by Melody Anne
Justin flitted in for a few minutes, threw burritos in the microwave, then rushed back out again, saying they were still working on their homework. What in the world kind of homework would a nine year old have that required hours? Dang, school was getting harder.
“We don’t let him do this every night. Normally we eat as a family,” Jewell said.
“I’m not judging you in the least,” McKenzie assured her.
“I’m judging me still. I hate that he was away from me for any time in the foster care system. When I finally got him back, at first I was overcompensating, barely letting him out of my sight. I was smothering him. But I was just so dang worried. But he’s doing wonderfully now. He loves his school, and he’s made such good friends. It kind of makes me sad how little he needs me now,” she said with a sigh.
“You’ve done a great job with him. That shows you’re an amazing sister, and I guess mom now, which is strange,” McKenzie said.
“I’m just his sister, but I agree. It is certainly strange,” Jewell said with a laugh.
“I think it’s amazing,” Blake said.
“I can’t get used to this roses and butterflies attitude you now have,” Byron said, but he laughed after.
“Don’t worry, my brother, it won’t be long until you have this same attitude,” Blake assured him.
“Don’t place any bets,” Byron said, but then he sent McKenzie a look so intense she felt scorched in her seat.
Who was the real Byron? Was he the hard-ass she’d first met? Or was he the kind brother-in-law and uncle? She really didn’t know which man was an act and which one was genuine. The question was, though, did she want to know? The answer should be an emphatic no. But she wasn’t so sure about that.
Once they finished dinner, Blake offered desert and coffee, but McKenzie knew she really should get home and get back to work. Why was she having such a tough time excusing herself?
“I have a ton of work to get done tonight, since I wasn’t in the offices all day, so I’m going to have to pass,” Byron said before McKenzie was able to make her own excuses. “Do you need a ride home, McKenzie?”
She felt caught. She couldn’t exactly refuse him in front of Blake and Jewell, but the thought of being alone with him in his car sent tingles all through her body. That was trouble waiting to happen. Instead of saying thanks but no thanks, she found herself accepting, and before she knew it, the two of them had said their goodbyes and they were heading down the road.
McKenzie lived only about fifteen minutes from Jewell’s place, and they made the drive in a silence she found excruciating. But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out a single thing to say to break the tension. Her vaunted social skills, honed at Relinquish Control, had completely deserted her.
When Byron pulled up in front of her house her stomach clenched. He got out while she was fumbling with her seatbelt and opened her door, then held out a hand to help her from the car.
Pretending not to see the hand, she climbed out, then went stiffly to her front door, inserted the key and twisted the knob. She turned around, waiting to see what Byron was going to do next.
“I had a wonderful time with you tonight. Thanks for sharing a dinner with me,” Byron said, and then to her utter amazement, he walked back down her steps.
McKenzie stared after him, wondering what in the world was going on. There was no kiss, no prompting for her to invite him inside — nothing.
Now he was climbing into his car and starting the engine. She stepped inside, and looked out the window as he pulled out of her driveway. She stepped inside and shut her door, then looked out the window and watched his taillights fade away.
What had just happened?
Nothing. That’s what had happened. Was Byron done with her? Was his game over? Had he lost his desire for her? Had her last refusal turned him away for good?
And, if it was all over, was that disappointment she was feeling?
Jewell didn’t have a single answer to any of those questions.
Chapter Sixteen
A bead of sweat dripped down McKenzie’s temple as she walked alongside Byron. They’d just left the offices in Boise. Clouds covered the sky and rain threatened, but it was unusually warm, and she’d dressed for colder weather. It would have been much nicer to shrug off her jacket, but she felt more protected in her wool suit.
The two of them approached the rental car they’d picked up that morning upon landing at the Boise airport.
“I always hate it when I have to fire someone who’s worked for the company for so long,” Byron said as he unlocked the car and peeled off his jacket, setting it and his briefcase in the backseat.
“It’s always troubling to fire anyone,” she said as she climbed into the passenger side of the car and waited for him to climb in and start the engine so she could point the vent in her direction and cool off.
“At least when I threatened to close the entire operation down, we finally got some answers.” He loosened his tie before pulling it off and tossing it over his shoulder into the backseat, and then he started the car.
She hated that his small stunt with the tie made her stomach clench with desire. He wasn’t stripping for her; he was simply making himself more comfortable. But all she wanted to do at the moment was climb over the console and right into his lap.
It was Friday afternoon and nothing had happened between them since the dinner three days before. He’d come into work, behaved like a complete professional, and hadn’t even attempted to touch her — shades of the way he’d left her on her front porch. And her job at Knight Construction was coming to a close. She only had a week to go. In the beginning the month had seemed like forever. Now, a week seemed so short.
She had her own business to run and didn’t have time to be working on Byron’s books, but in an amazingly short time she’d grown used to walking into his office in the morning when he was there, exchanging a few quick pleasantries with him, and speaking to him throughout the day.
When the man wasn’t trying to intimidate her, he was actually pretty decent company. And the longer she was around him, the more she desired him. Was it because he wasn’t doing anything lately to provoke that reaction?
But, hey, his loss of interest was the best thing that could have happened. He thought of her as a whore, so if she were to jump into bed with him, she’d be proving that’s exactly what she was. And as her eyes traced the slight opening at the V of his neck, she knew she needed to get out of this car as soon as possible. She’d be fine as soon as they were back in Seattle, safe and sound, and miles away from each other. Yes, it was Friday. She’d have all weekend to pull herself together. And then only one week left with him.
Byron pulled out of the attached parking garage and they began rolling down the road. The air conditioning should have cooled her off, but her body was too heated for anything to have that effect. She was again tempted to ditch the jacket, but at this point, her blouse was slightly damp, and the last thing she wanted to expose was her lacy bra, so she’d just have to suffer in silence. They’d soon be at the airport. She’d rush to the bathroom and splash cold water on her face.
“I’m starving,” Byron said, startling out of her train of thought. “Are you at all hungry?” he asked.
She tried to figure out exactly where they were, but she was about the most directionally challenged person around, so she stopped trying. “A little, but I can grab something at the airport.” She didn’t want to string this out any further.
“We have plenty of time, McKenzie.”
His vague reply made her uneasy.
“What time is the flight?”
“We’re taking a little side trip before heading home.” He didn’t elaborate, and McKenzie grew even more heated as nerves shot through her.
“What kind of side trip?” she asked. “And is it hot in here, or is it just me?” She reached over to fiddle with her vent again, feeling on the verge of fainting.
“It’s not too wa
rm,” he said, a sparkle in his eyes that had her breathing even more heavily. He knew she was close to panic, and he also knew exactly what was making her that way.
“Side trip? Where?” Maybe if she talked with less words, he would answer.
“You’ll see.”
Ugh! She looked out her window and focused on breathing. Coming along on this trip had been a bad idea.
“I don’t want to miss our flight,” she finally said.
“McKenzie, I own the jet. It leaves when I’m ready, and you know that.”
“Your brothers might need it,” she pointed out.
“We have two of them. And if suddenly Blake and Tyler both need to go somewhere, it’s only a one-hour flight back from here.”
She really didn’t have any more arguments for him, so she remained silent as he drove for another half an hour. He was moving farther and farther away from Boise, and she had a feeling they weren’t going to be making the flight home tonight.
When they still weren’t stopping, she had to say something or she was going to explode. “I’m not staying overnight with you, Byron.” She really wished her words had come out with more oomph. But at least she’d managed to get them from her throat.
“Do you want to be more specific?” he asked, the weasel.
“We are not having sex.” There. It didn’t get more specific than that.
He was silent for a moment before he turned and looked at her for several heartbeats.
“Are you trying to convince me of this…or yourself?” he asked quietly.
“Look at the road!” she gasped, and he turned back forward.
It took a moment before she had anything to say to that, but then she decided to go on the offensive. “As one of the infamous Knight brothers, you’re clearly used to getting women to jump into your bed, but I think you should know that I’m not a typical woman.”
He laughed again. “I love what you must think of me,” he told her. “But I’ll promise you this — we won’t do a single thing you don’t want to do.”
That didn’t reassure her in the least.
Chapter Seventeen
Silence stretched thick and long in the car, and finally, McKenzie had no choice but to remove her jacket. She was going to pass out if she didn’t. Even with the air blowing full blast on her face, she was sweating, uncomfortably hot.
“How hot it is out?” she gasped, grabbing her purse and pulling out a magazine she’d brought for the plane ride, fanning her face.
“Sixty-two degrees,” Byron said with a knowing chuckle that had her grinding her teeth together.
“It must be the sun pouring in through the windows. It’s magnifying the heat or something,” she lamely said.
“Sure…” The word was drawn out, but she would choose to think that he believed her explanation.
When she next felt his fingers drift over her thigh and grip her hand, she jumped, her head spinning to look at him. She couldn’t take his touch right now – anytime but right now.
When his thumb outlined the edges her knuckles, before turning her hand around and tracing the inside of her wrist, she felt the touch all the way to her core, which was now pulsing and hot. She squeezed her thighs together and tried desperately to remember why she needed to pull her hand away – why she needed to stop this seduction right this minute.
With as much effort as she could possibly muster, she pulled her hand away and tucked it between her thighs, waiting for a supernova to come and just obliterate their car. It was so damn hot now, that could be the only explanation. It certainly wasn’t her hormones.
After another ten minutes, she jumped when Byron reached over and squeezed her thigh. “Are you going to remain silent this entire ride?”
“How much longer is the ride going to be?” she countered.
“About thirty more minutes.”
“Where are we going?”
“To one of my favorite places,” he vaguely answered.
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” she said, but her lip turned up just the slightest bit. He was so excited, almost boyishly so, and it was hard for her not to appreciate the change in his demeanor. Even if he was kidnapping her.
“It’s not a well known place, but I’ve been here before. It’s a nice, small resort in the mountains. They have private cabins, while still having all the comforts of home, including room service,” he said.
“Ah, we wouldn’t want to go without room service,” she said before turning to look at him, wishing she could make eye-contact. “How many cabins did you rent?”
Her stomach was nervous as she waited for his answer. “Two, but I’m hoping one of them remains empty,” he said, and she let out the breath she’d been holding.
That he’d rented two meant a lot to her. Yes, he was obviously hoping for sex this weekend – it was the entire purpose of kidnapping her, but he was also giving her enough respect of offering her a separate sleeping quarter if she insisted on it.
“Considering that I want to pull this car off to a nice little logging road and strip your clothes off and touch every single inch of your silky skin right now, it may be a good idea for you to somehow distract me,” Byron said, making her head whip around and look at him in partial shock and partial awe.
“Um…I don’t…um…what do you want to talk about?” she finally managed to get out of her parched throat.
“Tell me about yourself. How did you end up in Seattle?”
That was a subject she really, really didn’t want to talk about. “How about anything other than that?” she said, trying to make it a joke. He wasn’t buying it.
“Everyone has a beginning, McKenzie, even if that beginning isn’t what we think it should have been,” he said.
“Why don’t you tell me about your youth then?” she challenged. His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t back away.
“I may do that, but you first.”
She paused for a moment, because if there was something she knew definitively about Byron, it was that he didn’t lie, and didn’t make promises he wouldn’t keep. He hadn’t said he would tell her, but it was a big step for him to even consider it. It was enough that it loosened her tongue.
“I had a typical childhood when I was younger. Divorced parents, a sister…” She stopped as she choked on that word. She had begun the sentence as a joke, and already had revealed too much.
“Wait!” he said, his head whipping in her direction. “You have a sister?” he asked, his full attention on her.
“Please pay attention,” she gasped when they swerved toward the ditch. He quickly corrected the wheel, then faced forward as he continued driving.
“Yes, I had a sister,” she quietly said, not wanting to talk about it.
“Where is she? Why doesn’t anyone know about her?” He obviously hadn’t picked up on the word “had.”
“When we were thirteen–”
Byron interrupted again. “We?” Of course he’d caught that.
“Susie and I are twins,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry. I won’t interrupt again,” he said before giving her a sheepish smile. “Or, I’ll try really hard not to,” he amended.
“When we were thirteen, my dad had given us a brand new quad. One of the nice things of being the children of divorce is when daddy comes to town, he’s really trying to be the cool parent, so we always got really expensive, outrageous gifts that would drive our mother crazy. She told us we couldn’t ride it until we were trained. Of course, she worked two jobs and couldn’t exactly monitor us. We lived in a small town outside of Sacramento, up in the hills, and it was summer and we wanted to test out the new toy.”
It hurt to even think about this day, let alone, relive it. She hadn’t spoken about Susie in so long to anyone that her heart was aching tremendously. “Please go on, McKenzie,” Byron said quietly.
“We took turns racing down some old logging roads, each of us fighting over who got to drive and who had to hang on for dear life. It was
her turn to drive and she was all sorts of confident at this point. And our father, being who he was, had gotten us the toy but not the safety items needed with it. Neither of us had helmets.”
McKenzie closed her eyes as she relived a brief second in time that had changed her life forever. “You can stop,” Byron said, squeezing her thigh in reassurance. Yes, of course he thought he knew how this story was going to end.
“She didn’t die,” she whispered so softly she wasn’t sure if Byron heard her or not.
“What?” he gasped, turning toward her again before realizing what he was doing and facing back forward.
“No, I felt guilt for years, because I wished she would have. It would have been better,” she said.
“Tell me, McKenzie.” It was a soft plea.
“We were going too fast and we came to a corner there was no way we could take at those speeds. We flew over the cliff and while still in the air, hit a tree,” she said, a tear falling from her eye. “I blacked out immediately, but later they put all the pieces together and figured out what happened.”
She took a few moments and composed herself before telling Byron something she hadn’t told another living soul. How sad her life was that she had no one she could truly share with. No. She had Jewell now, but Jewell had a husband and responsibilities. It didn’t matter. McKenzie wasn’t normally the sharing type. She didn’t understand why she was telling all of this to Byron – a man who most certainly didn’t care about her at all.
Then again, maybe that’s why she was sharing the story with him, because he didn’t care and he would go away. Maybe it was sort of like talking to a therapist. She decided to continue.
“Susie’s body protected mine because she flew forward, hitting her head on the tree, and cushioned my own impact. Her brain swelled and by the time help found us, I was awake, though I couldn’t see, so I had no idea what bad shape Susie was in, let alone how to get out of the mess we were in. A family was out riding bicycles and found us, called emergency services and sat with us until they arrived. Susie went into a coma. She still hasn’t come out. My mother…” She choked again, feeling the sting of her mother’s words to the very depths of her soul.