Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses)

by Grace Burrowes

  “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 game
s, 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.

  Leaving James to deal with their mother, the farm, and his own adolescent grief.

  James had coped, until their mother had died of ovarian cancer the year James had finished high school.

  “Were the horses on the property when we sold it?” Trent asked, and how had Trent not known one way or another?

  “They were there, weed whacking between planting and harvest on a field board lease. Their new owner was supposed to come fetch them before we closed on the sale of the farm, but I never… It was a detail. I figured the people who bought us out wouldn’t just let a pair of one-ton animals wander around indefinitely, and who knows if the horses have been there this whole time, or only recently been returned to that back pasture.”

  The waitress came around with the bill, which James took care of, and Trent didn’t bother to argue, lest the waitress have that much longer to flirt—pointlessly—with James.

  When the waitress sashayed away—and James didn’t even bother to watch—Trent picked up the reins of the conversation.

  “What did Mac have to say about this situation?”

  “Said the mares are managing, though they need some care. He also said the people who bought the place aren’t horse people.”

  The self-preservation instincts of a man who’d recently added two females to his household kicked in.

  “I don’t have space left for two more horses,” Trent said, “much less two draft animals. You?”

  “No fencing, though Inskip might let me board them with his cows.”

  “Not a good plan.” Because if there was one thing worse than a loose horse, it was a loose draft horse—or two loose draft horses. “What do Daisy and Buttercup have to do with Mac’s nonexistent love life?”

  James added a few little tucks and folds to his napkin. “Mac went out to dinner with the lady who owns the place and her foster kid. She kissed Mac right there in the restaurant, with everybody, including Vespa Boon herself, looking on.”

  Little brothers must tattle, but Trent sensed no glee in James’s disclosure. “I’ve seen Mac’s clients sometimes kiss him in the courtroom, when he gets them acquitted against the odds, or keeps them out of jail on subsequent offenses.”

  “Life is not a courtroom,” James said again. “A client kissing you or me or even Mac is not the same as this woman, who’d just met him, pulling a public stunt like that with Mac.”

  “Maybe not.” Trent took the last sip of his water. “But it’s Mac’s business. You wouldn’t like it if he told you you’re a damned fool for letting Vera go, and ought to get on your horse and win her back, would you?”

  James passed over the napkin, which had been transformed into an origami swan, complete with beak, tail, and majestic wings.

  “He already has.”

  * * *

  Everything about living in the country was different, and from Sid’s perspective, mostly not in a good way.

  Traipsing the length of the muddy, rutted driveway—nobody spoke sidewalk in these here bucolic parts—to catch the bus would wreck Luis’s designer sneakers in no time.

  Getting to sleep without the monotonous swish and whump of traffic six floors down was impossible. The night sounds were isolated and natural—barking dogs, crowing roosters, and even the occasional hooting owl—none of which was in the least comforting.

  Sid had the sense if she screamed, no one on two feet would hear her, and the cows and horses wouldn’t care.

  And she wanted to scream—she wanted badly to scream.

  Social Services would make an unannounced home visit any day, and the house was barely put to rights. When the case had been transferred up to Damson County from Baltimore, Sid had been warned the rules might change.

  This far from the city, caseloads were probably more manageable, and rules more strictly enforced. The new caseworker wouldn’t be as sensitive about Tony’s death and its impact on Sid. The local Department of Social Services might also not be a
s understanding about the cultural challenges facing a kid whose mixed heritage had been unusual, even in the metropolitan area.

  “I hate it here,” Sid informed her oldest cat, Bojangles. He was big, black, and long-haired, a perfect ornament to an apartment decorated in Eclectic Self-Expression, but no kind of farm cat. “Your turncoat brothers are probably all out gorging on mice until they’re the size of those idiot horses. It’s down to you and me, Bo.”

  Bo yawned.

  “Thank you for sharing.”

  Sid went back to hanging up clothes, clothes she’d probably not wear out here in the land of blue jeans and Timbos. Carhartt outerwear was popular too—so flattering to the figure.

  “I’m home!”

  The kitchen door banged as Luis announced himself, and Sid glanced at the vintage Garfield clock on her nightstand in consternation. Another day shot—completely shot—and still the house gave new meaning to the term “suitcase bomb.”

  “Up here, Weese!”

  He appeared in the doorway a moment later, his hair sticking out in all directions, his expression amused. “You’re trying to do housework again, Sid. I’ve warned you about this.”

  “Putting clothes away is not housework. It’s unavoidable drudgery, unless I’m to live out of boxes until we move again. How was school?”

  “Same, same. My trig teacher is cute.”

  “You made it a point to tell her that?”

  “Cute, as in, gray hair, nerves of steel, twinkling blue eyes. I think she likes me. Said her grandson has red hair, and he’s brilliant. She’s about this high.” He held his hand out at the height of his own shoulder. “You hungry?”

  He didn’t mention any cute girls, which was a good thing—probably. “Starved, now that you’re asking.”

  Sid followed Luis down to the kitchen, which at least bore a semblance of functionality.

  “Why do you suppose we always come and go through the kitchen door, rather than the front door?” she mused.

  “The house was designed so the kitchen is closer to the barns and buildings,” Luis said. “The house wants us to come and go this way. Did you use up the last of the raspberry jam?”