“Cora,” he started.
“Oh, God,” she said, and there was a plea in her voice he didn’t know how to answer. But she didn’t pull her hand away.
He would try his damnedest. “I can’t change what I did. When Logan was dying, I should have been here. And I’m sorry for my actions. I can’t change the past, though. God, Cora, if I could, I’d change everything about it, don’t you know that? I wouldn’t have gone with Trixie to that stupid dance. I would have decked Logan when he decided to ask you out. Our lives would be so different that it’s completely unimaginable. Logan still would have died, and I bet he would have been married to some nice woman who’d still be grieving him, too. But it wouldn’t be you. Because you’d be with me. That’s what I would change if I could only change one thing. It’s the only thing that matters.”
The look in her eyes – he’d attended a mare once during a difficult foaling, and right before she passed out, she’d looked like that. Nothing but panic. The sheer, unadulterated need to get out of the worst situation she’d ever been in.
He’d caused that. Mac hated himself for it.
“That’s all. I thought you needed to know that.”
“But Olivia – and… But –”
“We can talk later,” he said, and he drew her hand to his mouth. He pressed his lips against the back of her knuckles, breathing warmth onto their coolness. “I’ve always loved you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
No matter how clever you are, at some point, you will fail. That’s where the real fun begins. – E.C.
It was all right that she pulled her hand from his, turned and walked away, leaving him there, his boots sinking into the soft sand of the dune. Dammit, Mac felt like running too, and not back to the beach where his mother and aunt waited. How could Cora possibly accept him, thinking what she did about him? That he’d abandoned a child. He wanted to run, and keep going, past the pier, past the lighthouse, over the rocks, and to the southern part of the sand that stretched for miles, the part of beach that only the fishermen went to. He wanted to run all night until he was nothing but pain and heat and exhaustion.
But instead, he went back to the fire. His mother was holding her hands up to the flames, and Valentine was pulling a raw marshmallow apart and then pushing it back together until it turned into taffy in her fingers. Then she threw the marshmallow into the fire and wiped her fingers on the sand. “I’m going to get the wet sand. Come on, wee dogs.”
His mother sat in place, looking stunned.
“You know we were right to try,” she said to him. He heard the unspoken question in her voice. “If we sell, we should all sell.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we weren’t right. Maybe nothing was right about it,” he said.
“But we have to take care of ourselves.”
“Yeah, Ma. That’s exactly what Cora’s doing.”
Louisa’s gaze dropped to the sand. “You won’t believe me, and I don’t blame you, but that girl is my family, too. I’ve loved her almost as long as you have.”
Mac started.
“Just because I don’t show it, doesn’t mean it’s not real. If your father were alive, he’d tell you that was true.” Louisa rubbed her hands together in front of the fire. “I don’t have to tell people I love them. They should just know. Family just knows.”
“You should say it, Ma.’ Mac felt exhausted. “Every once in a while. Might do you good.” Maybe that had been the problem all along with his mother. Maybe if, as a family, they’d been more demonstrative, he’d have pulled it together earlier in his life. Gone after Cora when he should have. Instead of running away.
“I love you,” his mother said. The words sounded gravelly, as if she had a cold. Her trembling fingers reached tentatively toward him.
Mac took his mother’s hand for the first time since he was eight years old. Funny, it felt just the same. A little thinner, but still tough. Strong. As if she’d fight for anything, anyone. Maybe fighting was all she’d ever known. “I love you too, Ma. No matter what, okay?”
He saw relief on her face, starkly outlined in the light of the leaping flames.
Fuck Royal, anyway. Fuck him sideways for starting all this, for being all or nothing, for wanting more than he could have. Mac stood, taking a deep lungful of smoke and immediately started coughing.
If he was going to pretend to be a father, he was going to have to stay in town. Period. Maybe he should rethink this sale thing.
“Son?” Louisa’s voice was querulous and he realized she’d gotten older since he’d been gone. But he’d think about the ramifications of that later.
He needed to be near Cora.
Shit. Just being near her wouldn’t do.
No way in hell would it do. He needed her, and goddamn it, she needed him too. He knew she did. Mac felt a throb, a pulse of blood at the base of his wrists. The only other time he’d ever felt that was when he’d been about to make his first surgical cut on a live, breathing horse. The scalpel had shaken in his hand, until he’d finally drawn breath and held it, high at the top of his lungs.
The adrenaline spiked in his blood, sending a shot of electricity through his body. He breathed in slowly, holding the oxygen now like he had then.
Mac turned and met his mother’s eyes. “She’s not going to sell,” he told her. “And you know what? I might not, either.”
Louisa, to her credit, didn’t look surprised. “Will he take a smaller amount of land?”
“Not likely. I wouldn’t be able to talk him into it. He’s a stubborn cuss.”
She poured one more plastic tumbler of wine. “Go on then, son.”
“Do you understand me? I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. That you get the help you need somehow. But it won’t go the way you wanted it to go.”
His mother raised the glass to him. “Even if you think I don’t, I do understand. We’ll work it out.” She sighed. “Love conquers, and all that crap. Both you boys loved her. Now, go get her.”
Yes.
Mac started up the dune.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Always be brave. – E.C.
An hour later, the barn – a place that could usually soothe her through any anger, any sadness – was doing nothing for Cora. Every chore was a burden. Lifting the latch that led into the goat pen gave her a splinter the size of a two-by-four. She pulled it out with her teeth, and immediately felt nauseated. While she was moving hay, chaff flew into her eye. And she missed Miss Honey, the chicken they’d had for dinner at the beach.
Chickens were for eating. In case of emergency. She had three whole pages in her book, written out by hand – directions for killing and plucking a chicken with the least amount of trauma for all involved. Miss Honey, a Golden Laced Wyandotte, had never been one of Cora’s favorites, but she’d had a personality that couldn’t be denied – when Cora fed them, the hen would fly up to the roosting bar and make a sound that sounded suspiciously like a rooster crowing. From the bar, she attempted to boss all the others. They’d always ignored her, gobbling the grain as Miss Honey crow-gulped above them.
Tonight, when she stood still and listened to them roosting, making the rare sleepy cluck, there were no annoying noises coming from above.
Stupid chickens. And Clementine! What was she thinking, keeping the damn dog? Every time they went to the barn, she showed signs of having a strong prey drive. She’d have to keep her on leash when they were near the chickens. What kind of life was that for a dog? A farm dog locked in the house. It wasn’t right.
She sat on the bench she’d made and rested her hands on the wood, smoothing it with her fingers. Wood had seemed so foreign when she’d built it, a substance that wouldn’t bend or stretch like the fiber she was so used to. Cora could knit a sweater, spend weeks on it, and when she held it up after grafting the underarms, it could either fit her perfectly or seem suited for a giant. And that was after doing a gauge swatch.
Wood, though. Wood was solid. Long-lasting. Measuri
ng mattered. If she measured a board right, it fit. There was no guesswork in wood. Things didn’t crop up and surprise a person. It was trustworthy, like the wood that framed her home.
Home.
That moment after she and Mac had made love – before she’d bolted to the bathroom – her house had been more a home in that moment than it had ever been. That was the feeling she’d been after without knowing it, the one she’d been actively looking for this whole time. Maybe her whole life.
If she slept with him again, just once before he left, would she feel it? Strictly sexually, the orgasm he’d given her had been mind-blowing. She could imagine women lining up to feel that way. He could sell tickets. Expensive ones.
But that was only part of it. That connection they’d had, that feeling of warmth, of… love? Cora sat on the bench and stared at Mavis, who bleated comfortably back at her. It had felt like…
Love.
No. That feeling of home that had imbued her soul with that radiance and warmth, wasn’t that just the afterglow? Every woman he’d ever been with had probably felt that way afterward. They’d all wanted to get up and make him muffins and give him a place to put his boots just inside the kitchen door, right? He’d probably fit like that in every woman’s bed. In every woman’s home.
Cora pressed her fingertips against her lips and smelled the dust of the corn on them. She held her hands out and looked at her cracked nails, at the fine line of dirt under them that no amount of scrubbing ever completely took away. She held up her feet. Old mud was still caked up the sides of the canvas shoes from when she’d thrown them on late one night during a freak summer storm. Mac couldn’t want her. Not like this.
But she knew he did. She felt it in her very bones – that with her, he was where he’d always wanted to be, too.
Home.
She stood, and finished the chores, willing herself to think only about them.
Then she went to the bomb shelter. Ostensibly, she was checking the preserve stores. She’d had to sell more of them than she would have liked, but that was just something she would have to do to hang on. To make it. It was fine. She’d put in another couple of vegetable beds this next week and start some late tomatoes. If the weather held, there would be winter sauce.
But instead of doing the inventory on the canned goods, Cora sat. She’d made the bench in here, too. It had been her second wooden project, and she’d been more confident about the sawing and sanding. She’d been proud of the gleam she’d brought out of the rough aspect of it, proud of the way the stain had brought out the personality of the wood.
She’d left the flap of the shelter door open and now flipped off the interior light so she could look out and up at the stars. The night breeze sighed through the oaks, and the acrid scent of eucalyptus filled the small room. She pulled the afghan she’d knitted years ago over her knees – the orange one with the yellow fringe that always smelled of the trees, even though she’d washed it three or four times since she’d moved it out here.
The orderly rows of bottles of water, none of them past their expiration date, comforted her. She could just make out the glass jars of pickles and beans she’d put up last summer.
Cora wrapped the blanket tighter. She breathed.
Then she let herself think about Mac.
He’d abandoned a child. But true, it didn’t seem as if he’d known about Olivia. Could he be blamed for that? And what if he stepped up now, and did the right thing? A thin trail of something that felt suspiciously too much like jealousy threaded through her. Would he, then, spend more time with Trixie? Wouldn’t that be natural? What if they started up what they’d had before?
Before that happened, before she lost Mac again, what if she let herself feel that way one more time, feel that sense of falling-into-home? Just once, before he left. Was it too awful, too crazy to consider? Maybe this was what addiction felt like, telling yourself you only needed one more hit, and that would be the last. Would giving in to it only make the addiction that much worse?
Did she care?
There was a crunch of gravel from the driveway and the low growl of an engine before it shut off.
It was all the answer Cora needed. She shivered even though she wasn’t cold.
Waiting, she listened as Mac went up on the porch of the house and knocked. From inside, Clementine barked, but the lights were all off. He would check the barn next.
She heard his boots crunching that direction.
Cora stood. She took a deep breath and pulled the string on the overhead bulb of the bomb shelter. From where he was in the yard, it would attract his attention immediately…
The footsteps stalled.
Then she heard him start to run toward her, and her heart took up the sound, the rhythm. She heard him as he ran through the yard, then he raced down the steps.
“Cora,” he started, immediately. “I don’t have to sell, either. We can stay –”
Cora launched herself at him. Heaven help her, she didn’t know if this was right. Maybe it was the worst idea she’d ever had. She didn’t care. Mac was the last man on the earth she should be kissing. She was outraged with him, personally and morally affronted by what he’d left undone in his life.
And he was her home. Goddamn him, he was her heart.
When he’d said he should have been with her all this time, she’d unraveled inside. She knew he was right. She should have said yes back then. She should have run away with him.
His mouth dragged heavily against hers, and his lips told her that he wanted her in the same way. Possession, now. He tasted her lower lip, and drew her tongue into his mouth. When she groaned against him, he moved his kisses down her neck, and the way his stubble scraped her sensitive skin made her sides shake with need.
Cora reached down, and pressed her hand to him. He was hard, and ready. There was nothing in the world as important as having him inside her.
“Here?” he asked, in answer to her unspoken question.
In a moment – a second – of clarity, she tore herself away from him. “Oh, God…” Then, again, as she leaned against his chest, she felt it again. Home.
There was nowhere else she wanted to be. Consequences: they’d still be there in the morning. When the sun came up, it would be a new day, and she’d deal with it then. But now, she just wanted him. Mac. The man she’d loved since she was a teenager, since she saw the look of frustration on his face that he wasn’t the one dealing with Billy Thunker.
That same frustrated look was on his face now, and it made her want to laugh with the joy of it.
“Cora.” Mac’s hand was still on the small of her back and he pulled her against him, as if they were dancing. Cora could feel the length of him pressing against her stomach, and she turned liquid with need. She couldn’t wait – he was like a drug she’d had a taste of and needed more, as much as she could have. Unbuckling his belt, she unsnapped his jeans and slid her hand inside. She could hear the tension in him, feel it in the silk-covered strength she held in her fist.
“This is what I want,” she said against his mouth.
He blinked, hard. He moved fast, twisting away from her, reaching for the leg of the cot with his foot and dragging it closer. “Might need this,” he said, and then he was kissing her again, his mouth heavy on her lips. He was strong when he needed to be, and Cora felt how it was that he could move a thousand pounds of horse – he acted as if she weighed nothing as he lifted her and placed her on the cot.
Leaning over her, his voice was barely controlled, as he said, “If you tell me to stop now, I’ll stop.”
“Don’t,” Cora said. She took hold of the open fronts of his flannel shirt and pulled as hard as she could. Mac toppled onto her, and his weight, though it took away her breath, was exactly what she needed. “Don’t stop,” she said.
The words made him move faster, and Cora was so overheated she could only be thankful for his speed. The snaps of her overalls were undone in a second.
“Have I ever m
entioned how sexy you look in this getup? No one should look this good in farm wear.” He slipped off the straps and then undid the buttons at the side of her waist. “It’s a little more work to get into, but hot damn, Cora…” He ran his hand up her side, under her shirt, tracing the outline of her breast before he traced the vee between her breasts. “Jesus.”
She wriggled until the overalls were off as he pushed down his jeans to just below his hips. His cock was so hard, so ready. He pulled her panties down until she could kick her way out of them.
“Mac –” Cora wanted to tell him, had to…
But he got there first. “I love you,” he said.
Cora laughed with unadulterated joy. They were the best words in the whole world. “Yes,” she said. She lifted her leg and wrapped it around his hip.
Mac reached down and grabbed her other leg behind the thigh. He lifted her, pressing her into the afghan below them, and held her there, for just a moment, an agony of seconds, before sinking himself – hard – into her.
Cora kept her arms around his neck, kept her mouth on his, drawing his tongue deep into her mouth as the rocked against each other. With each thrust, she felt him climb, and she moved against him more frantically, needing her own release. “Yes,” she said again. “Love. Don’t stop. My love.”
The word felt almost as good in her mouth as he did deep inside her, and as she came around him, she wanted to laugh again from the happiness that bubbled up, so she did. He came with a deep, guttural roar, and then he joined her in the laughter. His chest shook, and as he pressed his face against hers, she felt her tears against his cheek.
“Love,” she said again, and her body shuddered.
“Love,” he repeated, running one finger from the corner of her eye down her jawline and then to her mouth. He kissed her again, and instead of hot, it was soft. Instead of need, it was sweetness.
“When I’m with you…” Mac’s voice was tentative. She could feel the words inside him, building on the breath in his lungs before he spoke. “I feel like… I feel like I’ve come home.” He paused. “Does that make any sense at all? Do you know what I mean?”
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