Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses)

by Grace Burrowes

  They lay in the moonlight, Sid’s leg over Mac’s thighs, her head on his shoulder, their hands joined over his heart.

  She’d given him the exclusive he’d wanted, tossed it at him as if, in Sid’s view, any damned fool would know enough to sign up for it, and then she’d blown his mind until he’d felt the earth, moon, sun, and stars moving.

  And they were moving still…

  Mac tried to place the dull echo of concussion that radiated up from the ground. There had been earthquakes in the area in his lifetime, little bitty geological twitches that barely made the next day’s news.

  But this was faint, steady, rhythmic…

  “Sid?” He shook her gently. “Sidonie, honey, wake up.”

  Her eyes opened, and she started to smile at him, but something in his face must have clued her in.

  “Sweetie, we need to get dressed and move it. I think the horses are loose.”

  * * *

  The urgency in Mac’s tone cut through the fog of lassitude and contentment in Sid’s brain. She had been so happy, drifting in his embrace, so at peace.

  She reached for her clothes and passed him his.

  Mac raised his head like a prairie dog on a windy day. “That’s them. Hear it?”

  Sid paused in the middle of shrugging into her shirt—to hell with the bra—and cocked her head. Yes, she felt as much as she heard dull, thudding hoofbeats, one-two, one-two, from over toward the house. What caught her attention was MacKenzie Knightley, kneeling up on the blanket like he was ready to sprint off buck nekkid.

  What a glorious sight that would be.

  “When the dew is falling, sound travels more easily.” He snatched up his jeans, tossed them away, and pulled on his socks instead. “The latch on the stall is securely bolted to the beam. I checked it myself last weekend.” He pulled on his jeans while Sid fumbled with her shirt buttons.

  “If they get to the road, there will be hell to pay.” Mac jerked at his belt as he nattered on. “Old man Wyandt keeps a little Arab stud about a mile that way.” He pointed with his chin. “If the mares are in season, they’ll head to him, and the shortest route is right along the road.”

  He stood and looked down at her. From where Sid sat on the blanket, Mac looked about nine feet tall.

  Then he was beside her again, kissing her on the mouth, hard.

  “Bring the blanket when you’re decent. Try not to move up on them so you push them toward the road.”

  He loped off, making not a sound as he ran.

  “Wham, bam,” Sid muttered, shoving a foot into her jeans. “Maybe have horse burgers for breakfast.”

  What had happened between her and Mac on that blanket had been beyond words. Profound. Special didn’t begin to start to think about covering it. Mac had surrendered to her, surrendered his body, his mind, his trust…

  But like an icy deluge, the thought washed through her mind: What if Social Services got wind the horses were loose on the road—a public nuisance, a safety hazard, an irresponsibly dangerous situation? What if somebody hits one of them, and I have to pay for all the damage?

  Sid stuffed her bra in her pocket, pulled the rest of her clothes on, folded up the blanket, and hustled back toward the house as quietly as she could. The sight that greeted her would have been comical but for the anxiety pushing up her heart rate.

  The horses were on the lane, halfway down to the road, and Mac was between the horses and the road. He was trying to herd the mares to the barn, but they were alternately munching on the grass beside the lane and frisking around Mac as if he were playing with them.

  Two horses and one man made herding a difficult proposition. He’d get one horse moved a few steps in the right direction, only for the second horse to trot around behind him, looking for a game of tag.

  This situation was like when Luis was too busy playing on the Internet to come down to do his weekend chores. He was simply too distracted to give Sid’s agenda the time of day. She ducked into the barn and retrieved what she needed.

  “Oh, ladies! Laaadies! Come see what Sid has for you!” Both horses’ heads came up, and they stood still, ears pricked in the moonlight. “Come to mama, you bad girls. Painting the town red can work up an appetite, and I’ve got just what you need.” Sid shook the feed bucket loudly, and one of the horses—Buttercup, the one with the blaze—took a tentative step in Sid’s direction.

  “Smart girl, Buttercup. I bet you’ll get a lot more of this than that silly Daisy. She’s too busy flirting with MacKenzie, and there won’t be any left for her.” Sid shook the bucket again, and both horses started moving toward her.

  “You’re brilliant,” MacKenzie said, walking slowly behind the horses. “Start backing toward the barn. They’ll follow once they get a whiff of the grain.”

  “Of course they will,” Sid said, doing as he suggested. “My girls are too smart to get into any real trouble, especially not for some little old runty stallion with a funny nose, aren’t you, ladies? You need your beauty sleep too. You’ve fallen prey to the full moon and the spring air and an excess of high spirits. Am I right?”

  The horses’ heads were down as they followed Sid to the barn, almost as if they realized their adventure was over and it was time for bed. She kept talking to them, just as she might read a bedtime story to a tired child.

  “Walk right into their run-in stall,” Mac said. “Put a little of the grain in each of their dishes then come on out.”

  “How much is a little? These are the biggest horses God ever made.”

  “A handful. They’re efficient, and all they need is enough to reward them for following you back to civilization.”

  Sid complied, but part of her wanted to stay with the horses, to keep talking to them until she was sure they were content for the night.

  “Good job.” Mac kissed her when she was standing beside him outside the horses’ stall. Kissing seemed to be his way of saying a lot of things.

  “This hasn’t happened before,” Sid said. “Is it a regular part of keeping animals, because if it is I’m not sure—”

  He settled an arm across her shoulders. “It happens, but those mares didn’t leave their own stall door wide open, Sid.”

  The implications sank in, and the anxiety that had been ebbing from Sid’s mind rose back up.

  “You’re saying Weese did this? He loves these horses. He wouldn’t do anything to put them at risk.”

  “Not on purpose, but we’re all human. I’ve done the same thing, or worse, left the feed-room door open, the feed unsecured, and the stall door unlatched.”

  “Good heavens. When was that?”

  “After my dad died. I was older than Luis, but it was an unexpected death. I went overnight from being Dad’s treasured firstborn to the man of the house. I’d find myself driving somewhere, and forget where I was going and why I was going there.”

  Sid kissed his cheek and smoothed down his hair, because the memory still bothered him.

  “I’ve done that. It’s like you keep waking up in some stranger’s life, except the stranger is you,” she said. The horses, meanwhile, had already scarfed up their bedtime snacks.

  “Stress, I suppose,” Mac said. “Losing a loved one is stressful as hell.”

  “Losing these horses would be stressful for Luis.” Sid turned, so she was nearly in MacKenzie’s embrace. “If DSS was ready to shut me down over a hog house, what do you think they’d do if Daisy or Buttercup caused an accident on the highway? People who can’t look after horses shouldn’t be looking after children.”

  She could hear Amy Snyder saying those very words as she tapped away at the SmartPad of doom.

  Mac’s fingers paused midway around the curve of Sid’s ear. “When is Luis’s hearing?”

  “Damn it to hell, MacKenzie. You’ve hit it on the head. The last time we faced a hearing, Luis would g
o to school without his backpack, put laundry right into the dryer without washing it, put the teakettle in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard. He never said a word, just silently fell apart.”

  “Court is stressful for most people. Luis still needs to know his girls went off on a toot, or it’s more likely to happen again.”

  “Do I have to tell him now?”

  “Yes.” Mac’s tone held a touch of humor.

  Sid let herself burrow closer for one long moment, then stepped back.

  “Come along, then. If we’re lucky, we can sweeten the lecture with a reprise of that blueberry pie.”

  “I like it when you’re bossy, Sidonie.”

  Sidonie. The name Mac used for her when the message was intimate. He fell in step beside her, but Sid resisted the urge to take his hand. What to say to Weese, and how to say it?

  They reached the kitchen to find Luis was already making inroads on the remains of the pie.

  “I left you some,” he said from his seat at the table. “It wasn’t a big pie to begin with.”

  “Getting smaller all the time.” Sid set a glass at Luis’s elbow and retrieved the milk from the fridge.

  “We had some excitement in the barnyard,” Mac said, putting a plate on the counter. “The mares got out and were halfway to the road before we caught up with them. No pie for me, Sid, but you should have some.”

  Sid poured the milk. The mares got out. No pie for me. Simple, effective, and yet Luis was on his feet, headed for the door, pie forgotten.

  “Your mom got them back to the barn with a bucket of feed,” Mac went on. “They’re safe, and the stall door is latched up tight.”

  Luis stopped short of the door. “They’re OK? You’re sure?”

  “Better than OK, because they had a little exercise. Finish that pie, son, or I might have to see to it myself. No harm, no foul.”

  Man and boy stared at each other, exchanging some silent set of signals Sid couldn’t decipher, then Luis moved back to the table. She poured his milk and put the jug back in the fridge.

  “I must have left their door open.” Luis stared at his half-eaten pie. “I can’t remember. I think I closed it, but I can’t be sure.”

  Mac lounged back against the counter. “You probably did close it, but you didn’t latch it, and they get to bumping on the door, and it moves a little, so they get their noses into the act, and lips that are damned near prehensile, and soon enough, two loose horses. I used to tie some baling twine around the stall doors at night with a bowknot so I wouldn’t forget, like tying a string around my finger. Sid, you want some tea?”

  He pushed away from the counter and took the teakettle off the stove.

  “Peppermint,” she said. “Something to settle my stomach after all the night’s excitement.” Mac held the teakettle under the spigot, his expression…bashful.

  Good.

  Lest Sid stare at Mr. Bashful until her indecent thoughts were visible on her face, she got down a couple of mugs and the honey. “What about you, MacKenzie? What kind of tea will you have?”

  “Same.”

  “I’m going out to tie some string around the stall door.” Luis got right back up again. “I shouldn’t have forgotten. Adelia and Neils will kill me if I do something like this at the stable.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Mac said. Sid was about to suggest they make a trio of it, when she caught Mac’s eye and the slightest shake of his head. “Might as well finish that piece of pie, Sid. Your boy seems determined to abandon it.”

  Mac followed Luis out the door, leaving Sid alone with a messy, half-eaten piece of very good pie.

  Which should not be allowed to go to waste.

  Chapter 13

  “You have a hearing coming up.” Mac waited until he and Luis were halfway to the barn to drop that bomb.

  Luis stopped walking and turned a belligerent expression on Mac. “What of it?”

  “You have a hearing coming up, the social worker has already threatened to move you once, and kids get moved at hearings all the time, particularly if DSS wants to move you from foster care to some therapeutic group home.”

  “What do you know of it?” Luis resumed his march toward the barn, his thin shoulders hunched as if the night were cold.

  “More than you think. Hannah was raised in foster care.”

  “Who? Oh, her. She was nice.”

  “She’s lovely. Luis, everybody makes mistakes. Get that through your thick, adolescent head.”

  “I don’t just make mistakes, I fuck up.” He stopped outside the barn, his expression bleak. “Sid deserves better than me.”

  “She doesn’t agree with you, and letting a pair of horses wander around in the front yard for fifteen minutes doesn’t make you the eighth biblical plague.”

  The kid’s expression turned hopeless and lost.

  “What aren’t you telling her?” Mac, veteran of uncomfortable discussions with many delinquent teens, let the question hang.

  “Sometimes you do more harm by telling, right?” Luis replied. “Like when I got into the beer? James asked me what the benefit would be to Sid of telling the truth, and there wasn’t any.”

  “Except you told her the truth in your own time anyway, because there is a benefit to treating the people you love with respect. Truth is usually part of that respect.”

  “So is keeping a few things to yourself,” Luis said. “I know the social worker called today. I was out on the porch when she did, but Sid thinks I was doing my chores. I should have been doing them.”

  If they didn’t move this conversation into the barn, Sid would soon be out on that same porch.

  “God almighty, Weese. How many things are you going to beat yourself up for at once? What did the social worker say?”

  “I got the impression she was still trying to jerk Sid’s license, but Sid got around her.”

  Mac looked up at the moon, at the cool, remote beauty of it in contrast to all the tension and misery he felt in the boy.

  “She won’t jerk Sid’s license. Teenagers are hard to place, boys handle moves worse than girls, and your lawyer will get you a hearing in a heartbeat if DSS tries to move you.”

  “My lawyer can’t get a hearing if DSS is only moving me from one foster home to the next. It has to be from here to a more restrictive placement, like a therapeutic group home, before I’m entitled to a hearing.”

  “Ever think of becoming a lawyer?” Mac asked, moving off toward the barn.

  “Sid would kill me.”

  At least the idea put a hint of a smile on Luis’s face, but surely the kid was indulging in adolescent hyperbole?

  “Well, you’re close to right. If you’re being moved to a more restrictive placement, then they must give you a hearing, but you can ask for a hearing at any time for a good cause. This is a good cause.”

  Luis flipped the switch to the right of the barn door, and dim lights came on in the aisle. “None of my lawyers told me that.”

  Or they’d told him and he’d been too stressed out to absorb it. “What kid wants extra hearings?”

  “I do, if they’re trying to move me. I don’t want to leave here. Not the horses, not Sid, not—I don’t want to leave here.”

  “Then let Sid adopt you.”

  Luis stalked away. “I’ll tie some baling twine around the stall door. The horses won’t get out again.”

  Mac watched him go, wondering what in the hopeless hell the boy was keeping to himself in the name of protecting Sid.

  * * *

  “You’d think nobody ever had topsoil for sale around here before,” James muttered as he maneuvered Trent’s farm pickup so Luis could dump a cubic yard of rich, dark earth into the bed.

  “You want more?” Luis yelled. “Sid’ll cut you a deal, maybe.”

  “Fill half the bed,”
James said, craning his neck to eye the truck’s rear tires. The kid was running around with the loader like he’d been born doing it, which boded well if he expected to spend the summer doing farm work.

  The truck shuddered as the additional dirt was spilled into the bed, and James moved his vehicle so the next customer could be served. He parked in the shade near the house and found Sid on the porch, shaking hands with Elroy Wyandt.

  “You’ll do business with just about anybody, won’t you, Sid?” James asked as he ambled up the steps.

  “She must,” Wyandt said, sticking out a hand to James. “Somebody let you back on the property, didn’t they? Hear you and old Inskip are getting in bed together, Knightley.”

  Old Inskip was probably ten years Elroy’s junior, a good foot taller, and possessed of twice the number of natural teeth, but the proprieties had to be observed.

  “If you heard that, then Louella must have made you get some decent hearing aids,” James said, letting the old man squeeze his hand hard. “I’ve got you a new customer too, if you have some wood for sale, Elroy.”

  “The pee-anna lady. Heard something about that too.”

  “You can interrogate him at your leisure about the piano lady or anything else,” Sid chimed in, “but James has to get out his wallet if he’s going to stand here all day.”

  She jammed her hands into her back pockets, which thrust her breasts out against the fabric of her flannel shirt. Elroy’s gaze dropped down over that unwitting display, then darted out to the pasture.

  “I’ll be moseying,” Elroy said, swallowing. “You tell me how much wood you want, missus, and I’ll have it stacked for you come September. Knightley, best of luck with Inskip’s operation.”

  He scampered down the steps, a wizened little gnome as spry as a man one-third his age.

  “You got him lending you his loader and giving you wood?” James asked.

  “He took a look at the quality of that topsoil, set aside three loads for himself, and started talking to me about heating with wood.”

  In the barnyard, two more pickups lined up behind the one Luis was filling with vintage horse manure.