“What idea? Of you going out with a respectable member of the community?”
“Of me starting another scandal.” She jutted her jaw out. “They hate it when I’m the center of attention.”
I hate them for making you feel like a burden.
And myself for not taking charge, because God forbid I do something less than pristine and make someone uncomfortable.
“I’m starting to lose my patience here, sweetheart,” I said, dead serious. “I’m not going to chase you forever. I like you, Tennessee, but I don’t like the way you make me feel, and that’s starting to become a problem.”
“I know,” she said firmly, placing her palms flat on my chest.
My heart was beating like mad.
Goddammit, I wanted her. I wanted to run. But her eyes were sincere.
“Just give me a few seconds to make sense of it all, all right? I’ll see you at the rehearsal dinner tomorrow.”
I drove back home, feeling a weird sense of calamity taking over me. When I parked in front of my front door, I realized why.
She was slipping away from me. Letting me down easy, the way I’d let down Gabriella and all the women before her.
I need to think about it.
I need to make sense of it all.
I need some alone time.
I punched the steering wheel so hard, I tore the motherfucker.
I was losing Tennessee Turner, and I felt it.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Trinity told me the following day at my clinic.
She collapsed on the seat in front of mine while I was scribbling some notes about my latest patient. She looked like something that’d been dragged out of a sewer to destroy New York in a climactic sci-fi film.
I didn’t look up from my notes, because I knew eye contact would cause her to lose her job. “Care to be more specific?”
From the corner of my eye, I could see her picking at the tail end of her braid and splitting the fine blonde hairs in it.
“Wyatt. The kiss. The bachelor party. He said you bent his arm to tell me. But I didn’t want to know.”
“Well, I don’t particularly care what you did or did not want, to be honest. It was more about my clean conscience than your comfort.”
“I’m embarrassed you saw it.”
“Really?” I asked casually. “You have so many more things to be embarrassed about, seeing my brother making out with someone else shouldn’t even be in your top one thousand.”
Her eyes darted up from her split ends, widening. “Have I done something wrong, Dr. Costello?”
Yes. So many things, I can’t stop counting them.
“Now, why would you think that?” I closed the file I was working on, stood up, and went to return it to my cabinet.
“You’ve never spoken to me in such a… such a…”
“Candid, no-bullshit manner?” I supplied.
“Yes. It’s like—”
“A slap in the face?” I finished for her again. She made a whimpering sound I took as confirmation. “Shame. You seemed like you could use one.”
She stood up, smoothing her blue uniform nervously, watching me as I walked around the room. She tried to angle the penholder on my desk and knocked it over, spilling ink all over the mahogany wood.
She fumbled to set it back up, whispering, “Sheet, sheet, sheet.” I disposed of my files into the cabinet, enjoying the sight of her sweating. “Is it about Tennessee? Did she tell you anything about me? Did she? Because I—”
“Don’t try to explain yourself to me, Nurse Turner. I wanted my brother to tell you, because I thought you should know. Also because I think it’s high time you enjoy a big, fat slice of humble pie.”
I was on my way out when she caught my wrist, panic swimming in her eyes.
Trinity may have wanted to quit her day job to pop out babies, but I bet the prospect of marrying my brother had just become a lot less secure, now that she knew he was sampling other women.
“I’m not a bad person, Dr. Costello. I’ve been through so much. I just want a normal life. That’s all. To be an ordinary woman with an ordinary family. Nessy is amazing, but she tends to…complicate things.”
I shook off her touch, storming out of my office.
Tennessee wasn’t a complication.
Her family was.
Rob showed up at the rehearsal dinner.
Either that or his ghost came to visit. But that would mean he’d died, and such blessing wasn’t in my goddamn luck, unfortunately.
“Don’t look at me.”
Wyatt raised his arms in submission as soon as we spotted Rob getting out of his swanky new Toyota Supra, making his way into the wedding venue with his head down.
He smoothed his tie, reminding everyone he was gainfully employed, and used that particular expression of a man unsure whether he was welcome or not.
The setting was a bore. A barn with a wraparound deck, lounge chairs, and Pottery Barn furniture. Everything was white. Including Tennessee’s face, once she realized he was here.
Rob made his way directly to us.
“The hell’s he doing here?” I turned to my parents sharply.
As far as I knew, Gabriella’s gossip train hadn’t made a pit stop in their ears just yet, but everyone in my family, other than Wyatt, kept their cards close to their vests.
My parents, who were dressed in a tux and a purple sheath dress (you guess who wore what), both shook their heads, perplexed.
“But why would you mind? You two were thick as thieves growing up,” Mom groused, licking her thumb to wipe imaginary dirt from my cheek.
Add it to the never-ending list of things I hated about being a full-sized, hunky teddy bear who held the Favorite Child title.
“He’s still thick and a thief.”
“Oh, Cruzy, I wish you wouldn’t be so surly. You’ve changed since the cruise.”
I pushed away from my family, trying to find Tennessee so I could warn her.
I found her standing with her family on a lush patch of green lawn by the dining area. The Turners were all talking animatedly.
At first, I thought maybe Trinity was having second thoughts, what with Wyatt almost scooping up someone else’s tonsils with his tongue the other day.
Who knew what could have happened if Rob and I hadn’t decided to reenact every bad teen movie ever made and pick a fight over a girl at the bar?
Wyatt could have slept with that woman.
But as I got closer, I realized that no, Trinity wasn’t upset over Wyatt at all. Tennessee and Bear were standing as a united front on one end of the lawn, while Trinity, Donna, and Bryan occupied the other side.
“Nothing is in my control anymore. Gabriella has bailed on me. I can’t believe she’s not here because of another headache.”
“I can,” Tennessee mumbled. “I’d believe it if she skipped the event due to a split nail.”
Her sister threw her a frosty gaze.
“Not only is my best friend not here, but my sister’s baby daddy is. Can I just have one day where it’s about me and not her?” Trinity wailed.
“Honey, the day’s all yours, but Rob has the right to see his son.” Donna rubbed at her favorite daughter’s back.
So Donna was the one responsible for Rob showing up. Bet she didn’t bother asking her elder daughter what she thought about the arrangement.