The Bourbon Thief(79)

“I already know all your secrets,” Levi said.

“You don’t know this one.”

“Is the secret that you’re sorry you’re so rotten and you drive me crazy and you promise you won’t interrupt me when I’m reading anymore? Is that your secret?”

“No.”

“Then keep it to yourself.”

Tamara huffed and slammed the window shut. Then she opened it again and peeked out. Damn that man. She shouldn’t let him work with Bowen anymore. Before they’d come to Bride Island, he’d had a nice body, lean and rangy, and she’d loved watching him mucking out stalls with no shirt on his back when he worked for her grandfather. After two months working the Bride Island cooperage, hauling logs, lifting barrels, cutting and sanding, and doing all sorts of hard heavy work, Levi’s shoulders had grown broader, his stomach flatter, and his biceps were everything a girl wanted her husband’s biceps to be. Even his hands were different, calloused all over especially on the fingertips, and when he touched her inside, magical things happened. She was about to give up and make some magic on her own when she was hit with inspiration.

Tamara ran downstairs, checking the floor for snakes as she crossed to the kitchen—it had become a habit—and ran out the back door across the sundeck Levi and Bowen had built last week.

“Finally she gets her ass in gear to clean,” Levi said as Tamara breezed past him, attempting to ignore him even if she did want to dive onto his half-naked body like Mark Spitz into a swimming pool.

“I’m not cleaning. I’m riding,” Tamara said as she skipped the steps and jumped off the low deck onto the ground and kept running.

Levi yelled something after her. She heard the words lazy and ass and ignored both of them. He had this crazy notion that just because he and Bowen had done the horse-stall building, she was under some obligation to do the horse-stall cleaning. Didn’t the horses of Chincoteague Island run free and wild? They didn’t need stalls. They didn’t need people changing their straw. Levi hadn’t been convinced by this argument, noting that Rex was a Tennessee Walker, not a Chincoteague pony, and if she wanted a Chincoteague pony, she could go catch one herself. He’d be standing by with the ambulance and the priest to perform last rites when her attempt to wrestle one of the wild beasts into a bridle inevitably failed. He’d miss her, Levi had said. They’d bury her on Bride Island, and he and Rex would visit her grave twice a year, on Easter and Christmas.

Well, Tamara told herself, she had only herself to blame for marrying the meanest man on earth.

But two could play that game. She might not be a Maddox by blood, but she had been raised by them, and if there was anything a Maddox knew how to do, it was how to be real damn mean.

Tamara took Rex by the bridle and guided him into his stall. It wasn’t much of a stall, not much more than a big fancy lean-to, but it kept him and his oats dry when the inevitable rainstorms hit and they hit about twice a week. She loved those storms, especially when they hit at night. The air turned electric and the little hairs on her arms stood up and her skin prickled, and when the thunder boomed, it would wake up Levi and what’s a man and his wife going to do in the middle of the night when a storm hits except each other?

No storm was happening right at the moment and yet Tamara’s skin tingled in a pleasant sort of way and she felt restive and twitchy, overly aware of her body and the lack of her husband on top of it and inside it. The warm summer breeze tickled her arms and her back and her belly, and the earth under her naked feet was soft and spongy, and it made her want to run fast and jump high and roll in the dirt like an animal. Was this how Rex felt before a storm? They weren’t expecting a storm today, so Tamara would have to make her own rain.

As Tamara saddled Rex, she discovered she was grinning ear to ear and so hard it made her face hurt. It was good to be happy again. She felt like herself again, her old self, before the flood. Except life was better after the flood, since Levi wasn’t just Granddaddy’s groom. He was her husband, her lover and the source of every good thing she had in her life. Which was why she couldn’t keep her hands off him and why she was determined to get his hands back on her as soon as possible.

Right this second.

Tamara tapped her heels into Rex’s sides and they moseyed out of the stall and up to the deck.

Levi didn’t look at her. Not once.

“Husband?” Tamara asked as she steered Rex past the deck. “Don’t you think it’s a nice day for a ride?”

“I’m sure it is if you say it is.” Levi turned a page in his book. “It is also a nice day for a read.”

His eyes were hidden behind his dark aviator sunglasses, and a lock of hair fell over his forehead. His hair needed a trimming, but she hoped he hadn’t realized that yet. She liked it longer and shaggier. He’d warned her that thanks to his mother’s side of the family, his hair would sport Shirley Temple curls if he let it get too long. Tamara wanted to see that with her own eyes.

Tamara led Rex on a quick circuit of the house before traipsing past the deck again.

“I read a book once,” Tamara said, grateful for Rex’s smooth gait.

“Good for you, baby. Now go read another one.”

“I wasn’t finished with my story. I read a book once about a lady whose husband was mean and awful.”

“Was it called The Autobiography of Tamara Shelby?”