Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel (38 page)

It didn’t hurt that the man was jacked. Not in an artificial way like some of the men who lifted weights in her gym, but in the lean, defined way she much preferred. She had no idea what happened to the brilliant, skinny, short, acne-covered kid of her childhood. It’s like he’d been in a cocoon and emerged as a brilliant, built, tall, handsome man. Nerdy Nash Hawthorne had turned into Cottonbloom’s most eligible bachelor—and that included both sides of their peculiar little town.

His gaze swept the room. Maybe he had a hot date. She’d heard rumors the single-ladies Bible study at Cottonbloom Church of Christ had nearly come to blows trying to decide who was going to take him a “Welcome to Cottonbloom” basket.

She turned back to her beer before he could catch her staring and watched the foam bubbles pop around the edges. A warm body took the seat next to her, and she was enveloped in a wholly masculine scent that muted the haloes of cigarette smoke around them. Seeing his big hands link together on the bar and the dark hair that peppered his forearm settled a weird knot of nerves in her stomach.

Nash had never made her nervous when they were kids. She’d trusted him above all others back then, even her brothers. But that had been a lifetime ago. In fact, those days seemed to belong to someone else. The days before her parents had died. Before things got hard.

Nash had been gone a long time, and once he’d moved to Mississippi after his mother had died, they’d barely seen each other. His aunt Leora had kept him close, claiming his asthma made it difficult for him to be outside. Although it hadn’t seemed to bother him all the time they’d spent wading and exploring the river as kids. She fingered the end of her braid.

She screwed up her courage and turned to him. “Hey, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m—”

“Tallulah Fournette. How could I ever forget you?” He swiveled toward her. His carefree, charming smile struck her mute.

She had the tendency to hang out with rough-and-tumble men who’d followed the same path she had. Street-smart and tough, the difficulties of life forcing them to be serious and defensive. Those were her people, the ones she felt comfortable around.

Nash’s optimism and easygoing nature were in his smile and in the way he held himself. His body language was foreign, yet unusually appealing, and she found herself smiling back. “Everyone calls me Tally these days. Except for my brothers when they’re trying to annoy me. I’m not sure what my parents were thinking saddling me with a name like Tallulah.”

“Maybe they were thinking, here we have this unique baby girl who is going to do great things in the world, so we should give her a great, unique name.” His voice had matured along with the rest of him. Deep and a little husky, it projected like a professor’s should.

“Or maybe they were thinking, let’s pick the most embarrassing name possible so our daughter learns to deal with bullying at a young age.”

The bartender stopped in front of them, wiping his hands on a bar towel, a smile parting the hair of his long dark beard. “What’ll it be, Nash? The usual? Or would you like something special?” He leaned in as if imparting a secret.

“Special? I’m intrigued. Surprise me, Clint.”

“You want another beer, Tally?”

“No, I’m good. Thanks.” She waved Clint off while still staring at Nash. “You’ve been hanging out here a lot, I take it?”

“Little bit.” He pointed to where Clint had disappeared through a short curtain into a storage room. “We discovered a common appreciation of Scotch whiskey.”

Clint returned with a heavy tumbler and an inch of amber liquor. Nash went for the side pocket of his cargo pants, but Clint waved him off and stayed to watch Nash take the first sip. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and hummed. Tally couldn’t tear her eyes away from the happiness on his face. “Perfect.”

Looking extremely pleased, Clint rattled off the name and vintage before being called away to the opposite end of the bar.

“Scotch whiskey, huh? Is Jack not good enough for you?” The amount of flirt in her voice surprised her. Flirting was not in her wheelhouse.

“I did my postdoctoral work at the University of Edinburgh and developed a love of their whiskey. Jack will do in a pinch, though.” He winked, and something fluttered around the nervous knot in her stomach. She did her best to ignore the feelings, but found herself smiling at him nonetheless.

“As in Scotland? Are you kidding me? That is so cool.” Now that he mentioned it, a foreignness lilted through some of his words. A Scots brogue mixed with a Southern drawl was intriguing and surprisingly sexy.

“I’m not going to lie. It was cool. My research emphasis is medieval history. Americans think anything from the Civil War is old. That’s nothing compared to Hadrian’s Wall, for instance. Built a hundred and twenty years or so after Christ’s crucifixion.”

“And it’s still there?”

“Miles and miles of it. You can touch stones placed by hands that are long gone.”

His enthusiasm was intoxicating. Her heart was pounding a little faster, and she leaned closer. Close enough to see the shaving nick on the edge of his jaw, close enough to see the yellow flecks in his brown eyes framed by the black rims of his glasses, close enough to see the tattoo that peeked out of the sleeve of his black T-shirt.

Before she could stop herself, she pushed the sleeve up a couple of inches. His biceps flexed, and she pulled back as if bitten. Geez, you’d think she’d never touched a man before. She cleared her throat. “What’s your tattoo of?”

He pulled his sleeve to the top of his shoulder, exposing a stylized cross on a shield. “The symbol for the Knights Templar.”

“Oh my God, are you on the hunt for the Holy Grail? In Cottonbloom?”

He threw his head back, his laughter coming deep in his chest but morphing into a cough that had him hunched over and covering his mouth. Finally, his laugh-cough subsided, and he took a sip of the whiskey. “No Holy Grail in Cottonbloom to my knowledge. The Knights Templar stood for bravery and discipline. I guess that’s what it means to me.”

“Bravery and discipline, huh? Not bad things to stand for.” She took a sip of her warm beer to have something to do besides stare at his defined arm.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Dance?”

“There’s a dance floor in the corner.” He pointed somewhere behind her. “And music playing. Dancing’s not so far-fetched an activity, is it?”

She looked over her shoulder. The corner consisted of a small square of planked flooring she’d never noticed. Maybe because she’d never seen anyone actually dancing in the Rivershack Tavern, unless it was a drunk girl’s mating call in the middle of the pool tables.

“Yeah, I don’t dance.”

“That’s not what I remember.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You used to take ballet. You put on a recital for me in the middle of your backyard.”

“I can’t believe you remember that.” She turned toward him.

He looked into his whiskey as if he could divine the future, a half smile on his face. “I’ve not forgotten a minute that we spent together. Don’t you remember?”

Emotions she didn’t understand grew a lump in her throat. Of course she remembered. Every second. Next to her parents, Nash had been the most important person in her life. Above even her brothers back then. The fact he remembered filled her with hope and despair.

“Why in the world did you come back to Cottonbloom, Nash?”

*   *   *

Nash suppressed another coughing fit. All the cigarette smoke hanging in the room like fog was making his usually well-controlled asthma act up. Friday and Saturday nights were definitely the worst as he had discovered over the past two weeks of coming in regularly. He took a too-large sip of the excellent, aged Scotch to soothe his throat. Not the way such fine liquor should be savored.

He wasn’t at the Rivershack Tavern for the Scotch or the company—although he’d surprisingly enjoyed both—he was sitting in the smoky bar for Tallulah Fournette. As soon as he’d heard she was single again and a semi-regular, he’d found himself there night after night, waiting.

It’s not like he’d moved back to Cottonbloom for her. A multitude of reasons drew him back to his hometown. His aunt was getting older. Cottonbloom College, while not as prestigious as an Ivy League school, offered something none of those schools could. The chance to build an outstanding history department from the ground up and the promise of early tenure. He was excited for the challenge.

But more than familial obligations and a job drew him home. Cottonbloom lived in his memories like an old tome he struggled to translate and interpret. When he dreamed of Cottonbloom, the negative recollections leaked out as if his memory were a sieve, saving only the good stuff.

The days before his mother got sick, catching lightning bugs in the summer, the walks along the river with Tally. He ignored the bad stuff—his mother dying, bigger boys pushing him down, calling him a freak and later Nerdy Nash, the constant ache of loneliness.

If reconnecting with Tally had crossed his mind more than a few times while he had been debating the job offer and move … well, it wasn’t something he was willing to admit to her.

“Is Cottonbloom not on
Conde Nast
’s top destinations list?” He kept his voice light, hoping to coax out another of her smiles.

“Not yet, but it will be if Regan and Sawyer have a say.”

“Ah, yes. Regan is rather passionate about her tomato festival.”

“Try obsessed. My brother has bought stock in antacids. Not that he’s any better. He wants to win the competition so bad, he might have sold his firstborn to the devil.” Her smile was a combination of tease and sarcasm.

“You don’t think—” he cleared his throat and side-eyed her “—Sawyer had anything to do with the gazebo fire?”

Her smile thinned and her eyes narrowed. “Absolutely not. Who said he did?”

“No one. Well, no one besides Regan thinks he did it.” Nash had a hard time believing someone as smart and level-headed as Sawyer would torch the gazebo, but then again, the man had planned to drop a half-dozen rabbits into Regan’s mother’s prize tomato garden. Regan had caught Sawyer in the act.

“Regan’s motivations are more personal than professional, if you ask me,” she said with more than a hint of antipathy.

Nash would have said the same of Sawyer, but he kept his opinion to himself. Tally looked ready to defend her brother to the death. “Say what you will, but the woman can get things done. Businesses on the Mississippi side of River Street are booming. And she has a solid plan for the contest money from
Heart of Dixie
magazine if she wins.”

“So does my—” A text buzzed her phone on the bar between them. She glanced at the screen, her forehead crinkling.

“Is that your escape text?”

She set the phone back on the bar, facedown. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought all girls had some system in place if some weirdo dude was hassling them. You know, your friend calls or texts you and all of a sudden something very important requires your attention somewhere far, far away.”

“Are you a weirdo?” The worry cleared from her face, her smile making her green eyes sparkle.

“I do get ridiculously excited about
Star Wars
.”

“Really? I pictured you as more of an Indiana Jones fan.”

“Why’s that?”

She raised her eyebrows and harrumphed. “Knights Templar, Holy Grail. I can only imagine what percentage of your classes are female.”

“Professor Jones was an archaeologist.” He took another sip of his Scotch and shook his head. Now that she mentioned it, a good eighty percent of the classes he’d taught as an associate professor at Edinburgh had been female. He stilled. Was she insinuating women signed up for his classes because they might find him attractive? Did
she
find him attractive? Embarrassment followed by a wave of longing incinerated his insides and triggered another spate of coughing.

Her eyes flared before she burst into laughter. This was the laugh he remembered, and he tumbled back twenty years.

“Ohmigod, you don’t even realize, do you?”

“Realize what?”

“Better if you don’t know.” She grinned.

Her cheeks were flushed, and dark hair that had escaped her braid wisped around her face. Unlike most of the women in the bar, she wasn’t wearing a skirt or heels. Her simple blue T-shirt emphasized lean curves, and her dark-wash jeans were tucked into a pair of black motorcycle boots. Smudged black eyeliner emphasized the only thing about her that was soft. In her laughter, her intense green eyes shed their wariness and turned warm and welcoming.

He smiled back and propped his chin up on his hand, leaning in closer. “I can assure you I am stodgy and boring.”

“Really?” Her voice dripped sarcasm, but she mimicked his stance, so they were only a few inches apart, their elbows nearly touching on the bar. “What do you do for fun?”

“I like to explore creepy, cobwebby catacombs full of dead people.”

Her smile faltered. “Are you serious?”

“Yep.”

“I’m pretty sure Cottonbloom is fresh out of dead-body-stuffed catacombs. How are you keeping yourself entertained? Are you dating anyone?”

“Nope. How about you?”

She glanced at her phone. “Not at the moment.”

Even though she’d voiced a denial, his spidey sense tingled at her slight hesitation. A woman as tough and beautiful and smart as Tally probably had men crawling all around her. Had he missed his window already? Or had she and Heath Parsons gotten back together? He forced his voice to stay light and teasing. “What would you suggest for entertainment?”

“You could pull up a chair with the rest of us to watch these festivals unfold. Ten-to-one odds that they’ll get us on the national news—and not in a complimentary way. More like a point-and-laugh-at-the-rednecks kind of way.”

“That’s not good. I’ll be implicated if someone starts digging for dirt.”

“How so?”

“I might have been involved in the bunny kerfuffle last month.”

She blinked at him a couple of times before bursting into husky laughter. He couldn’t help but smile back. She’d turned into a beautiful woman, if an intimidating one. He’d had to screw up his courage to walk across the bar and take the seat next to her. She seemed to have some sort of force field around her that repelled men. The vibe alternated between “back off” and “you are beneath my notice.”