Protecting What’s Mine: A Small Town Love Story

by Score, Lucy

  “Yeah. Me, too. Let’s go back to that.”

  24

  Leroy Mahoney was a big man in a freebie t-shirt and denim shorts held up by suspenders. He wore blinding white sneakers with slightly dingier white socks hiked to his knees. Every time he stood up to cheer, diet soda sloshed over the rim of his plastic cup.

  “Hey there, Leroy,” Mack said. She pretended not to notice the guilty look he shot in her direction.

  “Oh. Hello, there, Dr. Mack.” His mustache twitched. “I, uh, sorry about not returning your calls. Tyrone keeps me pretty busy and, uh, my phone is lost.”

  On cue, a cheery polka ringtone sounded from inside his pocket.

  “I think it’s in your shorts,” she said helpfully.

  He chuckled nervously and fished the phone out. He hit the ignore button, which she knew was exactly what he’d been doing to her calls.

  She sank down on the metal bleacher next to him and couldn’t quite contain the sigh that escaped when she took the weight off her foot.

  He glanced down at her boot. “Sorry to hear about you getting hurt and all,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said, now the self-conscious one.

  “How’s Tyrone feeling?” she said, changing the subject.

  “Couple days of rest, four viewings of The Princess Bride, and he’s back to normal. Just like you said.”

  “Good.” She nodded at the kid with grass stains on his knees. “So he plays left field?”

  Leroy beamed, radiating proud grandpa vibes, and Mack, for just a split second, wondered what it would have been like to have a Grandpa Leroy in her life.

  “He’s really progressing. He’s a natural just like his Pop-Pop.”

  “You played?” she asked, biding her time with a bite of hot dog.

  He surged to his feet along with the crowd around them at a pop-up into left field. “Get it, Tyrone!” Mack stayed on her butt to save her ankle for the arduous limp back to the parking lot.

  The man’s grandson trotted across the green of the outfield, screwing up his face in concentration. The ball hit his mitt and—thankfully—stayed put.

  “Out!” the ump yelled over the celebrating crowd.

  Leroy danced a surprisingly spry boogie. “That’s my boy!” He turned back to her and gave her a hearty high-five, then continued down the whole row.

  The Spider Pigs skipped off the field, whooping their delight.

  Her gaze skimmed to the blond, muscular coach high-fiving kids left and right.

  She felt a foreign, female kind of satisfaction watching Linc with the team. Then immediately dislodged the feeling. She was not the type of woman who would swoon imagining a gorgeous hunk of man holding a baby in his strong arms. She was more likely to be impressed by nice, neat stitches closing a wound or technical form on an overhead squat.

  Or the very important ability to efficiently deliver sexual satisfaction.

  When she let herself think about it, Mack was sure Linc could deliver on all those fronts.

  Hell. Not having sex with the man was only making her think about having sex with him more. It was the classic forbidden fruit.

  Her phone vibrated.

  It was a text from Ellen, including a selfie in a swim cap.

  Ellen: Five swims in toward the new me. I hate kale. But I can tolerate arugula. And I haven’t murdered anyone in my house yet! How’s the meditation going? I found an app that might help!

  She decided to respond later…after she’d meditated. Just as she was pocketing her phone, it buzzed again.

  Andrea: Kenzie, your direct deposit STILL isn’t here, and my rent is due! I’d think you’d be more responsible than this.

  One day late.

  One fucking day late because some dumbass broke her foot.

  She shouldn’t be responsible for Andrea. The woman was an adult. Mack knew her guilt was misplaced. But it was so much easier to transfer the money every month than to have the conversation. To take that stand. Because she knew once she did, it would be her final one.

  Calmly, Mackenzie squelched the urge to hurl her phone into the trash can in front of them. She pushed aside the knee-jerk emotional fallout that texts like these always brought. She had more pressing matters to deal with.

  She cleared her throat. “You know, Leroy. It’s been a while since you’ve had a checkup,” she said, dragging her attention back to her purpose when he sat back down.

  He sighed heavily. “You sound like Dr. Dunnigan. She put you up to this before she left?”

  “We should schedule a checkup. You haven’t been seen in almost two years. Not since your hip surgery. The surgeon made a note that you skipped out on the last follow-up.”

  Leroy mentioned something about Dr. Tattletale under his breath.

  “We just want you to be healthy,” she pressed. “You’ve got Tyrone here depending on you. I want to keep you healthy enough to throw ball with him for a long time. But I can’t do that without seeing you for a physical. We don’t even know if you’re still on your blood thinners.”

  “I’m not,” he told her. The droop in his shoulders made her feel bad for taking the shine off Tyrone’s athletic prowess.

  “I’m overweight,” he said. “I’m old. I don’t need anyone else telling me that.” His lips pressed in a firm, unyielding line under the white of his mustache.

  “Who told you that?” It certainly didn’t sound like something Trish or Russell would say.

  “The surgeon. He told me it was a waste of time doing the surgery on me if I wasn’t going to get off my ass and get healthier.”

  “Ouch,” Mack sympathized. There was that shame again. And instead of motivating him to do better, the shame had made Leroy retreat from the subject entirely. Russell was right. Some doctors didn’t care about their patients as people. But she wasn’t going to be one of them. “Look, you’re in good shape. You have to be to keep up with an eight-year-old. And not all doctors are…”

  He looked left and right then whispered, “Assholes?”

  “Exactly.”

  He still didn’t look convinced.

  “I’m here to help you figure out how to stay healthy and well for years to come. That surgery might have thrown you for a loop. I know it was a long, complicated recovery, and your surgeon sounds like a jackass. But moving forward, you and I can be proactive to keep something like that from happening again.”

  “I can’t not be here for him. Tyrone needs me. His mom needs me.”

  And Leroy needed them.

  “Then we start with a physical,” she said firmly.

  She pulled up the scheduling app on her phone. “How does next Tuesday look?”

  Mack limped her way toward the parking lot, feeling like she’d had her own victory on top of the Benevolence Spider Pigs’ win. He’d pushed her back to Halloween with a litany of excuses. But she’d nailed Leroy down for a physical and bloodwork. She’d also added the friendly threat that she’d show up on his doorstep with her medical bag if he bailed on her.

  “Hey there, doc.” Georgia Rae, in a powder blue sweater set embroidered with sparkly threaded flowers, waved from the concession stand.

  “Dr. Mack.” Skinny Carl, the man with a lot of opinions and children, nodded at her. He had a baby in one arm and a toddler on a leash tied to his belt.

  Mack waved back and quickened her pace toward the parking lot.

  After she’d locked down Leroy’s appointment, she’d given a foot rash a cursory glance and chatted with a mother of five who suggested Mack consider hosting a community flu shot clinic.

  An idea tickled at the back of her mind. She tucked it away to mull over later.

  “Skipping out on us, Dreamy?”

  She turned and saw Sunshine bolting toward her in a blur of tail and tongue. Linc followed. His greeting was slightly more tempered than the dog’s, but she still picked up on his enthusiasm in the slightly lecherous look he shot her legs.

  A pack of kids in grass-stained uniforms and a coll
ection of skin tones and missing teeth closed around them. “Coach Chief Linc, are we going for ice cream? Are we?”

  The kids were as excited as Sunshine was.

  “If I can convince Dr. Mack here to go with us.”

  They turned their sad, puppy kid eyes on her. Sunshine added weight with her own.

  “Please, Dr. Mack? Please?” A boy with goggles over his glasses and a runny nose clasped his hands under his chin.

  A lanky youngster with a cute afro peeking out from under his hat cocked his head and shot her a confident wink. A future heartbreaker in the making.

  “Please?”

  Lincoln Reed did not play fair.

  She telegraphed him a look that said exactly that.

  He sent her a cocky wink. The man’s confidence was a force of nature. And she found it appealing.

  The ghost of that text message floated through her mind and doused the playfulness that was arising in her. She’d never outrun the shadows of her past. And Linc, with his sisters and his nieces and nephews, came from a warm, solid family history. It wasn’t just a mismatch. It was a catastrophe. She had no idea how to be a productive partner in a healthy adult relationship.

  She felt sick and sad. As if the toxicity of her past was leaking through her pores to taint the present.

  Something wet and fluffy nudged her hand, and she looked down at Sunshine, who beamed up at her with unconditional doggy love.

  “See, Dr. Mack? Even Sunny wants ice cream,” one of the very smart, manipulative boys pointed out.

  She managed a weak smile. But when she looked up, Linc’s eyes were blazing into her as if he could see beneath this veneer of a competent adult. As if he could see the ugliness beneath her skin.

  “Please, Dreamy?” he asked sweetly.

  She couldn’t do anything about her past or its effect on the now. But she could say yes to ice cream and steal a tiny moment of fun. Even if it didn’t really belong to her.

  “I guess we’re going for ice cream,” she said with forced brightness.

  “Yes!” The ice cream celebration was as big as the one for the game.

  “Hey, can we ride with you, Dr. Mack?” asked a dark-haired boy with dreamy brown eyes and a Gatorade stain on his jersey.

  As a baffled Mack loaded up six baseball players—whose parents inexplicably trusted her with their kids’ lives—Linc pulled up next to her with Sunshine hanging out of the passenger window of his truck. The grin he sent her went straight to her gut.

  She wished things could be different. Because she would love a side of big, blond, handsome trouble.

  25

  Linc watched as Mack powered through another set of chest flies on his weight bench, her walking boot propped up on a crate he’d liberated from his garage. She was a week out from her injury, and once the small-town charm of being looked in on and catered to had worn off, she was going as stir-crazy as his crew at the station.

  In a week, they’d responded to four fender benders, three false alarms, and a cat stuck in a drainpipe. They’d completed every training scheduled, a new, boring record. Mack had spent the week pushing paper and wheeling herself around non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries at the clinic on a stool while her health care coworkers kept eagle eyes on her to make sure she wasn’t overdoing it.

  But he was picking up on something that ran deeper than just impatience. There was something brewing beneath Mackenzie’s very attractive surface. It felt like a dark cloud of thick, black smoke that hung over them, between them. Obscuring his view.

  She blew out a breath at the top, then lowered the dumbbells slowly.

  “I meditated today. For fifteen freaking minutes,” she complained.

  “That’s not a good thing?” he asked, gritting his teeth and working his way through triceps dips on the rack.

  She sat up, let the weights drop to the floor. “I had fifteen freaking minutes to spare because I’ve got nothing else to do. I’ve read every medical journal I’d banked for the last six months. Caught up on all the podcasts I follow. I don’t have any yard work to do because your guys mowed for me again yesterday—thank you again, by the way. I can’t run. I can’t take air shifts. All I can do is stare at those daffodil yellow walls and write prescriptions for UTIs and hay fever.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Quit whining. My guys are in the home stretch of their hair growing challenge,” Linc complained. “Al lost another bet and had to shave off one of his eyebrows. The women are measuring leg hair. The guys are looking like the cops from Super Troopers only less well-groomed.”

  She stood and he dropped from the bars. Facing each other in the tight space, sweating, frustrated.

  He was tired of waiting. Tired of not kissing her. Linc moved in. His hands settled on her hips, and he watched the sparks fly in those eyes. His favorite shade of green, he decided.

  His body reacted to hers immediately. Cock springing to life. Pulse kicking up. Every sense was heightened because he was touching Mackenzie O’Neil. He felt like he was walking into a fire.

  She was nervous. The pulse at the base of that slim neck fluttered away, and he longed to brush his mouth against it. But his focus was on her mouth. She favored red lipstick. He wanted to see it smeared. To have her step out from behind those barriers long enough to ruin those perfect red lines.

  Messing up the outward perfection of Dr. Dreamy was his new mission in life.

  “I’m gonna kiss you now,” he stated.

  Heavy lids lowered over those eyes as her focus locked on to his mouth. He wondered if she knew she was nodding. Taking his time, he slid his hands all the way up her sides, to her shoulders, that delicate neck, and cupped her face.

  Romance was not dead. It was a living, breathing thing in the room.

  He paused in his approach. A breath away from those red, red lips. Her breathing was ragged, and he noticed his was, too. They stood that way, breathing the same air. Feeling the pulse of desire as it awakened like a dragon between them.

  She broke first. And he thanked the gods in the heavens when those lips crashed into his. She kissed him like she needed it, needed him, to survive. There was no gentle brush, no savoring. This was a devouring. She pivoted and slammed him against the wall. One hand shot into his hair and tugged hard. She shoved her other hand under his shirt and touched his bare, sweaty skin.

  His hard-on was in danger of rupturing when she shimmied up against him. Vision going gray, he spun them again so her back was to the wall. For a moment, they each grappled for the upper hand, then decided it didn’t matter since they were both ravaging the other.

  He slid a big hand under her shirt and cupped one, perfect breast.

  Obligingly, she yanked her tank over her head and threw it over his shoulder.

  “God bless America,” he breathed before diving back into the kiss.

  She snickered into his mouth. “Is that the swoony firefighter version of dirty talk?”

  “Baby, I want to take my cock out and shove you to your knees. I want to put my hands on this wall and fuck your mouth until your eyes water. When I’m done with you, I want eye makeup and lipstick everywhere.”

  Her eyes widened. Then she smiled. A sharp, shark-like grin.

  “That’s better,” she whispered and shoved her hand into his shorts.

  He was going to die on his feet with a beautiful woman gripping his cock. Linc hoped they’d put that on his tombstone.

  “For the love of God, woman, slow down.”

  “Nope.” She brushed her thumb over the unfairly sensitive head of his dick that was leaking like a fucking sieve. “I want to see you on your knees, looking up at me while you taste me.”

  Yep. Dead.

  “I think I’ve been waiting my whole life for you.” His confession on a groan, a breath, a prayer ruined everything.

  Just like that, the fearless flight physician lost her nerve. He felt her stiffen up, muscles going to concrete. Spine tensing to steel.

  Her hand released him, the wa
istband of his shorts snapping back in an insult to his erection. He winced but didn’t move.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, trying to wriggle out of his arms. “I just don’t feel like doing this right now.”

  “You’re afraid.” He stated the truth, simply and without malice.

  She reacted as if he’d struck her. A button pushed.

  Mack’s lip curled in a sneer. But he saw it. That glimmer of fear in those green eyes. The shadows accentuated the scar.

  “I am not afraid.”

  She enunciated each word crisply. And he wondered if she thought that would make it true.

  “We’re both attracted to each other. Both unattached. Both interested. But something’s holding you back, and I think that something is fear.”

  “You start spewing things like that, and it’s a real mood killer, Hotshot.”

  He could feel the connection they had, their bodies pressed against each other, heartbeats racing. He wasn’t misreading signs, making things up. She wanted him. He craved her. But that black smoke made an impenetrable wall between them.

  “What’s wrong with being honest, Dreamy?”

  “Back off, Hotshot,” she said, shoving a hand between them.

  Understanding fear, he gave her space. He took a seat on the weight bench she’d vacated. He wasn’t running from this.

  “Talk to me, Mackenzie. Tell me what this is about.”

  “What do you want to hear?” she demanded, picking her shirt up off the floor.

  He mourned the loss of her streamlined raspberry sports bra. That view of the stomach he wanted to lick, to bite, to jet his release on, to lay his head on.

  “I thought I’d made that clear. I want you.”

  “In what capacity? A quick fuck? A long-term girlfriend? Because I’m neither of those things.” Her words were sharp, hard.

  “Tell me what you want, Mackenzie.”

  “I asked you first.”

  Fine. Truth. “First, I want to see that lipstick smeared on your mouth, my mouth, my cock, and any damn where else you want to kiss me. Nothing’s off-limits for you, Dreamy. Then I want to feel you come around me. I want to be holding you when you let go. I want to go off with you. After that, I want to eat ice cream in bed with you. Then I figured we’d date for enough time to convince you that fate brought you here exactly when we both needed it. We’ll have a wedding. Probably a big one because the whole station is gonna want to be there and you’ve seen the size of my family. Sunshine can be our flower dog. We’ll live a long, happy life together. How do you feel about kids? I wouldn’t mind a couple. But I’d rather have you.”