Then He Kissed Me: A Cottonbloom Novel (2 page)

I need you too,
he wanted to say. “Of course. I’m being dumb.” He started to roll his bike backward, still straddling it, his feet on the ground.

“I’ll see you in school though, right?” she asked.

“Aunt Leora is moving me to the elementary school on
that
side. She said it’s because the schools here stink. She thinks I’m gifted or something.” Even as young as he was, he understood the river marked more than a physical separation between Louisiana and Mississippi. The social divide between well-to-do ’Sips and the blue-collar swamp rats was a festering gash that stemmed from a long-ago dispute.

“Oh, Nash.” She stepped forward and hugged him, the handlebars of his bike between them. Her lips brushed his cheek, moving with her words. “I don’t think I can do it without you.”

Considering she was the strongest person he’d ever met, he knew she would be fine without him around. But he wasn’t so sure how he was going to make it on the wrong side of the river without her. He tightened his hold, and she returned the ferocity of his hug. Someone called her name from the house again. This time she pulled away, her hair falling around her face, but not before he saw her tears. Helplessness overcame him.

His world was changing too fast. Last summer, he remembered running from the river holding a tadpole in water he’d cupped in his hands, but by the time he’d made it to the house, the water had leaked through his fingers and the tadpole had died. Everything and everyone he cared about was slipping through his hands like trying to hold water until he was left with nothing.

Chapter Two

Eighteen years later …

Tallulah Fournette sat at the bar of the Rivershack Tavern, debating whether to head home. Three episodes of
The Bachelor
waited on her DVR. Even under the threat of torture, she’d never admit to watching the show, but the desperation oozing from the contestants fascinated her.

Her phone beeped and she glanced at the incoming text, muttering a curse that would have her mother clutching her pearls in heaven. A small amount of fear shaded the edges of her frustration, and she flipped her phone facedown as if that could shut her ex-boyfriend up.

She nursed her beer, feeling a little in limbo, not wanting to stay, but not wanting to go home to an empty apartment either. Cade and Monroe were probably somewhere making googly eyes at each other, and Sawyer was so busy getting the newly named Fournette Brothers Designs set up and planning the Labor Day crayfish festival, he didn’t have time to hang out with her.

She swiveled on the bar stool and exchanged smiles and waves with several men and women who were members of her gym. It was Friday night and all she had waiting for her at home was accounting work for the gym and episodes of
The Bachelor
. She might as well adopt a litter of cats.

The heavy wooden front door opened as she was turning back to the bar. From the corner of her eye, she saw a man enter. She glanced over her shoulder and whipped her head back around to stare down at the scarred bar top. It was Nash Hawthorne. Her heart skipped like a third-grader seeing her crush. Under the guise of taking a sip of her beer, she stole another glance.

She’d seen him at Cade’s welcome home party a couple of weeks earlier, and the same shock and zing of awareness stripped away the restlessness that had plagued her all evening. She’d beat a hasty retreat from Cade’s party, the reasons as murky as the river.

When he’d moved to Mississippi when they were young, it was like he’d hopped into a different river that had taken him in the opposite direction than her. While she’d barely squeaked through high school, he’d gotten a PhD and would be teaching history at Cottonbloom College come fall.

Unable to help herself, she looked his direction again. He still stood inside of the door. Calls from a pool table in the back went up, and he smiled and waved. Not only was she surprised to see him at the Tavern at all, apparently he’d become a regular. Tonight he fit right in with his olive green cargo pants and black T-shirt.

If she’d known professors like Nash existed, she might have attempted college after all. He had an old-school Indiana Jones vibe. Although scholarly with his black-rimmed glasses and perpetually rumpled brown hair, danger permeated the air around him nonetheless, like he would risk his life to save some ancient scroll or might rappel into a tomb seeking the Holy Grail.

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 halos 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 was 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 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 was 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.