Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (4 page)

In front of the whole goddamned restaurant, of course.

“Put that away, Mr. Knightley.”

He wanted to, if for no other reason than to get her hands off of him, but she held fast, and her gaze bored into his.

“You came over to help with those horses then spent half your afternoon cleaning up our barn. You said you’d take a couple slices of pizza as your reward, and it’s hardly a reward if you have to pay for it.”

Mac
had
said that, so he sat back and stuffed his wallet in his pocket. Convicted by his own testimony.

“May I at least get the tip?”

“No, you may not.”

He sat there feeling about two feet tall while Sid rummaged in a paisley green bag and came up with some sort of tie-dyed cloth billfold.

“Then you have my thanks,” Mac said, because his mama had raised him right. “I enjoyed the food and the company.”

Sid tossed a twenty and a ten onto the table. This wasn’t an expensive place to eat—far from it—but letting a woman pay for his meal was…

“You’re too much of a gentleman to argue with her in public,” Luis said, getting to his feet, and now the kid was smirking too.

“I am.” Mac rose and reached for Sid’s jacket, which hung on the coat rack at the corner of their booth. He went on in French, though it was arguably rude. “See that you continue to set a good example for me, lest I forget my upbringing and embarrass us both.”

“I don’t embarrass easily,” Luis said.

Sid watched this exchange but made no comment while Mac held out her jacket for her. She looked like she wanted to argue, or to snatch it from him, but Luis was grinning at them like one of the porpoises at the National Aquarium over in Baltimore. Sid turned her back and slipped her arms into the jacket, then flipped her braid out and draped it over her shoulder.

“Take me home, Luis.” She tossed him the keys. “Maybe in the morning, those equine asteroids will have ridden their bicycles back to whatever planet they came from. Mr. Knightley, thank you for all your help.”

She was dismissing him, and Mac felt more relief than was polite to be parting from her. People would talk, that was inevitable, but Mac had spent most of his adult life making sure they weren’t talking about him.

But then—oh, ye gods and little fishes—Sidonie Lindstrom made sure Mac was
all
that folks would talk about for at least the next three weeks.

She went up on her toes, put a hand on the back of his neck, and brushed a kiss to his cheek. To make matters infinitely worse, she hesitated for a moment, lingering near, her hand at his nape. She hovered long enough that Mac got a whiff of something fresh and flowery, a hint of lily of the valley over the clean scent of her shampoo. His hand was at her waist to steady her, though he’d not a clue how it ended up there.

“You’re welcome,” he managed.

Sid settled back down on her heels, her fingers brushing at the back of his neck before she withdrew her hand.

No doubt by the time church services were over tomorrow morning, Mac’s friends and neighbors would have him married to Sid Lindstrom, living at the farm, and picking out names for their firstborn.

Then his brothers would start in on him, and his misery would be complete.

These thoughts preserved Mac from blushing, but only just.

“Shall we go?” he suggested, shrugging into his own jacket. “Do you know how to get home from here?”

“We’ll manage,” the Kissing Fiend assured him, “but I’ll meet you fellows in the parking lot. I need to make a pit stop before we head back to the Ponderosa.”

She sashayed off toward the ladies’ room, leaving Mac to walk—not run—for the door, with Luis matching him step for step.

“Is everything around here so white-bread?” Luis asked as they gained the chilly night air.

“White-bread and then some. We have a liberal smattering of Mennonite, and even some Amish.”

“Like
Witness
and all that?”

“Daisy and Buttercup are genuine Amish plow stock,” Mac said, realizing too late he probably shouldn’t admit he knew their bloodlines. “But you’ll see some diversity at the high school, though it’s all recently acquired.”

“It’s bad enough being dark-skinned and red-haired in the city. I’m going to be the freak of the universe out here.”

“You’ll be different, but then, being six-foot-four before the end of my sophomore year made me different, and in my experience, that can be a good thing. Does Sid always kiss strange men in public?”

“Sid’s Sid.” Luis’s teeth gleamed in the darkness. “But, yeah, she’s a kisser. Took me a while to get used to it, but it’s kind of nice too. I figure it’s her way of telling the whole world I’m partly hers.”

Mac considered that. Sure as shit, he was not anybody’s, except perhaps his brothers’. “I’ll hurt her feelings if I ask her not to do it again?”

Luis’s smile disappeared. “I dunno, but it was just a kiss. Big guy like you can’t take a little smoocheroo?”

Mac let the conversation lapse because Sid was churning across the parking lot in her fake cowgirl boots, hugging her decorative denim jacket close against the night breeze.

“Spring, my fat aunt Fanny,” she said as she approached them. “Luis, don’t spare the horses, as it were. Mr. Knightley, good night.”

Mac found himself holding the car door open for her. On the other side of the car, Luis stopped before climbing in. “You said you could find us some real halters, didn’t you?” he asked.

What was it with these people, that they memorized a man’s every blessed word?

“I did say that. I’ll make some calls when I get home tonight.”

Luis wasn’t buying that, the little twerp. “How do we call you if we have questions about the horses?”

“Luis,” Sid broke in, “get in the car before I freeze to death.”

Mac drew out one of his farrier’s cards and tossed it onto the roof of the car. “Evenings and weekends are the best time to reach me. My thanks again for dinner.” He closed the car door and turned his back on them both.

The kissing female, the smirking, brooding boy, the pair of them.

He climbed into his truck, cranked up the heat, slipped in a disc of Vera Winston playing late Brahms piano solos, and turned on the seat heater for good measure. Shoeing horses was hard on a man’s back, and some days Mac was already half convinced he should put away his tools.

He’d always do his brother’s horses, of course. James was the family mechanic—when he wasn’t mooning after his piano teacher—and Mac was the family horseshoer. Trent’s position was more subtle.

He was the family dad, the middle brother, the glue, the guy who checked on the fraternal chickens, making sure Mac wasn’t too isolated, and James wasn’t socially exhausting himself.

Though their roles had started to change with Trent’s marriage to Hannah earlier in the year. Now James was showing signs of getting Vera Winston into double harness, and that would mean James had at least a stepdaughter to go with Trent and Hannah’s pair of seven-year-olds.

Eight-year-olds, soon.

Mac stabbed at the CD controls, and swapped out Brahms for early Brubeck. Children had been abundantly in evidence at the restaurant—babies, toddlers, tweens, and teens. Children and doting parents, and even grandparents.

He switched the music to Mel Tormé, soothing, bluesy crooning that suited Mac’s out-of-sorts frame of mind. His mood did not improve when he saw lights on at his house, and recalled James was bringing the everyday truck back from its visit to James’s garage.

“Made yourself at home, I see,” Mac observed as he walked into his own kitchen. James was at the table, doing the crossword puzzle in the local newspaper, while one of Mac’s cats supervised as it sprawled over half the funnies. The kitchen light haloed James’s blond hair. A loaf of homemade bread sat on the classifieds, amid a few crumbs, and a tub of homemade butter at James’s elbow.

“The kettle should still be hot,” James said, not looking up. “What’s a three-letter word for difficulty or trouble?”

Sid.
“Dunno. My truck’s done?”

“Rub,” James said, his pencil making neat strokes. “You’re the Shakespeare nut. You should have known that one. Your truck’s done, but I didn’t check your spare.”

“Why should you need to?”

“Because that model has been recalled. Road salt corrodes the spare brace assembly. Take it to the dealer and get it checked, lest your spare go thumping down onto the tarmac without warning. I need four letters for a word that means—” James looked up, his gaze going to the clock. “Where have you been, Mac? I’m almost done with this puzzle, and it’s the Saturday special.”

Prevaricating was pointless. James had a social network that made the online utilities pale by comparison. By this time tomorrow, word of Mac’s dinner out, and the way it had concluded, would be all over the valley.

“I had pizza with my last stop of the day,” Mac said, hanging up his jacket. “Spent the first part of the day with the therapeutic riding ponies. Adelia sends her regards.”

James stuck his pencil behind his ear. “She doing OK?”

“She and Neils are doing OK.” Mac added water to the teakettle. James had never been the possessive sort, nor did he tolerate possessiveness in his female acquaintances.

“She deserves to be happy, and Neils is good people. I wasn’t aware you were shoeing horses for anyone but the therapeutic riding program.”

“And our brother, Mr. Many Ponies. These people were connected with the riding program.” Mac put the kettle on the stove, turned on the burner, and wondered why James had hung out here on a Saturday night when he had his own place not two miles away.

“You ever talk to Hannah much about foster care?” Mac asked.

“Some.”

“What does she say?”

He heard James’s chair scraping back, and then his brother was standing beside him at the stove. “She says it was lonely, but not all of it was bad. Why?”

“No reason. You want some tea?”

“Sure.”

James’s tone was casual—James did a virtuosic job with casual—but Mac wasn’t fooled. His youngest brother was studying him, and the guy was brilliant at most anything he turned his hand to, including needling his elders or chasing women.

Except until recently, the women had done the chasing, which was beyond brilliant. Now James was smitten with his Vera, though the course of true love had apparently hit bad footing.

“Cream is in the fridge,” Mac reminded him.

“Why do you use cream? Clogging your arteries can’t be good for an old man like you.”

“You are six years my junior,” Mac said, taking the boiling kettle off. “This means I can still whup your ass on my worst days. Get the agave nectar.”

James rummaged in the cupboard for a squeeze bottle. “Did Trent turn you on to this stuff?”

“Other way around.” Mac took the bottle from him. “I use cream because I enjoy its richness, most flavor compounds being fat soluble, and because dairy fat is good for you. I also use it because you don’t need as much to get the same dairy impact as you would with milk, so you can have your tea hotter than if you’d dosed it with milk. Let’s take this to the study.”

“Why is everything an appellate argument with you?” James asked, trailing after Mac with his own tea.

“You asked me why I used cream. I answered. Did you know the home place has been flipped again?”

James closed the study door. “I knew it was for sale.”

“That was my last call of the day.” James would hear about this too, of course. Luis would go to school, he’d say something about the draft horses being on the property, and the whole story would eventually reach James’s ears.

“That could not have been easy.” James sprawled on one end of the couch. “The place doesn’t look like anybody has kept it up in recent years.”

“The property is still salvageable with hard work and hard cash.” Mac took the rocking chair he’d built to suit his personal dimensions. James was also several inches over six feet, Trent about the same, but they both seemed to wear their height more easily than Mac did.

More gracefully.

“So who bought it?” James asked after a thoughtful sip of Earl Grey. “What kind of horses do they have?”

“A lady with a foster kid bought it, or came by it somehow, and they aren’t horse people, James, but they have Daisy and Buttercup.”

James, the true horseman in the family, came immediately alert. “Our Daisy and our Buttercup?”

“They aren’t ours anymore, James, and haven’t been for a long, long time.”

* * *

“I’m telling you, Sid, he knew exactly where everything was.” Luis sat on the kitchen counter, looking like a giant, adolescent, cookie-ingesting vulture.

When had he grown taller than Sid’s own five foot seven inches, and where was he going to stop? And why didn’t anybody warn a woman that old Formica never really came clean?

“So Knightley knows his way around a barn. He’s a farm boy who shoes horses. Why wouldn’t he?” A mighty big farm boy.

“You never believe me,” Luis said, brushing crumbs from his lap onto the floor. “I’m telling you, Sid, he reached up into the rafters and found a hoof pick, like he’d hung it up on his personal nail just yesterday.”

She scrubbed at a brown stain on the counter, knowing she’d get nowhere with it. “What’s a hoof pick?”

“Like the thing in the nail file you use to clean under your fingernails, but for horses.”

“Maybe you always hang those things from the rafters, and as tall as he is, he spotted it up there.”

Which meant he’d probably seen the top of the fridge, which likely hadn’t been scrubbed since the Flood.

“You couldn’t see jack in that barn because the windows were all filthy,” Luis insisted. “Knightley knows this place, and I’m thinking he knew the horses were here.”

“So you’ve convicted him of abandoning and neglecting those equine asteroids, all without benefit of judge or jury?”

When had Sid appointed herself the guy’s public defender? She gave up on the stain and wrung the hell out of the tired rag she’d been using.

“I’m raising questions.” Luis’s tone was maddeningly patient, but then, the defining joy of adolescence was to condescend to slow-witted adults. “Questions you ought to be raising.”