Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (23 page)

Sid made herself another cup of tea—James had pretty much downed the entire last pot—and took it back out to the porch. The spring sun was beaming through a greening canopy of leaves, and over the grind and growl of the loader, birds sang.

Such a pretty place Tony had bought for them, but what she wouldn’t give to have her brother to share it with. To have somebody to share it with besides a teenager bound to leave for college in a couple of years, if she got to provide a home for him even that long.

Why didn’t Mac ever talk about his clients, their horses, or their farms? Why didn’t he bring up work when he and Sid shared a meal? If he lived with them here on this farm, would those confidences and commonplaces be shared between them?

What was she doing, letting her curiosity wander off in that ridiculous direction? The last place Mac would want to live would be the scene of his parents’ respective demises.

“Yo, Sid!” Luis waved from his perch on the loader. He hadn’t been off the thing all morning, apparently enjoying a masculine delight in powerful, noisy equipment.

“Coming!” She set her tea aside and walked across the yard. “You ready for a lunch break? We’re enjoying a momentary lull, it seems.”

“Get up here. I’ll show you how to run this.” He beamed a brilliant, open smile at her, a man-boy happy to share his new toy. “It’s really cool.”

“I dunno, Weese. It’s really big.”

“It’s a glorified skid loader. Stop being a girl and let me show you.”

Squeezing into the cab next to her foster son was a little awkward, but he was right—operating the loader wasn’t that hard, and manipulating the bucket and the vehicle itself developed a rhythm that was almost fun. The noise of the treads and the engine became a kind of music, the rearrangement of the remaining topsoil a sculpture.

“So you take care of that guy coming up the drive,” Luis said, “and I get a pee break.”

“See that you don’t strand me out here, Weese.”

He didn’t, but he sat on the porch with a sandwich and a bag of nachos, wolfing his lunch while Sid took care of the next three customers, two pickup loads and a three-bagger.

Luis gestured with what remained of the bag of chips. “You going to let me back on?”

“Not if you’ll get orange crumbs all over.” Sid climbed out, oddly disoriented without the vibration of the loader under her butt.

“I counted up the money between sandwiches, Sid.”

“How are we doing?”

He named a figure.

“You’re shitting me, Weese. That is not nice, not when money is so tight.”

“I shit thee not, Sid. Anybody ever tell you to work on your trust issues?”

“Shut up and scoop the poop. I’m going to recount the money.”

* * *

On Sunday morning, Sid took a break from reading the help-wanted ads to count the money yet again, amazed once more at what a certain kind of dirt was worth. She’d just set the jar aside when Mac pulled up in his horseshoer’s truck.

“Hey.” Mac’s version of a greeting rose considerably in Sid’s estimation when he followed it up by drawing her to her feet and kissing her lingeringly on the mouth.

“Hey, yourself, cowboy. I’m rich.”

He settled back against the porch railing, crossing his arms. “Did the estate settle?”

“Hardly. I’m the topsoil tycoon of this valley. We made a small fortune, Mac, and I met most of my neighbors. What have you been up to while I was raking in coin of the realm and cleaning out the muck pit?” Half cleaning it out—in one weekend.

“Shoed a few horses, and yesterday was my standing date with my nieces. We took Twyla with us, and it’s the first time I’ve been outnumbered that badly.”

“You look a little tired. Come on in. I made raisin bread this morning, and Weese hasn’t been around to scarf it all up.” Sid took Mac by the wrist and tugged him into the kitchen, which still sported a wonderful yeasty aroma. “Your brother James came by to get some topsoil yesterday and stayed to talk business.”

“He’s good at talking business. The topsoil was because he’s landscaping Vera’s place before she and Twy move to his farm.” Mac leaned back against the sink, looking marvelous in his jeans and denim shirt.

“What will Vera do with her property?”

“They’re renting the house to her ex and his kids so the ex can sell his own place. James will farm the land with Inskip. We washing the bread down with tea or milk?”

“What kind of woman rents her house to her ex?” Sid cut off a couple of slabs of raisin bread from a loaf that was still warm in the center. She passed Mac a fat slice, enjoying bustling around her kitchen while a hungry man looked on.

“Thanks.” He saluted with the bread. “Vera’s a nice woman. Her former stepson will work for James and Hiram this summer, so the location will be convenient. Vera’s practical, and she loves her kids. Her ex is not a bad guy, though he’s got his share of faults.”

“You want butter on your bread?”

“Of course.”

“Mac, how did your father die?”

He paused with his bread partway to his mouth. “Would I like butter, how did my father die? What kind of segue is that, Sid?”

“Death is on my mind a lot. I know your mom died in this house of an aggressive cancer.”

Sid got the butter dish out of the fridge, purposely turning her back on Mac to give him a measure of privacy. The question had come out of her mouth without forethought or planning, and now she wished it hadn’t.

Mac stared at his piece of raisin bread. “Dad had a heart attack as best we can figure. He was on the tractor when it happened. Why do you ask?”

“James sort of brought it up.” Or she’d sort of pried it out of James.

“James was just a kid, and it was bad. Dad was conscious when we found him, but Dad understood the situation. Mom and James did not. I’m not sure about Trent.”

And in all the intervening years, Mac and Trent had never discussed this?

Sid slid an arm around Mac’s waist. “You were all with him when he died?” Along the length of her body, he felt as unyielding as one of the centuries-old oaks in her yard, so she laid her head on his shoulder.

“We were. Dad understood that as soon as the tractor was moved, he’d bleed out. He told me to get the horses, when I wanted to call for the medics. I got the horses, and he said his good-byes while I hitched them up.”

“Tell me, MacKenzie.”

“James kept assuring him help was coming and everything would be fine. Mom sat beside him, holding his hand, crying. Trent cursed a lot, and pulled Dad free when the horses got the tractor up. I knew, and Dad knew. He said he’d always been proud of his family, and that he loved us very much, and then he was gone.”

Sid held on to him, mentally raging at herself for the casual cruelty of her stupid, curious question. This was why Mac avoided mention of the past: because his father’s death had been terrible beyond imagining. A memory of horror and helplessness and loss that likely abated little with the years.

“I’m so sorry, MacKenzie. Sorry I asked, sorry you had to live through that.”

A big sigh eased out of him, and some of the rigidity left his shoulders.

“I thought James would never stop crying. He was the baby, Dad’s little buddy. Of the three of us, James was the one most likely to be at Dad’s side. Trent and I were older, thinking in terms of life beyond the farm. Not James.”

Mac had apparently only seen this with the perfect torment of hindsight.

“James is a successful man, and he seems happy,” Sid said.

“You should have seen him a year ago. I’ve always wondered why I went and got those horses just because Dad told me to. I was an adult, technically. I knew the consequences, I knew there was a choice, but I ran to get those horses.”

“Are you
blaming
yourself?”

“Not blaming, exactly. Second-guessing. There’s a trauma center out here in Western Maryland. Dad was in good health otherwise, and he wouldn’t have been on that tractor if I’d been more conscientious about the farm work.”

Good God, worse and worse. Sid fed Mac a bite of raisin bread, wanting to give him something, anything.

“What the hell does that mean, MacKenzie? I cannot imagine you shirking a responsibility for love nor money.”

“Someday I’ll walk the north pasture with you. We always kept that parcel in pasture, and for good reason, because it’s littered with granite outcroppings. You can’t plow it safely with a tractor. Dad’s death proved what should have been obvious.”

Obvious
in
hindsight
. “He had an accident, very likely because he had a heart attack, not the other way around. Don’t be an idiot.”

He brushed a crumb from her lip, a hummingbird wing-beat of a caress. “You’re saying the heart attack caused the accident? I guess we’ll never know, but I do know I told him I’d turn up that ground with the horses, and then I didn’t see to it. You have to plant when it’s planting time, and I wasn’t getting to it.”

Sid endured an abrupt certainty that even the departed Mrs. Knightley had blamed herself for her husband’s death.

“So your dad didn’t remind you? His only choice was to hop on that tractor and start taking risks? He couldn’t have used the horses?”

Another stare, this one downright perplexed. “With horses, you farm ahead of yourself,” Mac said. “You can see the ground as it meets your plow or your rake. With a tractor, you’re always farming behind yourself. You drive the tractor over the ground before you till it, or plow it with whatever you’re dragging along behind you. I’ve never enjoyed that, but it didn’t bother Dad. He was an engine guy, like James.”

Whatever
that
had
to
do
with
the
price
of
horse
poop.
Sid took a bite of raisin bread lest she start shouting.

A long moment later, she tried for reason, despite the emotional nature of the conversation. “You can’t blame yourself for your dad’s death, Mac. He made choices, and he’s the one who took the risks that led to the accident.”

Mac set the rest of the raisin bread on the counter. Slowly, his arms came around her. “Where’s Luis, Sid? Inskip said the boy’s a natural on the loader.”

The subject was officially, if gently, changed. “He’s working at the riding stable until he has a lesson this afternoon. Left to his own devices, I think he’d live there.”

“And leave his girls?”

“Leave me, in any case. You should eat the rest of your raisin bread.” Sid slipped away from Mac before the lump in her throat overcame her composure, and why the hell was that?

“You have a hearing date for Luis yet?” Mac asked as he finished off the raisin bread.

“Soon.” Sid set the butter dish on the counter beside him. “I’m hoping it will be the same old, same old. We get more and more tense as the day approaches, and then it’s five minutes of nothing in the courtroom. His case plan remains return home or relative placement, and nothing changes.”

Mac slapped a fat dab of butter onto another slice of raisin bread. “How long has he been in foster care?”

“Better than two years.” Nearly three.

“His plan ought to be changing to adoption, Sid, or independent living.”

For a horseshoer, Mac knew a lot of what had been covered in foster parent training, but then, his sister-in-law was a former foster kid.

“Luis would go for independent living,” Sid said, “not for adoption. I’ve asked and asked until it feels like I’m torturing him.”

“He’s torturing you by saying no.” Mac held the bread out for her to take a bite. “You ever considered therapy with him?”

Good stuff, raisin bread, especially with butter. “No, because family therapy presupposes you’re both holding your own in individual therapy, or that you could. Luis hates talking about his situation.”

“It’s killing you that he won’t talk about it.”

The lump in her throat was becoming an obstruction, making it hard to breathe. “I mind more that he won’t tell me
why
he doesn’t want to be a family with me. But if I love him, then I respect his silences. He’s a kid doing the best he can.”

“Come here, Sidonie.”

She stopped wandering around the kitchen and tried to assess Mac’s mood, but as usual, he gave away little he didn’t want to give away.

“Why?”

“Just come here, stop thinking and fretting, doing whatever females do when you can’t clean or cook or fuss a problem into oblivion. Louie has a few things to work through. Give him time. He’ll come around.”

She took a step toward Mac, toward the low, soothing reason in his voice. She liked the way he Frenchified Luis’s name. Luis would like it too.

“Guys can be slow,” Mac went on, holding out his arm. “Be patient with us.”

Sid let his arms settle around her again. This embrace was different, more personal.

“James said you put him through his paces.” Mac’s hand began to move on her back in a caress already both dear and familiar. “He was bragging on you. Said you’re a damned Wharton MBA.”

“La-di-flippin’-damn-da.”

“You should be proud of yourself, Sid. We don’t see too many of those out this way.” His nose traced the curve of her ear, which tickled in odd places.

“Take me to bed, MacKenzie.”

“You’re saying that because you’re out of sorts, we have the house to ourselves, and you want comfort.”

She pulled back enough to glare up at him. “None of which outweighs the fact that I want
you
.”

“Ah, Sidonie.” He didn’t answer her in words, but started in kissing her. His mouth was a slow-moving force of nature over hers, warming her up from the inside, sending her blood singing through her veins, and bringing her to life in places low and lonely.

“Is that a yes? I’m in the mood for a yes, MacKenzie Knightley. A yes from you right this instant would be nice.”

“You don’t have to invite me into your bed twice. Just tell me you’re sure about this, Sid.” His lips brushed along her neck, pausing so a warm current of his breath caressed her throat.

“I’m damned sure, MacKenzie.”

He switched sides. “We need to talk.”