Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses)

by Grace Burrowes

  Luis toed off his sneakers, which had become sizable items of footwear sometime in the last year. “A riveting, action-packed, fun-filled, rollicking adventure for the whole family. We had the AP test in history. It went pretty well.”

  “That’s three college credits we won’t have to pay for, then. Pat yourself on the back. Do you like beets?” And please, God, could Luis stay with her until college was a reality, not merely a dream?

  “I’ve never had beets. The color’s not boring. Do we have any of Mac’s bread left?

  “If you looked in the fridge, you’d see I left a quarter of the loaf for you. It would make really good cheese toast. What about snow peas? Do you like those?”

  “I’ve only ever had them in stir-fry, but they’re OK. When will you make that salad again you made for Mac?”

  Mac, Mac, Mac. The boy was a broken record.

  “You liked it? It’s easy to make: equal parts shredded jack cheese, chopped celery, chopped mushrooms, and some Italian dressing. I can get the ingredients if you’d like to make it yourself.”

  “Put it on the list.” Luis shoved off the counter. “I’m off to tend to my girls. Tell Mac I said hi.”

  And damn the little twerp if the phone didn’t start to ring just as he yanked on his Timberlands and sauntered out the door.

  “Hello, Lindstrom’s.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Lindstrom, this is Amy Snyder. How are you?”

  Not Mac. Not anybody Sid wanted to talk to. “I’m fine, and you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m calling to let you know that my supervisor and I met to discuss that outbuilding on your property, and I’m sorry to say he was of the opinion we need to start the licensure revocation process. I’ll come out to meet with Luis in the next few days to discuss his next placement with him. You’ll be given a copy of the notice, and have some time to effect a cure before the decision can no longer be appealed.”

  You bitch. “That won’t be necessary, Amy.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ll see when you come for your next visit that there is no more outbuilding, no outdoor plumbing, nothing that would require a revocation of my foster care license.”

  “But how…? That’s not… The paperwork has already been submitted, though I don’t have final signatures on it yet.”

  “Then it can easily be withdrawn, can’t it? Luis was just telling me how well he’s doing in school here, and it really would not be in his best interests to have to move again so close to the end of the school year, would it?”

  “I’ll have to look up the regulations, because Luis was on that property when it was out of code. I’m not sure how you got approval to move there without somebody looking it over carefully first.”

  “I guess the Baltimore courts were relying on the Department on this end to do just what you did: make sure it’s suitable for foster care. Which it is. When shall I tell Luis to expect you?”

  Sid heard the sound of a keyboard clicking as Miss I’m-fine-how-are-you-but-I’m-taking-your-kid-away-over-a-formality Amy Snyder made her contact note in the file.

  “I’ll be out later this week, possibly next week.”

  That certainly narrows it down. “Do we have a hearing date yet?”

  “It will be on a Tuesday, probably in a few weeks.”

  Sid gave the phone the finger, because the worker’s response provided exactly no new information, and not even the cats were around to see her bad behavior.

  “Luis wondered who his attorney will be.”

  “Legal Assistance has the contract in this county. I’m sure they’ll call once the hearing notices are sent out.”

  Don’t bestir yourself to part with a name, much less a phone number, Almira Gulch. “Thank you, Amy. We’ll look forward to your next visit.”

  Sid hung the phone up and forced herself to unclench her jaw, her fists, her heart.

  That woman had been cheerfully planning to “remove” Luis to some shelter, probably right back down in Baltimore, and then pop him into a group home, or better still, transfer his whole case right back to Baltimore too.

  If Mac hadn’t been willing to call on his brothers; if those contractors hadn’t been willing to drop everything to work on a Saturday; if weathered barn lumber hadn’t been in demand…

  A child’s life shouldn’t be like this. It bloody damned shouldn’t be like this, so a worker’s whim and narrow-minded interpretation of the regulations resulted in a boy’s whole world being turned around. Damned social workers, as bad as the damned attorneys who did their dirty work for them.

  The phone rang again. Probably the idiot supervisor calling to snort and paw and wave the rule book around.

  “Sid Lindstrom.”

  “What’s put you in such a temper?”

  “MacKenzie…” Thank you, God. “I just got off the phone with Luis’s caseworker. The little twit has already put in paperwork to revoke my license because of the hog house.”

  “What hog house?”

  “Right, and I told her that, but she’s flown away on her broomstick to check her regulations. Mac, if she moves Luis over this, I will not answer for the consequences.”

  “She won’t.” The conviction he could put into two words was reassuring. “Keep your dire threats to yourself, Sid. Don’t mutter and mumble them around the kid, don’t mention them to the worker, and don’t, for God’s sake, put them in writing to the supervisor.”

  Which was exactly what she would have done. “I wasn’t planning to. How are you?”

  “Not so fast. Where did you leave it with the worker?”

  MacKenzie could do this. He could interrogate like a truant officer, and from him, Sid tolerated it. Mac would take in all the data, spot the issues, make sense of the situation, and find a course of action while Sid was still trying to breathe her way through a tantrum.

  Or a panic attack. To think that idiot-twit-bitch had almost moved Luis over a vintage two-seater people would pay good money for on eBay. A wave of weakness came over Sid as the near miss sank in.

  “Ms. Snyder said Luis was on the property when it was out of code, but she also said she might not get out here until next week. Mac, she was going to move him. She was about to pluck Luis up from his life and move him, and over an outhouse, like he was some t-two-year-old with no sense. Like I’d let him—”

  “She won’t do that, Sidonie. Are you sitting down?”

  She slid down the wall. “I am now. I hate this. Why would she be such an ass, Mac? The rules are just rules. They aren’t the Ten Commandments.”

  “Look, I have to be somewhere in a few minutes, and I’m sure this merits more discussion, but I wanted to ask if you’ll be home tonight.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then I’d like to bring you over some dahlias. I always have more than I need, and mine did particularly well last year.”

  He could be bringing her a used muck fork and she’d be glad to see him. “What are dahlias?”

  “Big, showy flowers that grow on tubers. You lift them in the fall and separate them when you plant them each spring. I can pick up some pizza too.”

  “Pizza sounds good.” Seeing him sounded even better. Tubers—whatever they were—were another matter. “What time?”

  They negotiated time and dessert, and by the time Luis was back from his barn chores, Sid’s panic was subsiding.

  “Mac’s bringing pizza over for dinner,” she said. “We’re making dessert.”

  Luis put the kettle on, then let the hot water keep running. “Are we making anything in particular?”

  “I was thinking a French blueberry pie. Mac’s big on healthy eating. Blueberries are good for you.”

  He gave her a look over his shoulder as he washed his hands. “You like this guy, don’t you, Sid?”

  She jammed her hands into the back poc
kets of her jeans. “I like Mac a lot.”

  “So do I, so don’t take it the wrong way when I ask how a man who shoes horses for a living can afford that big old house with all the trimmings? It must take a herd of gardeners to keep his back lawn in order.”

  This casual observation was made while Luis took down two mugs, his back to Sid.

  “Mac does all that himself, the gardening, anyway. He hires the mowing out.”

  “Right. Like shoeing horses pays well enough to hire mowers and shit? I counted four bathrooms, Sid. This house only has three and a half. He’s got a circular driveway. Only rich people have circular driveways.”

  “You’ve rubbed elbows with how many rich people, that you’d know one when you saw him?”

  Luis set a stick of butter on the counter, then got out a package of cream cheese. “He has a nice house, Sid. Really nice. You could eat off his garage floor, and his pool table probably cost more than your college education. The dessert dishes were Waterford crystal.”

  “Now you’re a connoisseur of pool tables and fine crystal?” Sid roused herself to scare up the flour to make the piecrust. “What is your point, Weese? Mac is a good man, and he’s becoming a good friend. I don’t need to know his net worth to know that much.”

  “If that’s where you want to leave it, that’s fine with me, Sid, but you’re a woman. Why not marry the guy? Didn’t your grandmother ever tell you it’s as easy to fall in love with somebody who has money as somebody who doesn’t?”

  Sid had never met her grandmothers. “Luis Martineau, you don’t pick out a prospective husband because he has four bathrooms.”

  “If you’re holding out for five, you’ll have a long wait in Damson County. Five-bathroom guys don’t grow on trees. Where’s the mixer?”

  “Over the fridge. This is a ridiculous conversation.”

  “Not noticing the man’s driving two brand-new trucks is ridiculous. How much do you think those things go for, tricked out like that? You’re putting cinnamon in this?” He waved a half-pint container of heavy cream in the general direction of the spice rack.

  “Whip it nearly to butter first,” Sid instructed, “then add a dash when you whip in the confectioner’s sugar and cream cheese. Mac’s house and his trucks and his pool table might be either mortgaged to the hilt, which is not good, or bought with family money, which means it’s gone and can’t be spent again.”

  She passed Luis the confectioner’s sugar and stared at her rolling pin. “The Knightleys sold this farm not that long ago. Ten, maybe twelve years ago. This property would have been worth a pretty penny even then, even split three ways.”

  Luis fitted the beaters to the hand mixer. “Rich, I’m telling you. He’s got nice toys—you did see the plasma TV?—a nice crib, nice threads hanging in his closet, nice everything. Marry him, Sid. You won’t have to dick around with knocking down hog houses or peddling vegetables.”

  Sid glared at him, prepared to tell him exactly what she thought of such a mercenary approach to matrimony, but Luis turned on the electric mixer, effectively giving himself the last word.

  “Brat.”

  He grinned at her and stuck his finger into the cream.

  Sid busied herself rolling out the piecrust, then fluting the edges. Luis had a point—not about marrying MacKenzie Knightley—but about Sid missing obvious clues to who MacKenzie Knightley was.

  Horseshoeing, even five days a week for upscale clients, couldn’t possibly subsidize the lovely Tudor home Mac lived in. He’d said the place was built in the 1920s by some wealthy Philadelphians who wanted a summer home away from the Chester County country-club set.

  Most of the common rooms had twelve-foot ceilings. The floors were gleaming hardwood parquet, the windows on the facade were mullioned, and the gardens…

  Maybe the time of year was ideal, maybe the place always looked like that, but if Sid’s backyard had that many dogwoods and azaleas, that many redbud trees and flowering crab apples, she’d spend all her spring days on the flagstoned back terrace.

  Mac’s backyard was a magical expanse that went on for acres. He’d said the daffodils were done for the year, but the tulips and grape hyacinths were still going strong, the pansies were gorgeous, and the lilacs and lilies of the valley intoxicating.

  Gardens like that, much like the plasma TV, took money. They took time and energy and forethought and follow-through, but undeniably, they took money too.

  Lots of money.

  * * *

  “What are you doing here?” Mac aimed the question at James, who was lounging in the back of Courtroom Three.

  “Watching the scourge of the state’s attorney’s office in action. I forget how good you are, MacKenzie. If you ever leave the practice of law, the judges around here will have to work a lot harder on the criminal dockets, and the prosecutors will be singing in the streets.”

  Mac slid manila files, one by one, into a fat black leather briefcase. “Might be a better use of their limited talents. Meaning no disrespect. Did Trent send you to spy on me?”

  “No, he did not. If you’re done here, let’s go for a walk.”

  Courtrooms had ears. The clerks tidying up at the end of the hearing, the bailiff gossiping with the sheriff’s deputy, opposing counsel, they all worked with Mac day in and day out and were as prone to talk as the next group of people.

  If not more.

  “Pretty day,” James said as they left the courthouse. “I thought spring wouldn’t make it this year.”

  Small talk, and when James had specifically hunted Mac down outside the office. Mac denied himself a glance at his watch and marshaled his patience.

  “You were nursing a broken heart, which you’ve apparently mended. When were you going to tell me, James?”

  “Trent has for once kept his mouth shut?”

  “Hannah left me enough hints that I know you and Vera are keeping company again, and it’s about damned time.”

  The sidewalks in this older part of town were uneven, and James was studying them as if he might accidentally step on a crack and lose his train of thought.

  “Vera and I cleared up a lot of old business.”

  They walked along in silence for a few minutes, while Mac tried not to envy his brother this newfound happiness. Vera was a peach, her daughter Twyla was a terrific kid, and they would make a wonderful family.

  Mac had always believed his brothers would eventually find domestic bliss, and as for the family average, two out of three qualified for the major leagues.

  “I wanted to discuss something else with you,” James said.

  Now there’s a surprise. “I’m going to be an uncle again?” Mac asked. “I’m a big boy. I can deal with nasty dipes. I changed enough of yours.”

  The breeze lifted, and a shower of white blossoms fell onto the sidewalk. The air bore a hint of sweetness, and Mac abruptly missed the sturdy baby boy James had been.

  “Hannah has the look,” James said, “but it’s not my place to say.”

  “I’ve come to the same conclusion. She has that happy, broodmare smugness in her eye, but I was talking about you and Vera.”

  “You call Hannah a broodmare in her hearing, and she’ll come out swinging, MacKenzie.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and Trent will hold my arms behind my back for her, while you sell tickets to the children. What’s on your mind, James?” James did not deny he and Vera might be considering building onto their family immediately.

  “I’m in discussions with Hiram Inskip about a business venture.”

  “Businesses are your thing. You’ve been bored with ours for a while, and it’s time you branched out.” What a relief to say that and not risk getting his face rearranged.

  “I want to specialize, Mac.”

  “In?”

  “Agribusiness.”

  Mac almost said: Why di
dn’t I think of that? “Farming, you mean. You’ll farm with Hiram?”

  “I’ll buy him out over the next five years. With my land, his, and Vera’s, we have a sizable piece of contiguous property. Vera’s land corners with the home place, and Hiram has been farming some of that since we sold it. I’d like to talk to Sid about making some changes in the way Hiram’s been doing things.”

  They were several blocks from the courthouse, and it was time to turn around, though Mac didn’t want to.

  “This is right for you,” Mac said. “We’ll manage in the office. You keep us in fresh dairy and eggs, we’ll manage.”

  “That’s all you’d want? Eggs and milk?”

  “I’d want my baby brother happy for a damned change.” From the corner of his eye, Mac also saw his baby brother swallowing a couple times and blinking.

  Spring breezes. Allergies, maybe.

  “I wouldn’t leave the practice,” James said. “Both my new hires are crack shots, and between them, they can manage what’s there now. I want to court the real money in this county, Mac. I want to go after the family farms. Those guys and gals are sitting on more wealth than the entire rest of the community has combined, and they just climb on their tractors and fret about how much rain we’re getting. They don’t see the big picture.”

  James had been stewing about this, and when James stewed about something, it got stewed to damned death.

  “You do see a big picture?”

  “Hell, yeah. I know how to get them the grants, the subsidies, the tax shelters, the competitive loans. I know how to set up their businesses so they’ll still be around when the grandkids get sick of playing in the city. I know how to diversify, how to develop specialty markets, and then there’s the growing demand for organic—”

  Mac thumped him on the back. “Go forth and be happy. Whatever your plans, they’ll make us money. You’ll do good while doing well, every ethical lawyer’s goal. I was proud of you before. Now I’m proud of you and happy for you.”

  James let out a sigh, sounding about thirteen years old. “Vera said I was fretting over nothing. Said you and Trent would be my biggest supporters, after her and Twy.”