Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (19 page)

Mac had always believed his brothers would eventually find domestic bliss, and as for the family average, two out of three qualified for the major leagues.

“I wanted to discuss something else with you,” James said.

Now
there’s a surprise.
“I’m going to be an uncle again?” Mac asked. “I’m a big boy. I can deal with nasty dipes. I changed enough of yours.”

The breeze lifted, and a shower of white blossoms fell onto the sidewalk. The air bore a hint of sweetness, and Mac abruptly missed the sturdy baby boy James had been.

“Hannah has the look,” James said, “but it’s not my place to say.”

“I’ve come to the same conclusion. She has that happy, broodmare smugness in her eye, but I was talking about you and Vera.”

“You call Hannah a broodmare in her hearing, and she’ll come out swinging, MacKenzie.”

“Yeah, yeah, and Trent will hold my arms behind my back for her, while you sell tickets to the children. What’s on your mind, James?” James did not deny he and Vera might be considering building onto their family immediately.

“I’m in discussions with Hiram Inskip about a business venture.”

“Businesses are your thing. You’ve been bored with ours for a while, and it’s time you branched out.” What a relief to say that and not risk getting his face rearranged.

“I want to specialize, Mac.”

“In?”

“Agribusiness.”

Mac almost said:
Why
didn’t I think of that?
“Farming, you mean. You’ll farm with Hiram?”

“I’ll buy him out over the next five years. With my land, his, and Vera’s, we have a sizable piece of contiguous property. Vera’s land corners with the home place, and Hiram has been farming some of that since we sold it. I’d like to talk to Sid about making some changes in the way Hiram’s been doing things.”

They were several blocks from the courthouse, and it was time to turn around, though Mac didn’t want to.

“This is right for you,” Mac said. “We’ll manage in the office. You keep us in fresh dairy and eggs, we’ll manage.”

“That’s all you’d want? Eggs and milk?”

“I’d want my baby brother happy for a damned change.” From the corner of his eye, Mac also saw his baby brother swallowing a couple times and blinking.

Spring breezes. Allergies, maybe.

“I wouldn’t leave the practice,” James said. “Both my new hires are crack shots, and between them, they can manage what’s there now. I want to court the real money in this county, Mac. I want to go after the family farms. Those guys and gals are sitting on more wealth than the entire rest of the community has combined, and they just climb on their tractors and fret about how much rain we’re getting. They don’t see the big picture.”

James had been stewing about this, and when James stewed about something, it got stewed to damned death.

“You do see a big picture?”

“Hell, yeah. I know how to get them the grants, the subsidies, the tax shelters, the competitive loans. I know how to set up their businesses so they’ll still be around when the grandkids get sick of playing in the city. I know how to diversify, how to develop specialty markets, and then there’s the growing demand for organic—”

Mac thumped him on the back. “Go forth and be happy. Whatever your plans, they’ll make us money. You’ll do good while doing well, every ethical lawyer’s goal. I was proud of you before. Now I’m proud of you and happy for you.”

James let out a sigh, sounding about thirteen years old. “Vera said I was fretting over nothing. Said you and Trent would be my biggest supporters, after her and Twy.”

“We were your biggest supporters before her and Twy, and in this family, a guy can have an unlimited number of biggest supporters. We should knock out the wall on the far side of the mail room. Give you a separate entrance, tone down the visible security, get some copies of Progressive Farmer for your lobby, that sort of thing. I’m sure one of Inskip’s daughters can handle your front desk.”

For improvisation, that was a good list, good enough to have James looking thoughtful. “Makes sense, but we should probably run it by Trent.”

“Next partners’ meeting.”

Another few strides, while Mac tried to sort out what he was feeling, besides relief that his brother was back on track with Vera. Without Vera’s hand on the tiller—so to speak—James would soon have run himself aground.

“I wanted to tell you something else,” James said. “About the home place?”

“You’ll farm it. I got that much, James. Just for God’s sake be careful.”

“I doubt I’ll be on the tractor much, but I will be careful. Very careful. Did you know the property has no mortgage?”

“Every farm has a mortgage.”

“None. I looked up the land records, thinking I could maybe find the interim owners and get some idea who left Daisy and Buttercup in the pasture or returned them there, but I also wanted to know how leveraged the land was before I sank a lot of money into farming it. Farming it
again
. Tony Lindstrom bought the place free and clear, except for honoring the land-use leases that conveyed with the title. Sid inherited in fee simple absolute.”

A load off Mac’s mind, for sure, but he hadn’t wanted to snoop into the land records himself.

“Then I’d say she needs a good agribusiness lawyer. Approach her carefully. The estate is taking its good old time settling, and Sid has no use for lawyers generally.”

Flat hated them, which could be a small problem.

Or a huge one.

“Then I won’t approach her as a lawyer. I’ll approach her as a neighbor with some business expertise and an eye for profit.”

“Approach her soon. She’s broke, and you can’t raise a kid on dreams and good intentions.”

“There’s something else, MacKenzie.”

MacKenzie. Whatever it was, James was serious about it, and he’d taken to within fifty yards of the courthouse to work up to it.

“Spill. I’m supposed to be at Sid’s for dinner tonight, and as pleasant as this constitutional is, defending the downtrodden today has built up an appetite.”

“Vera and I are getting married.”

“One concluded this.”

That got him a smile, though Mac knew what was coming next: Would he stand up with his brother? Of course he would. No question he would. Though the saying about always being a bridesmaid trailed through Mac’s mind.

“One concluded this, did he? Yeah, well, Carnac the Amazing, did one also conclude his prospective sister-in-law would ask him to be her maid of honor?”

It was Mac’s turn to smile. A sweet, pleased grin he didn’t bother hiding.

“Just don’t make me wear pink, and no ruffles on the hem of my dress. I look like hell in pink, and ruffles make my ass look fat.”

* * *

“I’m discovering I like dirt.”

Sid made this pronouncement while she tried not to watch MacKenzie Knightley consume a modest slice of blueberry pie with cream cheese filling in a flaky homemade piecrust. The man was a sybarite, savoring each bite, sliding his fork slowly, slowly out of his mouth.

He studied each forkful before he closed his lips around it, a silent moment of gratitude maybe, then he shut his eyes as if to catalog the flavors and textures hitting his tongue.

Sid knew things about that tongue, wonderful, scary, intimate things.

“What’s not to like about dirt?” Mac asked between bites.

“What’s to like about dirt?” Luis countered. He was putting away the vanilla ice cream, a fat scoop of which sat melting on a slab of pie that was bigger than Sid’s piece and Mac’s combined. “You’re forever washing my duds, scrubbing the floor, cleaning the windows, like dirt’s Public Enemy Number One.”

He brought his bowl back to the table and took a chair.

“Not that kind of dirt,” Sid said. “Soil, earth. I never knew there were different kinds, and that different kinds of plants like different kinds of dirt. I never thought about it. Some plants like a lot of sun. Some don’t want as much. Some want a lot of watering. Some will drown if you water them too much. Plants and soil are like people: they have personalities, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.”

“You going to be a dirt psychologist?” Luis asked.

“Elbow, Weese.” That from Mac, who was studying another bite of pie. Luis lifted the elbow he’d propped beside his bowl, but disgruntlement flittered over his features.

“I’m going to be a gardener,” Sid said. “I’ll start with the easy stuff, like tomatoes, squash, and beans, but we have lots of good dirt and lots of free fertilizer.”

“That you do,” Mac said. “The old muck pit out behind the barn should have some of the best topsoil in the valley. We had cows, horses, and sheep here for most of the years we farmed, and the muck pit was full up when we sold the place. I don’t think anybody ever thought to dig it out and spread the contents on the fields, so it’s thoroughly composted topsoil at this point. First-rate stuff.”

Clearly, Mac liked dirt too. “Will people pay money for it?” Sid asked.

Mac set his spoon down into his empty bowl. No clatter, just the smallest “plink!”

“They will, and this is the time of year to sell it. You can put a sign at the end of the lane, run one of those quickie ads, and you’ll have a regular parade of trucks here come the weekend.”

They discussed what to charge, and whether to sell some of the soil bagged, while Luis silently finished his dessert. Sid barely noticed when he took his bowl to the sink and slipped up the stairs, so fascinated was she by the idea of selling her dirt.

Topsoil, rather. Her thoroughly composted, first-rate topsoil.

“You up for a walk, Sidonie?” Mac asked as he set the last bowl into the drain rack to dry. His voice was casual, but heat leaped in Sid’s middle at his question.

“Are we taking a blanket to the pond, MacKenzie?”

She would have given a great deal to see his eyes, but he was watching the dishwater swirl down the drain.

“We can take the blanket, but we never finished the discussion we started there last time.”

Discussion? She cast her mind back, leapfrogging over thank-God-I’m-a-country-girl pleasure, over physical and emotional intimacy every bit as alluring as the pleasure itself, over his cell phone going off at the worst, worst moment.

“I’m happy to continue that discussion, MacKenzie.”

He wrung out the dishrag to within an inch of its life, and folded it exactly in half over the spigot.

“Tell Luis we’re going for a walk. I’ll fetch the blanket.”

There was no hurry to him, no display of eagerness, no winking, leering suggestion they were about to get naked under the moonlight again. The questions Luis had raised earlier popped into Sid’s head: How did a farrier afford the house Mac lived in by himself? Two late-model trucks? The landscaping, the plasma TV, the pool table?

Mac was on the porch when Sid left the house, the blanket slung over his shoulder.

“You were quiet at dinner,” Sid said, taking his hand. His fingers closed around hers, and she was feeling sufficiently insecure that even such a small contact was reassuring.

“I was enjoying you and Luis getting after each other. He seems a little testy to me. School going OK?”

Testy. A good word to describe a cranky teenager.

“Big exam in trig today, and he did seem sullen. He says he likes you, though. I try not to micromanage his moods, and appreciate that he doesn’t micromanage mine.”

They walked along in silence for a while, Sid listening to the peepers chirping in trees. The air was milder than it had been even a week ago, and when she scanned the hills to the east, she could see exactly where the moon was about to break over the horizon.

“Lovely night,” Sid said.

Mac stopped walking and slid the blanket from his shoulder. He settled his hands on Sid’s biceps, a gentle, implacable grip, then lowered his mouth to hers.

His dinner conversation might not be his greatest strength, but, oh, the man could
kiss
. His mouth plied her lips delicately, languorously, until Sid thought if he took his hands off her arms, she’d melt into a heap at his feet.

“Now, it’s a lovely night. Do you know what a distraction you’ve become for me, Sidonie?” He rested his forehead against hers, and just like that, Sid’s world became again a cheery, hopeful place, where many good things were possible, and not every challenge had to be faced alone.

“Is that what you wanted to discuss, MacKenzie? Because if it is, I will listen very patiently while you regale me with the details of your tribulation.”

“Witch.” An endearment, coming from him. He picked up the blanket, tucked his arm across her shoulders, and started them walking again. “I can’t be distracted when I work. I’m being well paid to keep my mind on the job.”

“You mean the horses might kick or stomp you if you blink?”

“That too. Tell me again what the social worker said when she called.”

Even Eden boasted the occasional serpent. Sid recounted the conversation again, as close to word for word as she could. That Mac would listen so attentively, that he would care enough to listen, to ask again, helped another increment of Sid’s anxiety for Luis abate.

“You do love that kid,” Mac said as they spread the blanket under the trees. “I suspect he loves you too.”

“I don’t say the words to him, because I don’t want him to feel obligated to say them back.”

“Say them anyway. Love is the furthest thing from obligation.”

Sid tried to see Mac’s expression in the darkness, but the moonrise still wasn’t quite visible. She liked the sentiment though, understood it. Nothing about raising Luis or dealing with all the convolutions and challenges of his foster care situation was an obligation.

“Sit with me.” Mac thumped the blanket beside him, leaving Sid to wonder how, exactly, she could get around to relieving him of his clothes and getting his hands and his mouth
and
his
mind
on her again.

She settled on the blanket and took off her shoes while Mac slid off his boots.

“Come here, Sidonie.” He hauled her into his arms, to sit between his upraised knees, then gathered her against his chest and rested his chin on her crown. Maybe having his hands on her like this—slow and warm and knowing—was enough. As Sid cuddled into the solid muscle of his chest, he started rubbing her back.