This situation was utterly, epically, incontrovertibly, and in all other ways unacceptable. And I was almost positive it was all Dunn’s fault, so I was going to freaking tell him so.
I pulled in to my usual spot on the driveway just under the big oak tree in front of the farmhouse, slammed the door, and took a deep breath to center myself.
True story, I’d always loved Dunn’s place. The little white house was tiny—one open living space and a half bath downstairs, two cozy bedrooms and a bathroom tucked under the sharply slanted metal roof upstairs—but it was so comfortable that just looking at it gave me the same feeling I got after taking off my shoes and stretching my toes at the end of a long day.
Dunn had redone the outside with white board-and-batten, which set off the original multicolored stone foundation from back in the early 1900s. The wraparound porch had two comfortable rocking chairs near the front door, where Dunn and I had spent many an evening watching the sun set over the trees while the fireflies gave us our own personal fireworks show on the lawn.
Now that Dunn was renovating the inside, he’d gone full-on Chip and Joanna with shiplap and slate and…
And holy crap, that was not remotely what I was here for.
Good Lord, Tucker Wright, can’t you stay mad at that man for more than thirty seconds? He had a heartbreak cake named for you, for crying out loud.
But it appeared I couldn’t, which did not bode well for me.
My phone jangled in my pocket, and I almost hoped it was Dunn texting, just so I could get properly worked up again, but it wasn’t Dunn. It was Carter Rogers.
Carter: Hey, handsome. We’re still on for tomorrow night, right? You, me, dinner… dessert?
Uh, so. Semi-important information about Carter. He wasn’t just a former colleague; he was actually a former boyfriend. As in, the guy I’d once imagined would be my Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After, until I’d realized my dream future involved putting down roots someplace close to home, and Carter had realized he wasn’t ready to put down roots anywhere just yet.
We’d parted amicably—meaning we’d fucked around for maybe a month or so after the breakup, even after I’d moved to the Thicket—but then things had shifted, and we’d grown apart for some reason.
The whine of a saw cut through the air from the general direction of Dunn’s workshop just off the pig barn, followed by a very enthusiastic, very off-key rendition of his mom’s favorite country song “Maria,” including all the falsetto bits.
I sighed.
Okay, maybe I knew exactly why Carter and I had stopped fucking around after I’d moved to the Thicket, and why I’d quickly rewritten my Happily Ever Afters with another Prince Charming in mind.
And maybe that meant it was a good thing Carter had picked right now to get back in touch. It might be nice to have dinner with a man who might actually want to kiss me at the end of the night, even if I didn’t plan on letting him.
Tucker: Yep. Looking forward to it. Where should we meet?
Carter: I’ll pick you up at 7. I remember your house. I made us a reservation at someplace called Steak ’n Bait.
The Steak ’n Bait? With Carter? My stomach fluttered at the idea—and not in a good way—but I pushed past it.
Tucker: Sounds great!
It wasn’t a date, I told myself. It was still just old colleagues reconnecting. Those colleagues just happened to have seen each other naked. Regularly. For a couple of years.
And the strange, guilty, gnawing feeling in my gut was a perfect example of the feelings I needed to stop feeling. Which would be a heck of a lot easier if Dunn Johnson kept his giant nose out of my business.
I nodded once, pleased that I’d managed to work myself up enough to stalk my way to the barn. I took a breath to yell his name, but when I stepped inside and got a good look at the man, I found myself choking on my tongue instead.
Dunn Johnson stood half-naked in a shaft of sunlight that fell through the open double doors at the front of the barn. God’s most perfect blue jeans cupped his ass and his thick, thick thighs, which were braced wide apart, but from his glorious shoulders down his thick chest and over his rippling—yes, rippling—abs, his golden skin glistened with sweat and flecks of pine sawdust.
He held a heavy table leg in one hand and drilled it into place with the other, as though it were the simplest thing in the world… which for him, it maybe was, though I could see the effort it required in the bunch and flex of his biceps and the sweat that dripped down his neck despite the cool March temperatures. He moved around the table with an odd grace, belting out a song—he’d moved on to some old-school Zac Brown—and only stopped every once in a while to smile at his audience.