"So … are you up for another go?"

"Wow. Don't you ever get tired?"

"Not when you're here, I don't."

He smiled shyly, his dimples flashing at her.

She smiled back, readjusting her robe where it had slipped off one shoulder.

"Well … okay. I guess I'm up for another hand. If it's not too late?"

"Not at all."

He tapped the deck of cards on the table and split them, shuffling expertly as he watched her.

"Hearts again, or are you ready for something a little more … serious?"

"Serious, huh? Hmm … are we talking 21?"

"Blackjack? Okay. I was thinking pinochle but blackjack's good if you're willing to ante up. Hey, would you like some coffee - or maybe another glass of wine?"

"Do you have decaf?"

"Sure. It'll be ready in a sec."

Bucky put the cards down on his dining room table and walked into the kitchen of his spacious Nashville condo, pulling a coffee can out of his pantry. Tandy turned and watched him, smiling to herself at the tidy way he measured out the grounds and the precision with which he poured filtered water into the reservoir of his coffeemaker.

He was a neat man, her …. Tandy stopped and thought a moment, listening to him hum "Wrong Song" under his breath as he pulled cups and saucers from his kitchen cupboard and set them out on a tray.

Her … boyfriend? Now that they were both divorced – or getting there - she and Rayna had recently talked about how silly that word sounded when applied to men their age. "So, what do you tell people he is? Your 'boyfriend'? Dear god – boys get up and go to junior high school every morning. There's got to be a better word, doesn't there?" she'd asked, and her sister had nodded slowly.

"I think I'm just going to say Deacon and I are 'seeing each other' and leave it at that. That's vague enough, I hope. Of course there's always - what are they calling it? A 'friend with benefits'?" Rayna had offered.

"Oh honey, that's so crass! Can you imagine what Daddy would say to that?"

The two of them had dissolved into laughter at the mere thought of their father's reaction to modern dating lingo, and the discussion had ended there - though Tandy's dilemma had not.

Of course there was lover, she thought now, but although it was technically accurate, thinking of slight, balding Bucky as her lover only made Tandy want to giggle. That word described something passionate, something dramatic - something epic.

Rayna and Deacon? Yes. They might be called lovers. But she and Bucky?

Gads …

Tandy tended to think that term was altogether better reserved for the icky couple in the SNL sketch she remembered - the one that featured Will Ferrell in a hot tub.

Indeed, Tandy wasn't quite sure what to think of this … special friendship … that she'd developed over the past few months with Rayna's long-time manager, a man she had known on a first-name basis for years but had only recently gotten to know … in the biblical sense of the word.

At the moment, her gentleman friend – that might be the most pleasant way to describe him, she thought – was padding out of the kitchen in his striped robe and blue slippers, carrying a tray and setting it down on the table. He placed a cup of coffee on a saucer in front of her, along with a spoon and a carton of the sweetened creamer she favored.

"Well! Thank you," she said, inclining her head at him. "You remembered."

"I did," he said, smiling. "Picked it up at the store the other day. I was hoping I might entice you to stay for breakfast sometime."

She paused a moment, his comment taking her aback. She'd been seeing Bucky since she and her nieces had accompanied Rayna to New York City a few months earlier. One evening after the show, they each found themselves at loose ends, and he'd surprised her with a dinner invitation. That led to lunch the next day and then more dinners - and concerts and movies – back home. They found they enjoyed each other's company and had more in common than either of them had realized.

Over the weeks, they'd started to make a habit of returning to his place for a drink and, eventually, one thing led to another. By now, it wasn't uncommon for them to skip the formal dates altogether. When he was in town, she'd come over on Friday nights after work, they'd have sex and then he'd cook, or order in, and they'd eat a late supper together, playing cards afterward or watching an old movie on TV.

He'd always extended the invitation for her to spend the night, but somehow that had never felt quite right. Instead, she would go home late, making some excuse about needing to be up early on Saturday, or having to get some work done before she turned in.

The old reluctance bubbled up again now.

"Well, thank you, Buck. That was awfully nice of you to buy that for me. It is my favorite. And I … I would like to stay - sometime. Tomorrow I told Daddy I'd be over early, though. He fired his nurse again and we've got the temp agency sending some new girls out to meet him, so …"

Bucky looked momentarily disappointed, but he recovered quickly.

"Of course; some other time. You know, I make a mean Denver omelette for Saturday breakfast. Or … cheese. I mean, I make cheese omelettes, too. Or ham and cheese, sometimes …"

They looked at each other for a moment, the silence growing progressively more awkward.

"So … uh, blackjack?" he asked.

"Gosh, you know, I'm actually kind of tired. Maybe I should call it a night. Rayna phoned me at the crack of dawn to help her plot her escape. She came up with the idea of stashing her car in my garage, so it'd be out of sight, and having Deacon pick her up at my place. You heard about all that, right?"

"What – she and Deacon taking off for his cabin this weekend? Yeah, I heard something about it. Just all week long, every single day, from both of them."

Bucky rolled his eyes and the two of them shared a laugh, back on comfortable ground again.

Rayna's manager was nothing if not discrete – he wouldn't have kept his job for the better part of two decades if he'd been anything but tight-lipped. In fact, he knew far more about Rayna's personal life than even she realized, but he'd never let anything slip that was less than professional or supportive of her.

With Rayna's sister, however, the confirmed bachelor had found a kindred spirit. And he had to admit he'd been letting his hair down – metaphorically speaking, of course – around Tandy. Rayna's drama never seemed to end, and it provided plenty of fodder for the two of them to dish about. This was gossip neither of them could share with anyone else, especially since Deacon had stormed back into Rayna's romantic life in a big way.

"Oh my goodness, you should have seen them this afternoon! Deacon knew she wanted to wait until the girls got home from school and Teddy showed up. But he still got to my place half an hour early and paced my porch until he just about drove me to distraction. I finally got him inside for coffee, and he stood there drinking it at my living room window!"

Bucky laughed, shaking his head.

"That sounds about like it. At least they got up there okay. It was later than they hoped; they must have hit some traffic. She left me a voicemail a couple hours ago with some telephone number she wants me to use for her this weekend. I guess there's no cell service at the cabin."

"Oh, okay. She left that number on my voicemail, too."

Bucky stood up and wound a rubber band around the deck of cards, stashing them in a drawer in his sideboard. Then he went into the kitchen and came back with the coffee, refreshing both of their cups and setting the empty pot aside.

"Well, I certainly hope they have a good time and get some of this ... stuff out of their systems, you know what I mean?" he asked.

The two of them laughed again, conspiratorially.

"Oh yeah, I sure do. Though I wouldn't be too optimistic about that ever happening. You remember what the guys used to say about them in the old days?" Tandy offered.

"Ummm … "

"That they couldn't be in the same zip code for five minutes without screwing?"

Bucky sat stunned for a moment, while Tandy burst out laughing. Then he joined her. A sophisticated Southern lady, Tandy tended toward refinement in all things. So when she let loose with one of her more outrageous statements, he was always momentarily shocked – and secretly pleased.

Her wicked sense of humor was one of the ways she most resembled her sister, and one of the things he liked best about her.

"Oh yeah, I do remember a lot of teasing along those lines," he acknowledged. "I guess … um, physical attraction was never on their list of troubles, huh?"

"That's an understatement. But anyway, I hope they have a good time. And I hope he lets her get some sleep. Otherwise, she'll come back more exhausted than if she'd been chasing around after the girls all weekend."

Bucky nodded, his expression turning serious.

"Honestly, it's been really hard on her, being away from him. Especially right now, when they're..."

"Obsessed with each other?"

"Yeah, something like that. Distracted, anyway. Do you know she missed a cue last week? In Vegas. She's never done that before – that I remember - but this was the second time in the past few months. It wasn't a big deal, she picked up her entrance again right away, but the guys noticed. They think it's still the divorce and all the bad publicity bugging her."

"And you think-?"

"I think it was Deacon, that time – just missing him, really. She's so used to having him around when she's out on the road; she's always relied on him being there. Now, she just walks around kind of staring off into space half the time, with the funniest little smile on her face …"

"Oh my god – I've seen that goofy smile. I know exactly what you mean!"

The two of them were laughing again. Tandy reached over and squeezed Bucky's hand, thinking about how easy it was to talk to this man, who was practically a member of the Wyatt family after all these years. She looked at him, appreciating his sweet smile, and realized he was a better listener than any man she'd ever known. He'd have to be, after years of trailing her chatty sister.

Well, now Rayna wasn't the only Wyatt getting the benefit of Bucky Dawes' talents, Tandy thought - including a few that Rayna clearly had never dreamed about.

"Hey, is there anything you can do? I mean, I know she can't officially hire him as her guitarist right now, since the band's under contract, but … I don't know. She sure would be easier to live with if Deacon could go out on the road with her, even if it's just for this last leg before she comes back for the CMA Awards."

"Well sure, she could bring him along without any problem, actually - if she wanted to call him a personal guest. But she's so concerned about keeping this thing under wraps."

They stared at each other a moment, and then each seemed to have an epiphany at the same moment.

"You know…" Bucky started, but Tandy interrupted him.

"I know – at least, I think I know - exactly what you're going to say."

He looked at her.

"You think we can figure this out? And should I call and tell her, or wait until she gets home? I don't want to bother her."

"Call her? Absolutely! She left us the number, right? She's definitely going to want to hear this. And Deacon will too, if we can pull it off. Let's put our thinking caps on," Tandy said.

"I thought you needed to get home. What about Lamar and his nurses?"

She looked at him seriously a moment, then walked around to his side of the table, leaned down and kissed him gently on the mouth.

"You know what? I think I will take you up on that breakfast offer. Daddy can interview his own goddamned nurses tomorrow. Maybe if he picks one himself, he'll be too stubborn to fire her next week."

Bucky smiled and took Tandy's hand. She smiled back at him.

"Hey, what kind of omelette did you say you make – Denver? That's starting to sound pretty good."

A/N: Thanks to Rachel Wilder for beta-reading this chapter.