Carrie ignored Mack’s comment and asked, “You guys want grape Kool-Aid?”

“Jesus, is that what you’re drinking?” Mack asked.

“Yes,” Caroline answered.

“Little kids drink that,” Mack noted.

“Laurie and me are always kids when we’re home,” Carrie replied. “You know that.”

“God’s honest truth,” Mack muttered in a way that stated plainly this was not a good thing as he shook his head while glancing at Tate then he looked back at Carrie.

“You have a grape Kool-Aid mustache,” he told Carrie and Carrie swiped the back of her wrist along her mouth at the same time she cried, “I do not!”

And she didn’t, Mack was just teasing which was why he grinned.

She stuck her purple tongue out at him and looked at Tate. “You want a Coke?”

“Yeah,” Tate replied.

“I’ll have a Coke too,” Mack put in as Carrie and I swung the hammock back so she could get out.

“You can get it yourself,” she muttered as she rolled out of the hammock to her feet. Then she rounded the hammock, jumped up on the patio and headed toward the door.

“I see the Grahame sisters have matching attitude,” Tate murmured to Mack and my eyes narrowed on him but Mack chuckled.

“It’s in the genes. Jeannie’s shell-shocked ‘cause Gavin’s in ICU. Just wait until he’s fit. He’ll be fakin’ a heart attack to get some rest from the drama,” Mack returned.

“Mack!” I snapped. “Mom’s sweet as pie.”

“Yeah, to you. You got balls, she’ll bust ‘em,” Mack retorted and my eyes cut to Tate firstly because he’d accused me of busting his balls and secondly because he’d burst out laughing.

“Shit man, you’re gonna catch it,” Mack warned a still chuckling Tate as he watched me glare at the still chuckling Tate. “I’m gonna get a Coke.”

Then Mack walked to the patio, jumped up on it and headed to the house.

Tate walked to me and then smoothly entered the hammock to lie at my side like he slept in one nightly since he could walk.

Regardless of the fact that I was in no danger of spillage, I snapped, “Watch my Kool-Aid!”

“Babe,” was his reply.

I glared at him.

He reached across his abs, wrapped an arm around my waist and curled me so I was on my side and resting the length of him. He also did this without endangering my Kool-Aid.

I decided to ignore him and take a sip.

Tate watched me doing this and remarked, “You grew up in heaven.”

I swallowed, dropped my tumbler hand to rest on his chest, glanced at him, lifted up and looked. I saw sun dazzling lights on the pond; the long, green front yard Dad kept neat and trimmed; the lush, dense trees at the foot; the farmland beyond that; and Mom’s tidy, flourishing garden on the opposite side of the pond where she planted strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, regular corn and popcorn every year.

I looked back at Tate and whispered, “Yeah.”

“The first time I met you, you told me you grew up here, I’d call you a liar,” Tate informed me.

I tipped my head to the side and asked, “Really?”

“Really.”

“Why?”

“High-class,” he replied.

“Sorry?”

“You looked high-class,” he semi-repeated.

“I’m not,” I stated.

“No, Ace, you’re not. You’re a different kind of class.”

“Farmer class.”

“Pure class.”

That was so nice, and so unexpected, before I could stop myself, I melted into him, my face getting closer to his.

“Tate,” I whispered.

His hand slid from my waist partly up my back.

“You get grape Kool-Aid on my tee, babe, it’s gonna piss me off,” he lied and I knew it was a lie from the look on his face which was sweet and soft and more handsome than he ever looked.

“I’m not going to get Kool-Aid on your tee,” I returned quietly.

He rolled into me and I had no choice but to lift the tumbler and hold it behind his back.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad,” he said, his face in my neck, his beard tickling my throat. “You could lick it off.”

“Captain, we can’t fool around in the hammock at the front of my Mom and Dad’s house with Mack and Carrie in the house,” I informed him as his lips and beard slid up the underside of my chin.

When they reached my mouth, he whispered, “Yeah, sucks.”

He was not wrong.

Suddenly his head came up and he looked over his shoulder.

I looked too, in time to see a police cruiser followed closely by a silver sedan coming around the bend and up my parent’s curving, gravel lane.

“What the f**k?” Tate murmured then I knew he saw what I saw and that was Brad driving the silver sedan. I knew this because he bit out a repeated, “What the f**k?”

Before I knew it we were both rolling out of the hammock and, with Tate firmly guiding our actions, I had a task of keeping my grape Kool-Aid safe. Tate grabbed my hand and dragged me around the tree and we both jumped up the two foot high side of the patio. Caroline and Mack came out of the house, Carrie still holding her tumbler, Mack had two cans of Coke in his hands. They both looked at Tate and me then they looked to the side of the house where the cruiser and the sedan were parking. We all met up and walked toward the side together but stopped when a uniformed policeman entered view and on his heels Brad followed.

Wonderful. Brad.

Again.

The policeman’s eyes scanned us all but they jerked back to Tate, got wide, he stutter stepped and then halted, staring bug-eyed at Tate like he would stare at a movie star he just happened to bump into on a farm in middle Indiana.

“You’re Tatum Jackson,” he whispered and I stared at him then swung my head to look at Tate thinking he must be a really good bounty hunter if a policeman four states away knew who he was.

“I know you?” Tate asked.

“Tatum…” Mack started, trailing off and my eyes moved to him to see he was looking at Tate like he hadn’t seen him before. “Shit,” Mack muttered, “I knew there was something familiar…” he trailed off again as Brad spoke up.

“Yes, that’s him!” he was pointing at Tate. “That’s the man who assaulted me in the Marriott!”

My head twisted around and it did it fast so I could glare at Brad.