heavy, stirring up the languid sensation that had settled deep in her core.

“Here?” He rested his palm against her spine, just above the waistband of her shorts.

She swallowed, barely able to nod. Why was she nodding? The next thing she knew he was gently rubbing his knuckles across her back. He didn’t say anything else, just kept slowly massaging her.

They stood like that for a while, not saying a word, Boone’s big hand touching her so tenderly it sucker-punched her. The refrigerator cycled on with a click and hum. She could feel his slow, steady breathing stir her hair at her temple and this moment…the two of them in her kitchen together for the first and last time, was both strange and wondrous. And tainted with remorse, because it was too late now to start something up. They could have had something special, she and Boone. She felt it in her bones. If only she could have gotten him to walk across the street, open up his heart, months ago.

“How’s that?” he asked, stepping back, leaving her both regretful and relieved.

“Fine, fine.”

He scowled. “You shouldn’t be lifting boxes.”

She shifted her gaze to his knee. “Yes, Pot, are you calling the Kettle out?”

“You’re right. I need to get some new movers in here ASAP.”

“Or you could just call Rodney and Joe back and apologize.”

He looked as if he’d rather have his leg squeezed in a vise. “Not a chance.”

She sympathized. “Tell you what. I have a lot of friends. Let me give them a call. There’s bound to be a few of them who wouldn’t mind lending a hand.”

He nodded with a quick jerk of his head. He had so much pride. This was really hard for him, letting others help him.

“Call ’em,” he said gruffly and limped toward the back door.

Tara blew out her breath and pulled her cell phone from her pocket to start making calls. If she and Boone kept butting heads the entire way to Miami, it was shaping up to be a very long trip.

OVER A DOZEN of Tara’s friends converged on the house. By the end of the afternoon, the U-Haul was packed and loaded, the house cleaned and empty of everything except the furniture that came with the rental. But now, everyone was sitting around drinking beer and eating the pizza that Tara had bought to thank them for their help. They were laughing and joking and lamenting about having to say goodbye. A few of her female friends even had tears in their eyes when they hugged her.

See, this was the problem with recruiting friends to help you move, Boone thought. You couldn’t just pack up, say thanks for the help and get the hell out of town. No, you had to sit around and make small talk and linger. It wasn’t worth the hassle.

Tara, however, was the life of her impromptu party. Teasing and smiling and telling everyone how much she appreciated their friendship. Promising to stay in touch via Facebook, Twitter and texts.

C’mon. All that social media stuff was crap. Nothing but a huge time suck. And honestly, those relationships were superficial at best. Why bother?

Yeah? These days, how many of your friends would show up to help you move?

Once upon a time, he’d had a handful of good friends he could count on, but these days? Boone licked his dry lips. Well, were they really friends? They’d abandoned him in tough times.

Or hey, maybe you were the one who pushed them away.

He caught Tara’s eye from across the room and tapped the face of his watch. She gave him a bright, empty smile, like she thought he was the most pathetic guy in Bozeman.

Someone said something to her. She threw back her head and laughed with a rich, deep sound that rattled him to his core. No wonder people surrounded her like they were honeybees and she was their queen.

His gaze tracked from Tara’s face down her long, slender throat to the cleavage revealed by the V-neck of her tie-dyed T-shirt. She had a cola in her hand. No beer for her, since she would be driving later tonight. His eyes dropped lower to take in those denim shorts sitting low on her curvy hips. The cuffed hem hit high on her thighs, showing off those pinup-quality legs.

He felt a stirring below his belt and swallowed hard. No, no. No way. She might be sexy as ten kinds of sin, but he was not even going to allow himself to fantasize about her. That was just inviting trouble. He had to be confined in a car with her for the next several days. He was not letting his libido off the chain. His focus was on getting to Key West to keep Jackie from making a huge mistake, and he was not going to let anything distract him.

Not even sexy Tara.

In fact, he was antsy as hell, hating that he had to wait for her to wind down this dumb party so they could get on the road. Plus, his leg was achy. He needed to get up and move around. He hoisted himself from the chair and limped toward the door.

The summer sun hung on the horizon. The evening breeze was cool against his face. Perfect. Just what he needed to snap him out of red-hot thoughts about Tara. He wasn’t the kind of guy who went in for temporary flings, and of course that’s all it could be between them. Not just because she was moving away, but because they had as much in common as a brightly colored helium balloon and a brick wall.