Make a Right (20 page)

Tuck looked her in the eye and jabbed a finger at the pearl earrings, shaped like teardrops, displayed in the case. As best as an ordinary guy could tell, they looked like they’d match the dress. “These.”

“Four hundred dollars.”

“Box ’em.” A set of finely carved hair combs, something that’d look good on Megan, caught his eye. “And those.”

“One hundred dollars.”

If she wasn’t padding the bill at least twice the value of each item, Tuck swore he’d eat his hat.
Hats
. Tuck flipped a classy black fedora off a mannequin. “Humphrey Bogart wear this back in the day?”

Pinch, pinch, pinch
went the lips. “No.”

He checked the price tag, a rarity in a shop like this, inside the brim. “One hundred fifty. Bag it.”

“Perhaps you should call your bank to be sure of the limit on this card. Sir.”

“I know what I’m good for, but you go right ahead and call if you want.” Tuck decided he liked the look of a carved wooden box inlaid with mosaic tiles, displayed at the front of the second shelf of the glass case. Pretty. He had absolutely no use for the thing, and it carried a two-hundred-dollar price tag. “That too.”

“Sir, I must insist—”

“Must you?” Tuck dropped to a crouch to study the case, meaning only to scrounge for something else that’d tick her off. The silver chime behind him sounded again, as sweet and pure as she was sour. Good. Witnesses were always fun. He scanned the display fast, searching—

And stopped.

There. Hidden at the back of the bottom shelf. A simple thing strung on a leather cord. A curiosity, a trinket.

Exactly what he wanted.

A key, an old-fashioned key made of heavy iron. A house key that a man could wear around his neck, to warm against his skin.

“And that,” Tuck said, setting his jaw, his shoulders, and his feet. “By the way, that one’s for my man.”

“Is it?” A body he knew better than his own, a man with pale brown skin and tip-tilted blue eyes, flowed as easily into place at Tuck’s side as water and twice as soothing as spikenard balm. Cade slipped his arm around Tuck’s.

Okay. Keep the shock to a minimum in front of the locals, especially this one
. Tuck coughed and cleared his throat and managed not to twist around and stare. “Yeah. You like?”

Was it his imagination, or did Cade’s arm tighten, almost a squeeze? Closer to a one-armed hug. “I think you’ve done good work here.”

Huff
went Alicia. Tuck watched the brief war between pride and indignation surrender to almost four thousand bucks. Tuck would be swallowing down sour bile right now if it weren’t for Cade’s arm around him when he needed it most. Even if he had no idea why—how—especially
why
, after the shitstorm in the parlor—

“How’d you know where to find me?”

“I followed you.” Cade’s thumb feathered across Tuck’s waist. “You never were the one who learned the art of hiding.” He tilted his head to look at the array of boxes and plucked up the fedora before it disappeared into a hatbox—an honest to God hatbox—amid a swath of tissue paper. He dropped the hat on Tuck’s head and tugged it to a rakish angle.

“I notice you’re not asking if I can afford this.”

“No.” Cade tracked the debit card from swipe to the green “acceptance” light. He stood still, very still, arm hard as iron and warm as fire, and not quite unsteady but not exactly steady either. “You really were saving for a house.”

“Like I said.” He snorted. “And I blew it all here.”

“For them.” Cade drew in a slow breath. “And for me.”

In answer, Tuck pulled move for move and took the key necklace before it disappeared in a bag. He offered it to Cade. “Like I told you before. That was all I ever had in mind.”

Cade’s reaction was the last thing Tuck would have expected, but the one Tuck wanted most, even if it was for her benefit. Probably.

He slipped that key around his neck and beneath the collar of his T-shirt. Tuck could see the shape of it under the soft cotton and how it rested in the center of his chest, close to his heart.

Then he kissed Tuck. Once, but slowly, stretching on until the ticks of the clock faded away.

Tuck forgot the woman behind him hard at work with her card terminal and ledgers, sucking his savings account all but dry. Nothing else mattered right here, right now, except Cade.

Cade had something on his mind, for damn sure. He’d kissed Tuck to get his attention. Tuck knew and accepted the fact. Yet it was a kiss without anger. Such a strange thing, these days. Almost like a—no, it
was
a gift, and he didn’t know what he’d done to earn it.

Cade placed his hand on Tuck’s cheek and fixed him with a steady gaze. Calmer than before. Still uncertain, still the littlest bit shaky. “I’ll wait outside for you,” he said. “I think, maybe…I think we can talk. The way we need to.”

Chapter Fifteen

Tuck didn’t so much have a plan for what should come next. Hell, he counted himself lucky he could think at all with Cade pulling this kind of stunt after all they’d been through.

Hell, man. Fucking hell. It ought to piss him off. It kind of did.

And he forgot it all when he hit the street, loaded down with boxes like he’d been on an all-day spendthrift bender, to see Cade waiting for him by his car but not alone.

Nothing dramatic about the scene, not at first glance. Just a couple of guys in a hybrid, one of them leaning out the driver’s side and talking with Cade.

No—not with Cade. At him. And Cade, he stared ahead of himself as if deaf, dumb, and blind. The guys might not even have been there; Tuck would have wondered if he hadn’t seen Cade’s fists clenched, knuckles white, and known how that meant Cade was walking a razor’s edge.

No one got to do that to Cade. Not on Tuck’s watch.

Tuck made his steps loud, stomping, and made his approach as if he were well ready and willing to rip the balls off those guys. Which, since it was true, came across well. “There some kind of a problem here?”

“Shit! I told you,” the passenger in the hybrid hissed.

The driver started to open his mouth. Then he looked up at Tuck. The Tuck who drove in rush-hour traffic without breaking a sweat, whose knuckles bore the scars of many a fistfight, who was not happy and would gladly demonstrate.

He rolled up the window without a word and backed out, fast. Even dumb-asses had their moments of clearheadedness.

Speaking of which… Cade had eased up just enough to catch the boxes Tuck thrust at him. “What was that all about?” He darkened with a thought. “Were they hitting on you?”

Cade shrugged but not convincingly. “Not really. Just assholes. They grow in every city.”

True, but Tuck couldn’t figure it. There’d been something cocky about those two, but unless they’d been able to ID Cade as one of the out-of-town queers just from word of mouth…

Made no sense.

“But they were hitting on you?” Tuck popped the backseat door and loaded boxes in, trying to think this through and not having much luck. He tossed his fedora in the backseat. Cade was okay with Thomas, but he went both nuclear and cold over those two clowns? Why?

“I wasn’t encouraging them.” Cade had gone stone-faced again, not giving anything away. “They thought I was available.”

“What were they, blind? They didn’t get that no means no?”

Cade cast Tuck a sideways look that said it all. Tuck didn’t have room to talk about that. Not one bit.

Anger leaked away from Tuck as if from a slowly deflating balloon. “I know,” he said. “Stones, glass houses.” He slammed the back door shut. “Not sure how you got here, but you want a ride back?”

He flinched at Cade’s light touch on his back, between his shoulder blades. Cade was still taking deep breaths to settle himself, but it seemed to help calm him when he had his hand on Tuck.

Again. It made no sense.

“I told you we needed to talk,” Cade said. He nudged Tuck aside to stack his own armload of boxes on the seat, more carefully than Tuck had. “I meant it.”

Right. No one ever set somebody up like that for a
good
talk. “Now?”

“I’ll wait for you in the car.”

Well, then. Tuck counted to three, then ten, trying to get himself under control. Didn’t succeed at that either. He thumped the roof of the car once, frustrated almost past words.

For fuck’s sake, this was what he’d been asking for all along.

Maybe someday he’d learn to be careful what he wished for.

* * *

Cade waited patiently enough for Tuck to settle and start the car, and stiffly when Tuck idled the engine, temporarily lost in fast-moving thoughts.
Fuck it. Might as well ask
. “
Are
you okay?”

There. Cade’s turn now.

Cade started to answer, then stopped. “I don’t know.”

Not what Tuck wanted to hear, but it beat getting no answer at all. “Will you be?”

Cade drew his tongue across his lip. “I don’t—I will be.” He straightened his shoulders in an almost convincing attempt at shaking it off. “I will be,” he repeated and even tried to offer Tuck a smile. “That was nothing. Forget about it. Things happen. They were idiots. Horny and stupid.”

“You think?”

Cade bit the lip he’d just licked shiny and kissable. The air between him and Tuck grew thick and heavy. “I need to ask you something.”

Fuck.

“Were they the kind of idiots you drove around?”

Tuck grimaced. He could have said the same thing Cade had.
I don’t know
. But that wouldn’t be the truth. “Sometimes.”

Cade could have been a ghost in the seat beside him, but that was not the end of that story, and by God, he’d hear the rest.

“
Sometimes
,” Tuck emphasized. “And when I figured that out, I kicked ’em out on the curb. That was part of the job too. Protecting the ladies.”

Cade didn’t have to ask out loud; the quizzical and surprised lift of his eyebrows would have done it for him. “The people you worked for let you make that call?”

“They
told
me to make that call.” Tuck turned and rested his arm on the steering wheel to better face Cade. “And if the assholes didn’t want to behave, I’d get them out of the car on the toe of my shoe. Or my fists.” He curled one tight, showing off the calluses on his knuckles. “I’m not a smart guy. That’s your gig. I’m a tough bastard who goes with his gut.”

The noise Cade made took a second for Tuck to identify as laughter. “God, is that you. All over. They trusted you,” he mused out loud.

“Go figure.”

Cade startled Tuck by reaching for him. Tentatively, but all the same extending that hand. “You didn’t have to do that,” he said. “The dress, and”—he reached for the key hanging around his neck—“and everything else.”

“No, I didn’t. But I wanted to.”

“That’s you too,” Cade said without explaining himself. He looked down at his hands, knuckles free of scars. “That was a lot of pent-up anger back there.”

Tuck felt his face warming. “They had it coming.”

“I meant at the store.”

“Yeah? Trust me, so did she.”

Did that amuse Cade? No way. But seemed like it did, from the way Cade glanced slantwise at him. “That wasn’t a complaint.”

“You’re joking.”

“No.” The ghost of a smile crossed Cade’s lips. “If you hadn’t let her have it, I would’ve.”

“You would?”

“Want to go back and test that theory?”

The laugh burst out of Tuck. “Hell.”

Cade shrugged. Tuck could believe him or not.

Thing was, Tuck did. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel. No, that was a lie. He knew. This was
pride
. He threw the car into forward gear and rolled away from the curb, glad to leave the shop and the street behind them. “How did you even know where I was?”

Cade brushed shoulders with him. “It wasn’t hard to figure out. Everything you think, you feel, it’s right there on your face. You got that look in your eye when you promised Hannah about her dress.”

“I have a look?”

“You do, and you know it.” Cade’s nudge closer to Tuck
was
on purpose this time. Tuck was sure of it.

“You didn’t answer my question, you know. How’d you get here?”

The smile was small and real. “I took a taxi.”

Tuck would have facepalmed if he weren’t behind a wheel. “You’re not serious.”

Cade drew an X over his chest. “As I’ve ever been.”

“Follow that car?”

“Not quite as dramatic. Like I said, I thought I knew where you’d want to go. By the time I made up my mind, there was only one place left you could be. I Googled the local shops. This was the only place that fit the way you think.” Cade raised an eyebrow at Tuck to ask if he could have the bottle of water in the cup holder between their seat.

“It’s a couple days old,” Tuck warned.

“It’s still drinkable.” Cade popped the cap and sipped. “You like the same things,” he said once he’d oiled his joints. “Old things. Beauty where you don’t expect it.”

Tuck mumbled under his breath and rubbed the back of his neck.

“It’s true.” Cade made to push his hands into his pockets, frowned, and let the gesture go. “It always has been.”

Felt like they were closer now, somehow, than they’d been in over half a year. “What’s on your mind, babe?”

“Everything that’s happened since we came here. Before then. None of it’s been—”

Tuck picked up where he knew Cade would have left off. “Hasn’t been what you expected.”

“No. Not even the past five minutes. You’re a wild card, Tuck.” Didn’t quite sound like a bad thing, the way Cade said it now. Still confused. Not angrily so. More…searching. “I mean, that first night—the one in your apartment—and the first night here—every time I think
now I know where I stand
, you…”

Tuck kept his mouth shut. He wanted to help, but he knew when Cade had to get this out by himself.

Not that knowing so made it
easy.

“If you knew the worst thing possible about me, would you still love me?”

The fuck
? Tuck eased off the gas and kept one hand on the wheel, everything else focused on Cade, even twisting quarter-sideways in the seat to get a better look at him. “’Course I would. You even have to ask that?”