The Trouble with Tomboys (Tommy Creek #1)(69)

him. He smiled, his eyes damp with emotion. “I never thought we’d see the old Grady again. He was so lost. But when he came into work this morning…”

For a second he looked too choked to speak.

Then he broke into another brilliant grin. “He was smiling. You made him smile.”

Emotions engulfing her, B.J. covered her mouth with her hands and burst into tears.

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Chapter Nineteen


B.J. didn’t want to blame it on Tucker’s visit, but after he left, something inside her shifted. After locking herself in the bathroom until she’d stopped bawling and the red blotchiness left her face, she emerged a different woman entirely, humming as she returned to her plane.

Leroy paused to send her a strange look.

“What?” she asked as she moved by.

“You okay?” he asked, wrinkling his face and sending her the strangest expression.

She frowned. “Sure. Why?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. You’re just acting awfully...girly all of the sudden.”

B.J. rolled her eyes and turned away. “Well, thank God I’m a girl then.”

She knew he continued to watch her, but she

kept ignoring him. After a moment, he said, “Them pregnancy hormones are really messing with you, ain’t they?”

When she glanced his way, he actually looked concerned, like there might really be something medically wrong with his sister.

“Shut up,” she muttered and flipped him the

bird. His face cleared, and his shoulders slumped in relief, but he sent his own dirty hand-signal back in return. Then he turned and strode off. She could’ve sworn she heard him say, “Thank God,” as he walked away.

B.J. stared after him for a moment, absolutely stunned. Her butt-headed brother had actually been 212



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worried about her. The sudden softness she felt for him shocked her even more.

Hell, maybe there was something wrong with her. If there was, she knew exactly what the source was. One Grady Jace Rawlings. If she’d acted a little too feminine today, it was purely his fault. The guy made her emotions go haywire.

She was in love with him, and that scared the piss out of her. Suddenly, she wanted to make this marriage thing work...not just work. She wanted to make it succeed. She wanted it to be permanent, and she wanted to be as important to him as...well, hell, as important as Amy had been.

Sobering, she straightened.

There was no way she’d find equal footing with Amy. No freaking way. But her heart still wished it...and B.J. couldn’t ignore the yearning. Thinking up ways to get him to feel at least half as much for her as he’d felt for his first wife, B.J. put in a discreet call to her new girl buddy, Jo Ellen.

If anyone knew how to be feminine and win over a man’s heart, it would be Grady’s utterly feminine sister.

****

By five o’clock, B.J. had started taking steps to finding her inner female. She’d stopped by Jo Ellen’s, and they’d talked for hours, discussing all the changes she could make to be less masculine.

Now, she knelt in the flower garden, muttering under her breath about all the freaking weeds. After visiting with Jo Ellen and then stopping by a boutique on the way home for a new nighty, she’d called Rudy for gardening advice.

Rudy gave her very strict instructions on

weeding, what to pull and what not to pull. So there she kneeled, down on her hands and knees, sweating in the dirt. As she worked relentlessly, a very small, very green grass snake slithered across her hand.

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B.J. screamed and jumped to her feet, immediately scrambling from the flowerbed. In her mind’s eye, the reptile was ten feet long. She could almost hear the twitching rattle of its tail and feel the white-hot venom from its fangs as it bit her right under the arm. Grady flew out the front door. “What’s wrong?”

he said, bounding off the porch, his eyes wide with concern.

B.J. didn’t think. She just leapt, landing in his surprised arms and nearly crawling up his leg she clung to him so tight.

“B.J.?” Grady took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her back so he could look her up and down, probably for blood. “What’s wrong?”

Reality finally returned, and she could only shake her head and move out of his concerned grasp.

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Yet she scanned the grass frantically as she spoke.

“You screamed,” he insisted.

“I did not.” But as soon as she spoke, she bit her lip, realizing screaming was a girly thing, and that was exactly what she’d been trying to accomplish.

Grady looked at her strangely. “I heard you

scream.”

“I do not...scream,” she stated firmly. Okay, so, in some ways she’d always be a tomboy, because no way on God’s green earth would she admit to screaming. “I might’ve let out a sound of surprise.

But your goddamn wrong if you think I screamed.”

Grady gaped a moment. Then he sputtered out a laugh and shook his head. “All right then,” he revised. “I heard your sound of surprise. So, what surprised you?”

B.J. mumbled about the snake, and Grady