Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses)

by Grace Burrowes

  She’d kept Mac’s damned note, sniffed at it hoping for a faint whiff of cinnamon and clove. Pathetic.

  Wheels on the driveway had Sid glancing up, even as she told herself it wouldn’t be Mac. Not his truck, but the black SUV looked familiar.

  Luis and another kid got out, followed by a pretty dark-haired woman Sid put at about her own age.

  “You Sidonie Lindstrom?”

  “I am.” Sid struggled to her feet as Luis and the other kid hustled off to the barn.

  “I’m Vera, James Knightley’s fiancée. How do you do?”

  Sid tossed off her gloves and shook hands. “You’re the one who gave MacKenzie the brownie recipe?”

  The lady’s face split into a grin. “You didn’t say, ‘You’re the pianist.’ We’ll get along just fine. I’ll happily share the recipe with you, but I heard Luis rhapsodizing about your pies. Care to trade kitchen secrets?”

  “Cream cheese filling, and use fresh fruit if you can get it,” Sid said, grudgingly charmed. “Look, if Mac sent you to plead his case, then I don’t mean to be rude, but it won’t work.”

  Though Sid’s attempts at being righteous and standoffish weren’t making things any better either.

  Vera swung her gaze to the barn, where Luis and the other kid were emerging with halters and lead ropes in hand.

  “I wish Mac had sent me to plead his case,” Vera said. “My stepson will be working off a debt to me at Inskip’s farm this summer, and I gather he and Luis have hit it off. Darren wanted to see Luis’s famous horses, so I gave Luis a ride home. How are you settling in?”

  What did that mean, Vera wished she’d been sent to plead Mac’s case?

  “Settling in is a slow process. I need to find work, though there doesn’t seem to be much call around here for what I do.”

  “I heard about your interview at the office. MacKenzie is the last person I’d suspect of deceptiveness, but he picked a disastrous time to start keeping secrets. I hope he at least apologized?”

  “He tried to.” Would he try again?

  Vera walked over to the garden, and now that somebody else was viewing Sid’s garden, she wished she’d bothered with the string.

  “What are you planting? James is putting in a vegetable garden for me, though how he expects me to learn to can and freeze this late in life, I do not know. These are tomatoes, aren’t they?”

  Sid walked Vera around the garden, surprised to find how enthusiastic a person could get about four different kinds of beans and three different varieties of tomatoes.

  “What are the marigolds for?” Vera asked.

  “To keep the bugs down, and for eye appeal. They’re cheerful and heat tolerant.”

  “If Mac asks me, is there anything you want me to say, Sidonie?” The question was meant as kind, the tone could not have been more sympathetic, but Sid felt the words like hammer blows.

  “Tell him…” She walked off a few paces, her gaze landing on the mares as Luis and Darren led them in from the paddock. Their coats were glossy, their manes and tails were clean and combed out, and they followed the boys happily.

  “Tell him his girls are doing fine.”

  Vera got down on her knees to sniff a marigold, which was silly. Nobody sniffed marigolds.

  “Mac won’t even come by to check on the horses? Is he not welcome?”

  Oh, to see him again…

  “I honestly don’t care one way or another if he wants to visit his horses. Luis might like to see him, but Mac knows how to look Luis up at the stables.”

  “Those are the largest equines I have laid eyes on. Magnificent, if you don’t mind feeling like a midget. Would you introduce me?”

  As Sid’s guests gushed over the horses, and Sid met Darren MacKaye, she concluded Vera Waltham—Vera Winston to her adoring fans—was a person imbued with an innate sense of calm. Vera had brought Mac up without pleading his case, and without concealing her sympathy for him either. And yet Sid didn’t feel put on the defensive.

  Though why should she feel defensive? She hadn’t repeatedly failed to disclose her livelihood.

  “Have you ever considered doing day care?” Vera asked as they walked back to the porch. “You have a wonderful property, you’re set plenty far back from the road, the house is enormous, and James says you’re good with Luis.”

  “Day care?”

  “Yeah, you know, rug rats climbing your porch railing, sitting on the steps and seeing how far they can spit watermelon seeds, chasing the cats up trees. Day care?”

  An odd sensation skittered up Sid’s spine, hot and cold at the same time, but Vera wasn’t done speaking.

  “You’ve probably done the CPR and first aid classes already as part of your foster care license, and if you can handle a teenager, you can probably handle anything.”

  “I like children,” Sid said, “but it wouldn’t be fair to them. They’d just get settled in here, and Luis and I would be moving on.”

  “So open up shop for the summer.” Vera knelt by the garden again, and pinched off some dead marigold blossoms. Her hands would smell like marigold until she washed them now. “I am still wracking my brain for how I’m supposed to get my practicing done when Twyla isn’t in school for hours every day. Hannah’s in the same boat. She could send Grace to her usual day care over the summer, but that place doesn’t have room for another kid, which means Grace would go one place, and Merle another.”

  In Damson Valley, those places could be miles apart. “I’ve met Grace and Merle. They’d build a cat palace in the tree the minute my back was turned.”

  Vera rose. “Then you’ll consider it?”

  “No, I will not.” Though Sid was sorely, terribly tempted. Little girls would love baking cookies, not simply come by and snitch the batter, as Luis did. “If I watched those girls over the summer, I’d give Mac’s brothers the perfect opportunity to convince me I’ve wronged him, and the last thing I want is a bunch of lawyers turning loose all their arguments on me.”

  Though she did want to talk to Mac, most days. Most nights.

  Sid sat on the front porch steps and wondered how far she could spit a watermelon seed.

  “Hannah and I would not allow the guys to badger you,” Vera said. “Think about it.”

  The boys emerged from the barn, shoving at each other as normal young guys did.

  “Hannah’s a lawyer too, isn’t she?” Sid asked.

  “Sort of. She’s admitted to the bar, and she can snort and paw with the best of them, but she detests the posturing and procedural baloney. She’s in charge of keeping cases out of court, the way I understand it. She mediates and negotiates, and takes cases where the parties agree not to litigate.”

  The porch smelled good, of petunias and impatiens. Little girls could help look after the flowers too.

  Sid gave in to the curiosity Vera’s description aroused. “How do Hannah and Trent manage that? She doesn’t like what he does, and he probably never considered doing what she does.”

  Vera fished her keys out of a bright orange and fuchsia shoulder bag. A gold quarter note dangling from the chain winked in the afternoon sunlight.

  “I’m marrying a guy who sat for the CPA exam,” Vera said, “then decided to try law school, but has now concluded he was meant to farm and work for farmers. I don’t think the Knightley family is particularly rigid about how anybody pursues happiness. Give me your email address, and I’ll send along the brownie recipe.”

  Sid complied—no reason not to—and walked Vera and her stepson to the car. At the very least, Luis seemed to have found a friend, though it would be a friend connected with the Knightleys.

  “So what’s for dinner, oh foster mom?” Luis didn’t even wait until Vera’s SUV had disappeared to ask.

  The foster part hurt a bit; the mom part comforted. “Dunno, foster son. You have a suggestio
n?”

  “Yeah, I do. I think we should have company for dinner. I think you should call up MacKenzie Knightley, tell him you’re missing him like crazy, and get him over here before sundown. Maybe take a walk with the guy and hear what he has to say.”

  “Traitor.” She had to look up a little to call him that, suggesting country sunshine and farm work agreed with his adolescent growth spurts.

  “I’ve watched you for two weeks, Sid. You’re going through the motions, just like you did when Tony died. Don’t do this to yourself. No guy in his right mind would look forward to delivering unpleasant news to you. Mac might have been slow with the deets, but he’s not stupid or crooked.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Sid said, hating the whine in her voice. “He treated me as if I were stupid, Weese.”

  “So he was stupid. You crucify every man who’s ever stupid, and the race will die out in a hurry.” He patted her shoulder—Luis’s version of a hug—and loped off into the house.

  If it were up to Sid and Mac, the race would die out. About that, uncomfortable as it had to have been for him, Mac had been honest.

  * * *

  “She hasn’t answered my calls, and I’ve pumped Luis about as much as I can stand to.” Mac hated admitting that much, but this was his brother, and Trent’s family law practice meant nothing that transpired between adults, consenting or otherwise, would surprise him.

  Trent leaned against the front of his desk in what Hannah referred to as his corporate conqueror pose.

  “What do you mean, as much as you can stand to?”

  “Luis is keeping something from Sid, something he thinks will hurt her. I don’t know what it is, but it has to do with how Tony died. Maybe Tony made a pass at the kid, or introduced Luis to some chicken hawk—to something a teenage boy would be uncomfortable sharing with his foster mom.”

  Or a foster mom would be furious to learn. Mac touched the soil in the pot that held a very healthy rhododendron, though the plant never bloomed.

  “Something that could cost her a foster care license?” Trent asked.

  “I do not know.”

  Which was killing Mac. Vera had passed along that he was allowed to go visit his horses, but had Sid meant something else by saying, “Tell him his girls are doing fine”?

  Had she meant she was still his girl? Could she possibly have meant that, even subconsciously?

  Mac picked up the water pitcher that sat near the rhodie on the windowsill, wondering if Sid might also have meant “Tell him we’re fine without him.”

  She’d probably meant exactly that.

  “MacKenzie, you zone out like that in court, and you’ll be post-convicted for ineffective assistance of counsel,” Trent said.

  “I’ve never been post-convicted.” Except by Sidonie Lindstrom. Mac gave the plant a small drink, though the soil was still moist.

  “Not once?”

  “Not one damned time, but that’s neither here nor there. If this interrogation is over, I’m leaving for the day.” He set the pitcher down and headed for the door.

  “Go then, but two phone calls that might have been swallowed up in voice mail isn’t much of a campaign. Sid got you out of mothballs, though maybe you’re too comfortable being the family spinster to fight for your lady.”

  Mac turned to face his brother, wanting to belt him in the chops or laugh. Maybe both. “The family spinster?”

  “You dote on your nieces, you tend your garden, you fuss over cholesterol, and you watch the retirement investments as if we’re all about to pick out our rocking chairs. You’re several years shy of forty, and your life is over.”

  Mac did not coldcock his brother, because this was simply what came after the Hannah-is-worried-about-you speech.

  “Is Hannah expecting?” he asked.

  “Jesus Rockefeller H. Christ on a damned pogo stick, you’re as bad as James.”

  “Well, is she?”

  Trent came around the desk and mumbled something as he rummaged in a drawer.

  “Didn’t catch that, Trent.”

  “I said I don’t know, but she could be. There are indications. She hasn’t said anything. It’s more—”

  “A look in the eye,” Mac said, smiling despite the envy piercing his soul. “A glow, a luster. James and I agree with you. She looks like she’s on the nest.”

  Trent stopped pretending to fish for something—his sense of equilibrium, maybe?—in the desk drawers.

  “It’s too soon,” he said.

  “What, seven years parenting experience apiece isn’t enough? Wait much longer, and it will be too late. You’ll be fine.” Though what did Mac know about parenting? What would he ever know?

  Trent flipped his tie, a navy-blue silk with unicorns charging around on it. “If she’s pregnant.”

  “Get me a nephew, would you? The numbers in this family have abruptly tilted in favor of the opposing team.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but, Mac?”

  Mac waited, hand on the doorknob, knowing whatever misbegotten sentiments came out of Trent’s mouth, his brother meant well.

  “You can’t let Sid slip over the horizon. You have to take a risk.”

  “I took a risk, Trent. Risked what I thought was the biggest gesture of trust I could make toward a woman, any woman, and she didn’t let me down over it. She instead let me down over something so insubstantial I’m tempted to think she would have found a pretext sooner or later to dump me.”

  Though to Sid, it hadn’t been insubstantial at all. That Mac was a lawyer had been a reminder of every trauma and loss she’d suffered. Could she see that? Could she see that connection if Mac brought it up?

  “If practicing law is insubstantial, and I would argue that conclusion on behalf of every defendant you’ve ever seen acquitted, then why not give it up?”

  Mac’s grip on the doorknob slipped. “What?”

  “If Sid doesn’t like you being a lawyer, but she’s necessary for your happiness, then quit. You don’t need the money. We can manage without a criminal department. Every other defense lawyer in town will rejoice, as well as the state’s attorney’s office. Quit.”

  “I can’t…” But he could. He could give it up in a heartbeat. The whiny clients, the scared clients, the arrogant clients, even the nice clients, the ones who went meekly to their fate. They got Mac’s best efforts, each and every one of them, but what did he get?

  A fatter portfolio?

  “I haven’t told you this for a while, Trenton Edwards, but I have the best brothers in the world, mostly because I raised you that way.”

  Trent smiled, a smug grin with a hint of relief in it. “James said you’d threaten to punch me out for suggesting it.”

  “In which case, you’d tell me it was James’s idea?”

  “I’m thinking it was Vera’s, and you’re not rejecting it out of hand, are you?”

  “No, I am not.”

  * * *

  Another Sunday morning home alone, and Sid’s nerves were stretched thin. Her damned useless period was late, playing games with her at a time when she needed her body to treat her decently. Luis was off at the stable, though he’d continued to needle her, to hint and wheedle that she should call MacKenzie Knightley and give him a fair hearing.

  She’d given Mac her body, her trust, her affection…

  Wheels splashing up the lane, a big engine with a particular knocking rhythm.

  Mac. Maybe he’d go right out to the barn, see his girls, whom Luis hadn’t turned out because of the rain.

  Maybe he’d come to apologize.

  Maybe it wasn’t even him.

  “May I come in?”

  He stood outside the screen door to the kitchen, a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Seeing him hurt and filled Sid with gladness—and pissed her off.

  She let him in, bec
ause pissed off was reassuring. “Those are for me?”

  “They’re only yard flowers, but yes.”

  Yard flowers meant lily of the valley, lilacs, tulips, a fat blue hyacinth, some kind of narcissus that smelled heavenly, and a blossomy white flower on woody stems that smelled even better.

  “Why are you here, MacKenzie?” Sid set two mugs on the counter, hoping he’d stand his ground long enough to share a cup of tea with her.

  “As soon as I understood how you feel about lawyers, I should have told you I’m a criminal defense attorney. I apologize for that. I didn’t try to deceive you, but I avoided the confrontation much too long. I regret that more than I can say.”

  Sid took the flowers without touching Mac’s hands. The regret was sincere, that much she could read in his eyes, but the apology was grudging.

  “You like being a lawyer.” She fished a green glass vase out from under the sink. “It galls you to have to apologize for what you are.”

  “I do like being a lawyer, and I’m sorry you can’t respect the profession. I’d like to hear your reasons, though I’d clarify one point: I practice law, it’s what I do, it isn’t what I am, or not the biggest part of what I am.”

  Oh, he was trying so hard, looking so solemn.

  “This isn’t about your profession, MacKenzie. It’s about not being honest when you knew it was important to me.” Though it was about his profession too. Why couldn’t he have been a mortician? A trash collector? Anything but a lawyer?

  “Would it make a difference if I weren’t a lawyer anymore, Sid?”

  She was glad her back was turned to him, lest he see the shock his question gave her. That he would offer to give up his livelihood meant more than it should—and he was offering. This wasn’t a negotiating ploy. Mac was being honest.

  Damn him.

  “Yes, it would make a difference,” she said, turning to face him. “It would make you resent me, but it wouldn’t fix what’s wrong between us.”

  His eyes went blank, his expression utterly calm.