Lost in Tennessee (8 page)

She took three steps backward with Butch following. “I don’t know how to dance.”

“It’s easy. The first thing to know is that the man leads. I step, you follow. Not vice versa.” He took three steps backward, putting them back in the middle of the floor.

She pushed at his chest. “You’re too close. I can’t see my feet.”

“You’re not supposed to see your feet. You’re supposed to look at me. Put your arms around me. Most women put their arms around a man’s neck, but I’m willing to explore any more interesting ideas you might have.”

Color crept into Kate’s face, but she slid her hands up his chest until they reached the back of his neck.

“Now sway back and forth with me.” He pressed his hips against her stomach, showing her which way he wanted to go.

She lifted her chin. “I’m going to step on your feet.”

Butch dipped his head and captured her words. Her soft lips opened with a gasp. Butch made the brief kiss sweet, intimate. He didn’t push her for more but cradled her to his chest, showing his growing affection. Her hands had tightened on his neck, her whole body stopped moving. He stroked the lines of her back, the curves of her waist and hips while humming the ballad in her ear, swaying in time. The closeness had other effects. His body hardened, wanting more, but Butch focused on Katie. By the time the bridge ended, she rewarded his patience by melting in his embrace. Her soft curves followed his hard lines. When the song ended, he tipped her chin up and kissed her forehead, her nose, and her lips.

“You taste as sweet as summer strawberries.”

She stepped back and reached to smooth her hair.

Butch caught that nervous hand and brought it to his mouth. The contrast in Katie intrigued him, challenged him to discover the real woman. On the surface, she wore the skin of a quick-witted, exuberant woman. But beneath lived a shy woman who blushed at a compliment and looked on the verge of running.

“I…I don’t think this is a good idea.” She tugged at her captured hand.

Butch held that hand to his heart. “What, honey?”

“I’m your roommate. That makes this…”

Butch raised an eyebrow, challenging her to finish her thought. A shout of his name from across the room caught his attention. “Looks like you won a reprieve. Don’t disappear on me. Remember, I’m your ride home.” He kissed her knuckles before releasing her hand.

T
he second Butch’s back turned, Kate ran to the only sanctuary a woman had: the ladies’ room. She rushed into a stall and sat on the seat, fully clothed.
What happened?
She intended the whole Hokey Pokey thing to be a gag to pick up Butch’s spirits. She’d overshot. By several states.

What was he thinking, kissing her? She really wanted to know, because her brain stopped working when she felt that soft weight on her lips. Then his hips started moving, and she felt a different kind of weight pressed into her belly.

This was a bad idea. A bad, bad, bad idea. He flirted with her! What was he thinking?

Not that she completely hated it. Butch did more than make her heart go pitter patter. She liked his mouth, liked his lips on her, liked his voice in her ear.

But that wasn’t the point, was it? They had a…contract. An implied but firm contract. They were roommates with chores performed in exchange for room and board.

She liked his home. Doing the chores would be more like play than work. Maybe they would work together. If it was warm enough, he could do it with his shirt off.

No no no no no!

Yes!

She had to think what could happen if this went anywhere.

Kate jerked to her feet and pushed open the stall door. She needed to be outside. She needed space to think.

“You!” Venom poured out with the word. Angie McCormick stalked across the tile floor, her heels clicking with each step. The pretty pin-up face mutated into that of a bitter, lonely woman. The lines carved in the carefully applied makeup showed the years over thirty Angie tried to erase. Her finger in Kate’s chest, she spoke through a tight mask of hatred. “You have no right interfering in Butch McCormick’s business.”

Over Angie’s shoulder, Kate saw Trudy come into the restroom.

Trudy stilled for a moment, looked at the scene, and frowned. “Neither do you.” She yanked on Angie’s arm, spinning her away from Kate.

Kate planted her feet, ready to defend herself. Angie stepped to the side, opening up room between the two of them. Standing three paces apart, Angie and Trudy had eyes only for each other.

Angie pitched forward, jabbing her index finger toward Trudy. “This is none of your business either, Trudy. You think you’re something special? You are nothing but a cheap groupie. You’ve always been jealous of me.”

Trudy looked at Angie’s tightly stretched shirt. “The only thing cheap here is your boob job.”

Angie’s face flushed with color. She trembled with the insult but didn’t respond, verbally or otherwise. Then the door pushed opened, and two denim-clad women entered, laughing about the Hokey Pokey. Angie darted behind the women, catching the door before it closed. She narrowed her eyes at Trudy. “One of these days, you’re going to get yours.”

Chapter Four

K
ate knelt next to an iron-framed bed. She blew lightly across a cup of coffee, the steam teasing the hair that laid across Butch’s cheek. His eyelashes fluttered. He inhaled deeply and exhaled a slow, satisfied sigh. Kate crept closer to the bed and blew again. Butch rolled toward her, and the elaborate quilt slid to his waist. His arm fell off the bed, landing heavily on her thigh.

Kate blew the steaming coffee a third time, and he inhaled again; this time his lashes lifted.

His hazy eyes, open to the narrowest of slits, roamed over her face. “What are you doing?”

“Waking you. I made coffee. Coffee worth waking up for.”

“What time is it?” Butch asked, his voice thick with sleep.

“Six thirty.”

Butch groaned and rolled away from her, draping his arm over his eyes. “In the morning?”

“Of course in the morning. I thought farm boys were all about ‘early to bed, early to rise.’” When he curled into the quilt, Kate sat on the edge of the bed and sipped the coffee. “Come on, lazy bones. You’re driving me to work this morning, remember?”

Butch twisted to look at her. “It’s still night. The damned rooster isn’t even up yet.” On cue, a rooster crowed from behind the house. Butch kicked at the quilt like a grumpy child, coming to stand in front of her as rumpled as the bed he’d left. “It’s a conspiracy. A goddamned conspiracy. That better be a freaking great cup of coffee.”

Kate stood, protecting the coffee as the blankets flew. She sipped as she appraised the twisted sleep pants, the mess of hair, the narrow eyes, and broad shoulders. Definitely not a morning person. She thought she might have to make a habit of waking him just to see that twist to his mouth. “I’ve been accused of a lot of things, but never conspiring with a cock.” She handed him the appeasing cup, her gaze racing over the picture he made, so she could take another look when she had a few minutes to herself.

He sipped the coffee, groaning deep in his throat. “That’s good. Aren’t you full of surprises? What’s in this?”

“It’s a coveted family secret. How long until you’ll be ready to go?”

He swallowed half the cup. “Ten minutes. Maybe less if you make me a cup to go.”

“Consider it done.”

Better than his word, Butch stumbled down the stairs five minutes later. A baseball hat with a stitched guitar on it contained his curly hair. He wore the shirt he’d worn the night before but inside out. Rumpled jeans and cowboy boots finished the package. “You ready?”

Kate nodded, handing over a silver travel mug. “Your shirt is inside out. How did you button it that way?”

He answered by stripping the button-down shirt over his head, which turned it right side out, and pulling it back on like a T-shirt.

“Interesting approach.”

Butch sipped the hot coffee. “No point getting fancy. I’m going back to bed as soon as I get you off and running.” He went into the kitchen and retrieved his keys and phone from the counter. He shoved his phone in his pocket and tossed the keys at Kate. “You’re driving.”

The rising sun painted a sky no camera could capture, but Kate missed it. Her sharp eyes focused on landmarks and crossroads to make sure she could find her way back again. She turned left where Butch’s road teed into a state route. In the field at the intersection, a lone bull faced east, basking in the early morning sun.

“Have you ever ridden a live bull?” she asked.

Butch shook his head. “I’ve always thought riding the mechanical one was stupid enough. My brother Jeb did it once, though.”

“Just once?”

Butch nodded and laughed. “He broke his arm.”

Kate wondered at his sense of humor. “Why is that funny?”

“Jeb couldn’t have been nineteen, trying to impress a girl. His legs went all wonky after he got thrown. A stick figure of a rodeo clown tried to get him out, but Jeb wouldn’t cooperate. God knows what he was thinking. The clown finally got Jeb out of the ring and then cold cocked him. Jeb flipped over a pile of gear and came up with a broken arm. Then Mama got ahold of him. I told him riding a bull was a stupid way to impress girls. Better to go with flowers.”

“Flowers are a classic for a reason. Speaking of bulls, I liked your bar, even if the bull was out of commission. You have good friends, but they don’t think much of your ex, Angie.”

Butch sighed. “She’s never liked the Sly Dog. She only comes out to corner me. It’s not a fun life, but it is predictable.”

“Was she serious about wanting to vaccinate snakes?” Kate saw his reflection nod. “I support environmental efforts. This building will be LEED certified, which means it’s being constructed in a sustainable manner. There is actually a big role in architecture for sustainable and environmental stewardship…but vaccinating snakes is a new one for me. Is that a Tennessee thing?”

“More like an Angie thing. We were high school sweethearts. I had just turned eighteen when she got pregnant. We married a week after graduating high school. She lost the baby before the end of that summer. At eighteen, we were just too damned young.”

Kate couldn’t imagine being married now, let alone at that age. “When I was eighteen, I was executing my great escape from my family.”

“Where did you escape to?”

“New York City. Columbia University.”

“So it worked?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? Well, here we are. Work sweet work.” Kate steered the pickup truck through the gate and across the uneven ground to an enclave of trailers in one corner of the site.

B
utch had seen dozens of construction sites, many from the window of a car as his life raced by at thirty-five to seventy miles an hour. He’d never given more than a passing thought about what happened on the other side of the fence. Like Alice through the looking glass, he put one foot down on that gravel and dirt surface and found himself in another world. Through the fence, he saw the world he lived in, exactly two hundred feet and a world away. The world on this side of the fence towered ten times larger than life. Tires on machinery stood taller than a man. The earth had been torn open, and from her womb rose a steel frame that juxtaposed elegance with brute strength.

He whistled long and low as he came around to the back of his truck. He lowered the tailgate and pulled out the boxes that had been in Kate’s trunk. “I never thought much about how you built a building.”

Kate worked next to him, taking the boxes and stacking them against the trailer. “From the bottom up. Come on inside. I’ll get you another cup of coffee and give you a tour.”

Butch followed Kate up five steps and into the triple-wide, white trailer. He’d been in trailers before. Some of his best friends grew up in double-wides, but nothing like this. This trailer specialized in business. High-tech business. A desk with a flat screen computer monitor and a vase of dying flowers greeted visitors just inside the trailer door. Five folding chairs claimed space around a small conference table to the left, and across from it, four cubicles made a hallway to an office with a door.

Kate tugged on his sleeve and led him through the space. “That’s my office.” She entered the room at the end of the hall, tossed her bag onto the cluttered desktop, and gestured to the corner. “There she is.”

A scale model of an expansive but graceful structure stood proudly on a round table under the window. Butch bent close, and his gaze followed his fingers over the elegant curves that reminded him of soft ripples in the stream on the farm. “It looks like water, the way it flows.”

“That’s exactly what I was going for. Exactly.” She mirrored his pose, grinning ear to ear. “Do you want to see the real thing?”

Her broad smile, open and honest, told Butch what Kate hadn’t said aloud. She took pride in her work, this work. He remembered the nerves that beset him when he played for her, sharing his passion, and wondered if she felt the same.

Kate handed Butch a hard hat and put her own on, threading her ponytail through until her hair fell down her back and her hat sat on her head. She pulled on a neon-yellow vest and handed him a matching one. “Ready?”

His hat stuffed into his back pocket and outfitted to match, Butch gave a sharp nod. “Lead on.”

Kate gestured wildly as she led him through the acres of construction. Her energy and excitement for the work radiated out as she took the time to explain details of the art and science that would make this building stand for generations.

As they rounded the corner and returned to the trailer, Kate pointed to the names painted proudly on the side of the white trailer. “Tom and I started our own architecture and engineering firm two years ago. The concept for the Cicada building is mine. Tom is the structural engineer. Now I manage the construction from here and work with my father’s crews while Tom manages the engineering in Michigan. Well, that’s the tour. What do you think?”

Butch couldn’t help being impressed, even if he had to hear about Tom. As the day broke around them, men in denim and plaid with reflective vests and hard hats huddled in groups near the trailer. Kate greeted them, many by name, as she walked Butch back to his truck. The seasoned veterans eyed the newcomer whose smooth soles of his favorite boots slid off the rocky surface, causing him to side step more than once. Most didn’t spare him a second thought, but a few stared, as if trying to place him. Butch stripped off the vest and handed it and the hard hat back to Kate. He quickly pulled his hat from his pocket and put it back on his head.