I do the lazy Queen of Sheba routine.”
He grinned. “Somehow I believe that, like I believe in the tooth fairy.”
He had an odd way of making her feel comfortable … when she’d never imagined being comfortable around Tucker. He gravitated toward her front porch, where he probably spotted the old Adirondack rockers nested in the shade. It was a favorite spot for her. She couldn’t see the road or the shop; she just had her private view of the mountain … and the acres she’d cultivated with greenhouses and raised gardens.
Tucker took it all in, as if the view were sipping whiskey. “Wow. You’ve got a lot to do here. Major work.”
“It’s taken a long time to get it this far. But I love it,” she admitted.
“Is that a padlock I see on the far greenhouse?”
“Yes … it’s pretty much the only thing I keep locked around here.”
“For a special reason?”
“Oh, yeah. My vanilla plants are in there. It’s the specialty of the whole place … not that I’m doing anything so brilliant. But it’s a strain of vanilla I developed, so I need to guard it.”
He’d cocked up a leg, started a slow, lazy rock. “Speaking of stuff that smells beyond irresistible—like vanilla—what’s the thing I’m smelling around the porch?”
She motioned to the pots around the doors and steps. “Mint. It takes over if you just let it grow, but in pots it’s easy enough to contain. They’re not such pretty plants, but according to folklore, flying bugs and insects just don’t like the smell, so they stay away.”
For a second—just a small, small second—a silence fell. Because she’d never had the brains God gave a goose, she suddenly thought of a local folklore legend. Old-timers claimed that Whisper Mountain got its name from a “whispering wind” that only lovers heard.
In that small, small second of silence … she heard it. The whisper. The silken-soft whisper in the air. The achy sweet hum of yearning.
How stupid could she be? Annoyed with herself, she stabbed the porch floor with a heel and set her rocker at a creaky pace.
Tucker broke that dangerous silence. “How bad’s the head?”
The bump on her head wasn’t a problem. The brain inside her head was the problem, particularly if it was going to continue to respond to him like mush. “Our sons,” she said, and thankfully the words functioned like a trigger to remind him why he’d stopped over.
“Yeah, I figured we’d better get into that.” Tucker sighed, scratched an ear, made a comical face. “Mrs. Riddle scares the devil out of me, has from the first day of school. She makes me feel like I’ll end up standing in the hall for some unknown wrongdoing. Anyway, she had a problem with my Will. Said for the last few months, he’s become painfully shy around girls. Really miserable. Sweating, stumbling, can’t talk.”
She had to smile. “Don’t you think all kids go through that?”
“Yeah, I do. But Will hit a massive growth spurt this year, shot up four inches, and I expect the mountain of hormones hit him before I was ready.”
Out of nowhere, a cat showed up at the corner of the porch. Garnet instantly recognized it as the feline Pete had mentioned, because it was a she. A very, very pregnant she. There was some invisible sign on her property that invited only the critters who were pregnant and hungry. The cat was the color of mud, with a little Georgia red dirt thrown in, and eyes as gold as topaz. She started washing a paw, as if it was her porch and she’d always washed a paw there.
“Your cat?” Tucker asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said firmly.
As if the cat sensed she was the subject of discussion, she twitched her tail and ambled over to Tucker’s side. She hesitated for all of a millisecond, and then leaped on his lap.
“You’re sure it’s not yours?”
“Trust me. That cat will never be mine.”
“Hmm. She doesn’t seem wild.”
He probably got that impression because the ornery, hardscrabble cat sleepily closed her eyes and started purring loud enough to wake the dead. Tucker shot her an amused look. He also gave the cat a long, soft stroke under her chin.
“Do not laugh at me. I’m learning to say no to Pete. It just doesn’t happen to be a skill I’m particularly good at. But we simply have to stop adopting strays.”
“Uh-huh. So how long do you think before she makes it into the house?”
All right. He made her laugh. “A week. At least I hope I can hold out that long.” And then, because she was starting to feel comfortable with him in spite of herself, she asked carefully, “I don’t know your circumstances, Tucker. I mean, I know you’re a single parent like I am. But as far as Will’s being extra nervous around girls … is there no mom in his picture?”
“There is. But she isn’t what you’d call a helpful female influence on Will.” Tucker sighed. “Angie’s her name. We married before we finished college. My parents, her parents, everyone thought we were the perfect pair. For damn sure, she was the prettiest girl to ever graduate from Ole Miss, and back when I was twenty-one, I thought that was all that mattered. We’ve been divorced for around five years now. She got physical custody from the beginning, but Will never actually lived with her.”
She frowned. “How’d that happen?”
“I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Angie decorates rich folks’ houses in Atlanta. She’s great at it. She claims she’s putting all the child support money I send into a college fund for Will. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I just know that Will’s happy with me, and there’s no trouble as long as I keep sending the full quota of child support.”
The picture Garnet formed of his ex-wife wasn’t pretty … not that it was any of her business. “Will knows this? That she actually has physical custody even though he really stays with you?”
“Not exactly. I don’t like lying to a kid, any kid … but I can’t see telling Will something that would only hurt him, and for no possible purpose. She schedules four weekends or so a year to see him. And some holidays. She loves him. But … well, I think she was in a hustle to get married and have kids, but once the ring went on her finger and we had a kid, she was like a snail without a shell. The new role didn’t fit. She never grew out of wanting to be a full-time Southern belle.”
Garnet mulled how much he’d revealed of his life, and how easily. But he was already talking again.
“I didn’t want to bore you to death with all that background. But I figured you might need to know … if you’re inclined to go along with my plan.”
“A plan?” she echoed.
The mottled cat leaped to the ground, washed another paw and then, as if she’d been asked, leaped up on Garnet’s lap. Garnet firmly ignored her.
“I didn’t hear all of what Mrs. Riddle had to say about your Pete. But I heard some. And
