Protecting What’s Mine: A Small Town Love Story

by Score, Lucy

  And when she moaned, when those green eyes fluttered open, he knew he was a goner. He could feel his balls pulling up against him, feel the delicious burn of his ejaculation rocket up his shaft.

  “Mackenzie,” he gritted out.

  She was quickening around him, which was a fucking miracle considering he was coming and coming and coming inside her. And she was closing around him, gripping him.

  Her hungry squeezes milked his dick, drained his balls, as he emptied himself into her. Giving her everything that he had, all that he was.

  “Linc,” she whispered, arms banding around him as she rode out her world-destroying aftershocks on his still-hard cock. “Linc.”

  53

  The next morning, Mack’s phone rang on the nightstand. Linc had spent the last thirty minutes watching her sleep in his arms. It was almost eight in the morning, and she was still sleeping. Not wanting to disturb her, he reached over her.

  Andrea.

  It said something that the woman was in her daughter’s phone as Andrea, not Mom.

  Easing out of the bed, he took the phone with him down the stairs.

  Sunshine followed him

  “Hello,” he answered sharply.

  “Oh, I’m calling for my daughter Kenzie.”

  “If you mean Mackenzie, she has nothing to say to you,” Linc said coldly. He opened the back door and let Sunshine scamper out into the frost-bitten grass.

  “Don’t be silly. I’m her mother. We had a little misunderstanding. That’s all. If you put her on the phone, I can straighten it all out.”

  “Your misunderstanding amounts to assault, Andrea.”

  “It’s Auhn-DREA-uh,” she corrected.

  “It doesn’t matter what your name is because your relationship with Mackenzie is officially over.”

  “Oh, sweetie, you don’t understand. Kenzie and I had a little tiff, and I just need a quick word with her. The rent is due—”

  “That’s your responsibility. Not hers,” he said.

  “I’m her mother. We’re family.”

  The emphasis on the words rang emptily in his ear.

  “That’s a title you earn, lady, and you haven’t earned it. You’ve done nothing for Mackenzie her entire life. She’s no longer obligated to save you.”

  “Who in the hell do you think you are?” Andrea dropped the sugary sweet Southern accent.

  “I’m the man who’s going to convince Mackenzie to marry me someday.”

  “She didn’t say anything about you while she was here.”

  “You mean while your other daughter assaulted her on the street? Why would she? Why would she share anything important with you?”

  “We’re family.” Andrea was back to wheedling.

  He thought of his own parents, of his sisters, of his nieces and nephews. That was family.

  “You don’t know the meaning of the word. You and your other daughter are no longer welcome anywhere near Mackenzie. No more money. No more guilt trips. She’s mine, and I protect what’s mine.”

  “You don’t understand. I need to talk to her! The police were here looking for Wendy, and I accidentally forgot to pay the light bill—”

  “Don’t call her. Don’t email her. Don’t even think about showing your face here. Ever. As far as you’re concerned, Mackenzie is an orphan. You never deserved her.”

  “Oh, and you do?” she snapped back.

  “No, but I’m sure as hell going to try.”

  He hung up.

  “What are you doing?” Mack asked.

  He turned around and found her in the kitchen doorway. Sleepy and sexy. She was wearing his discarded t-shirt from the night before. Even with the bloodstains on the cotton, the bruises on her face, she was breathtaking.

  “Taking out the trash,” he said innocently.

  “You yelled at my mother. You threatened her.”

  “Yep. And now I’m figuring out how to block her number from your phone. You’re done with her. Forever, Mackenzie. She’s no longer a concern of yours.”

  “Did you mean what you said?” she asked.

  “The part about you being an orphan?”

  “The part about you convincing me to marry you,” she said.

  Oops. She had been there a while.

  Linc dropped her phone on the counter and casually started pawing through her refrigerator. “Maybe,” he said.

  “Because if you did mean it, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.”

  He poked his head over the fridge door.

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying if we’re both in this, then why not? I wouldn’t mind a nice barn wedding.”

  He crossed the room in two swift steps and lifted her up.

  “Just so you know, I’m not officially asking yet. I wouldn’t do that without a ring, and I want to meet your parents. Your real parents,” he said. “When they come here for Thanksgiving.”

  Her eyes went watery. “And I’m not officially saying yes yet.”

  “But it’s on the table?” he clarified, almost afraid to breathe in case this delicate truce would shatter or pop like a bubble.

  She nodded. “It’s on the table.”

  “So we’re staying here, or we’re moving away when you’re done at the clinic?” he asked, cocking his head, holding his breath.

  “We’re staying here.”

  He kissed her and swung her around until they both groaned.

  “That Garrison can throw a punch,” Linc muttered.

  Mack reached for the ibuprofen. “We are quite the pair. What’s Georgia Rae going to say when she gets a load of our faces?”

  “One of a kind, Dreamy. You and me.”

  “Thank you for standing up for me even though I didn’t need you to.”

  “Thanks for letting me take a few hits for you.”

  “I love you, Linc.”

  He took the caplets she handed him and leaned in close.

  “Love you, too, Dreamy. You’re never gonna be alone again,” he promised.

  “It’s going to take some getting used to. I’ll probably screw up again once or twice.”

  “I won’t,” he joked. “By the way, Andrea said the police were there looking for your sister.”

  She sighed. “It’s time she was the one to pay.”

  54

  “Oh! You got your boot off! But daaaaaamn, girl. What happened to your face?” Ellen looked both fascinated and horrified when she opened the door to her split-level house. There were balloons on the mailbox like it was signaling the destination for a kid’s birthday party and a dozen cars parked in the driveway and on the street.

  “Uh, hey. Did I get the date wrong?” Mack asked.

  Raucous laughter exploded behind Ellen.

  “No! You’re right on time,” she said, grabbing Mack’s arm and towing her inside.

  The house looked like it had been designed in the late seventies and haphazardly updated over the ensuing decades. The carpet on the stairs was pea soup green, and there was a birdhouse-themed wallpaper border-peeling from beneath the popcorn ceiling in the foyer.

  “Barry, say hello to Dr. Mack.”

  A hairy arm shot up from the big brown leather sectional visible through the white metal spindles of the railing that cordoned off the second-floor living room.

  “’Lo!”

  “Keep the kids out of the basement, you know?” she yelled, then turned back to Mack. “Come on downstairs,” Ellen said gleefully. “We’re all hanging out in the family room.”

  “All?”

  But her question was drowned out by another round of laughter.

  “Ladies, look who’s here!” Ellen made a grand ta-da gesture in Mack’s direction.

  There was spontaneous applause that cut off abruptly as guest after guest noticed the bruising on Mack’s face.

  She should have been much more generous with her makeup application, Mack realized.

  “What happened to you?”

>   “You didn’t have another run-in with the Kershes, did you?”

  “I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like after Linc got done with him.”

  “Come on, Dr. Mack probably fights her own fights.”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine,” Mack insisted. “It was nothing.”

  “She’s so modest. I heard the last ‘nothing’ involved her being thrown down a twenty-foot ravine on an accident call. She climbed back up, gave the guy a poke in some secret pain point, and now his peep don’t work.”

  Small damn towns.

  “You really should start taking better care of yourself, walking around all banged up all the time,” Mariana Brewster suggested.

  The greetings blurred together in a sea of faces and names that Mack would never remember.

  “This is my sister-in-law Tiffany. My neighbor from two houses down Marie. My coworkers Sandra and Ellen. Two Ellens! Madison’s son is on my son’s soccer team and runs carpool on Tuesdays and Thursdays…”

  Harper and Gloria were there. And Mack recognized Beth, from the offices of Garrison Construction, perusing the snacks on the sawhorse and plywood table.

  There were women everywhere—on the worn couches, the upholstered rocking chair, two even shared a yellow vinyl bean bag. Plates of appetizers and bowls of snacks hogged every flat surface. If there was music playing, she couldn’t hear it over the hum of female conversation.

  The mood was festive, light.

  “Do you see the appetizers?” Ellen asked. “We’ve got a veggie tray, a fruit tray, grilled chicken skewers that my father-in-law made. The water is cucumber lemon, just like at a spa!”

  “Very nice,” Mack said, feeling just a little overwhelmed.

  “And healthy!” Ellen elbowed her. “I’m down six pounds. Six! Can you believe it?”

  “That’s fantastic,” Mack agreed. “How’s the swimming?”

  “Amazing!” She drew the word out to three full syllables. “Which is what I wanted to talk to you about. I guess I should have talked to you about it before I sprung a dozen extra ladies on you for Ladies’ Night. But when I started telling people about what I was doing, they had questions.”

  Questions about eating right and exercising? Wasn’t that what the internet was for?

  Mack felt a flicker of concern. If this was about to turn into a Q&A with the doctor, she was going to fake an emergency call. She could clamp an artery and save a limb when necessary, but giving a lecture on nutrition was a bit out of her area of expertise.

  “We got to talking, and we had a crazy idea that we wanted to run by you, you know?”

  “Okay.”

  Ellen clapped her hands. “Ladies, let’s tell Dr. Mack our idea.”

  The crowd hushed. Someone turned on the TV mounted on the wall under a creepy, stuffed ram head.

  “We made a PowerPoint,” announced a woman with curly hair somewhere between the shade of strawberries and wheat.

  “Cue it up, Roberta!”

  “Here, you can sit here,” Harper said, patting the cushion next to her.

  Mack crammed herself between Harper and another woman she recognized as Peggy Sue Marsico from the grocery store and the Little League national anthem.

  “We, the overworked, under-exercised, convenience food-dependent women of Benevolence, Maryland, would like to propose a social solution to our problems,” Ellen began.

  She wouldn’t be able to send an SOS text to Linc without the women on either side reading it. She was good and stuck.

  “Dang it. This thing isn’t working,” the woman with the slide remote said, shaking it vigorously. Her generous breasts bounced in a bra that clearly didn’t fit.

  “Gimmie the clicker thing,” Peggy Sue demanded.

  They fought with the technology, at one point fast-forwarding through the entire presentation upside-down.

  Harper coughed. “Uh, how many slides are there?” she asked.

  “Forty-eight,” Ellen said cheerfully. “We even made pie charts.”

  Sweet baby Jesus.

  “Maybe we should just summarize it?” Harper offered helpfully.

  “Yes!” Mack said, unwedging herself from the couch and its occupants. “How about a summary?”

  “Gosh. I don’t know if we can summarize this easily,” Ellen frowned.

  “We want to start an activity club that combines a social event with some kind of physical fitness or healthy eating theme,” Harper announced.

  “Well, that does about summarize it.”

  “We don’t spend enough time with our friends, and when we do, it centers entirely on food and/or alcohol,” Beth complained. “We want to start something that changes that. With some professional guidance, of course.”

  Realization started to sink in. “And you want me to organize this?”

  A dozen heads nodded enthusiastically.

  “You have the background obviously,” Ellen began. “And you’re also not bogged down with kids, sports, pets, oil-leaking minivans, and five loads of laundry a day in addition to your job—not saying that you’re not very, very busy or that your time isn’t important, you know?”

  Mack nodded. “I know.”

  “We’ll understand if you say no,” Harper said to her. “Mack does have a very demanding job and boyfriend,” she pointed out to the rest of the women.

  A purr of feminine satisfaction rose up.

  “Lord, if Harry looked at me the way Chief Reed looks at Dr. Mack, I wouldn’t survive the night,” Georgia Rae said, fanning herself with a paper plate.

  “She’s obviously got stamina,” another woman, this one in a misbuttoned red cardigan and orthopedic shoes, mused.

  “Which is why we need this club. If I don’t start doing something, I’m going to continue to do nothing, and I won’t need stamina for a hot boyfriend with excessive sexual needs because I’ll be too tired to go out looking for one.”

  An Activity Club. With events like group walks or maybe a couch-to-5k program. Winter hikes or workouts in the park. Maybe she could borrow a nutritionist from the hospital for a monthly healthy cooking demonstration or a grocery store tour.

  The idea wasn’t terrible. In fact, it was kind of exciting.

  “We saw how much happier Ellen is with just a couple of lifestyle changes. What if we all made some changes?” Beth asked. “What if all our lives improved?”

  “This is a really interesting proposal,” Mack said. “I’m going to think about it for a bit, if that’s okay?”

  There were a few smug smiles in the room, and Mack knew that they knew they’d hooked her.

  * * *

  Later, on her way home with a belly full of carrot sticks and baked spring rolls, she dialed Linc.

  “Dreamy. Are you on your way home?” His voice pooled like warm honey in her belly. Apparently, her delicious boyfriend wasn’t the only one with excessive sexual needs.

  “I am. What do you think of hosting a monthly health and wellness screening at the fire department?” Mack asked him. “Maybe blood pressure and cholesterol checks, flu shots? Throw in some first aid training? We could do it by donation and have the proceeds benefit the fire department.”

  “What kind of Ladies’ Night did you go to, Dreamy?”

  “One with a PowerPoint and a lot of really convincing ladies.”

  55

  The mid-November morning air was a refreshing shock to her system as Mack sucked in a lungful. She’d gotten the all-clear from her doctor earlier in the week, and the second thing she thought of when she woke up was lacing up her running shoes.

  The first thing was how much she missed waking up with Linc’s arm locked around her waist. She’d slept at her place when he pulled B shift. And it made her think about their living arrangements.

  As comfortable as she was in his refurbished gas station dude den, she realized they were going to have to make some decisions. Her rental was too small for a family. And Linc’s place wasn’t much bigger. There were no real bedrooms. Just
a sleeping loft.

  Now, her feet drummed the pavement in a steady beat next to Aldo’s and Harper’s, and she felt free.

  “Is that some kind of bionic leg?” she gasped as they crested a hill on a sleepy residential street. Aldo took pity on her and slowed to a stop.

  “It is. It has magic powers,” Harper insisted, drawing in a breath.

  “Maybe cut yourself a little break. You’ve been out of commission for two months,” he suggested.

  “I’m just saying I’ve got two good legs. I should be kicking your ass.”

  “Woman, please.” Aldo snorted.

  “It’s Moretta Power.” Harper sighed, rolling her eyes. “He’s superhuman.”

  Even at a slow jog, Mack felt a bit superhuman herself. Her physical aches and pains were fading. More importantly, her heart was healing.

  They got to the lake where Aldo and Harper peeled off for a trail run. Mack headed back toward home, slowing her pace through quiet neighborhoods.

  She wondered what kind of house she and Linc would end up in. Neither of them was the farmhouse with a garden type. And a beigey townhouse that looked just like its neighbors didn’t fit either.

  She’d figure it out. They’d figure it out. She adjusted the thought with a little thrill. She’d told Linc everything, and he’d still stood for her. He still loved her. He still wanted her. The miracle of it hadn’t lost its shine yet.

  Mack turned onto another street. One mile to go, and she felt warm and loose in the early morning cold.

  She felt a tingle between her shoulder blades. A little niggling of warning. Danger.

  Carefully, she plucked the earbuds from her ears and made a show of stopping to stretch her calves at the curb. She didn’t see anyone. There weren’t any suspicious cars. No masked criminals looking to cause harm. But still, she felt the familiar tingle.

  Was it the other Kersh? Things had been quiet on that front since the vandalism.

  She’d check in with the sheriff when she got home. Just to be sure.