Luis folded away from the horse to wrap his arms around Sid. He dropped his head to her shoulder and cried openly, bringing tears to Mac’s eyes as well.
“You had nothing to do with Tony’s death,” Sid said. “Tony was sick. Very sick, and not going to get better. In all the times he hinted about suicide, he never once said he’d drive himself to death. It wasn’t your fault, Luis. It was not your fault.”
* * *
“So he’s willing to be adopted?” Trent sat beside Sid on the porch swing, pushing them in a lazy summer rhythm with one foot.
“He is, thank God.”
“Then congratulations are in order. If it’s all right with you, Hannah would like to handle the pleadings.”
Hannah? Fitting somehow, because each of the brothers had taken on an adoption for a sibling already, though adopting Vera’s daughter would take James some time.
“I would be very pleased to have Hannah do this for us,” Sid said.
They fell silent, but Trent’s quiet wasn’t as restful to Sid as Mac’s, or as easy to translate. He brought the swing to a halt and rose.
“Is Mac around somewhere?” he asked.
“Out in the barn. It’s like he can’t take his eyes off Luis for fear the kid will disappear before we can get through the legalities.”
“Maybe. Maybe he wants Luis to know his parents won’t disappear.” Trent scratched an itch between his shoulder blades on one of the porch posts, the same way Daisy and Buttercup scratched themselves on obliging tree trunks. “James said he talked to you about the day our father died.”
Sid kept her seat, not familiar enough yet with her brother-in-law to read his expression. “He did, and so has Mac. I cannot imagine a harder day for your family.”
“Or for me.”
“Why do you say that?”
He turned his back to her. Across the barnyard, Bojangles pounced on something in the weeds near the fence.
“I was supposed to put the damned roll bars back on that tractor. I wanted to paint them the same red as the tractor, though. They were sitting in the carriage house, still a rusty white when Dad died.”
This again? “Your dad, who’d farmed his entire life, couldn’t have bolted those roll bars on the tractor himself, had no other tractors on the property, and didn’t know better than to plow rocky ground on a vintage tractor without its roll bars?”
Trent studied her for a few minutes but said nothing, so Sid got up and stood beside him.
“Blaming ourselves is a way to stay connected to someone who’s gone. I know that now. It’s a way to get into that nice, cozy coffin with the deceased and shut out the world. I had to figure this out before I could marry your brother. I ranted about Mac’s reticence regarding his profession, I fretted over Luis’s situation, but part of what nailed my emotional feet to the floor was simply a lack of courage. Shoving grief aside takes as much courage as enduring it does.”
Before she could say more, James’s black SUV came bumping up the lane.
Twyla, Vera’s daughter, hopped out, barreling across the yard, followed by Vera and James.
“I asked James to come by and join Mac and me on a walk,” Trent said. “I’m not sure why he brought reinforcements.”
“They come bearing brownies,” Sid said. “Don’t complain. Hullo, Twy.”
“Hi, Aunt Sid. We made brownies!” As if making brownies didn’t happen at James and Vera’s as often as doing a load of whites. “Dad wants to take a walk with the uncs.”
School had been out for more than a week, and Sid kept all three nieces for most of each weekday. She still lit up inside every time she laid eyes on her nieces, and Luis’s resumption of the role of big brother had been wonderful to watch.
Wonderful and sad.
“Let’s find some milk to wash down our brownies,” Sid said. “James, greetings. Vera, the party is in the kitchen today.”
“We had lunch in the tree house last week,” Twyla reported, taking Sid and Vera each by a hand. “There were bugs, though. Uncle Mac said next time we should wait until it snows to have lunch outside.”
“That’s because Uncle Mac had to figure out how to get the cooler up the tree,” Sid said. “Trent and James, Mac is in the barn. Enjoy your walk.”
She let Vera and Twy take the brownies inside, but waited on the porch until she saw all three brothers walking slowly, side by side, in the direction of the north pasture.
When Sid joined the ladies in the kitchen, Twyla turned a curious gaze on her. “Mom wants to know when you’re going to tell Uncle Mac about the baby.”
* * *
“Did you enjoy your walk?” Sid positively cuddled against Mac, in a way she hadn’t before they’d married.
“Enjoy isn’t quite the right word. I appreciated it. I appreciate my brothers.” Mac propped his chin on her crown. “That walk was overdue.”
Overdue. He’d used the word advisedly, hoping his new wife would confide in him. He understood completely why she wouldn’t: she was afraid to hope, just as she’d been afraid to trust. But not, by God, afraid to love.
“Sidonie?” He kissed the side of her neck, which had her snuggling yet closer in the broad light of day right in the middle of the kitchen, such were the blessings of holy matrimony. “I can count to twenty-eight.”
“Hmm?” She lipped his ear lobe as her hands slipped down around his backside.
“I said, I can count to twenty-eight, my love. Married men develop the knack. Isn’t there something you want to tell me, but haven’t, because you’re trying to protect me from being disappointed if you can’t carry to term?”
She went from twining herself around him like a randy vine of ivy to clutching at him in shock.
“How did you know?” Sid planted her forehead on Mac’s chest, which meant he could not see her eyes. But then, he didn’t need to.
“I caught you crying yesterday when the mares played tag with Luis. Then too, Trent and James have been nudging each other each time they see you.”
“Hold me.”
He held her, he waited, and he thanked God for the miracles that had recently deluged his life. “You scared, honey?”
She nodded.
“You’ll make a wonderful mother, and the baby will be fine.”
She relaxed. “This wasn’t supposed to be possible.”
“Maybe one or both of us healed what was ailing us.” The phone rang, cutting off his litany of comfort. He reached for it over Sid’s shoulder.
“Knightleys’.”
The call was from Social Services—perfect timing, as usual—but Mac listened in silence and had to revise his opinion.
“I think you want to speak with my wife.” He handed her the phone and stepped away. They could celebrate in private at length—they had so much to celebrate—later. Mac fished out his car keys, mentally mapping a shopping route.
He would love having a pregnant wife, except Sid was shaking her head as she held the phone to her ear. By degrees, her expression clouded, which wasn’t at all what Mac had expected.
“I’ll have to ask you to hold. I need a minute.”
She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “This is awful. This is just—do you know why they’re calling?”
“I got the gist of it, yes.”
“You left it to me to tell them we can’t take Luis’s sisters? I can’t—this is just—those poor girls. Luis will never forgive us if we tell the Department no. To think, their foster parents are divorcing when the girls were expecting adoption. And then to toss a pair of perfectly adorable little girls back into the system as if they were—I cannot deal with this.”
Mac threw his keys into the air and caught them. “Can too. When you’re done with your phone call, we have places to go.”
Sid’s eyes filled with tears—she would be a weepy sort of
pregnant wife, apparently. Mac mentally added tissues to their shopping list.
“I am very disappointed in you, MacKenzie. They aren’t puppies, they’re children, and if you think it’s easy for me to turn my back on them just because we might have a child—”
He plucked the phone from Sid’s hand. “You will have to excuse us now. My wife and I are going shopping. We’ll be picking up twin beds, a doll house, at least two ponies, possibly a dog, tissues, an aquarium, an entire library of horse books, a sturdy piano, probably a bunny or two before my brothers try to pull that maneuver, an entire nursery set for a child of either gender, and a hammock for parents only. We’ll figure out the rest when you get those girls where they should have been all along.”
He hung up the phone, soundly kissed the mother of his children, and bellowed for Luis over Sid’s squeals of happiness. And later—not too much later—they did, indeed, celebrate their good fortune at great and glorious length.
Order Grace Burrowes's first book
in the Sweetest Kisses series
A Single Kiss
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The First Kiss
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Order Grace Burrowes's first book
in the Sweetest Kisses series
A Single Kiss
On sale now
Order Grace Burrowes's second book
in the Sweetest Kisses series
The First Kiss
On sale now
Read on for an excerpt from A Kiss for Luck, a Sweetest Kisses novella
Size is not important.
Sadie Delacourt knew better than to put stock in breed prejudices, though the canine panting at her from across the breezeway was a mastiff/rottweiler cross, as homely as it was substantial.
“Know any Baskervilles?” she asked the dog, shifting a bag of groceries to dig for her keys. “I bet you get that a lot.”
The dog was jet-black, had a fine set of teeth, and was not smiling that Sadie could tell.
“I see you have a collar and tags,” Sadie went on in her best nice-poochie tones. “That suggests you also have an irresponsible owner, who’s probably worried sick that his little friend has gone for a romp to devour helpless single women too stupid to find their keys.”
The dog cocked its head, a disarmingly human gesture.
“Move to Damson Valley, they said,” Sadie muttered as she groped around in the bottom of her purse. “Everybody’s friendly in Damson Valley. Great schools, not much crime. You probably eat anybody dumb enough to be on the streets after sundown, don’t you?”
The sharp edge of an apartment key greeted Sadie’s index finger.
The dog rose from its haunches, and fear dripped acid into Sadie’s veins as she extracted her keys from amid wallet, hairbrush, unpaid bills, mints, pens, toothbrush, water bottle, vegan granola bar (she could resist those most easily), and notebooks.
“Too late to ignore you,” Sadie said, because that was the safety protocol with a stray dog. Look away, stay cool, drop what you’re holding in case the dog is attracted to it.
“You’re not attracted to high-quality toilet paper, are you? Orange and spice tea? Organic whole milk?”
The key did not want to go into the lock, and the dog’s toenails clicking on the concrete told Sadie the Baskerville’s missing pup was the curious sort.
Screaming might alarm the dog, and Sadie doubted she could have mustered a scream in any case. Just as a cold, whiskery, nose-kiss hit the back of Sadie’s knee, the key slipped into the tumblers. She wedged purse and groceries aside, twisted the lock, and was about to push open the door to her new apartment when a male voice stopped her.
“Baby, what the devil do you think you’re doing? Stop right there, or you’ll be sorry.”
* * *
Moving was second only to death of a loved one in terms of creating stress, apparently for dogs as well as humans.
“You come here right now, young lady,” Gideon went on, using his stern-papa impersonation. “You know better, and I’m ashamed of you.”
The petite redhead with the groceries froze, probably terrified out of her wits by a two-hundred-pound canine Welcome Wagon.
“You’re addressing your dog?” she asked, hiking her groceries onto her hip.
“My naughty dog,” Gideon said, keeping his tone disapproving, because Baby knew how to work those big brown eyes. She’d gone butt-down onto the concrete, aiming her doggie version of the “please don’t let him take my squeaky toy” look at the woman.
“Could you possibly ask your naughty dog to sit somewhere else?”
The lady’s voice shook, suggesting Baby was about to get her owner sued.
“Baby, come.”
Up she did get, across the breezeway she did amble, head down, as if reluctant to part from her new friend. Damned beast should have been in pictures.
“Park it, dog.”
Baby sat with an air of martyred resignation and turned her gaze on the woman, whose arms had to be tired by now from lugging those groceries.
“May I help you with those?” Gideon offered. “I’m Gideon Granville, and I’ll be moving in here at the end of the week. Baby has never hurt a soul, unless you count the affronts to dignity suffered by my partner’s cat. The cat gets even, though.”
The lady passed over a heavy bag of groceries and slumped against the brick wall beside her door.
“Once, when I was kid,” she said, “I was playing at the park, and I went to the water fountain, same as I had a hundred times before. A golden retriever didn’t like me getting a drink before him. I ended up with thirty-seven stitches and a phobia about big dogs.”
She had bright red hair—none of that titian, auburn, strawberry-blond equivocation—so her version of pale made the freckles across the bridge of her nose stand out. She was five-two or five-three, fine boned, and no match for a big, territorial dog. Her shoulder bag was an artful rendering of an English saddle, and she gripped the strap as if it held her sanity together.
“I’m so sorry,” Gideon said. “You’re absolutely safe, I promise you, but you look a tad rattled. Should we get you out of this heat?” For western Maryland was enjoying a late, ferocious St. Martin’s summer.
The woman shot a glance at Baby, who was panting across the breezeway and could probably do with a bowl of water.
Though the dog had been known to drink good English ale too.
“I’m Sadie Delacourt,” the lady said, passing Gideon her keys. “And when I’m scared, I shake. If you’d do the honors?”
The private investigator in Gideon wanted to scold her for allowing a strange bloke into her apartment, particularly when she was off-kilter and maybe about to faint.
The guy who’d spent half his life in Damson Valley unlocked her door and waited for her to precede him into the cool space within. That same guy—thirty-two years old, single, and in excellent health—noted that Miss Sadie Delacourt’s figure did sweet things for her Hawaiian-print board shorts and raspberry scrub top.
“You can’t leave Baby out here,” Miss Delacourt said. “I doubt property management wants her tied to the stair rails.”
“Property management is how she got loose,” Gideon said, following Miss Delacourt inside. “I stopped by to pick up a key, and the building manager didn’t close the door all the way. Baby, come.”
The dog sprang to her feet, two hundred pounds of hairy, panting, tongue-lolling good cheer.
“She’s well trained,” Miss Delacourt observed as Baby joined them inside.
“I can only take credit for some of that,” Gideon said, carrying the groceries into the galley kitchen. “She was found running loose at the truck stop, wearing a spike collar with the name Baby on it. People don’t adopt big dogs, old dogs, or
black dogs—it’s called Black Dog Syndrome—so when I decided to get a dog, I went for the biggest, blackest, mature canine at the pound.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” Miss Delacourt said, opening the fridge. “I couldn’t leave all the other dogs behind. Would you like something to drink? I have cold water, lemonade, or iced mint tea.”
Miss Delacourt had manners, also a lot of unpacking to do. Her apartment was a mirror image of the space Gideon had rented, a beige-carpeted rectangle chopped into a combined living room and dining room, galley kitchen, bathroom, a small bedroom, and a human-sized bedroom with attached second bathroom.
Both the living room and the larger bedroom would have tree-shaded balconies, and the complex backed up to the farmland bordering the town of Damson Valley. The last cutting of hay had come off in recent weeks, but some of the late corn remained, giving the valley a bucolic checkerboard beauty that reminded Gideon of Surrey.
“Lemonade would be delightful,” Gideon said. “May I offer Baby some water?”
“If I can find something large enough for her to drink out of. I set up my studio first, and the rest of the place…”
Taped, labeled boxes sat on the floor, sofa, and on the dining-room table; ferns occupied the odd level surface—all of them healthy—and a mobile of stained-glass hummingbirds hung crookedly from a curtain rod, two of the birds entangled.
“The rest of the place will be there when you get to it,” Gideon said. “Are you an artist?”
One box read “acrylics” and another “pastels,” suggesting she was, but a competent private investigator should be as good at small talk as he was at observation and recall.
Miss Delacourt handed him a serving of lemonade in a mason jar and went back to stuffing salad fixings into her refrigerator.
“I test and design video games,” she said, “but I also dabble in the studio arts. What about you?”
Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) Page 33
