Big Sky Eyes (2 page)

Chapter 2

Brent knew the Chevy was approaching long before it made it
to the top of the hill. The way Ty drove, he threw clouds of dust that could be
seen for miles. When the truck finally parked in front of the house, he had no
interest in its passengers. Ty had told him that the two of them would be
wrangling
the horses, instructing the guests and running the
trail rides for the summer along with Ty’s cousin Kelly and a school friend.

“Great,” Brent had drawled.
“Babysitting
tourists
and
teenage girls.
Just what I had planned for my summer.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ty had replied. “You didn’t plan anything for
your summer, Brent, because you are way more boring than you think you are.”

That comment had indeed shut him up. Shut him up and pissed
him off. So he’d grabbed an axe and was well into chopping enough wood to last
through the whole summer and most of fall. He couldn’t believe what he’d be
forced to endure. He remembered Ty’s cousin from when she had been out to visit
during Christmas three years ago. She had been fifteen then and the unashamed
owner of every annoying teenage habit in existence. Brent had been twenty-one
and found it almost intolerable.

He heard the rising female voices behind him followed by
their squeals and cackles and he shook his head with a roll of his eyes. How
would he ever survive the season?

“Brent!” he heard Bev’s call. “Put down that axe and come on
over here and say hello to my gals!”

It was the last thing Brent wanted to do, but he would never
disrespect Bev, so he stuck the axe blade into the tree stump, grabbed his
flannel shirt and flung it over his shoulder and obeyed. From his distance,
they looked like two normal teenage girls, but he immediately noticed a shock
of curly red hair on fire in the fading sunlight. The other girl appeared to be
a blonde, so he knew the redhead had to be Kelly.

A wave of surprise washed through him. The pestering runt
had grown up.

And filled out.

Tremendously.
 

He definitely noticed the full and ruby red lips breaking
into a wide smile as he approached.

Mackenna was the first to admit the difficulty in deciding
which view of the man was the best: the back or the front. A shadow of stubble
covered the lower half of his face framing firm and full lips kinked into a
haughty grin. Like the rest of his body his face was bronzed from long days in
the sun, highlighting the lightness of his bright blue eyes. The muscles of his
torso were so big and taut that she wondered how his tank top remained intact.

She knew she was gawking and so shyly averted her eyes. They
fell onto his hands as he wiped them clean on his jeans. His fingers were long,
strong, and she’d bet anything that they were beautifully calloused. She forced
herself to swallow down the tiny flutters working up from her stomach to her
throat just as Brent stopped in front of them.

“Well, well, well,” he mused arrogantly, crossing his arms
over his chest. “Can this really be the teenage brat I met three years ago?”

Kelly piqued, and her cheeks flushed as brightly as her
hair. Mackenna’s own brow wrinkled defensively for her friend.

“Couldn’t have been me,” Kelly said in tamped down anger.
“I’ve never been a teenage brat.”

Brent laughed. “Yep, it was you. I’d remember that red hair
anywhere.”

Kelly pinched her lips into a thin line, unable to think of
a clever comeback.

“Don’t worry,” Brent brushed casually. “I can see that
you’ve…ah…” he looked her body up and down slowly, “grown up quite a bit since
then.”

The compliment had its intended affect and Kelly’s ire
disappeared, instantly replaced with her earlier infatuation. Her flush turned
to blush and she smiled demurely out of the corner of her mouth. Mackenna was
astonished to watch the stranger play her friend so expertly. He knew it, too,
for she also did not fail to notice the triumphant smirk on his face.

“Okay,” Bev interrupted the awkward silence that had fallen.
“So, you know Kelly. This, here, is Mackenna, Kelly’s best friend.”

Brent turned to her and each looked the other in the eye as
he held out his hand for a solid shake that Mackenna returned.

“Pleased to meet you,” she offered.

“Likewise,” he returned before he narrowed his eyes in study
of her features. “You have a very honest face.”

She furrowed her brow and answered, “And you have a very odd
way of speaking to women.”

He smiled with a soft chuckle. “Is that what you think are
you are?
A woman?”

“As much as any other, I imagine.”
 

“I suspect every teenage girl feels the same” he jeered.

Ty had returned through the door in time to witness the
pair’s introduction and he shook his head disapprovingly at his best friend.

“Jesus, Brent,” he admonished.
 
“Can you remember your manners, please?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Ty,” Mackenna offered nicely.
“Brent is just pleased to have a two kindred spirits here.”

Brent raised a questioning eyebrow at her.
“Kindred spirits?”

“Well, sure” she returned brightly. “With us two
kiddies
here, you won’t be burdened by
the great difficulty it so obviously is to act your own age.”

Bev chuckled once before biting her bottom lip to stifle the
rest, but Ty let his full laughter rumble from the depths. Brent’s features
remained unreadable but for what Mackenna determined was a tiny hint of humor
lighting his eyes as they locked onto hers.

“Come on,
kids
,”
Bev said. “Supper’s been waiting on you.”

As Bev and Kelly led into the house, Ty followed. Mackenna
took one step before Brent’s voice stopped her.

“So, you’re saying I’m immature?” His tone was challenging
and teasing all at once. Mackenna turned back toward him and cocked her head to
the side. She smiled sweetly with a feigned innocence and batted her eyelashes
before she spoke.

“I also have an honest tongue.”

With that, and one eyebrow spiking as mockingly high as his,
she turned and entered the house, leaving Brent chuckling good-naturedly and
genuinely amused.

Bev McCrae was accomplished in every way that a Montana
rancher’s wife should be. She could rope and ride. She never balked at blood or
blemish. She was thick and strong, wild and just plain good through and
through, and no one had ever cooked a better beef stew. She would tell you so
herself. As the entire McCrae family gathered to fill their bowls with it,
Kelly was busy locking arms and elbows with all manner of cousins.

Greetings flew across the room to Mackenna as well and she
felt quite at home as she filled a ladle and emptied it into her bowl. Brent
was soon beside her, standing so close that she could feel his body heat meddling
with hers.

“So,” he began, quietly speaking only to her. “You left me
out there thinking that I ought to just call a truce now and be done with it.”

“Oh, but it'd be so much more fun to cut each other down all
summer long," she returned with sarcasm. "You certainly proved that
you are quite capable of that."

“Well, truth be told, that show out there was more for
Kelly’s benefit.”

Mackenna laughed. “Oh, please. That show was for your
benefit and yours alone.” She scrunched her face and puffed her chest in a
caricature of him and said in a deep, mocking voice, “
No woman can refuse me….even after I insult her
.”

Brent laughed loud and long. His ego wanted to be offended.
It begged him to stomp away, but the rest of him knew her to be so right that
he couldn’t help but laugh.

“You
do
have an
honest tongue,” he relinquished and Mackenna seized the opportunity.

“Oh yeah, what the hell kind of line is that anyway?” she
asked. “You have an honest face? I mean, what does that mean? That’s like
saying ‘Hmmm, you’re not pretty, but I can’t really insult you, so what should
I say about you? Oh yeah, you have an
honest
face.’ I mean, really? Come on!”

“It wasn’t a line,” Brent defended. “I meant it. I mean
everything I say.”

“Everything?” she asked disbelievingly.

“Well, except for when I’m drunk. I don’t really know if I
believe half the stuff I say when I’m drunk.”

“Noted,” she quipped. “And you’re not drunk now?”

“Not hardly
,” he chuckled, filling
his bowl with stew.

“So, then I’m to assume that what you said about Kelly out
there is what you meant to say?”

“What? That she was a teenage brat when I met her? Or that
she has grown up since then?”

“I mean what you said with your eyes,” she answered,
stopping Brent in his tracks.

“And what did I say with my eyes?” he asked with measured
curiosity.

“You said, quite clearly I might add, something to the
effect of ‘She’s toast. I got this one.’”

Brent’s mouth nearly fell open. She was right. Kelly was so
readable and predictable. It didn’t take a genius to see the lust in her eyes,
indeed in her entire face, as he’d approached. With only two sentences spoken
to her, he thought the very thing that Mackenna had recognized: that Kelly
would be putty in his hands if he so wished it. Something in Mackenna’s tone in
pointing it out had made him feel guilty and ashamed.

His failure to respond was confirmation enough for Mackenna
and she determined right then and there that she did not like him and she shook
her head with a sigh. What’s more, she felt an inherent responsibility to
protect Kelly from his advances, and since she possessed both an honest face
and honest tongue, she told him so.

“Look, Brent. I’ve known the McCraes for most of my life,
especially Kelly and Ty. Now, Ty says you’re his best friend so there must be
more to you than what I’ve seen so far, but Kelly is my best and dearest
friend. She falls for guys easily, and she gets her heart broken easily. So, if
you can’t respect your ties to the McCraes and keep away from her, know this:
if you pursue her, she will fall for you, and I don’t want to see her hurt
again by someone just after a fling. I also don’t want anything to ruin this
wonderful Montana escape that she looks forward to every year.”

Brent stared, slack-jawed, as he battled
between angry and…well…really angry.
This girl, this teenager, had
assassinated his entire character based off of twenty seconds of flirtation.
For crying out loud, he had flirted with Kelly, not propositioned her. He had
done what every other hot-blooded man does in testing the limits of his
influence with any female he is physically attracted to. Where was the affront
in that? He hadn’t planned on pursuing Kelly. He had just wanted to know what
sort of challenge she would be if he’d wanted to.

“Well, Mackenna,” he said tightly. “I thank you for assuming
the worst of me, but your warning is wasted. Not only do I value my friendship
with Ty more than some fling with his cousin, but
girls
don’t interest me.”

He stormed off in such haste that Mackenna felt sorry for
offending him and she fought to reassure herself that she had guessed his
intentions correctly. She turned to join the family and meet the woman Ty had boasted
of.

“Mackenna, this is my beautiful Leslie,” Ty introduced.

“Yes, she is!” Mackenna exclaimed, shaking the woman’s hand.
She was tall and Nordic looking with long, thick blonde hair and bright, round
green eyes. Mackenna instantly thought she had the regal look of a goddess.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mackenna,” Leslie chimed
after a laugh. “I’m looking forward to spending the summer with you and Kelly.”

“Me, too,” Mackenna answered. “I’ve been looking forward to
this all year.”

Chapter 3

Mackenna had been dreaming an odd dream as her subconscious
sorted through the experiences of the previous day. She replayed her meeting of
Leslie, and how lovely she had turned out to be, but her mind gave her the head
of a talking daisy, which no one in the room seemed to find interesting.

She dreamed of Kelly propped up on the twin bed next to hers
in the loft, her red curls bobbing up and down as she spoke excitedly of Brent.
Mackenna had tried to talk her out of her scheme to seduce him, but found that
her dream-mouth was made of a metal that she could not move and so she resorted
to banging her head against the wooden walls methodically. It made a loud
thumping sound and as Kelly’s voice began to fade in the
background,
the thumping grew louder, spaced out evenly until Mackenna’s eyes finally
fluttered open. The thumping carried on, plucking at her ears until she sat up
and went to the window to investigate.

Brent was there, exactly where she’d first seen him the day
before, doing exactly what he’d been doing then: chopping wood. She wondered
that no one else had been woken by the heavy sound of his falling axe. Dawn was
approaching enough that the sky was a deep purple, but there was no sun to
speak of. She dressed in her jeans and a long-sleeve flannel shirt, tying the
bandana once again into her hair before she made her way downstairs. No one
else was awake and the cabin seemed sadly abandoned, given the spirited reunion
that had taken place the night before.

She brewed some coffee and tried to ignore the thudding axe
pricking at her conscience, chiseling away at her righteousness and replacing
it with guilt. It was not like her to be so judgmental. When the coffee pot
sputtered and spewed its final puff of steam, she let out an equally tired sigh
and poured two mugs full.

She caught the screen door with the toe of her boot so that
it didn’t slam and wake the house and made her way across the dampened gravel, standing
quietly behind him as he hammered away. Different from the day before was that
he had abandoned both his red bandana and his shirt. His long hair was tied
back in a ponytail and his bare skin was smooth and shiny, rippling in perfect
melody with the axe.

He must have been at the wood pile for quite some time for
his body had worked up enough heat that it mixed with the cool morning air,
producing an aura of steam around him that made him look like a figment of her
imagination. While her mental judgment of him was wary, her body was responding
quite differently and she thought it wise to end the vision. She cleared her
throat, loud enough to stall his movements. She made the noise again and he
finally turned. His face was a mixture of annoyance and surprise, the
combination of which rendered Mackenna speechless.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked finally and sharply.
His tone brought back her voice.

“Well, it’s kind of hard to sleep with a pounding axe in the
air,” she said with irritation.

His eyes made an exaggerated sweep of the area to prove his
point before he
said,
“doesn’t seem to bother anyone
else.”

“True enough,” she conceded. “Maybe it’ll just take me a bit
longer to get used to life here again.”

“Maybe,” he mocked and then returned to the wood pile.

Mackenna’s fury was mounting. His behavior was nothing short
of childish. What had got him so upset?

“You know,” she shouted above his pounding axe, “if you plan
on chopping this much wood every time someone calls you on your…” she fought
for a more civilized word before giving up and shouting “bullshit, then there
will be no trees left in Montana when you’re done!”

He stopped in mid-swing for a few long seconds before
slamming the blade into the stump and rounding on her.

“My
bullshit
?” he
called.

“Yes!” she shouted. “What are you so pissed about? I come
out here with a cup of coffee for you, feeling…God knows why…
guilty
for what I said to you, when
everything inside me tells me that I’m right!”

She was standing almost within an arm’s length of him. His
eyes, which had been bright with fury, were slanting humorously as the corners
of his mouth began to lift. Without warning, he began chuckling and it
progressed until he was doubled over with laughter. Mackenna was flummoxed, not
knowing what had generated such a fit. He soon answered the question for her.

“Guilty? You came out here because you felt guilty?” he
asked.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” she spat.

“That’s rich,” he said. “We both came out here for the same
reason.”

“Well, I fail to see what is so funny about that.”

He settled himself and explained. “You said that you felt
guilty even though you knew you were right. Well, I felt angry even though I
knew you were right, and then I felt guilty for being angry.” He shook his head
and rolled his eyes. “God, what a pain in the ass feelings are, eh?”

Put that way, she couldn’t help but smile. The smile soon
turned to a chuckle.

“You’re right,” she said.

“Well, at least I get to be right about something in this
scenario.”

They smiled and she handed him the cup of coffee. He took a
hearty swallow, not minding the scald. Then, his brow furrowed in question.

“What do you have to feel guilty about, though?” he asked.

Mackenna gulped down a mouthful of strong, hot coffee and
coughed. “What?”

“I said I felt guilty for being angry. What made you feel
guilty?”

She mulled it over for a second. They had both agreed that
she’d been right, but she had still felt guilty. Why?
Because
he had lost sleep over her accusation?
That had to be it.

“I guess,” she stammered, “because you were out here
chipping away at something that was bothering you pretty badly.”

“And you assumed you were responsible for that?” he asked,
amused.

She nodded and shrugged.

“Well,” he said, “you’d best get over that quickly, Miss
Mackenna. The one thing you can be sure about with me is that I stew over many
things. Don’t give yourself responsibility for all of that.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I misjudged you,” she said. “It’s not
because I’m judgmental by nature. It’s more because of my love for Kelly, you
see?”

“I figured,” he answered. “And I shouldn’t have let something
silly like that get to me, but, well, the truth of it is I’m not used to a
female calling me out on something like that.”

“No? I find that hard to believe out here.”

“People like to act like country folk are all mouth and no
manner, but that’s not the case. Look at Bev. She’s tough as nails. The best
there is, but she’d as soon die than offend somebody, especially someone she
just met. There’s a lot of old-fashion left in the world of country women.”

“Oh, great.
Now, you’re really
making me feel rotten.” She stared down at the ground. She looked up to Bev,
and he had just used her as an example of what Mackenna was not.

“Well, don’t. There was nothing wrong with what you said.”

“Still, can’t we just go back to that first thing you said
to me in the house and call a truce?”

“I think we can do that,” he said and held out a hand for
her to shake.
“Truce?”

She smiled and allowed her fingers to be swallowed by his
palm.
Beautifully calloused indeed.
“Truce.”

When Mackenna made to pull her hand away, he held her there
in place. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds and she could feel
the beat of her heart quicken.

“Seriously, though,” he finally said as he peered into her
eyes. “You don’t have to worry about Kelly.”

“Thanks,” she whispered. He dropped her hand and his casual
manner returned.

“I mean, I’ll admit that she’s smokin’ hot, and I’m sure
I’ll notice it every day, but there’s a bag full of reasons why I won’t go
there. Number one, she’s a McCrae, so that’s off-limits. Number
two,
she’s not my type, and number three: we’ll be working
together and work and play don’t mix.”

The screen door smacked back into its frame behind them and
they turned in response. Kelly stood on the porch, a coffee mug in her hands.
Her curls were tied back into a ponytail where they tumbled down to the middle
of her back. Her jeans were functional and stylish, clinging tightly to her
curves. She wore a flannel similar to Mackenna’s, but she left hers unbuttoned
down the front to billow around a tight white tank top. Her young, round
breasts were full and firm. When she spotted them, she smiled and headed their
way, gilded in the golden early morning light.

Brent smiled and shook his head as he hummed appreciatively.

“Yep,” he concluded. “I’m damn sure I’ll notice it every
day.”

Mackenna looked away and down at her own outfit. For the
first time she felt every extra pound she had gained.
 
All of a sudden, the roundness in her cheeks
embarrassed her and she loathed to think how Brent viewed her when she stood
next to Kelly. The silliness of her thoughts was not lost on her. Nobody was in
Montana for romance, but she had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted
to feel beautiful just then.