by Riley Knight
And Logan had been so upset about Malcolm’s thing for Kyle. His best friend had a temper, even if it was the kind that rarely came out. When it did, though, it could be intense, and Logan didn’t always think straight.
“You can’t really think …” Logan started, and then Mary Anne, the poor girl who was shaking like a leaf, glanced briefly at her mother as if for permission and then spoke up in a squeaky little voice.
“It had to be someone in here, right? So who had the motive?” She took a deep breath. “It must have been pretty quick when it happened. Couldn’t there be, um, you know, clues or something?”
By the end of it, her voice was coming in a rush of words, barely understandable, and when Craig spoke up, she gave him a deeply grateful look.
“Kid has a point. Whoever did it did it fast. So let’s look through rooms, see if we can find anything.”
No one, Malcolm included, was exactly happy about the idea of people poking through their rooms, but with some grumbling, everyone agreed. Most of the people, after all, would be happy to have their names cleared, and Malcolm knew that because it was how he felt. After all, according to most of these people, he would have the most motivation of anyone to try to drive Kyle away.
So the little group of people, all of them eyeing each other suspiciously, went from room to room. But they didn’t have to go far. Malcolm’s room was first, where they, of course, found nothing, because there was nothing to find. It was sort of funny how much that helped to relax Malcolm. Of course, he had known that he hadn’t done it, but now everyone else had to be leaning that way, too.
Logan’s room was next, and immediately, Malcolm’s brows furrowed because the scent of wet, fresh paint was clear in the air. Without a word, he pushed open the door, and from the beginning it was very clear that this was the room. There were even, Malcolm noted, scarlet droplets here and there across the floor. Amazing, he thought dully, as he leaned down and touched one of those drops, how much they looked like blood.
It was the paint that Malcolm had gotten to repaint one of the barns. He was positive of it. There were a few drops of it dotting the wooden floor, heading toward the bed, and without a word, without even daring to look at Logan because he didn’t want to see the guilt written on his best friend’s face, he pulled aside the blankets and revealed the empty space under the bed.
Or not so empty, because there were the cans. Two of them, completely empty, thrust desperately under the bed to hide them. Throwing the blankets all the way off, Malcolm took a silent step back so that everyone, packed into the little room, could see what he had just seen.
“Logan?” Kyle whispered, and it wasn’t a lot easier for Malcolm to look at the man he loved so obviously in distress, two hectic splotches of color high up on his cheekbones, his eyes burning and hurt. “Do you really hate me that much?”
Anna pulled her daughter to herself, comforting her, and Malcolm supposed that the girl needed it, because she was shaking. It couldn’t be easy for her. Logan had been in her life since she’d been born, and Anna’s husband had left soon after that day. Malcolm and Logan had both stepped into the role of father to her, so this had to be a betrayal for the poor girl.
But there was a lot of that going around, betrayal. It was stamped all over Kyle’s face, and Malcolm felt it gnawing at his heart and stomach. He had been so sure that he knew Logan.
“Wait, no. I didn’t … how did those …?” Logan’s tone of voice was odd. It wasn’t angry, which would have been suspicious, but he actually sounded baffled, confused. Did Logan just have a better talent for acting than Malcolm could ever suspect?
“Are you going to press charges?” the new guy, who had yet to be introduced, at least to Malcolm, said quietly to Kyle, but it was a smallish room and everyone in it heard what the guy said. “You could. He destroyed your belongings.”
There was a very solemn sound to his voice. It was almost impossible to imagine this man, with his pale, bright eyes, smiling. His lips were full, but Malcolm, at least, wasn’t sure that he could imagine the guy smiling. Kyle may be serious, and Kyle, at least when he’d gotten here, might have had a stick so far up his ass that Malcolm had thought it would take surgery to remove, but at least he had a sense of humor.
But he was beautiful. Almost ethereal, with those dramatic eyes and the cleft in the chin and, again, those lips. And he stayed far too close to Kyle for Malcolm’s mindset, although how ridiculous was it that he was thinking about that right now with everything else going on? How possessive was he, and for something which was so obviously a lost cause?
“I didn’t do anything,” Logan said, still protesting, even as Anna pulled an ancient cell phone from her pocket.
“I’m going to call the police,” she said, in her matter of fact voice, while Mary Anne looked at Logan, utterly stricken. Malcolm couldn’t have known just how betrayed the child would feel, and he tried to give her a bit of a smile, but she didn’t smile back.
He couldn’t blame her.
“No, wait. Anna, stop.” Logan had a pleading sound to his voice, not the sort of thing that Malcolm was used to hearing. But there were many things here that he wasn’t used to. “I swear, I didn’t do anything, I don’t know how that paint got under my bed but anyone could have put it there.”
“Kyle,” the newcomer, and Malcolm was probably going to need to find out the guy’s name sooner or later, called. He leaned in, hand on Kyle’s shoulder, to whisper something in his ear, and Malcolm tried not to bristle. This was neither the time nor place for hurt feelings.
Something that the other man said made Kyle frown thoughtfully and look at Logan, eyes slightly narrowed. The hectic color faded from Kyle’s cheeks and Malcolm had the feeling all of a sudden that he knew exactly what Kyle would look like arguing before a judge. Cold, calculating, like emotion was a foreign concept to him and all that mattered was figuring out the truth.
Kyle was a hell of a man, and Malcolm wasn’t just thinking that because of the feelings he was having for the guy. He had been understandably upset, but now he was studying Logan like he would a bug under a microscope and then turning, eyes narrowing more, toward Anna, who was still on the phone.
“Hang up the phone, Anna. Logan didn’t trash my room.”
Logan, understandably, was hanging on Kyle’s every word. So was Malcolm. Maybe it was just desperation, a desire to see his best friend’s name cleared, but Kyle certainly had command of the room now.
“Mom!” Mary Anne burst out, and Anna shushed her without even looking at her. But Kyle noticed, just as Malcolm did, and the faintest trace of a smile lingered over Kyle’s sweet, pink, full lips, something like triumph in his face.
“It was you. It was you the whole time,” Kyle murmured like he and Anna were the only people in the room. “I thought it was Logan. I was pretty sure that it had to be Logan, because who else could it be?”
“Kyle, you wanna share with the rest of the class what the actual blue hell you’re talking about?” Malcolm demanded, fascinated but confused. Things were going on here that he couldn’t understand, but Kyle, and apparently his friend, had figured it out within a few seconds.
“When I took this job, I was told that there was someone else in the house who was also working for your brother, Wyatt Hart,” Kyle explained, speaking to Malcolm but not looking away from Anna, who had her shoulders defensively up and her gaze was darting around like a trapped animal. “Someone who was reporting my movements back to him. I thought that it had to be Logan.”
“Wasn’t me,” Logan interjected. “I hate that fucker.”
Well, the fucker in question was Malcolm’s brother, but right at the moment, he couldn’t say that he was exactly highly enamored of him himself. And when he looked over at Derrick and Craig, he saw that they had similar disgusted expressions on their faces.
“No. It wasn’t you.” Kyle sighed and finally looked at Malcolm. “It was Anna. She did it. She was working with your brother the whole time, M
alcolm.”
“What?” Anna screeched, and Malcolm had heard that sound coming out of her only once, over a decade and a half ago, when she had found out that her husband had walked out on her after the birth of their new baby. Her eyes, he couldn’t help but notice, had the same hunted quality to them. Malcolm didn’t know what to think. This was a woman he had known for years, a woman who had honestly helped to raise him. It seemed impossible that she would turn on him. “That’s ridiculous. I would never do anything like that.”
“She’s lying.”
Everyone turned to look at the beautiful young man who was still standing far too close to Kyle for Malcolm’s taste, but he wasn’t looking at Malcolm or Kyle or even Anna. His strange, pale eyes were fixed on Mary Anne, who was, Malcolm couldn’t help but notice, pale and shaking, her gaze darting up to her mother’s face over and over again as if for reassurance.
“Anna,” Derrick commented, and his voice was calm and reasonable, which was nice because Malcolm knew that his own voice wouldn’t come out nearly that way. “You told me once that you had debts that your husband left you. Gambling debts.”
“And Anna takes care of the bookkeeping, doesn’t she, Malcolm?” Kyle looked at Malcolm, and his eyes were sharp and calculating as he put the pieces together. “I wondered how the ranch could be losing as much money as Wyatt said. It looks prosperous enough.”
“You’re insane,” Anna insisted, her arm tightening around Mary Anne’s shoulders. But everyone was looking at her suspiciously. What put the nail in her coffin, though, was when her daughter let out a deep, shuddering sigh and pulled away from her mother.
“No. Stop lying, Mom. I’ve covered for you long enough.”
No one actually yelled out that Anna was done, that her carefully constructed web of lies had all fallen down around her, but no one had to. Everyone knew, including Anna herself, who dropped her phone to the ground and leaned heavily against the wall.
“You can’t prove anything,” she whispered, and Kyle smirked and leaned forward a little, his gaze leaving Malcolm’s and going to the defeated woman instead.
“Give me ten seconds with the computer you use to do your bookkeeping and I can prove everything.”
“Everything was fine until you showed up,” Anna murmured, her voice quiet, but bitter. “I almost had my husband’s creditors paid off. I was going to stop, to make things right.”
But it didn’t ring true, because Anna, it seemed, had been working with Wyatt. Anna glanced around her, looking for sympathy, but no one had anything to say to her.
“I wish you’d never come here,” Anna whispered. “Malcolm, you can’t possibly believe this man over me. He hates you.”
“No, I don’t,” Kyle corrected, and while Malcolm just stood there, frozen to the spot, not sure what to believe about any of this, Kyle came over to him and took his hand right there in front of his family and his friends, walking away from the beautiful man and squeezing Malcolm’s cold fingers. “I don’t hate him. I love him.”
No one said a word. Malcolm didn’t dare to look at anyone, and honestly, he had never thought that this could happen. Had never thought that Kyle, of all people, would be open about what they were to each other. Honestly, he hadn’t even known himself what that was.
“Kyle?” Malcolm barely recognized the sound of his own voice, so quiet and questioning and yet so hopeful. Kyle stepped in even closer to him, looking up into Malcolm’s eyes, his thumb warm and possessive on the back of Malcolm’s hand.
“Yeah. I love you,” Kyle admitted. “I don’t know how it happened, but I do. I’m not going to work against you anymore. I’ll call Wyatt right now, in front of you, and tell him so if you want. Because I want to be with you.”
SEVENTEEN
This wasn’t exactly how Kyle would have chosen to tell Malcolm. Actually, he hadn’t been sure that he would tell him at all, not those three words. He had been planning on telling him quietly and calmly that he had quit his job and that he was going back to Seattle. That was the sane thing to do.
But then he had seen Anna weaving a web of words again, and he had seen the doubt in Malcolm’s eyes. Even if everyone else believed that Anna had done it, if Malcolm didn’t, he would keep being loyal to her, right to the very end. Kyle knew that, just as he knew that Malcolm would be intensely loyal to anyone who made it past his prickly exterior and wove their way into his heart.
So it had been an act of desperation, telling Malcolm, but it was more than that, too. It had also just felt right, too, the words unplanned but no less true as they burst out of him. So he said the words that he had never said to another man, words that he couldn’t remember the last time he had said them or heard them.
Malcolm might not know it, but Kyle had just bound himself to him. Even if Malcolm made Kyle leave anyway, Kyle knew that he would always love the other man. He was incapable of doing anything halfway, and that included, it seemed, falling in love, once he finally did.
The question was, how was Malcolm going to take it? Because the truth was, Malcolm wasn’t out to anyone in his family. Or to anyone at all, as far as Kyle knew, other than Kyle himself and even then they had never actually said the words. But sleeping together had sorted of outed them both to each other, he supposed.
Point being, maybe Malcolm wouldn’t appreciate what Kyle had just done there. Maybe he didn’t want to be outed this way, or at all. Kyle had taken the choice out of his hands, and he had done it on nothing more than a sort of instinct.
Something inside of him had told him it was the right thing to do. But that was an incredibly flimsy thing for someone like him to rest on. And the moment the words were out, he was second-guessing them, sure that he had made the wrong choice. He couldn’t regret telling Malcolm he loved him, that part he suspected would have had to come out just for his own peace of mind, but he could have done it in private.
“Kyle?” Skyler asked, and the question in his voice was a fair one. Kyle, after all, hadn’t so much as implied to his best friend of decades that he might be interested in men, and Skyler should have been the first one that Kyle had told.
“Sorry, Skyler. I guess this is a good time to come out?” Kyle sighed and shook his head. This wasn’t going well, and Malcolm still hadn’t said anything. He had offended the two people in the world who were closest to him. The two people that he cared about the most. God, he was such an idiot, and if he could have taken it back, he would have. Hell, if a pit had opened up right in front of him, he would have stepped inside of it and let the earth swallow him up without a hint of regret.
Kyle stared down at the floor, not sure how it had all come to this. He was such an idiot sometimes. Or was it just that he wasn’t that good at being impulsive, and he had picked the completely wrong time and place? He didn’t dare to look around him, not at any of the Hart brothers, especially Malcolm. Not at Skyler. Not even at Mary Anne, who was undoubtedly having a bad day.
He had never really been sure what he had been afraid of, even in his own head, when it came to hiding that he was interested in men. His parents wouldn’t approve, but that didn’t seem like quite enough, but maybe he had just been avoiding an intensely awkward situation much like this one.
And then Malcolm was there. Kyle recognized him by his feet, by his big, strong work boots. And that was how he knew it was love. He knew it wasn’t Logan or Derrick or Craig, but Malcolm, by his scent and by the sound of his breathing and by a million other things that he had picked up without even meaning to.
“Kyle.” That deep, low growl of a voice caught Kyle’s attention, made him raise his gaze reluctantly away from Malcolm’s feet, pulled upward like his head was connected to a piece of string and he couldn’t help it. “Look at me.”
Kyle took a deep breath, sure that he was about to be punched in the face or something. Sure that Malcolm was pissed off, that this was going to go badly. But he was brave. He focused on Malcolm’s shoulder, his broad neck, his strong jawline. Then he made th
e leap up to his eyes, and he had never been so terrified in his life, but he did it.
“I love you, too,” Malcolm told him, and while Kyle was still processing that, trying to really, truly internalize the words that Malcolm had just said, Malcolm gripped him, two strong fingers on his chin, and turned his head up so that their lips could meet.
Right there in front of everyone, friends and family and even the person who they had just discovered had trashed Kyle’s room and all of his stuff, Malcolm kissed Kyle. And not just a soft, chaste kiss. A kiss of passion, a long, lingering one, a kiss that made Kyle see stars and his knees so weak that he swayed against Malcolm. But Malcolm was right there to catch Kyle, holding him up gently but firmly as their tongues met and tangled and danced together.
“Well, um.” The kiss ended and Kyle turned in the circle of Malcolm’s arms and looked at Derrick who was shifting uncomfortably, though Kyle was glad to see that at least the guy was smiling. “That’s all very well and good but what are we going to do about her?”
“I’m not pressing charges.” Kyle decided right on the spot. He could have, of course, but he was far too happy at the moment to be that vindictive. But he couldn’t help but give a wicked grin as he caught Anna’s gaze as she stared at him defiantly. “But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. I’m going to tell Wyatt what you did. That you were trying to scare me away.”
Anna looked at him, her face defiant, but no longer trying to deny what they all knew to be true. It was pointless, because she had clearly done it, and they would find signs of it eventually.
“I think you owe me this,” Kyle said, with Malcolm’s arms around his arms, as if they belonged there. “Why? I remember back when I first came here there was a gunshot that scared my horse. Was that you, too?”