You Can Go Home Again Read online

  You Can Go Home Again

  by

  OTKRomance

  A Newsite Web Services Book

  Published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2011 © by OTKRomance

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by

  mimeograph or any other means, without permission of

  the author or Newsite Web Services, LLC

  Published by Newsite Web Services, LLC

  P.O. Box 1286, Loganville, Georgia 30052 USA

  www.shop.thebookpress.com

  [email protected]

  disciplineanddesire.com

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, places,

  and events are purely coincidental.

  E-book Edition ISBN 978-1-60850-275-2

  Cover image credit: “Couple in Love”

  by dgphotography/www.bigstockphoto.com

  Other Books by OTKRomance

  Not Fade Away

  Promises

  Stories to Keep You Warm at Night

  Lucky in Love

  Tails of the Old West

  Cowboy Love

  Gabby’s Secret

  The Brat Next Door

  A Match Made in Heaven

  The Wedding Lingerie

  Ch 1

  Ch 2

  Ch 3

  Ch 4

  Ch 5

  Ch 6

  Ch 7

  Ch 8

  Ch 9

  Ch 10

  Chapter One

  Becky Atlee juggled the two grocery bags that grew heavier with every step. Thank goodness she was almost home.

  She popped the earpiece from her cell phone out of her ear and frowned, thinking over the last voicemail message, as she walked the remaining few feet to her brownstone. Why had Amy sounded so upset…?

  Her eyes, downcast on the evening sidewalk in front of her feet, caught on the toe of a weathered, yet familiar, cowboy boot as she pivoted to start up the steps to her building, and her heart froze. Her gaze dragged up the lean, muscular legs, the tapered waist, the broad shoulders, and stopped on the handsome, beloved face, as she gasped in surprise, both bags slipping from her hands to land at her feet with an audible crash!

  Well, now she knew why Amy had been trying to get hold of her all day long – she’d been trying to warn Becky that Tucker was going to be in town.

  “Well, Red, it’s about damn time you showed your pretty little face,” Tucker Rhodes admonished in his lazy redneck drawl, as he unfolded himself from her front steps and wrangled her disheveled shopping items back into the grocery bags. She stood frozen stock still, unable to do anything but stare at him as he stood erect again and hitched both bags easily into one burly arm. Her gaze again slid involuntarily over his hard, working man’s muscles, up the long frame of his tall body, and finally came to rest on his easy going, masculine face. He didn’t look a bit different than he had fourteen months ago, when she’d last seen him. Yet, somehow, the flyaway wisps of his long, dirty blond hair tugged at her heart. The cleft in his chin begged for her lips to press against it. The hollow of his stubbled neck promised the smell that was uniquely his and that came to her sometimes in her dreams.

  And his clear, spring green eyes met hers with an intensity that made her stomach twist.

  Her traitorous heart was knocking so hard against her ribcage that she half expected to look down and see it burst from her chest.

  Becky feigned a heavy sigh that was meant to convey her supposed displeasure at Tucker’s unexpected appearance on her front steps, but was really just an attempt to try to calm her suddenly racing pulse, then looked up into his beloved face, and said, “What are you doing here, Tucker?”

  He indicated the brownstone with a motion of his head. “Let’s talk inside. I’ve been sitting out here over an hour, and my ass feels damn near froze solid.”

  Reluctantly, Becky followed Tucker up the stone steps, her gaze naturally drawn to the tight, jeans-encased area of his body that he had just referred to.

  “You seem to have a good building here, at least,” he was saying, as she punched in her code to access the inside of the brownstone. “Lots of security. No one would even give me the time of day, let alone let me inside. ‘Course, that just goes to show you how dangerous it really must be in this area, if the security has to be so tight at your apartment building.”

  Becky stifled another sigh, this one purely born of frustration. She wasn’t surprised to hear Tucker start in on New York; from the time she’d first mentioned that she was moving here, she’d heard nothing but horror stories about it from him. A country man born, bred, and always, Tucker could never fathom her current choice in residence no matter how many times she tried to explain it to him.

  In the foyer, Tucker stood to the side while Becky did a quick mail check, then trudged up the next flight of steps with him following along behind her. She unlocked the door to her small apartment and preceded him inside, turning around to watch as he entered and took in the little piece of New York that was her own.

  Kicking the door shut behind him, Tucker immediately locked it with his free hand and then went straight to the counter in her kitchen where he deposited her bags. She waited for the negative comments to come, watching him closely. This is it? he’d say… or This is why you want to stay in this God-forsaken city?

  But he didn’t say any of it. Instead, he started taking things from her grocery bags and putting them away in her cabinets – and in all the right cabinets at that, just like he lived here, for crying out loud, which really grated on her nerves!

  “Tucker,” Becky said in a voice carefully controlled, but tight with impatience. “What the hell is going on? Why are you here in New York?”

  He paused in his work and met her gaze. “I’ve come to take you home, Beck. Mark has finally gone and done it. He died of a drug overdose last night.”

  Her immediate internal response to that was: Oh, mama…. But she carefully hid any feelings about his statement, and within barely a blink of time responded with, “Well, what the hell took the bastard so long, anyhow?”

  Tucker looked her up and down, not judgmentally, but searchingly, like he was trying to find any missing emotions she might be hiding from him. She wanted to shout at him to stop looking at her that way because, of all people, he should have known that she wouldn’t have any emotions except relief where this news was concerned. Pity for her mother was a side effect, yes, but there was little to be done about that.

  Carefully, like he was talking to a time bomb that could detonate at any wrong word that might accidentally fall from his lips, Tucker said, “He was your brother, Beck…”

  “No,” she interrupted adamantly, holding up a protesting hand. “There’s two things wrong with that statement. I haven’t had a real brother in fifteen years – and even if he was my brother by my own bad luck and genetics, it doesn’t mean that I have to care that he’s gone now because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Look, I know you’ve never been his biggest fan…” Tucker began in a slightly cajoling voice.

  Becky snorted. “Can you blame me? He’s done nothing his entire life but hurt my mother and father, leach everything he could get off of them, and then turn around and verbally and physically abuse them every chance he got!”

  Tucker nodded. “I know, Becky. I’m not asking you to come home to see him put to rest. I’m asking you to come home and be there for your mom. She needs you right now.”

  Becky found herself suddenly blinking back against hot, pressing tears. She took a few cleansing breaths before trusting herself to speak clearly.
“You know that’s not true. You know as well as I do that we haven’t talked to each other in over fourteen months.”

  “That was your choice,” Tucker reminded her softly, “not hers.” He stopped the process of unpacking her groceries and met her gaze directly. “You need to go to her now. It’s time to mend the wounds between you two.”

  She folded her arms across her chest in a defensive stance. “I… She… She won’t want me there…”

  “Yes, she will.”

  “Did she ask you to come and get me?” she pressed him.

  Tucker lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “She didn’t have to. I know she wants you there. And besides that, Red, you’re all the family that she has left now.”

  Becky stared at him. “She has you… you’ve always been as good as a son to her – better even than the son that she had by blood.”

  Tucker shook his head. “I’m not you,” he said. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “I can’t just go off, just like that, you know,” Becky said defensively, as she watched him put the last of the groceries away and then fold up the two paper bags. He wedged them between the side of her little refrigerator and the wall, where she had a small collection of paper bags already started. “I have a job. I…I…”

  “That’s been taken care of already,” he interrupted her. “I called your boss this morning and explained the situation to her. She was very sympathetic and told me you had plenty of personal time accrued and that you should use as much or all of it, even, as you might need.”

  For the second time in twenty minutes time, Becky found herself staring, speechless, at the man before her.

  “You called my boss?” she thundered, incredulous.

  “Yup.”

  His agreement was completely unabashed, almost proud. She wanted to slug him.

  “I wasn’t about to come all this way, you see, and then let you wiggle out of this by giving me some horseshit excuse about your job.” His gaze narrowed on her. “You forget how well I know you, Red. You never use personal or sick time unless someone makes you do it. You’re a workaholic.”

  “Yeah, and you’re a meddling asshole!” she shot back, so frustrated she couldn’t think of anything more insulting or profound to slay him with.

  “’Tsk ‘tsk. Don’t resort to name calling, sugar.”

  To her dismay, Becky felt her cheeks warm at the mild rebuke, and the memories of what similar displays of language had resulted in for her over the years. Annoyed with her reaction almost as much as she was by Tucker’s characteristic high-handedness, Becky made a low, growling sound in her throat and stamped her foot. “Look here, Tucker, I am not going home with you! I am not going to the funeral. I am not going anywhere….”

  “Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough earlier when I said that I was ‘asking’ you to come home – I’m not really asking, you see. Because asking implies that you have a choice here, and really there is none. You will come with me, Red. Make no mistake about it. How you come is up to you, but I am not returning to Pennsylvania without you in tow.”

  Becky glared at him. “You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. You… we… you’re not my fiancé anymore, in case you haven’t noticed! You don’t have any say in what I do or where I go…”

  The grin he sent her way had a dark, dangerous glint to it. “You were the one who ended the engagement,” Tucker reminded her. “I never wanted that. I still want you. And so you see how I can think that I still do have something of a say in what you do and where you go, at least, in this one instance.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Now, we have exactly four hours before our plane leaves. Considering drive time and check in time at the airport, that leaves you exactly twenty minutes to get your little behind back into your bedroom to pack for your trip.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Becky insisted stubbornly, arms folded decisively over her chest.

  Now Tucker’s grin widened. “All right, now, so we’re going to play this game, are we?” Out of the corner of her eye, Becky saw him unbutton one sleeve of his flannel shirt. He flipped it up, inside out, and began to fold it up several more times until it rested just beneath the level of his elbow. “I’m going to count to three, Red. And if you haven’t hightailed it out of this room by then, by God, your butt is mine.”

  “What a surprise,” she scoffed. She glanced at the kitchen clock. “And imagine, it only took you twenty-five minutes before throwing a spanking threat my way.”

  His eyes glimmered. “I wouldn’t have to resort to it at all, if you’d just act like an adult every once in a while and be reasonable.” He watched her, as she glowered back at him, standing her ground. “So what’s it going to be, sugar? You going to come along nicely with me to Pennsylvania, or do I blister your backside first and let you squirm on it the whole ride home?”

  In a tone meant to grate on his control, she carefully enunciated her response through gritted teeth, as though speaking to someone either very dense or of another country who spoke only a little English. “I’m-not-go-ing-any-where-with-you!”

  A deep, masculine chuckle shook through Tucker’s chest, and despite herself Becky felt her toes curl in response to that sound. She remembered times when they had made love, tousling and playfully wrestling in the sheets, when that laugh of his had started in his belly but felt like it ended inside of her because their lips had been locked at the time. She felt color rise to her cheeks at the memory.

  “All right then, miss, if that’s how you want it,” Tucker was saying, oblivious to her thoughts. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” With one hand, he reached into the drawer to his right and immediately extracted the largest wooden spoon that Becky owned. How he knew where to find it was a mystery she never would understand, and she mentally laughed, thinking he must have some kind of spanker’s radar. Holding the painful-looking utensil up for her to see, in case she’d somehow missed it, he sang out, “One.”

  Later, Becky would wonder why she didn’t just run for it then. She could have taken off for her bedroom, locked the door and gone out the window and down the fire escape. But she didn’t. She stood her ground shakily, staring wide-eyed from that spoon to Tucker’s face.

  Of course, subconsciously, she knew how fast Tucker was. And how much more angry he would have gotten had there been a chase. He probably would have spanked her every hour on the hour along the way back home had she made a run for it when she had the chance.

  “Two…”

  “This is absolutely ridiculous!” Becky protested, still somehow holding her ground. “I am a grown woman, for God’s sake, and I can make my own decis—”

  “Three!”

  “Oh, shit!”

  The time for action had come, and Becky took off down the hall as fast as she could. But, as always, Tucker was still faster. He snatched her clear off her feet and had her twisted around his hip, her bottom propped in the air on his raised knee in seconds. To her mortification, she felt his hand as he fisted her sweatpants at the waist and a second later shucked them down over her hips to puddle on the floor. Her plain cotton panties immediately followed.

  And barely a breath later, before she could even gather enough air to voice any kind of protest, before she could figure out the best way to wiggle out of his grasp, the first fiery splat of that wooden spoon made its mark on her naked backside.

  It had been over a year since Becky had endured a spanking at this man’s hands. And good God, how it did hurt to have her memory refreshed!

  Tucker was merciless with the wide wooden spoon, dealing out smart, stinging raps all over her backside, deaf to her howls and pleas. Her skin reddened quickly under the deluge of smacks, and her bottom literally bounced with the impact of his blows. Becky called him every dirty name she could think of only to have him repay her in a faster, more furious barrage of spanks. Her body bucked in time to the tempo of the spanking stick he yielded, a dance of punishment that was a fight for dominance and concession of her will to
his desire.

  The sounds of the spanking seemed deafening in her tiny apartment, and Becky was sure that her neighbors could hear everything through her paper-thin walls. Mr. Thompson, across the hall from her, who always pounded on the wall for her to ‘turn down that blasted music’ would probably run over any minute now and beg to lend a hand with her comeuppance. She’d been determined at first not to add any sounds of her own distress to the loud slaps and smacks echoing in the apartment, but with each new stinging bite of wood on flesh, her resolve not to cry was rapidly dwindling.

  “Anytime you want me to stop, you just say you’ll come back home with me, and that’ll be it,” Tucker graciously offered her.

  “You can go to hell, you bastard,” she hissed at him over one shoulder.

  The spank that followed that response resulted in the handle of the wooden spoon cracking in half.

  With a disgruntled noise at the interruption, Tucker threw the ruined implement aside, shifted Becky slightly to allow for a better target, and began anew with the wide, hard surface of his hand.

  “I can do this all night, Red,” he told her now. “I’m sure you remember that from experience. But if you make us miss the plane because of this, I promise you, you will have a freshly battered behind each and every day that you’re home.”

  Becky gritted her teeth and hung onto her precarious position half over his hip, half over his raised knee. She blinked back the first tears from the spanking and allowed herself the smallest of yelps and groans. The position he had her in was too tenuous to attempt to struggle too much; she’d either wind up landing face first on the floor, or Tucker would simply carry her a few feet over to the kitchen table, take a seat in one of her chairs and start anew, reenergized and renewed with a much more comfortable position to work in. She was totally at his mercy.

  Yet, despite the pain and her odd position, the contact of his hand on her bottom, even in this harsh manner, did strange, familiar things to Becky. Even though it hurt, and badly, she found herself aching between her legs, and almost lifting herself up for his assault. Her sex clenched as if reaching for him, and she felt her nipples grow taut, awaiting a gentle hand upon them. And these traitorous reactions, more than anything he had said, more than the pain of the spanking, or the guilt of knowing she should do the right thing and be there for her mother at this hard time, made her shout for him to stop, that she’d go with him after all.