Lilian Darcy - The One Who Changed Everything

“You sound breathless,” Daisy said, relieved to hear her sister’s voice. It would be good to get this settled before she talked to Tucker himself.

“Just got back from a five-mile run,” Lee said.

“You didn’t have to call me back before you’ve even got your breathing back to normal.” Except that already it almost was. Lee was incredibly fit.

And although convenient, the timing of her call was a little awkward. “I’m good,” she said. “Now, shoot, Daze.”

Daisy picked her words carefully. “Look, I’m here at Reid Landscaping...”

“Oh. Wow. You mean Tucker’s company?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re thinking of contracting him for the work at Spruce Bay?”

“Yes, only Mary Jane...has doubts.”

“Because of me?” Lee had a habit of getting right to the point.

“That’s right,” she said again, aware that Jackie could overhear.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Well, yes, I thought so, but I wanted to check with you.”

“And you’ve checked, and I’m good, so go ahead.”

Daisy laughed. “You are the most efficient conversationalist I know, Lee.”

“Only when I’m busting to get into the shower. Seriously, it seems like half a lifetime ago that he and I were planning a big wedding, and I am sooo not that kind of girl anymore. If I ever was. Mary Jane is projecting her own stuff.”

“Well, yeah, I did wonder about that.”

“I was hurt at the time. I mean, I was.”

“I don’t think I knew that...”

“You were hardly around. But now I know it’s the best thing that could have happened, us calling that wedding off. Are we done?”

“We’re done. Go take your shower.”

They ended the conversation seconds later, just as the phone vibrated on the Reid Landscaping office manager’s desk. Jackie checked it quickly and said, “Okay, you’re in luck, Ms. Cherry.”

“Please call me Daisy.”

“Daisy. Such a pretty name!”

“Thanks.”

“Tucker can see you now. He’ll be coming in from the display area in a moment or two.”

“Can I meet him out there?” Daisy jumped up. “I don’t want to create too much of an interruption.” She felt a little claustrophobic in here for some reason, and suddenly craved the open air with its October crispness and bite.

“Sure, go through the door here,” the office manager said. “You’ll see him coming across in a minute or two.” Once more, there was that flicker of curiosity in Jackie’s manner, and Daisy wondered what it meant.

Probably nothing. Curiosity was a natural response. She was feeling it, too. If she’d never gotten to know Tucker Reid ten years ago when he was about to marry her sister, what would she feel about him now?

Would he still be that granite-faced, uncomfortable presence she’d been able to call to memory so clearly a few minutes ago? Would he be someone that carefree Lee would still be happy to think of as a friend? Would he be the man Mary Jane thought he was—cold and superficial enough to dump his fiancée because she had some burn scarring on one side of her lower jaw and neck and shoulder?

Or was there another truth to the man that none of the Cherry sisters had understood?

* * *

The paving stones were a delaying tactic. Tucker knew it even as he placed another one in position, rocking it back and forth on its sand foundation to make sure it was steady.

It wasn’t.

Or level.

He didn’t have the spirit level with him to enable a final adjustment, so he was not just delaying his meeting with Daisy Cherry here, he was actively wasting his own time, because he would probably end up lifting all the pavers and laying them down again from scratch in order to get them right.

He sighed between his teeth, irritated at himself.

And then picked up another paving stone. There was something about physical labor that settled his head. He’d always been that way, through his father’s illness, through all the anger and mess, through the years he’d spent filling his dad’s shoes too young. When he had something on his mind, he worked through it, literally. Raking leaves in his parents’ yard at thirteen. Unloading deliveries at the garden center at twenty.

Or fiddling uselessly with pavers right now.

He didn’t like thinking back on his relationship with Lee, that was the problem. And he definitely didn’t like thinking about Daisy’s part in the whole thing.

No, that wasn’t fair.

As far as Daisy herself knew, she hadn’t been involved at all.

It was all me.

It had so nearly been a disaster—so very, very nearly—and he couldn’t give himself any credit for averting that disaster. He’d seen it coming, but he hadn’t been the one to act. He’d let Lee and fate do that. He’d been paralyzed by his intense need to do the right thing, without knowing what the right thing was.

There were reasons for the paralysis, but he found it hard to forgive himself for it all the same.

He sometimes still thought about getting in touch with Lee to see how she was doing. Thought about calling or emailing, but how did you do that? How did you revive something that had started as a friendship and should never have turned into anything else? How did you just ask someone out of the blue, “Hey...are you happy?”

You can ask Lee’s sister if Lee is happy. You can ask her today. She would know the answer to that.

But he wasn’t convinced that he would manage to frame the question. He could end up holding back and holding back until someone else took the matter into their own hands, the way he had held back ten years ago.

Yeah, he definitely hadn’t forgiven himself for that.

Ten years earlier

Something’s not right.

The thought was nagging and insistent, prodding at Tucker like someone trying to get his attention with the point of an umbrella. Hey, you! Notice me! Do something!

Everything’s not right.

“...and Mom is still questioning the fact that we’re only giving chocolate as wedding favors,” Lee was saying.

Tucker tried to listen, tried to feel that what his fiancée was saying was important. “I think it’s fine,” he said, and she nodded, but neither of them was really thinking about chocolate or wedding etiquette or any of that.

I’m thinking I don’t want to go ahead with this, and I’ve known it in my heart for a while, and today it’s making me sick. It’s like lead in my stomach. It’s gotten worse. Oh boy, has it gotten worse! How could this happen? Everyone in both families is so happy about the wedding, I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

Was that what Lee was thinking, too? Or was she just scared? Scared because she could see that he was thinking it?

His mind scattered onto six different tracks at once. Scared because she didn’t know what he was thinking, because he was fighting so hard not to let it show?

More than that, he was fighting so hard not to feel it. He honestly did not know if it was just prewedding jitters, the kind everyone had, or if it was a serious problem, and he didn’t dare to bare his soul to a listening ear in order to find out. Not to Lee, not to anyone.

Dad had “followed his heart” and left havoc in his wake for years, made his whole family miserable. Tucker thought that human hearts could talk a lot of disastrous nonsense, and had vowed many times that he would keep his where it belonged, under the firm control of his head.

Meanwhile, Daisy had disappeared into the kitchen.

Daisy, who’d knocked him off course the moment he’d set eyes on her from an upstairs bedroom window less than an hour ago. He’d never expected it. How the hell could you expect something like that?

He’d heard the car swinging in from the resort driveway to park beside the house, a little later than predicted. Mary Jane had been the one to go pick up Daisy from Albany airport. He’d heard voices—Lee and his future in-laws, Marshall and Denise, as they rushed outside to greet her.