"Great," I muttered as she walked back into the house. "That makes me feel much better."
Chapter 4
Tucker
“I won't stand for it, Tucker. I'll sue his ass from here to Timbuktu if he doesn't move that tree off my property. It's blocking the milkweed from getting enough afternoon sun and if my monarchs don't show up then he's got a whole other problem."
I held the phone away from my ear when his volume hit decibels not fit for human ears. "I understand your frustration. Why don't you let me deal with the zoning commission, all right? No point in taking this into court if we can avoid it."
Through the speaker, I could hear the deep, tortured sigh that only a man upset about his butterfly garden could achieve. "I ain't afraid to sue him. And he should know it."
"No one thinks you're afraid, Cornelius." I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling of my office, followed the lines of the map that my mom spread over the entire thing. Straight above my chair was Russia, massive lines of sepia and cream that I'd memorized over the last three years of working with my father at the law firm that bore our last name. Haywood and Haywood. The largest law firm in Green Valley, with two full time lawyers and one legal assistant. "Besides, I don't want to have to send you a giant bill if this gets dragged out. I'd rather you use your hard-earned money to make your garden bigger. Remember those trees you told me about?"
He grunted. "Spicebush. I could get more swallowtails if I had a couple more spicebush trees."
"Exactly."
Cornelius was nothing if not predictable. "Biggest butterfly garden owned by a private individual in all of East Tennessee. D'you know that?"
"We're all really proud of it, Cornelius. It's a beaut," I agreed easily. "I think we can take care of this easily, you just let me handle the leg work, all right? If the zoning commission has the original paperwork, we won't even need mediation to get him to move the tree."
"All right," he agreed. "Thanks, Tucker. Let me know what you find."
I dropped my head and rolled my neck. The starched edge of my collar dug into my neck, and I wanted to rip it off. "Will do."
He hung up, and I sighed as I set the phone back onto the cradle. Irritably, I unbuttoned the top button on my white shirt and loosened the tie around my neck. If my dad had a problem with it, he could fire me.
I laughed. That would be too easy.
The office in which I sat, the same one I'd sat at every week since I held my diploma from Vanderbilt, had my father's stamp all over it. The whole place did. Haywood and Haywood had been in our family for three generations, first opened by my great-grandfather when he moved to Green Valley.
Every single week, I spent at least fifty hours in that building, and every week, it was like another rock got added to a bag strapped across my back. One isn't bad. You hardly notice it. But once that bag has a hundred rocks, then two hundred, it starts feeling awfully heavy.
After that many rocks, you have a hard time moving forward. Feeling like you can move at all.
I sighed, the bridge of my nose pinched between my thumb and forefinger. My cell phone buzzed on the lacquered surface of my desk, and I saw a text from Magnolia.
Magnolia: Bringing you lunch. Can't wait to see you. XO.
That brought out another sigh. It might have only been twenty-four hours since I pulled my truck from the Buchanan's driveway, but my girlfriend was acting like she'd caught me sticking my tongue down someone's mouth.
The bell hanging over the front door to the office jingled, and I heard the familiar tone of Magnolia's voice when she greeted my mom, where she always sat at the desk in the front of the office.
There was the low voice of my father, asking her how her daddy was, Magnolia's laugh, my mom saying something as well, and I took a moment to just breathe before my office door opened.
When it did, I'd see a wide, cheek-splitting smile aimed in my direction, I'd see bright golden eyes that never missed a single, cotton-pickin’ thing, and dimples in both cheeks that made her look as sweet as cotton candy.
And she was. Until she wasn't. That was the underlying steel core to almost any good Southern Belle. They had it buried underneath a sugar-spun exterior. And usually, in the case of my girlfriend, she only showed it in one instance—if anyone upset the perfectly organized apple cart that was Magnolia MacIntyre's life.
She had a list of how life was going to play out, one she'd been working on (with the help of her daddy) since we were sixteen and met in marching band. Me on trumpet, her waving one of those big stupid flags and wearing glittery white boots over top mile-long legs.
That list, the one I'd never contributed a single item to in the last seven years of dating, added the 'rocks on my back' tally well into the three hundred range. And I still wasn't entirely sure how to offload some of them.
Before the knob turned, before the hinge creaked on the right side of the door, I straightened my tie and smoothed my hand through my hair.
Just as I did, there was the turn and the squeak, the smile and the eyes, a brown paper bag clutched in her hands, looking drab and inconspicuous against the mint green and white of her perfectly tailored dress.
"I hope you're hungry," she said, coming around the corner of my desk. I stood, sliding one hand around her waist to drop a kiss on her waiting cheek. "I made your favorite sandwich."
I smiled, because I knew exactly what was waiting for me in that bag. Tuna salad on rye, and it was absolutely not my favorite sandwich. I'd complimented it once, the first time she tried her Grandma MacIntyre’s recipe. From that day on, she'd cemented it in her head that any time she wanted to butter me up for something, that tuna salad was made in bulk.
"Sounds great, thank you." I took the bag and settled back into my seat. "You didn't have to come into town just for this, did you?"
Magnolia took a seat on the edge of my desk, daintily perching one hip on the corner so that she could cross her legs and face in my direction. "It's no trouble. What's the rest of your day look like?” Her gaze sharpened on my face when I paused before answering. “Your eyes are tired. Are you feeling all right?"
As she said it, she leaned forward to trail her finger underneath my eyes and I sighed. They probably did look tired. All night, I'd tossed and turned, an itch at the back of my head that I couldn't scratch. There was nothing left undone in my day, nothing I hadn't finished, but I slept as if there had been.
Carefully, so she wouldn't feel like I was rebuffing her, I clasped her hand in mine, pulled it away from my face and rubbed my thumb over the soft skin of her knuckles. “Just tired,” I answered, studying her hand in mine.
I used to tell her—when we were younger and hadn't realized that skin could be compared to something other than the color of food—that we could make a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich, between the two of us. Especially in the summer, her normally golden skin turned into something more like burnt caramel, and if I wasn't careful, I'd get red as a lobster, except the skin covered by my swim trunks, which stayed marshmallow white. She used to think it was funny, the thought of us as an ice cream sundae, and I did as well, but sometime in college, the things we found funny, just kinda … stopped.