by Lucy Connors
“Mickey? Where did you come from?” I couldn’t ignore the way her face lit up, and something wild inside me settled, calmed.
I dropped to my knees next to her, looking for blood or broken bones.
“I was riding my bike, and then I saw you, but I was leaving, and you fell—forget that. Are you okay?”
I tilted her head up with one hand under her chin, examining her face for bruises or signs of injury.
She smiled. “I’m okay, I think. I didn’t hit my head, and I’ve taken enough spills over the years to know how to fall. I think I might have twisted my ankle, though. I’m more worried about Heather’s Angel.”
I bared my teeth at the horse, who was clearly fine. “You ought to be worried about her. She could have hurt you. There would have been a glue factory in her future if she had.”
Victoria shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that. Anyway, she’s walking fine, so I’m not too worried. I’ll be able to check her out thoroughly when we get back to the barn. Can you help me up?”
I put my hands on her waist and lifted her up off the ground, holding tightly and supporting her weight in case her ankle was bad. Or at least that was the reason I gave myself for not wanting to let go. It was nothing at all to do with the way she smelled like sugar and sunshine, or the way I’d spent the past week with a perpetual hard-on, wondering what her lips would taste like in the moonlight. What her body would feel like underneath mine.
“You’re kind of my own personal hero,” she said, laughing a little. “Rescuing me the night I met you, rescuing Melinda, rescuing me from this fall—how are you even possible?”
“I’m no hero. I’m just somebody in the wrong place at the right time,” I said.
Her smile faded. “Is near me always going to be the wrong place?”
I wanted to kiss her. I needed to kiss her, more than I needed to think or talk or breathe. I leaned closer, but she stumbled a little, wincing when she put weight on her injured ankle.
“Ouch. Yeah, I wrenched it. Not too bad, though. I’ll be able to get home on my own. It would be better—”
“If the big, bad Rhodale didn’t take you home twice in one day,” I said bitterly. “Yeah. I know. The best thing for both of us would be if we forgot we’d ever met, wouldn’t it?”
She looked up at me, and I fell, drowning, into her wide green eyes, which were almost silvery in the moonlight.
“You promised not to do this. Is that what you really want?” Her voice was a whisper, and I couldn’t tell which answer she wanted to hear, so I just told her the truth.
“No, that’s not what I want, but what I want isn’t sane or reasonable. I want to spend all my time with you. I want to know why I can’t sleep without dreaming about you. I want to kiss you until you can’t remember a time before you met me.”
She took a deep, shaky breath, and then she put her arms around my neck. “Then kiss me again. Because even though I’m hardly brave enough to admit it, that’s all I want, too.”
Chapter 21
Victoria
You are brave, you know. You stood up for me, today. With your father,” he said softly, staring into my eyes. “Nobody ever did that for me before. Don’t think I’ll forget it.”
I couldn’t help it. The expression of pain that flashed over his face caught at something inside me, and I was powerless to resist him, so I kissed him—the gentlest touch of my lips to his.
Before I could retreat, he put an arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him. He angled his head and deepened the kiss, and suddenly it wasn’t gentle anymore. Summer lightning storms had burned through hayfields with less heat and power.
I didn’t even try to resist. I let myself sink into the moment, surrendering to his demand. Somehow I felt safer with his strength surrounding me than I’d felt in so long. I couldn’t breathe—couldn’t think—couldn’t run away and, for once, I didn’t even want to try.
My entire body was trembling by the time he raised his head from mine. Stunned, I looked up at Mickey, wondering how one kiss could have shifted the entire world. As if suddenly Whitfield County, Kentucky, had turned into fairy-tale land, and a nerdy, smart girl had turned into a princess.
He was breathing hard, and his eyes were wild, reminding me of nothing so much as a racehorse that had been completely and utterly spooked.
“I think we’re in trouble,” he said, his voice rough. “There’s no way I’m going to stop wanting to kiss you now, after that.”
I touched shaky fingers to my lips. “This is moving way too fast, and both our families are against it, and there are so many problems—”
He kissed me again, and I stopped thinking, stopped breathing, and stopped feeling anything but him. I was pressed up so close to him that I could almost feel his heartbeat. When he finally raised his head, I didn’t even try to offer any more protests.
“This is going to be dangerous,” I said, conceding my surrender.
“You’re worth it. And I’ll make sure that any danger doesn’t come anywhere near you,” he said, his dark eyes gleaming.
Angel suddenly lifted her head and nickered, and I realized I could hear Pete yelling my name in the distance. He was probably riding out toward us.
“You have to go,” I said, panicking. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He kissed me again, and then he lifted me up onto Angel. “You can count on it.”
I headed back toward the barn, my lips tingling and my head spinning so much I could hardly feel any pain in my ankle. Dangerous had probably been an understatement, but Mickey was worth it, too.
By the time Pete reached me, I was able to pretend to be completely calm. I told him Angel had stumbled, and concern for the horse outweighed any suspicions he might have had about why I was dawdling out in the fields so late.
I talked to him, focusing on the conversation with one part of my mind, while the rest plotted out how I’d find ways to spend time with Mickey. I must have missed something Pete had asked me, though, because I realized he was giving me a strange look.
“Long day?”
“The longest,” I said, smiling so brightly I think it made him nervous. “But tomorrow will be wonderful.”
I hoped.
Chapter 22
Mickey
I smelled like sweat, gas, Cheetos, and fried pig skins. It wasn’t an appetizing aroma.
The bell over the door rang, but it was only my boss.
“You leaving already?” He glared at me, holding his arm in its cast protectively close to his chest. He’d broken it trying to find something in the hoarded-out nightmare he called a storage shed.
“I was supposed to clock out an hour ago. You need to find us more help,” I said, wiping my face with the bottom of my shirt.
“I’m trying, but nobody wants to do an honest day’s work,” he grumbled.
“Nobody wants to work for you, you mean,” I countered.
“Aw, get out of here. And don’t be late next time.” He stomped off, but I knew he secretly liked it that somebody actually stood up to him. Or, at least, he’d never fired me for it, even on the days that I wished he would, which were usually inventory days, like today.
I washed my hands and headed home. All I wanted was a hot shower, a big dinner, and a chance to call Victoria in case her idiot father had finally given her phone back after taking it away for her “bad judgment” of letting me drive her home.
If he ever found out I’d kissed her, he’d probably ship her off to boarding school in Switzerland.
But as I pulled up to my house, my mood plummeted straight down past zero, because Pa’s sheriff car was parked at a careless angle behind Ethan’s truck. As far as I knew, Ethan hadn’t been back to my house for six years, so something big must be going on. With Ethan, something big always meant something bad, and my first instinct was to turn around and av
oid the situation altogether. Let him and Pa shout it out.
Then I saw that my mother’s car was there, too. I couldn’t leave her to deal with the two of them, especially if Pa had been drinking again.
I heard the shouting when I was only halfway across the yard, so I started running.
They were in the living room, and Ethan was up in Pa’s face. “And don’t you think he’s going to come after your job next? You’re up for election next year. Don’t you think Whitfield is going to throw his money behind your opponent?”
“He doesn’t have any money,” Pa shouted at him. “Why do you think he had to move back here in the first place?”
“Whitfields always have money. You think he doesn’t get to take over the ranch when his mother kicks it? Maybe he’ll push her along toward her casket a little quicker. I wouldn’t put anything past a Whitfield.”
Mom came out of the kitchen to intercept me when I started toward them.
“No, Mickey, please stay out of this,” she pleaded, but I didn’t stop.
“What is it about this time? Why can’t you just leave the Whitfields alone, Ethan? That old feud is ancient history—what did they ever do to you?” I grabbed his arm to pull him away from Pa, and Ethan whipped around and shoved me, hard.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Didn’t your girlfriend tell you about their newest asshole move?” He advanced on me, fists clenched, but I stood my ground.
“What are you talking about? And why are you even here? I figured you’d be too busy selling drugs to the rest of Coach’s family to make social calls,” I said bitterly.
“Yeah, I heard about that. Want me to pay him a little visit and get you back on the team?” Ethan’s eyes gleamed, and I wanted to punch him in the face.
“No, you psychopath, I don’t. That shit didn’t work when I was a kid, and it’s not going to work now. Just stay the hell away from me.”
“I’m not here about your football problems, asshole. You couldn’t listen to me, could you? I told you to stay away from that little bitch, but you had to play the knight in shining armor,” Ethan said. “Well, Dick Whitfield retaliated. He talked to his employees today and went down a list of everybody he’d found out was in any related to a Rhodale and fired their asses. Every single one of them. Said this would teach the Rhodales to mess with his daughters.”
I looked at Pa. “Is that even legal?”
He sighed, and he suddenly looked about ten years older. “It’s legal. You can fire your employees for any reason you want in Kentucky, unless they’re part of a protected class. So, you can’t fire somebody on account of their race or gender or for being pregnant, that kind of thing.”
“Being a Rhodale is in no way a protected class, is it? Never has been. We’ve always been the ones who have to protect ourselves,” Ethan said bitterly. “So now we’ve got to explain to eleven people who just lost their jobs why it is that my little brother had to ruin their lives chasing Whitfield tail.”
I was stunned by the news of such vicious retaliation, but there was still no way I was taking the blame for Victoria’s dad’s actions. “This isn’t all on me. Let me refresh your memory. You know, about how you took off with Melinda Whitfield in your damn truck?”
Ethan and Pa both started yelling at the same time, with me in the middle, until a tremendous crash shut us all up. Mom stood in front of the kitchen, the shards of the glass fruit bowl she’d just smashed all over the floor around her.
“That’s enough,” she said quietly. “Ethan, please leave my house. You are not welcome here until you can behave in a civilized fashion.”
Pa started to speak, but she held up a hand for silence. “I’ve had enough from you, too. We are going to talk, about your sons, and your ex-wife, and your drinking, but that’s between the two of us. For now, you will please escort Ethan out of the house while I have a conversation with Mickey.”
Ethan sneered at her, then turned his contempt on Pa. “That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it? You let the women wear the pants in your marriages.”
“And you let your mommy tell you what to do,” Pa shot back, and we all looked at him with shock. He rarely stood up to Ethan, or Jeb for that matter, but this thing with Ethan taking off with Melinda must have sparked something in him.
Pa followed Ethan outside, and I turned to look at my mom. Now that the crisis was past, she leaned against the table and started shaking. I rushed over to pull out a chair for her and made her sit down while I cleaned up the mess.
“I always liked that bowl, too,” she said quietly, and then she put her head down on her folded arms and started crying.
I didn’t know what to do, so I finished cleaning up the glass and then sat down beside her and patted her back until Pa came back in. He gave me a helpless look. The one thing that always brought a Rhodale man to his knees was a woman’s tears.
Mom probably realized that, too, because she sat up and wiped her face with the backs of her hands. I jumped up to get her a box of tissues, and she nodded her thanks. She pointed to a chair and my father joined us at the table.
“Ethan is right, you know,” she said, surprising us. “If this is true and not just rumors getting out of hand, as happens so often around here, then Richard Whitfield’s vindictive action is going to cause a lot of trouble.”
Pa nodded wearily. “And you know where some of those unemployed Rhodales will go? Into the drug business with Ethan. Some will be willing to uproot to move to wherever they have to go to stay in the horse business, but others won’t want to move their families. Not much work around here now, and there’s big money in drugs. Huge money. That’s why it’s so damn hard to fight.”
“It’s so hard to fight because you don’t want to stand up to Ethan,” I said, figuring what the hell, we might as well get it all out on the table. “He’s your son, but he’s also a criminal. You’re the sheriff. You need to shut him down.”
Pa shook his head. “You don’t understand. We can’t root it out. Meth labs are all over the state, and the big drug cartels are taking over the sales and distribution. If Ethan magically gets out of the business or—more likely—goes back to jail, then somebody worse takes over, and the whole damn county becomes a hellhole. At least Ethan keeps it away from the schools and the kids.”
“You’re both fools if you don’t realize that Anna Mae is behind most of this,” my mother said.
“Of course I realize that,” Pa said wearily. “Do you think I’m an idiot? But we can’t prove anything, because we’d need a warrant to search the compound, and she’s very careful to cover her tracks.”
Mom reached over and took his hand. “I didn’t know, because every time I tried to bring up Anna Mae, you shied away from the issue.”
“Ethan had better not go after the Whitfields,” I inserted. “I will put everything I have into stopping him if he tries to hurt Victoria’s family.”
Pa switched his gaze to me, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “Victoria, huh? So it’s true? You have feelings for this girl? In spite of everything we’ve told you?”
I looked Pa dead in the eyes and lied to his face. “No. There’s nothing between me and Victoria Whitfield, but I’m not going to let Ethan start up any crap and turn this county into a war zone, either.”
“Mick, I want you to stay out of this,” Pa said. “It’s too dangerous to get in Ethan’s way. Let me handle it.”
He’d never handled Ethan before, I thought. But I shrugged anyway and pretended to give in. “Sure. Fine. Whatever you say. I need a shower, and then I have homework to do.”
“Dinner’s keeping warm in the oven for you, honey,” Mom said.
She still looked kind of shaky, so I patted her shoulder and then headed upstairs. If my father handled this problem as poorly as he’d handled Ethan in the past, Rhodales and Whitfields would be shooting it out in the streets within a week.<
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I showered the day’s grime off and then took a minute to plug in my phone, which had died sometime during the afternoon. The display lit up with text messages I’d missed.
4:16 PM: Mickey, big trouble. My dad has gone insane. He’s firing anybody related to you. It’s the feud all over again. I stole my phone back from his office. Call me after 8.
6:12 PM: It’s worse. He’s blaming this all on Melinda for going off with Ethan. She got into a hidden stash of whiskey she found in the barn and is passed out. Fights are breaking out in the yard. The poor horses
The poor horses? She was worried about horses when so many people had just lost their jobs? Maybe she was more like her father than I’d thought.
6:15 PM: Sorry, had to hide my phone so that last message got cut off. The poor horses are in a state from the turmoil they don’t understand and I am not much better. It is devastating that good, hardworking ppl lost their jobs because of this insanity.
Guilt nudged me that I’d thought, even for a minute, that Victoria was the type to care more about horses than people. I kept misjudging her, based on her last name. I was no better than Ethan.
6:58 PM: Have screamed myself hoarse, but he refuses to change his mind. Gran argued with him all day, but she’d signed over control of so much to him that she can’t stop him. Mickey, I’m so sorry. I feel guilty by association.
7:18 PM: Do you hate me now so much that you won’t text me back?
Damn it. I needed to call her, now. It was 8:30.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Mickey?” Her voice was so tentative and somehow broken that I damned myself for a fool for not charging my phone earlier.
