Tucker (The Family Simon 1)

So, he’d taken Mick’s warning under advisement, and over the course of the last year, he and Abby had become friends. He liked her. He liked her a lot, but it was a platonic kind of thing. Not exactly sisterly—she was way too hot to go there—but it was a friendship nonetheless.

Besides, Abby was dating some useless musician with no money who was constantly coming into The Black Dog looking for cash. He wondered why the Mathews boys hadn’t gotten rid of him, because if he was dating Tucker’s sister, he would have taken care of it himself.

Personally, Tucker thought the guy was a loser with minimal talent—he’d seen the guy perform at the bar—and Abby was wasting her time with him. He didn’t get it—didn’t understand what she saw in the guy—but ultimately it was none of his business.

“What’s this?” Abby scooped up the invitation.

“Wedding,” Tucker replied, his mood dark again. “Family wedding.”

“Oh,” she said, as she put it back in front of him. “You don’t seem real excited about it.”

“I’m not.”

“Why?”

Tucker shrugged and took another sip of beer. The place was hopping—Wednesday was their half priced wing night—and it was loud. Did he want to get into it right now?

“I thought you and your family were close. That you all got along great,” Abby said as she grabbed a drink for the guy on the stool beside Tucker.

“We do.”

She took the cash from the man, deftly avoiding his lingering fingers and leaned against the bar, eyebrows raised as she stared at Tucker.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Tucker rested his elbows on the bar. Fuck it. He needed to talk to someone and right now, Abby was all he had.

“I don’t want to go alone.”

He winced as the words came out, because, shit, could he sound any more pathetic? But it was a simple truth that led to the bigger, broader picture.

“I get that,” she said softly.

And for a second, Tucker stared into perfect brown eyes that knew about his past. That knew about his pain.

Hell, who didn’t? For a while there, he’d been in the tabloids every other week. The Simon family had always been ripe for the picking—with Beau being a bona fide superstar and Jack well on his way to the White House—the comparisons to the Kennedys had dogged them for generations.

When Tucker’s young wife had gone missing, his family had done their best to shield him from the endless CNN coverage, or the half-truths printed in the trashy gossip rags. Eventually it had blown over—three years between then and now would do that—and he’d been able to live in relative anonymity in New York City.

Oh, there were still moments when the paparazzi interfered, nabbing pictures of him jogging in Central Park, grabbing groceries at the market around the corner from his apartment, or eating a bagel for Christ sake. He knew they were trying to snap pictures of him with a woman and he took great pains to keep out of the public eye when he was with one. But for the most part, they left him alone and he supposed he could thank the insatiable appetite the public had for new scandal or tragedy.

Tucker Simon—the tragic one—was yesterday’s news.

His family, however, was another thing altogether. His mother was on a mission to find him some kind of happiness, and it killed him to know that it just wasn’t out there for him. It had gone down with Marley’s plane.

He was sick and tired of putting on that mask, the one his family needed to see in order for them to get off his back. The one that said he was all right with the world. The one that said he was halfway to happy.

The one that was a total fucking lie.

“What happened to that Sonya you brought here last weekend?”

Tucker’s frown deepened as his level of pissed off increased. “She bailed.”

“Wow. Can’t say that I’m surprised.”

Tucker glanced up. “Sounds like you aren’t a fan.”

“I’m not. What was her excuse? She had a pedicure scheduled and couldn’t miss it?”