Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses)

by Grace Burrowes

  “I’m no drunk,” Luis said, his accent all but gone. “I could have been, easy, but you drink, you don’t care about anything else. All my mother’s boyfriends were into drinking and doping. I tried it all. They thought it was fun to get me high, get me drunk. I thought it was fun too, for a while.”

  “And then?”

  Luis shook his head.

  James took to studying the water draining from the old trough. “My mom drank. She was grieving, and she drank. Too much, too often.”

  The tension went out of Luis’s shoulders; he took another swallow of water then handed the bottle to James.

  “What are we going to tell Sidonie?” Trent, the only married man present, asked the question.

  “I’ll apologize,” Luis said. “I know better, and Sid’s stupid crazy about irresponsible drinking.”

  “Why?” James asked. “She seems normal enough otherwise, except for liking Mac.”

  “Drunk driver killed her mother,” Luis said. “And her brother. Different accidents, different ways. She’s got her reasons.” His gaze slid away as the last of the water dribbled from the trough into the grass.

  Trent passed Luis a clean, dry shirt. “Some diplomatic discretion might be in order.”

  “What’s that mean?” Luis pulled the shirt over his head.

  “It means we cover your skinny ass,” Mac said. “Just this once, and only insofar as what Sid doesn’t ask about, we don’t discuss with her. We don’t lie, and we don’t tattle. You tell in your own good time, if you tell her.”

  “I can tell her if I want to?”

  “You can,” Mac said. “I’m not sure I’d advise it.”

  “It’s like this,” Trent said. “All morning, we’ve been busy, with Sid working mostly in the house and the backyard, while you’ve been with the crew at the hog house. If one of the guys calls DSS and reports underage drinking, then Sid can honestly say she knew nothing about it. If she knew, and she didn’t report it, that’s worse than if she just lost track of you and you sneaked a few hits from the keg.”

  “It doesn’t feel good to keep something from her,” James said, “but what is the benefit to Sid of confessing to her while her license is already in jeopardy?”

  “She’ll feel guilty,” Mac pointed out. “She’ll worry, she’ll blame herself, and she’ll doubt her ability to parent you. If it will make you feel better, I’ll tan your backside for you, but remorse is often punishment enough.”

  They gave Luis a moment to consider.

  “I feel sick all over again.”

  “First sign of a full recovery,” Trent said, patting Luis’s shoulder. “Now, who’s going to be our decoy so Luis can get upstairs in peace?”

  “I will,” James said. “There are pretty ladies and homemade desserts involved. I’m your man.” He smacked Luis gently on the back of the head and walked off.

  “He really graduated first in his class?” Luis asked.

  “And don’t cut loose around him in French,” Mac said. “His is better than mine.”

  “I’m going to round up my daughters,” Trent said. “Hannah was muttering about sunscreen, which I’m sure has worn off by now.”

  Mac let Trent disappear around the corner of the barn before surveying a damp, sobering-up Luis.

  “I feel like a fuckup,” Luis said, sitting on the lip of the trough. “I am a fuckup.”

  Mac sat beside him. “Everybody, every-God’s-blessed-body on this earth fucks up, Weese. I’ve had some spectacular fuckups, so has Trent, so has James. Ask Trent about his first marriage. Ask James about his entire adolescence—which lasted until this very spring. You do what you can to make it right, learn whatever lessons you can from it, forgive yourself, and move on.”

  Luis kicked the dirt at his feet. “That’s what my mother says.”

  “Is that what this is about? Your mom’s in jail, so you’re a fuckup too?”

  “Nah…maybe, a little bit. We got more water?”

  “Mother’s Day is coming up,” Mac said. “You making a trip to Jessup?”

  “Sid asked the same thing, but my mother will ask about my sisters, and I don’t want to tell her I haven’t seen them in months. She’ll cry, I’ll want to hit something, but I won’t. Their foster parents already think I’m the big, bad, hoodlum older brother. I might corrupt my own little sisters, or some shit.”

  “You’re an honor-roll student with no juvenile record,” Mac countered. “You’ll want to bring up the sibling visits with your lawyer so he can get them court ordered.”

  “My lawyer—whoever the hell that is.” Luis finished his water and crushed the bottle in his hand.

  * * *

  “I cannot believe a building stood right here just this morning.” Sid toed the dirt, which had been graded to a smooth, level surface. “It’s like the fairies came through and disappeared it.”

  “Damned loud batch of fairies,” Mac said. “They put the hurt to some steak too.”

  “But it’s done.” She beamed a smile at the guy who’d authored this bit of rural magic. “I didn’t think it could be as simple as you said it would be, but it’s done, and I have a check in my hot little hand. Just like that.”

  “Sometimes things do work out the way they’re supposed to.”

  Not often, in Sid’s experience.

  Mac stood a few feet away, but he wasn’t entirely present. Was this when he told her she couldn’t go attacking him in broad daylight? For hours, she’d watched him moving around the property, once or twice catching him with his shirt off.

  And, merciful God, it had been hard not to stare. His brothers were good-looking men, fit and well proportioned, but MacKenzie Knightley was beautiful. He had a kind of competence in his movements, a confidence that made a train wreck of Sid’s higher brain functions now that she knew the feel of his mouth on hers.

  His body next to hers.

  James had done a much better job of flirting with her—with Hannah, and with the two women who had worked on the demolition crew. Mac hadn’t said a word, not even when James had stood, one arm around Hannah, the other around Sid, and complained about a man having to do without his dessert entirely too often for entirely too long.

  “MacKenzie?”

  He glanced her way.

  “Don’t let me keep you if there’s somewhere else you need to be.” Trent and Hannah had taken off a couple of hours after lunch, and James had left by five. Luis was zonked, which sometimes happened on weekends, though he’d lasted at least until lunch.

  “There’s nowhere else I need to be,” Mac said. “Nowhere else I want to be. Have you seen the pond?”

  Nowhere else Sid wanted to be, either. “I’ve seen it.”

  “Moon will be up in an hour or so, and you should monitor the water level in the pond.”

  The water level in the pond? And yet, Mac was so dear when he was managing the universe. “Why?”

  “The pond is one barometer of your water table, albeit only a rough one. The well here has never gone dry that I know of, but the development farther up the valley puts a greater demand on the aquifer.”

  “We’ll go visit the pond.” Because he’d more or less been asking her to, right?

  Mac started off toward the pasture, then stopped. “We need a blanket.”

  “We do?” To check the water level?

  “Wait here.” He loped off toward his truck and reappeared carrying some sort of camping blanket. “This’ll do.”

  He slung it over his shoulder and took off again, and this time Sid fisted her hands on her hips and advanced on him.

  “It will not do. You kissed the daylights out me a few days ago, MacKenzie. Now I’m getting the silent treatment? You trying to get your it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech together?”

  “My what?”

  “The speech where you t
ell me you’re still involved with your ex, or your hairdresser, or you’re one of those guys who needs a lot of freedom, but if I ever want to hook up, you’ll work me in, so to speak.”

  “I don’t have a hairdresser. I go to a barber.”

  “Good to know. Makes all the difference.” She stalked past him, or tried to. A large, warm hand on her arm prevented her progress.

  “Sidonie?” Mac’s tone was gentle, laced with regret, or consternation, or some damned thing that suggested she’d just made a fool of herself. Again.

  “What?”

  “We’re in view of the house, and it isn’t dark yet. Luis might wake up and take a sandwich to the porch, or check to make sure we brought his mares in. He has enough on his plate without serving as your duenna.”

  “Oh.”

  Mac leaned closer. “When we get over the lip of that hill, I know for a fact that he can’t spy on us from the house, and I have been waiting all damned day to get my hands on you.” He let her arm go. “You kiss the daylights out of a man, then leave him to wonder, while you carry on with his wayward baby brother. Brothers, plural, because Trent is only marginally better than James. My influence on the both of them was limited.”

  Mac kissed her nose and sauntered off.

  Well.

  Sid enjoyed the view from a few paces behind him for a half-dozen steps, then caught up to him and slipped her arm through his. He patted her hand where it rested on his forearm, readjusted the blanket on his shoulder, and matched his steps to hers.

  MacKenzie Knightley was a good communicator, but he didn’t limit himself to words, or necessarily do his best communicating with words.

  And he was a gentleman.

  “I should have considered Luis’s feelings,” she said. “I haven’t dated anybody since I got my foster care license. Sometimes after a shoot, some of the guys from the crew and I would go out, but that was a work thing. Not that we’re dating.”

  “No, we’re not. We have things to discuss before we’re dating.”

  “Rules?” She didn’t like the sound of that, not unless her rules figured into the discussion. Prominently.

  “Understandings. James would say we need a meeting of the minds, a contract of sorts.”

  Was that Mac-speak for a meeting of the gonads? “James would say that?”

  “Business law comes naturally to him. Goes with being a CPA.”

  “Suppose it would. What are these understandings, MacKenzie? I won’t be dictated to by anybody, not for any reason.”

  “Who said anything about dictating?”

  Sid walked along beside him, trying to fathom his mood. He still seemed preoccupied to her, lost in thought.

  “This is a nice spot,” he said. “The horses will loaf here in the hotter months because the trees make for good shade, but the canopy isn’t quite done leafing out yet, so we’ll be able to see the moon come over the ridge.” He spread the blanket on a patch of grass up the slope from the pond.

  Sid settled on the blanket, running her hand over what felt like soft flannel, while Mac lowered himself beside her.

  “Give me your foot.” Mac didn’t wait for her to comply. He took Sid by the foot, and drew her running shoe off. “Other one.”

  He peeled her socks down and tucked them into her shoes, then unlaced his boots and set them beside the blanket, stuffing a sock in each one. “Moonrise is always best appreciated barefoot.”

  The sentiment was poetical; the words were not. “Is that a rule?”

  “Suppose it is.” He took off his jacket, balled it up, and lay back to rest his head on it. “Come here and let me hold you, Sidonie. I haven’t watched the moon come up with a lovely woman in my arms for years.”

  She settled against him, resting her head on the slope of his shoulder. “We’re going to talk about rules like this?” He thought she was lovely.

  “We’ll come to some understandings.” His arm came around her shoulders, and his hand stroked over her hair. “I’ll undo this braid while we’re at it.”

  “Don’t lose my elastic.”

  His fingers were soon winnowing through her hair, drawing the length of it over her shoulder.

  “How am I supposed to think about rules when you’re touching me like this, MacKenzie?”

  “You don’t need to think. You just tell me what’s true for you.”

  “True about what?”

  He went quiet again, while Sid repositioned herself against him. She could hear his heart beat, feel the slow, steady thud of his life’s blood beneath her cheek.

  “What do you want from me, Sidonie Lindstrom? What do you need?”

  “Nobody has asked me that before.” She considered her answer, while Mac’s hand drifted through her hair, across her back, down her arm. “I want a friend, I guess. You’ve been a friend to me, and I wasn’t expecting to find that here.”

  “Is that all you want? I can be a good friend. My brothers would vouch for me in that regard.”

  Sid could not tell from Mac’s voice if he was disappointed with her answer, or pleased. “No, that isn’t all I want, but I’ll settle for it, and be grateful if that’s where you want to draw the line. A friend, a real friend, is nothing to scoff at. Tony was my friend.”

  Another silence, while Mac got his hand on her nape and started massaging the tension there. His idea of friendship would soon leave Sid witless and boneless.

  “I can’t expect you to put yourself out there without showing I’m willing to do likewise: I want you.” Mac’s voice was quiet in the gathering darkness. “I want you at least for a friend, an intimate friend, Sidonie, but I don’t share something that precious. If you allow me the privileges of a lover, then I will expect that for whatever time I enjoy that status, those privileges are exclusively mine. You will agree to this, or our friendship keeps its clothes on.”

  Sid shivered, though the night wasn’t uncomfortably cool, and Mac gave off heat like a woodstove. He was so serious about this, when they could have shared a casual romp in the moonlight.

  She would have settled for that—and settling would have been a mistake.

  With Mac, where Sid was now in life, a hookup would have been wrong.

  She traced his facial features. Beyond serious, he was solemn, as if these understandings he sought could be the foundation for something even greater than friendship.

  “If you agree to my terms,” he said, his hand slowing in her hair, “you agree because it’s what you want too, not because I need to hear the words and you have a private agenda that’s different from what you’ll say to me.”

  He was asking for honesty, the most basic tenet of a real friendship. Friends were kind to each other, considerate, patient, reliable, but above all, a friend was somebody who told the truth.

  “I don’t have much practice with relationships, MacKenzie. Tony was protective of me, and I never went looking. I’m not a party girl now. I haven’t looked at a man in months, possibly years. Then Tony got sick, and there was no question, no possibility.”

  “You were grieving. You’re still grieving.” He rolled slowly, like the earth heaving up, until Sid was on her back with Mac blanketing her. “There’s more to say.” He rested his forehead against hers. “A lot more, but right now, Sidonie, I have to kiss you. Have to.”

  He’d thought about this. Sid could tell from his kiss that this conversation was what he’d been preoccupied with. These understandings and this very kiss.

  He brushed his mouth over hers, slowly back and forth. “Open.”

  She parted her lips, the better to sigh out her pleasure. His weight wasn’t on her, but she craved it and wrapped her legs around his flanks to pull him closer.

  “Touch me, Sidonie.” He brushed her mouth again, then brushed his lips over her brows, along her hairline, down her jaw. The sensation was warm and ticklish and sp
ecial. “Put your hands on me, anywhere. Everywhere.”

  Sid didn’t need the whispered invitation, but hearing it sent arousal arrowing down to the secret places in her body. She tugged Mac’s shirt free and skimmed her hands over the warm plane of his naked back.

  “Feels good,” he murmured. “Makes me hot. Hotter.”

  Mac settled his mouth over hers on those incendiary words, and Sid groaned with the pleasure of it. He would torture her, she was sure of it. She’d caught him unaware the other night on the porch, ambushed him, and now in his own much more studied fashion, he was ambushing her.

  “MacKenzie, I want it fast.” She spoke against his mouth, felt him chuckle, or maybe groan. She tried to get her hands under his belt to clutch at the muscles of his backside, but he took his mouth from her and rested his cheek against hers.

  “You want my clothes off, Sidonie?”

  “Need them off.” She ran her fingers through his hair. She’d been longing to get her hands on his hair, longing to feel the silk and softness of it. “Every stitch. Be pagan with me, MacKenzie.”

  He sighed against her cheek, which was no damned answer at all. She started undoing the buttons of his shirt while he made up his infernal male mind.

  “We’re burning moonlight, Knightley.” She pushed his shirt off his shoulders and opened her mouth on his chest. He even tasted of cinnamon and cloves. “Ah, God. MacKenzie.”

  He let Sid tease at his nipples with her tongue, and nuzzle and lick and explore for long moments, until she was squirming her hips against him.

  “You are driving me bonkers,” she said, “and you’re barely moving.”

  “I’m half-undressed, which is more than we can say for you.”

  Sid digested that sorry reasoning for about one second. “Get off me.”

  He was gone in a single, lithe move. His weight and warmth surrounded her one instant; he was flat on his back beside her the next.

  “The jeans have to go.” She worked at his belt buckle, some tricky arrangement intended to serve the misguided cause of adult male chastity. “Damn you. No more belts when we’re getting lucky. Understand? That’s a rule.”