She’d hurt him, and that wasn’t any help either. “We’ll torment each other if we pile words on top of deeds. I’m sorry, Mac. I like you. I do respect you…” She stopped herself before she could say she desired him, but heaven help her, she did. Just keeping her hands off him, just keeping enough distance that his scent didn’t invade her brain was killing her.
“Don’t say it.” He crossed the kitchen and pulled her gently into his arms. “Whatever brush-off you’re about to give me, Sidonie, don’t say it. I will keep coming around, bringing you flowers, begging you on my knees if that’s—”
“Oh, hush.” She put her hand over his mouth, but he turned his head and kissed her palm. “MacKenzie, we mustn’t—”
“You’re not eating,” he said, running his hand over her hips. “It’s Mother’s Day, Sid, and you’re sitting here, alone, still in your nightie, when you should be—”
Double damn him for being able to read a calendar.
Bless him too. Sid kissed him to shut him up, mostly. To shut him up and to satisfy the hunger aroused by the simple sight of him. He felt so good against her body, his kisses tasted so clean and sweet, and the scent of him fed a need Sid had tried to ignore.
“Mac, we can’t do this.”
“I’ll stop when you do.” He hoisted her up on the counter, so she could wrap her legs around his flanks, get her hands on his belt buckle. That took some doing when she couldn’t tear her mouth from his, but she got his jeans undone, and delved into his clothing with her hands.
“Want you, MacKenzie…” Though she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, she absolutely should not.
“Honey, I know.”
Honey. Had he ever called her honey before? “This doesn’t change anything.”
“Touch me, Sid. Touch me, love me, let me love you.”
Her breasts were exquisitely sensitive when he brushed his thumbs over her nipples through the thin cotton of her summer-length nightie. The hem was above her knees, but to Sid, that was still too much clothing.
She would regret this, and Mac ought to hate her for that. She fused her mouth to his anyway.
Mac was the perfect height for having sex with a woman sitting on the kitchen counter, but they weren’t having sex. Mac touched her with a combination of tenderness and ferocity, kissed her like he’d been starving for the taste of her, ran his fingers over her sex with delicate insistence.
Sid did not mistake this for a hookup. This wasn’t a quickie, wasn’t anything casual at all. This mistake was MacKenzie Knightley making love to a woman he cared for very much. Sid groaned at the first touch of him near the entrance to her body, wiggled her hips closer, and then went still.
The moment of joining, of penetration beyond that first glancing nudge, stood out for her as so right, so pleasurable, so inevitable, she laid her cheek against his shoulder and let him move into her. She bit his shirt to keep from crying, because they were joined bodily, and Mac would feel the shudders moving through her.
He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her brow, her mouth, not denying her tears, but offering what comfort he could. Oh, how she’d missed him, how she was going to miss him if she couldn’t get over her mad.
Over her fears.
Mac had missed her too. He communicated that in every kiss and sigh, every undulation of his hips and caress of his hands. Pleasure came over Sid, the building heat of a summer morning, pushing against the pain, absorbing it, consuming it, and turning it back on her in satisfaction that blurred her awareness of MacKenzie as a separate being. He was inside her, around her, with her, and she never wanted the moment to end.
But it did. The sense of union faded like the last notes of sweet music, leaving Sid panting against Mac’s shoulder while his hand stroked her hair. The tears were spent; the passion was subdued for the present.
In its wake lay a bitter, bottomless ache despite the fact that Mac was still hilted inside her. Grief, disappointment, and anxiety tangled up with whatever Sid felt for Mac, and made her reckless.
“I can’t do this again, MacKenzie. Not until I’ve sorted this out. Have your pleasure of me, and go.” The voice of a despairing old woman, Sid barely recognized it as her own.
Mac held her for a moment longer, his hand moving over her hair slowly, and then he withdrew. The absence of him made everything hurt worse, but she understood the gesture: he’d denied himself what pleasure he could have had, contenting himself with the pleasure she’d taken from him.
“That was unnecessary,” she said, plucking her nightgown off the counter and dropping it over her head. When had she lost it?
He finished tucking himself back into his clothes and gave her a level look.
“I needed to be with you. I didn’t need to be selfish about it. Cut line, Sid. We’re both miserable without each other, and we can work through this if you’d give me a chance.”
“I gave you the first chance I’ve given any man in years. Luis tried to tell me horseshoers don’t live in four-bathroom estate homes, but I was so needy, so imprudent, I didn’t heed the signs. I’m eighteen again, grieving, adrift, and clinging to any spar. A relationship can’t work when I’m in this shape.”
Sid hadn’t understood that dynamic until she’d said the words out loud. She wiggled off the counter and past Mac, though that meant she’d brushed against him momentarily.
And he hadn’t budged. “It was working fine a minute ago, and let me remind you I gave you the first chance I’ve given any woman in years. We belong together, Sidonie, and you’re too scared to admit it.”
She ignored the plea in his voice and focused on the words, on the traction they gave her.
“Thank you for sharing, MacKenzie. You’ve just repeated my own conclusions: I’m scared because I let things move too fast with you. I’m rattled as hell because Luis is facing another hearing. I’m anxious over money, though on paper, I’m supposed to be wealthy. I’m not happy that you lied by omission about your profession. I’m upset, MacKenzie, and tired of being upset, and it’s damned Mother’s Day. Brilliant closing argument, but this isn’t a courtroom.”
So upset, she was about to throw herself back into his arms, and that would be a horrendously mixed message to a guy who wasn’t the villain of the piece.
“I love you, Sidonie. I’m in love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But if you can’t understand that, if you don’t want that, then just please forgive me.”
She turned away, as if his words were more than verbal threats to her fragile composure. As if they could hurt her physically, steal her resources, addle her feeble wits, and break her already broken heart.
“MacKenzie, I absolutely do forgive you. That’s the easy part, but as for the rest of what I want—”
She wanted her brother alive and in good health. She wanted Luis to be legally hers and for him to have a real relationship with his little sisters again. She wanted Mac and she wanted her mother and she wanted to be a mother.
“Mac, I’m sorry, I can’t do this now.” Sid pelted up the steps, bare feet slapping on the risers, half hoping he’d chase her and make her listen again to those terrible, awful, unbelievable words.
But as she threw herself on her bed, all Sid heard was the kitchen door banging closed, then silence.
Complete, hopeless silence.
* * *
The most neglected tactic of all the tactics used on cross-examination was silence. In theory, the witness should not say anything other than to answer questions put to him or her by counsel. In practice, opposing counsel was allowed to ask leading questions, and this could be exploited to create the fiction of a dialogue.
Mac exploited that fiction shamelessly. In the days following his most recent encounter with Sidonie, his courtroom technique graduated from flawless to brilliant. His clients were offered sweet plea-bargain deals; his cases were settling left
and right.
Because he was in love, but his lady wasn’t in love with him.
Or was she?
Sid had wanted him desperately, clung to him, wrung herself out, poured her soul into that interlude in the kitchen, and then she’d gathered up her anger, fear, and exhaustion like so much dirty laundry, and left Mac standing alone, his balls aching, his heart in tatters.
“Come with me.” Trent swept past Mac and headed for a witness interview room, the closest thing to privacy the Damson County Courthouse had to offer.
“What’s on your mind?” Mac asked when the door was closed.
“I told you so is on my mind. Look at this.” Trent passed Mac a document eight or ten pages thick. Mac recognized it as the report a social worker would complete in anticipation of a hearing on a foster care case.
Luis’s case.
“Read the recommendations.”
Mac flipped back to the last page and scanned the document. “This will kill Sid, to say nothing of what it will do to Luis. What the hell do they have up their sleeves?”
“I’m not sure,” Trent said. “But the recommendation to transfer Luis’s case back to Baltimore will be easy for the court to approve. Moving the case gets a teenager out of Damson County’s hair, one who has no ties to speak of to the community.”
Trent’s tone was detached, while Mac wanted to start throwing chairs.
“For God’s sake, Trent. Luis has two jobs here, friends, his foster mom, a physician, and a dentist, and he’s enrolled full-time in merit and advanced placement classes at the local high school. What kind of ties does DSS want?”
Trent snatched the document back and jammed it in a briefcase. “DSS wants to see family. Luis’s sisters are in Baltimore County, his mother is locked up over near the city, and he might have some cousins over there. His case history is there.”
“Right, but the Baltimore County courts tossed him up here to keep him with the same foster mom. The kid is thriving. Something else is going on.”
Something rotten, and Sid had had enough rotten lately.
“I can ask,” Trent said, “but I’ve left two messages for Ms. Snyder between cases this morning. I get voice mail.”
“Call her supervisor, and if that doesn’t work, the supervisor’s supervisor. Call the damned head of the agency. This isn’t right, Trent.”
Trent snapped his briefcase shut, both locks in the same instant. “What if moving back to Baltimore is what Luis told the worker he wanted in those private tête-à-têtes they’re supposed to have with each kid?”
Trent playing devil’s advocate would result in something close to fratricide.
“Luis told me he wants to stay with Sid,” Mac said. “They’re a family, regardless of the legal labels, and that kid is thriving in Sid’s care. He hasn’t changed his mind about this, Trent. I know that kid.”
Knew him and loved him.
“I need to meet with him,” Trent said. “Get my marching orders. The hearing is next Tuesday, and I don’t think anybody will let Sid know what the Department is recommending, unless Luis tells her.”
“If Luis even knows. I’ll tell her. She won’t like it, but she’ll listen to me. What aren’t you telling me, Trent?”
Trent set his briefcase on the table and busied himself fussing his cuff links—gold unicorns.
“MacKenzie, when we enter our appearance counsel for the client, we enter as a firm, not only as an individual attorney. You could represent Luis.”
No, he could not. In this situation, for Mac to be a lawyer would be no help to anybody and a conflict of interest even if the strict letter of the law didn’t see it that way.
“If I lose, Trent, and Luis is sent back down the road, where does that leave me? Sid’s holding on by a thread and has been for too long.” Which even she admitted, an aspect of the situation that gave Mac hope.
Why in the name of all that was stupid had he tried to confront her on Mother’s Day?
“This isn’t a divorce, Mac. When it comes to contested litigation, you’re a better litigation strategist than I am. We won’t lose.”
Not true, also not worth arguing over. “With those recommendations, somebody has to lose.”
Mac hoped the somebody wasn’t Luis, or Sid—or him.
Chapter 17
“Land, Katie Scarlett,” Sid muttered, taking a swig of lemonade.
Gardening was good for her soul. She’d realized this when she was making her fourth trip to the Farmers’ Co-op, buying yet another flat of impatiens for the beds she’d dug in the shade of her oaks. Between the flowers, the vegetable garden, the weed whacking, and the occasional can of paint, her property was looking more and more like a home, and feeling more like one too.
Which didn’t make sense. When the money came through, she and Luis would probably pull up stakes and find somewhere near some good colleges.
Except DC and Baltimore both had excellent colleges in abundance. Hood was in Frederick County, along with Mount St. Mary’s. Frostburg had a campus over in Hagerstown.
And Mac was in Damson County.
Mac, from whom she’d run in a teary swivet.
Sid sat back on her heels and swiped her hair from her eyes with a gloved hand. Instead of hanging baskets on her front porch, she’d settled for big pots of petunias on the steps, purple ones, while the beds she labored over were full of red, white, and pink. The fragrance soothed, the colors cheered, and the sense of having planted something of her own to grow and beautify the house—
Wheels. His wheels, and because Luis wasn’t home from school yet, Sid made a silent vow not to go inside the house with Mac. Though they’d certainly been intimate out-of-doors too. She stood, pulled off her gloves, and tossed them in her tool basket.
“MacKenzie.”
His expression was more unreadable than ever, and the fact that he was still in his lawyer togs reassured Sid not one bit.
“We need to talk, Sid, preferably where Luis can’t overhear us.”
Foreboding congealed into outright dread. “We can talk here, and we can talk now.”
“On the porch.”
A compromise. Sid sat on the swing, surprised and perversely pleased when Mac sat beside her. He did not reach for her hand, and she did not reach for his.
“Luis’s hearing has been scheduled, and Trent has been assigned to represent him.”
Relief washed over her. “I appreciate your telling me. I’m pretty sure Luis will ask for sibling visits, because he hasn’t seen his sisters in months.” That Mac would bring this news to her in person boded well.
Mac’s hand twitched, as if he might have reached for Sid, or for her hand, then thought better of it.
“You will not appreciate this: the Department is recommending that Luis’s case be transferred back to Baltimore, Sid. Trent’s digging, and he’ll fight it if that’s what Luis wants, but we can’t figure out where this is coming from.”
So much for going home to Tara. “You mean, did I ask for it? No, I did not.”
Sid resisted the urge to turn her face into Mac’s shoulder and scream. Barely. Luis, uprooted again, probably for the last time before he simply beat feet and told the foster care system where to shove it. She tried to focus on what Mac was saying, on the unhurried cadence of his voice.
“I never thought you’d ask for him to be moved. Did you get anything in writing about your license being in good standing?”
“I never got anything in writing that it wasn’t or that it was.”
Sid sorted through the possibilities: that Luis had asked for this, that his sisters’ social worker had asked for this, that his sisters’ foster family wanted to adopt Luis.
That family had had months to make overtures, and they’d been as possessive about the girls and as selfish and close-minded toward Luis as possible.
; “Amy Snyder does not like me,” Sid said slowly. “That sounds petty, but she’s one of those by-the-book, clueless social workers. Luis was lucky in Baltimore, his worker was a gem, and she never gave up on finding him a placement that was a good fit, never blamed him, never took the dips and twists in his case personally.”
Mac did take her hand, and Sid let him, closing her fingers around his. “We can’t all be gems, Sidonie.”
They sat in silence while Sid’s awareness split, as it often had immediately after Tony’s death. In one part of her mind, she considered all of the roots Luis had put down in the past few weeks.
All of the roots she’d put down, despite intentions to the contrary. The other part of her brain purely and selfishly savored the pleasure of holding Mac’s hand while her world tried to reel off its axis.
She hadn’t comported herself like a gem where he was concerned. Amid the fragrance of petunias, and with the breeze blowing softly through the oaks, she could admit that to herself.
And try to admit it to him. “I’m scared, Mac. Scared about this too.” The words were out before she could swallow them back. “If Luis wants to go, I’ll live with it, but if they’re jerking him around to gratify some bureaucratic agenda, I will not stand for it.”
“Nor will I, nor will Trent. James has dated a few of the ladies at DSS, he’s collecting what information he can, and Trent is papering the hell out of the file.”
In a game of rock, paper, scissors, paper often lost. “What does that mean?”
Mac gave the swing a push with his toe. “Trent’s requesting in writing the Department’s reasons for moving Luis again when the kid’s barely getting settled here in Damson County. He’s inquiring into why sibling visits have not been maintained per the Baltimore court order. He’s requesting discovery—demanding to see documents, reports, letters associated with the case—though the Department won’t have time to comply.”
The rhythm of the swing was soothing, and so was Mac’s voice, despite the circumstances.
“You’re telling me that Trent’s lawyering up.” Thank God.
Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) Page 28
