Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (10 page)

“It’s all that I could do to swallow it,” she explained after they left.

“You did fine,” the doctor assured her. “As far as Margaret is concerned, it was the best darn pie you ever tasted.”

With every stop, Christina began to feel more comfortable and confident. After the drama of finding Eunice bloodied and in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, tending to run-of-the-mill occurrences such as broken bones and new babies reassured Christina that every day in Longstock wouldn’t be as crazy as her first. She went about her work with a smile.

Still, Eunice’s words about the joys of having a man to share her life nagged at her from time to time, especially when she was at the Apitz home. There was no point in denying that she wanted to have a family someday; reading Charlotte’s letters left little doubt how wonderful it was. But right then, as Christina sped along the back roads of Wisconsin, it all seemed so very far away, almost unattainable. Even as exciting as her day had been, she couldn’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be
even better
if there were someone special waiting for her at home, someone she could tell all about it.

By the time they neared Longstock, the afternoon sun was high in the sky, baking the road before them. Absently, Christina wiped away a bead of sweat that had begun running down her cheek. The first thing she was going to do once they were back at the doctor’s clinic was drink a tall glass of water.

“I reckon we’re going to have to stop for gas.” Dr. Barlow frowned as he peered at the coupe’s fuel gauge. “If we don’t, I’m afraid we’ll have to
push
it the rest of the way back.”

Pulling off of the road at the end of Main Street, the doctor guided the automobile into the parking lot of a service station. He brought the coupe to a sliding halt just before the fuel pump. While the engine was still ticking, an attendant rushed out to help them, smiling as he unlatched the hood and began checking the fluids. Another began filling their nearly empty tank as the pump’s meter clicked noisily.

“You might as well get out and stretch your legs,” Dr. Barlow suggested. “I know my old bones sure could stand to get out from behind that wheel.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” she agreed.

But just as she was about to open the door, she saw something that stopped her cold. There, standing in the open bay of the filing station’s garage, wiping his grease-stained hands on a soiled rag, was Tyler Sutter. He was watching her intently; a sly smile spread across his face as he tucked the dirty rag into his back pocket.

Christina didn’t know what she should do; her fingers tightened around the door’s handle, but she made no move to open it. Maybe she could just ignore him by staying in the car and waiting for the doctor to return.

But it was then that the decision was made for her.

Tyler began walking toward the car.

“I
SEE MY UNCLE’S
got you out traipsin’ through the woods on one of the hottest damn days of the year,” Tyler said as he leaned his forearm against the roof of the car, peering down through the window, bringing with him the pungent aroma of oil mixed with sweat. “I reckon if it gets any warmer I’ll be able to fry myself up a mess of bacon and eggs on the sidewalk.”

Christina didn’t comment, setting her jaw as defiantly as she could manage, and kept staring out the coupe’s windshield, even if all she had to see was the top of the raised hood.

It didn’t take long for Tyler to understand her intentions. “Oh, I see how it’s gonna be.” He chuckled. “I’ll just stand here talking away while you give me the silent treatment. I guess you haven’t gotten over our little run-in last night.” Running a hand through his short hair, he added, “I figured you weren’t the sort of woman who’d be so skittish over something as harmless as a honking horn.”

“Following along behind me in your car was the
least
of the things you did wrong last night,” Christina snapped, instantly upset with herself that he had goaded her into breaking her vow of silence so easily. “If I were to start talking about all of the things you did to make me have a horrible impression of you, I don’t know
when
I would finish!”

“I get it.” He nodded. “Now you’re gonna play hard to get.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, incredulous.

Tyler grinned. “Isn’t that just the way it is with you ladies these days? When it’s obvious that you’re developing feelings for a man, you go out of your way to make him feel so worthless and unwanted that he tries all the harder to win you over, just like in the movies or in all of those magazines you’re always reading. Well, darlin’, that’s where I’m one step ahead of you. I
know
that you’re smitten with me, so why don’t we just skip all of that courtship nonsense and get down to what really matters, especially with the kissing and then to somewhere…well, you might call it romantic, I guess.”

Christina simply
could not believe
the words that were coming out of Tyler Sutter’s mouth. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined having to listen to such inappropriate advances. With her heart pounding in her chest, she decided that she had no choice but to tell him how offensive he was.

But when she turned to him, determined to give him a piece of her mind, to tell him in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to hear such talk again, she stopped; Tyler’s face was twisted up into an outrageous expression, like a dam struggling to hold back water, finally giving way as he burst into huge bellyfuls of laughter.

“Oh, that’s rich!” He laughed, slapping a hand against the coupe’s top. “I can’t believe you bought that junk! You thought that I was being serious; admit it! Boy, they must not have much that passes for humor back in…Minnesota, wasn’t it?”

Christina flushed a bright red, angry that she was the butt of Tyler’s joke, and turned back to face front; the last thing she wanted was to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had gotten to her.

“You did, didn’t you?” he kept prodding. “You actually believed I was serious with all that!”

“If you think you’re being funny,” she managed, “you’re not…”

“I tell you one thing.” Tyler chuckled. “If there’s something we need to work on, it’s the fact that you take everything so damn seriously!”

“
We
don’t need to work on anything!”

“If I don’t help you, who will? My uncle? He might be skilled as a doctor, but he’s as humorless as a tree stump!”

Bantering back and forth with Tyler was quickly becoming exhausting. Christina desperately wanted it to end and for him to leave her alone. Craning her neck to look around, she saw no sign of Dr. Barlow; she wondered if she shouldn’t get out of the car and look for him so that they could leave the filling station, but she had doubts as to whether Tyler would allow her to pass.

Frustrated, unsure of herself, and more than a little bit fearful of what might happen, Christina began to get emotional. Tears sprang to her eyes. Beads of sweat dotted her brow. She couldn’t help remembering how Tyler had violently grabbed her by the arm the night before, his fingers digging into her flesh, a crazed look dancing in his eyes when he learned about her meeting with Holden. Involuntarily, she rubbed the spot where Tyler had held her, wincing from both the physical discomfort of the bruise and the memory of how she had received it.

It was then, while Christina was struggling with her recollections of Tyler’s outburst, that he did something completely unexpected…

He touched her again.

Reaching through the open window, Tyler gently took Christina’s hand in his own. Although her first, panicked instinct was to pull her hand away, she found herself doing nothing of the sort. Tenderly, his fingers traced a slow arc across hers; despite the roughness of his skin and the streaks of oil and grease that dirtied the back of his hand, she found his touch affectionate, warm, and even inviting. The way that he managed to surprise her was becoming something of a habit.

“Christina,” he said, his voice losing all of the annoying playfulness with which he’d almost always spoken to her; at the sound of her name, she couldn’t resist looking at him. What she found in his eyes held her as firmly as he had the previous night, though this time she didn’t struggle to break free. “Apologizing isn’t something that I’m particularly good at, but I wanted to tell you that I was sorry for the way I acted last night. Sometimes…I act before I think things through all the way. I shouldn’t have behaved as I did.”

“You frightened me…,” she admitted.

“And that’s why I’m telling you this,” he said, as a wisp of a smile curled at the corners of his mouth. “I hate thinking that, on your first day in town, you might have felt as if you’d made a mistake in coming here.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Christina protested.

Tyler looked at her closely for a moment. “Looks to me like we’re going to have to work on your lying, too.”

Christina couldn’t help but laugh. Looking at him, she was suddenly struck by the realization that Tyler Sutter was a very handsome man, much more than she had previously noticed. With his broad shoulders, close-cropped hair, and easygoing manner, he was someone who could easily catch a woman’s eye.

“Now how about letting me make last night up to you,” he said.

“What…what do you…” But before she could even finish asking her question, he had opened the car door and gently, but insistently, helped her up and to her feet.

“Hey! Uncle Samuel!” he hollered.

Christina followed his gaze to where Dr. Barlow stood beneath the filling station’s awning, drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola. Startled by his nephew’s shouting, he sputtered, spilling some of the liquid down the front of his shirt. Annoyed, he began wiping it off with his hand.

“What is it?” the doctor asked, frowning.

“I’m going to borrow Miss Tucker here for a little while,” Tyler said as he began pulling Christina toward the side of the garage and away from his uncle. “When we’re finished, I’ll bring her on back to your office.”

“Now just a second there,” Dr. Barlow began to protest, still preoccupied by the soda that had stained his clothing. “We only stopped for gas and our day’s already been a mess so—”

“I really need to—” Christina began.

“That’s settled then!” Tyler exclaimed, allowing neither of them to finish their complaints. “You won’t even know she’s gone!”

Without another word, Tyler hurried toward the side of the building, practically dragging Christina along behind him, weaving between the empty oil barrels that littered the ground and plunging between the posts of a broken fence and into the dense overgrowth that lined a stand of trees.

Behind them, Christina heard the unmistakable, yet fading, sounds of the doctor’s protests.

Once they had passed through the first dense bushes, Christina struggling to keep nettles from becoming twisted in her hair, they stumbled out into a small clearing. Splotches of sunlight dotted the ground, shifting with the faint movement of the thick canopy of leaves far above. A pair of squirrels, startled by their unexpected arrival, scurried out of sight in a crescendo of chattering complaints. Christina hardly had time to identify the faint trail that wound up a small rise and away from the garage before Tyler began leading her down it.

“Where…where are you taking me?” she asked, trying to maintain her footing among the rocks and exposed tree roots that littered the path.

“It’s a surprise.” He smiled over his shoulder.

A part of Christina found Tyler’s evasion of her question charming, even a bit mysterious. Undoubtedly, it would be much easier to just accept his mischievous ways and go along with his game, seeing it through to the end. But she knew that she could
not
allow that to happen.

Far too often in her life, Christina had allowed herself to be led somewhere she didn’t necessarily want to go. Often, she would do what someone else wanted simply because it was harder to disagree, all because she didn’t want to rock the boat.

From the first moment that she had met Tyler, he always seemed to have the upper hand, laughing at a joke given at her expense and making her seem foolish. It was a feeling she did not appreciate. She knew that the only way to put an end to it, to keep it from becoming a habit, was to dig in her heels and let him know that enough was enough.

“Just stop, Tyler!” she shouted. Pulling her hand free from his grasp, she stood stock-still.

Tyler’s momentum carried him a bit farther along the trail and, when he finally came to a halt, he looked back at her as if confused, not quite able to understand why she was no longer beside him.

“Now why do you have to be so difficult?” he said.

Christina took a slow, deep breath. “I know that you’re excited to show me something, but you can’t just expect me to be dragged along behind you without knowing where we’re going. That’s just not fair to me. Besides, I really shouldn’t be gone from my job for very long.”

“Don’t worry about my uncle,” Tyler reassured her. “We’ll be back before he gets too bent out of shape.”

“What about your boss? Isn’t he going to be upset that one of his employees just took off in the middle of the afternoon?”

“Raymond spends every day sitting in his office, drinking whiskey and listening to the baseball games on the radio.” Tyler laughed. “Hell, even if I didn’t show up one morning, I doubt he’d notice.”

“I still want to know where it is you’re taking me.”

“I told you that it was a surprise.”

“And I just told you that explanation wasn’t good enough.”

For a long moment, Tyler remained silent, staring at her. Christina wondered if he wasn’t contemplating grabbing her arm and resuming their mad dash through the woods. Clearly, he was a forceful man accustomed to getting his way.

“I know I haven’t given you a whole lot of reasons to trust me,” he finally said, making his way back to where she stood with her arms folded defiantly across her chest, “but couldn’t you just give me the benefit of the doubt?”

“I don’t know you well enough to do that, and what I
do know
of you…”

“Doesn’t my apology for last night mean anything?”

“It…it does…,” Christina answered truthfully. “But what if I were to get lost? I don’t know my way around these woods.”

“Why do you think I was holding on to your hand so tightly?”

“Because you know that there was no way you could get me out here willingly.”

“You say that like you don’t want to be here.”

“The thought
had
crossed my mind.”

“Look,” Tyler said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I know I’m asking a lot for you to take me at my word, but I
really
wish you would. The place I want to take you is special to me, that’s all. There’s no way that you’ll get lost, absolutely no wild animals this close to town, and I’ll even have you back to work before my uncle fires you, okay?”

“Maybe it’s not wild animals that I should be afraid of,” Christina suggested, the meaning of her words clear to the man she spoke them to.

“Perhaps I should ask you where you
think
I’m taking you,” he said as a slow, sly smile spread across his rugged face. “Are you wondering if I’m
that
bad a man, the dangerous sort who’s dug a hole in the middle of nowhere where he stashes all of his unsuspecting victims?” When Christina visibly recoiled at his words, he immediately dropped all pretense and sighed. “You know, I meant what I said earlier about working on your sense of humor. Do you suppose it would help if I told you I was telling a joke
before
I said it?”

Christina knew that her reaction had been silly, but if there was one thing that amazed her about Tyler Sutter, it was that he never failed to surprise her. Though it didn’t come easily, she resigned herself to giving him the trust he had requested. Reaching out, she placed her hand in his and said, “Show me what it is that’s got you so darn excited.”

Tyler led the way as they walked down the path that had been worn through the underbrush. Up and down gentle rises, beside the gurgling waters of a small stream, and among the birds, squirrels, rabbits, and other wildlife that watched their passing, they walked on, neither of them saying a word. Christina had no idea how long it had been since they had left the garage, but just as she was about to ask how much farther they had to go, Tyler came to a stop as the path opened into a clearing.

“We’re here,” he said.

Stepping out of the break in the trees, Christina found her breath taken away by the beauty of the scene before her. It was obvious to her that the clearing had, many years before, been a farmer’s field. While there was no sign of what crops had been grown there, furrowed rows marked its boundaries, now almost completely overgrown with weeds. A small, dilapidated building stood at one end of the clearing, its weathered boards and roof somehow managing to remain intact. Beside it, an old tractor rusted under the open sky. The land sloped gently away from them, allowing plenty of early summer sunlight to brighten all that she could see.