Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (5 page)

To throw the rag or to be an adult? Sid ran the rag under the tap and wrung it out again.

“Weese, I am grateful that you’re so protective of me, but I’m the mama. It’s my job to protect you. What I know about Knightley is he showed up here when we needed him, dealt with the horses, spent more time acquainting us with their preferred pony chow, and even joined us for a surprisingly good dinner at the local watering hole. His actions suggest he’s a decent man, if a little low on charm.”

Charm challenged, in fact.

“I didn’t think you liked him,” Luis said, taking still more cookies from the package.

Fortunately, Sid didn’t particularly like peanut butter cookies, for that bunch was doomed to annihilation by morning.

“I don’t know Mr. Knightley well enough to like him or dislike him,” Sid said. “I was grateful he came when needed, and equally grateful that he rode off into the sunset. I’m about to do likewise, and you shouldn’t be up too late either.”

She wrung the rag out again, as hard as she could, and draped it over the spigot.

“I still have to set up my computer,” Luis said around a mouthful of cookie. “How long before we have high speed out here?”

“Yeah. About the high speed.”

Luis rolled up the package of cookies and slipped a rubber band around it.

“I’ll get a job,” he said. “I can pay for the horse food, and help out with the bills, and high speed really only makes a difference for graphics. You don’t need it for email and social stuff.”

Sid would rather he scolded her, even if she was the mama. Dial-up not two hours from the nation’s capital was proof positive of parental incompetence.

“Weese, I am sorry. First thing Monday, I’ll call the estate lawyers and harass the hell out of them. They said it could take a year, but it’s been six months. Something has to break loose sometime soon.”

Though every time Sid called them, they probably billed the estate for it.

“I’ll get a job, Sid.”

Six months was a long time to a teenager, particularly a disillusioned teenager who’d been let down enough for a long lifetime. Six months was a long time when bills were coming due too.

“So you get a job.” Sid swiped the cookies and stashed them in a cupboard. “We only have one car between us, and you don’t have your license yet. How will you get to and from this job? We’ve been over this and over this: your job now is to rack up as many advanced placement courses as you can, Weese. That’s money in the bank; that’s entrée; that’s laps ahead of the pack.”

Also time spent in the company of people his own age, something Luis didn’t appear to care for.

“I can do both.” He hopped down from the counter, lithe as a dancer. “You did.”

“I do not recommend it,” Sid shot back. “By the time Tony took me in, I was a wreck, and I had no friends, and you don’t want to end up like that.”

Luis gave her a long, sad perusal, then balled up the paper towel he’d been using as a napkin and, with the faultless grace of the natural athlete, lobbed it into the contractor bag pressed into service until they found their wastebaskets.

“I’ve got Mac’s card,” Luis said, leaping topics in a display of teenaged tact. “He said he’d find us some halters for our horses.”

“Ours for now,” Sid said tiredly. “They’re only our horses for now.”

Until a few years ago, when somebody local referred to “the Knightley boys,” they meant Trent and Mac. Only within the past five years, with joint ownership of a law practice, had the duo become a trio.

And James, like most youngest siblings, figured he was more aware of this distinction than his brothers were. Underdogs watched overdogs much more closely than the converse, simply as a matter of survival.

“How are the mares?” James asked. “They have to be, what, seventeen years old?”

“Closer to twenty,” Mac said, cradling his mug of tea in both hands. “They were the last pair Dad broke before he died.”

The study became silent while each brother pushed back memories of a long-ago spring that had put an end to both of their childhoods.

“The mares are a little underweight, their feet are long, their teeth probably need some attention, but overall, they seemed hale.” Mac had chosen a green-and-purple-paisley-patterned mug, probably locally made craftware he’d picked up at Boonesboro Days, or some festival over in Frederick.

“Will the new owners look after them?” James posed the question sincerely, but he was struck by Mac’s preoccupied expression.

“They’ll tend to the mares to the best of their ability, but they aren’t horse people, and the lady of the house does not enjoy comfortable finances.”

MacKenzie Knightley could use language delicately, for all he was frowning mightily. His surgical gift with language was part of what made him so effective before juries.

“You went to dinner with the people who have Daisy and Buttercup?”

Mac simply nodded, and James’s curiosity spiked upward, while his own tea grew cold in its plain white mug. “When’s the last time you went out to dinner with an adult female, Mac?”

“Be ten years this July third.” He hadn’t glanced at a clock or a calendar, hadn’t hesitated.

“You know the exact date, like a drunk knows his sobriety date?”

Mac took a sip of tea in a manner another lawyer—say, James—would have called dilatory. “This wasn’t a date. The foster kid was with us. We merely went out for pizza.”

“You don’t look like you
merely
went out for pizza, MacKenzie.” He looked, to James’s expert eye, like a guy who’d been coldcocked with the celestial two-by-four of love—or lust, or fascination, or whatever passed for attraction in the labyrinthine depths of Mac’s brain.

“She kissed me, James.”

What did a baby brother say to such a disclosure from an elder, and such a bewildered disclosure?

“You break your streak after
ten
years
without a date, and all you can say is she kissed you?”

“Nothing will come of it.” Mac set his teacup aside—on a coaster, of course. “Nothing
can
come of it, and I don’t think she meant anything anyway.”

“Was I adopted?” James took the last swallow of Mac’s tea in hopes his brother would at least look at him.

The bewildered expression was replaced by vintage Scowling Oldest Brother. “For crap’s sake, James. What kind of question is that? Seen yourself in the mirror lately?”

No, he hadn’t, particularly. “I have blue eyes, wavy hair, and big feet, the same as you and Trent, but I have to wonder, Mac. Trent’s excuse was his first wife broke his heart, and apparently his pecker too, because since Merle came along, he’s been a born-again virgin, at least until Hannah got him sorted out. You don’t have that excuse, and as far as I’m concerned, the proper use of a weekend for a single guy who closely resembles me is to get his ashes hauled by some fun-loving, easygoing female, or females, if you swing that way.”

Which, of course, Mac didn’t.

Mac wore the expression of a defense attorney patiently waiting for the prosecutor to finish bungling cross-examination. “Does this digression have a point, James?”

“You’re unattached, solvent, good-looking, and of age,” James said—or nearly shouted. “
Go
play, Mac.
What are you waiting for? If you’re gay, then for God’s sake go find some like-minded mischief, just don’t…”

“Don’t what?” Mac was looking at him with Mac’s version of a smile, which had more to do with the eyes, while his mouth was in its characteristic solemn line.

“Don’t die of loneliness,” James said, rising.

“Like you were dying of loneliness, bedding down with everything that crooked her brokenhearted little finger at you?”

The problem was, they hadn’t beaten the shit out of each other for fifteen years, and yet James paused on his way to the door, because the question was fair.

“I’ve wondered if you and I haven’t been trying to solve the same problem from different directions, but if we have, then we’re both wrong, Mac. A little flirting and flinging isn’t going to hurt you, and it might be fun.”

Might ease that loneliness James had so incautiously brought into the conversation.

Mac looked, if anything, puzzled by this pronouncement. James sat back down as a thought occurred to him.

“You aren’t carrying a torch for someone, are you? Damn it, Mac, that would be just like you. True blue, unrequited bullshit, self-sacrificing, waste of a—” A very good man.

James fell silent, but Mac’s reply still took a couple of heartbeats to materialize.

“I’m not carrying any torches, not that it’s any of your business. Isn’t it past your bedtime, James?”

“It’s always bedtime somewhere,” James said, getting back to his feet. Mac’s hesitation had been telling. He wasn’t carrying a torch, exactly, but something lay behind Mac’s monastic existence. Maybe Trent could shed some light on it, assuming he could disentangle himself from his new wife long enough to consider the matter.

Mac stood and took his mug back from James’s hands. “Does it mean anything when a woman kisses you in public?”

Such
a casual question. “No, MacKenzie, it usually doesn’t mean anything, except perhaps that she likes you, is interested in you, wants to have her wicked way with you, and considers you worth pursuing.”

“God, let’s hope not.”

* * *

The practice of criminal defense law was in some ways easy. The object of the game was clear: get the client acquitted, if at all possible. If that wasn’t possible, then get him or her the lightest consequences the circumstances allowed.

The lines were bright: evidence was admissible or inadmissible. A case was decided by a judge or by a jury. A verdict was guilty or innocent. A charge was prosecuted or dropped.

And yet, Mac had long since realized that being immersed in these bright lines and clear distinctions was poor preparation for dealing with the messy reality of life’s conflicted emotions.

Such as liking a woman but being uncomfortable with the liking.

Or finding a woman attractive but dreading the consequences of acting on the attraction.

James saw more than most, particularly where his family was concerned. James had picked up immediately on the seriousness of the situation between Trent and Hannah. James was the uncle their nieces confided things in more easily.

That hurt, but it was the way things had to be if Mac was to keep his sanity.

Mac had very nearly confided to James what exactly could keep a man home every Saturday night for ten years. James might not understand, but he would not judge.

Lawyers got the knack of not judging, because they saw all too often the hopeless corners life painted their clients into.

And sometimes, the lawyers got painted into some of those same corners.

* * *

“You got a minute?” James spoke quietly, appearing unannounced in Trent’s office. While that wasn’t particularly unusual, Trenton Knightley’s little brother seldom appeared bothered by much of anything.

James looked more than a tad bothered now.

“My next appointment isn’t until this afternoon,” Trent said as James closed the door. “Is this a discussion we should take out to lunch with us?” Trent ran a hand through his hair, the hair he’d been intending to have trimmed over the lunch hour.

“Is your hair getting longer?”

“No, James. Of all the Homo sapiens sucking air on this planet, I’m the only one whose hair doesn’t grow.” Trent tucked the financial disclosure he’d been studying back into the fat blue divorce file from whence it sprang. “Hannah likes my hair long.”

Only an older brother would notice James’s mental wince. “Lunch with you would be a novel treat, even if your wife is turning you into a barbarian.”

A happy barbarian. “We could grab Mac and make it a threesome.”

“No, we could not. He has juvenile delinquency court today and never makes it free by lunchtime. Where’s Han?”

“Facilitating a four-way negotiation for Aaron Glover. What are you in the mood for?” If James needed to take something off-site, then Trent would keep the questions general until they were at least out of the building.

James and Hannah, and Mac too, for that matter, had been whispering in corners a great deal lately, and while Trent trusted his wife and his brothers with his life, the sense of being kept in the dark was not comfortable.

“Protein,” James said. “I’m usually in the mood for protein.”

Big old sloppy burgers, then, such as a man could enjoy in the company of another man and not feel guilty. They were finishing up their meal before James set the baseball and office talk aside.

James aimed a check-please-honey smile at the waitress, then turned a serious gaze on Trent. “May I ask you a question?”

“Anything.” Trent saw the surprise that response gave his younger brother, but did James think Trent would start listing topics that were suddenly out of bounds now that Trent was married?

Wasn’t going to happen.

James opened a paper napkin to its modest, square dimensions. “Did Mac ever date?”

Huh?
“Mac doesn’t date, and until lately, you did almost nothing but date, to use a euphemism.”

The napkin was clean—James was nothing if not fastidious—and James began to fold it back up.

“I ran around. Not the same thing. Mac’s a good-looking son of a bitch, well heeled, has the same manners Mom taught us, and is surprisingly well read. Why isn’t he sporting a trail of interested ladies?”

“Because he’s Mac.” And women were not hounds, to go baying after anything that smelled like a rabbit. But that wasn’t really an answer, was it?

“When did he post the No Trespassing signs, Trent? Did he date in high school?”

“Yes,” Trent said, thinking back. “Mac was reserved, but never wanted for female companionship. We often double-dated at the football games, and he was halfway serious about a couple of young ladies toward his senior year. He applied to some Canadian colleges too, on the strength of one young lady’s appeal.”

The napkin folding absorbed James’s attention, or perhaps James’s nimble fingers distracted Trent’s focus—James had started taking piano lessons again, of all things.

“What happened to Mac after high school?” James asked.

James was gathering data, conducting pretrial discovery. Not exactly cross-examining, but maybe taking a deposition. Fishing in the waters of family history.

“His girlfriend ended up going to Europe for the summer, I think, and staying, and Mac figured he’d save money by starting college in-state. Then Dad died.”

And life stopped, and for James, things had gone downhill from there, something Trent and Mac had only recently become aware of.

“Did Mac date after Dad died?”

“Not at first.”

None of them had done anything in the first year after their father’s unexpected death, except reel with grief and try to cope.

More paper folding. As an uncle, James had developed a knack for things that would entertain two little girls—card tricks, sleight of hand, silly jokes.

“When you were both at the University of Maryland, did Mac date then?”

“Why are you suddenly interested in Mac’s social life, James?”

James aimed a blue-eyed stare at Trent. “Why are you content to let our brother live in isolation from everybody except us and his clients? He’s not a bad guy, Trent, just a little shy.”

“Shy? MacKenzie Knightley is shy? Have you run that theory past the prosecutors he opposes regularly? Mac’s about as shy in the courtroom as a chain saw.”

“Life is not a courtroom, and you didn’t spend a week looking after Merle and Grace with him when you and Hannah recently honeymooned. He is putty in their hands, and yet he left them to me at every opportunity.”

“They’re little girls, James. Most grown men with any sense would dodge them when they gang up and start giggling.”

Because next came the princess movies.

“Would not. Something’s going on with Mac, Trent, and not something happy.”

“What about you and Vera?” Vera being James’s piano teacher at least, and perhaps something far more.

“There is no me and Vera, and don’t try to change the subject.”

Trent considered himself determined, when the need arose, or tenacious, but James and Mac could be sulking-mule stubborn.

“To answer your question, yes, Mac dated as an undergraduate, and was pretty serious about a woman named Linda, but she ditched him. He had another semi-serious thing going with a first-year law student whose name I forget, but that didn’t go anywhere either. Why isn’t there a you and Vera?”

James stopped fiddling with the hapless napkin. “Anybody ever tell you you’re stubborn?”

Trent smiled, because no friendship came close to the friendship he could enjoy with his brothers at certain moments.

“Never one time. You?”

A smile spread over James’s handsome features, one full of pride, humor, and mischief.

“Never. Now, listen up. I called Adelia to get the facts, which could have been damned delicate if Neils had picked up the call. Seems Mac was doing his regular impersonation of a farrier for the therapeutic riding horses, and one of their clients called in to say they’d found some stray horses in a back pasture.”

“Stray horses? How likely is that?”

“Very likely, if it’s the back paddock at the home place, Trent, and the stray horses were Daisy and Buttercup.”

“Well, damn.” Guilt rose up along with memories. When their father had died, James had been only thirteen. Trent and Mac had spent the summer on the farm, dealing with the logistical wreckage of a life cut short, and then they’d both gone back to college.