Page 47 of The Trouble With Tomboys (Tommy Creek 1)

“Uh, I’ll just go start the pre-flight inspection before we take off,” Rudy said.

Leroy added, “Yeah, I’ll help.”

The two stumbled over each other in their haste to flee.

B.J. watched them go. Cowards. Thanks a lot, guys, she wanted to call after them. Abandon your own sister to the big bad wolf. But instead she stood her ground and faced off with Tucker Rawlings alone.

“Well, I guess I should’ve expected to see you sooner or later,” she said.

Instead of answering, Tucker glanced toward the television just in time to catch Jeff Gordon nosedive into the very wall B.J. had predicted he would. She’d never felt so sick about winning twenty bucks in her life.

“You like to gamble, do you, B.J.?” Grady’s father asked, letting her know he’d been standing behind her long enough to catch her wager with Rudy.

She didn’t answer. But he obviously didn’t expect her to because he continued talking. His eyes met hers, so brilliantly blue, for a moment she felt like she was looking at his son. “What say the two of us make our own wager?”

Her tension was so great, she couldn’t even sweat. “’Bout what?”

One corner of Rawlings’s mouth curved up as he sent her an amused look. “’Bout my son, of course.”

B.J. shuddered out a breath, knowing this conversation was somehow going to leave her damaged. Seriously damaged. “What about him?”

Instead of responding, he turned away to watch Rudy and Leroy walk around her Cessna. “That airplane’s yours, right?” he asked and glanced back over his shoulder at her.

She gave a brief nod, uneasy about his interest in her baby.

“You owe, what, thirty-three grand on it, don’t you?”

B.J.’s stomach dropped. It felt like someone had just pushed her over the edge of the Grand Canyon, and she dangled there in space for a split second before falling. But what the—

He’d nosed into her debts? Into her plane? What did he want with her plane? Why would he bring her plane into this?

Realizing this conversation had just taken a turn she knew was headed down a doomed path, she stood steady. Petrified, but steady. “It’s thirty-two and half,” she corrected, feigning all the courage and bravado she didn’t feel.

“Actually, it’s thirty-two thousand, six hundred twenty-three dollars and eighty-eight cents if I paid it off today.”

“If you paid it off?” she repeated.

“Okay,” he revised on a shrug. “Not if. When.” He reached back to his hip pocket and produced a thick envelope. “The deed to your Cessna. I just paid it off.”

B.J.’s vision blurred. For a moment, her equilibrium shorted out. She had no idea if she was vertical or not. She must’ve swayed, reached out her hand for support, or something because the next word out of Tucker’s mouth was, “B.J.?” He sounded concerned. Steady fingers dug into her bicep, grounding her.

She blinked him back into focus and brushed his hand away. “I’m fine.” Turning away so he couldn’t see her face that had no doubt lost its color, she repeated, “I’m fine.” But in the next breath, she rasped, “Oh, my God. You bought my plane.”

Spotting the pile of tires she’d won off Ralphie, she plopped down on top of the stack and looked up at Grady’s father. “What. . .what do you want from me?”

He took his time answering her. After blowing out a long, steady breath, he said, “Grady’s bound and determined to marry you to set this thing with the baby right.”

B.J. snorted. “Well, I already told him no, so you don’t have to worry none there.”

Tucker gave a slight, amused smile. “You don’t understand. After everything my boy’s been through in the past three years, I’m just as bound and determined to see he gets everything he wants.” His gaze slid to her, his unfinished sentence lingering thick in the air. . . And he wants you.

B.J. shivered and sucked in a stuttered breath. “So, uh. . .you bought my plane so I would marry him? Wow. That’s not what I expected.”

Tucker laughed softly. “It’s a little more involved than that.”

B.J.’s hopes sunk. “Of course it is.”

“If you thought was I going to pay you off and try to run you out of town, you weren’t too far off,” Tucker admitted. “That was my initial reaction. But. . .Grady’s been different lately. He actually mentioned. . .this week he talked some about what happened to Amy.”

---