“No,” she said. It was important that he understand this. “I thought that at first, yeah. I thought he would do that. But it was never his job to take care of me, and even though the bank account was slim, we still had our farm, our home, and this, our secret treasure trove. It felt good that he’d left me something, even though he didn’t need to.” She tapped the side of the can. “I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. It’s all my fault. Again.”
Mac came toward her. As he reached out, Cora flinched.
“I’m okay,” she said. She moved backward, remembering the hole just in time. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m like a cat. I always land on my feet,” she said lightly, looking at the floorboards. “Or maybe I’m like Clementine-also-known-as-Salt here, finding a sucker right out of the gate to take care of her.” The dog looked up at her in what appeared to be blind devotion. Cora did not need this. “Now, really, I have to put my house back together again. How the hell did Logan get the can out and back and fix the floor without my noticing? He must have worked his ass off. For once.”
“I can help.”
She met Mac’s eyes. “You can go.”
“You don’t want me here.”
That was the crazy part. She really, really did. She hadn’t wanted someone here so much since… she couldn’t remember. But he couldn’t stay.
“Please go.” The words weren’t easy to say. But then again, she didn’t do things that were easy. Cora did the things that had to be done. And he had to go, because she had a sneaking suspicion that she was going to cry soon, and no way in hell would she allow Mac to witness it. “Now,” she added.
“Okay,” he said. “All right.” He clicked his tongue once toward Clementine who wagged her tail.
But he didn’t move.
“So?” she asked.
He shook himself like she’d caught him in the rain. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I should go.” The same words, again, that he’d said so long ago, the morning of her wedding.
But still he didn’t make a motion. It felt as if something were tethering Cora in the spot where she stood, an invisible rope, with him holding one end, her the other. The only thing moving was Cora’s heart which jumped around inside her chest so much she thought he might be able to hear it.
Then with one large and sudden step, Mac closed the distance between them. Toe to toe, his eyes met hers, and in them she saw her own emotions reflected back – trepidation, resistance. Fear. She read the apology in his eyes as he lifted his hand and placed it on her cheek. Then his head lowered, his body curving and bending to claim her mouth for the first time.
The touch of his lips, infinitely softer than she would have imagined, made her head swim. Cora’s hand went to his elbow, and she held him there, not sure if she was trying to remove his hand from her cheek or if she wanted to press it there forever. At first the kiss was slow. Sweet. Mac’s lips barely touched hers, and Cora had to sway forward to keep him with her. And she did.
Then the kiss heated. His tongue met hers, tentatively at first, and then with more force, a pressure that she matched and raised. She lifted her other hand so that now she clung to both his arms, and then her fingers went higher, touching the side of his jaw, reveling in the rough stubble under her fingertips. It had been so long since she’d kissed a man… No, it was more than that. It was this man making her dizzy, this one.
He whispered words against her mouth that she didn’t understand, and his lips felt superheated. The heat reminded her of something, and as she drew him further into her mouth she searched her brain – what was it, what was this like? Why was this small bell ringing in her mind?
Oh, God. His lips were as hot as Logan’s had been when he’d been sick, when the tumor messed with his hypothalamus, screwing up his body temperature, sending him into a fever nothing could bring down.
Cora gasped and pulled away. It was only when Mac bucked forward and he wrapped his arms around her that she realized she’d almost fallen backwards into the hole in the floor.
“Careful,” he said, and there was a breathless laugh in his voice.
“That was – no,” she started, twisting herself out of his grasp. She rubbed the skin on her upper arms. From so hot, she went to freezing in an instant. “I can’t believe –”
“I’m sorry,” Mac said, releasing her. He scraped his jawline with the heel of his hand. His lips still gleamed wet. “Jesus, Cora.”
“You apologize now? And you apologized the other day. I was almost ready to accept it, too. But this, this is the worst thing you could have possibly done.”
“I know.”
“That wasn’t fair.” It was the cry of a child, and Cora felt seventeen again. How she’d wished for this, then. Before Logan. “We can’t do that to him.”
Mac’s eyes were twin pools of shocked despair. Without saying another word, he spun on his cowboy boots and crashed out the kitchen door, out into the darkness. Heavy silence landed in the room.
She sat, heavily, on the floor and stared into the empty pit she’d dug for herself. Tears threatened, hot and insistent. “Shit.”
I will not cry. Crying would make what they’d done to Logan even worse than it already was. Only Logan deserved this kind of tears, and she’d long ago learned how to shut it off.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When in doubt, knit. – E.C.
Three days passed without a glimpse of Cora.
He’d kissed Logan’s wife. There was nothing Cora could have said to him, yelled at him, beat him over the head with, that would make him feel worse than he already did. Way to fuck it all up, right from the get-go.
He worried that staying on the property next to hers might automatically mean another meeting, but it was as if she’d closed herself into the hole she’d dug in her kitchen floor and disappeared. Deliberately, he pushed the thought of her out of his mind. He’d always been good at doing that – God knew he should be, he’d been practicing for years. He returned Clementine to the shelter, telling Cindi he hoped she’d find a nice home, trying not to think of what a dog could mean for someone like Cora. The dog had such a lonely, hollow look in her eyes when he left her behind. It was the same loneliness he’d seen in Cora’s eyes – she needed a pet. Something to really love, to hold.
But that wasn’t his place. Not after he’d screwed it so far up he couldn’t see down.
Maybe not seeing Cora was for the best, anyway. Mac had plans, and they were plans that she didn’t need to know about. Not yet, anyway. And the best place to talk over plans in Cypress Hollow had always been Tillie’s.
In high school, his group of friends had congregated at the diner late at night to discuss the next day’s hijinks. Old Bill (who looked no older than he had then) had closed at ten o’clock back in the day, but if he liked the kids in question, he’d stay open late after football games and serve them chocolate milkshakes and plain cheese quesadillas. Nothing else – you couldn’t talk him into even a single French-fry. But the quesadillas were fried crispy, ropy with mozzarella and set next to giant sides of sour cream, and the milkshakes were so thick you could hardly shove the straw down, let alone suck it up. Those shakes had taken time and patience, and deliciousness was the reward.
Mac watched Old Bill, slowly wiping the counter next to the register with what looked like the same red cloth he’d used back then. He chatted with Pete Wegman and Jessie Sunol about the possible cold rain they had coming their way, and Mac knew that none of them really cared, not anymore. The ranchers didn’t really ranch – they were too old now. Their sons and grandsons had taken over, leaving them to reminisce. But the weather had always been what they talked about since creatures started crawling out of the muck, and long after Mac was gone he hoped that they’d still be there, perched temporarily on their stools before they headed to the side room to their permanent tables.
Shirley – still Shirley! – came up to his boot
h, pad in hand. “Coffee?”
“I remember you used to have those chocolate milkshakes that could choke a horse. You still got those?”
She peeked over her reading glasses. “We have ’em, yeah.” Then she looked at the red cat clock hanging on the wall, its black tail swishing away the seconds. “It’s nine in the morning, though. You sure that’s what you want?”
Mac said, “Yep. And a cheese quesadilla.”
Was that a small smile he saw on her face? “Good enough,” Shirley said. “Coffee, too?”
“Why not?” He turned over the upside-down coffee mug so she could expertly pour exactly the right amount without a drop spilled. It was good to be back.
Outside the window, he saw the black Rolls as it pulled into the open spot in front of the diner, and it looked like everyone else saw it, too. Pedestrians paused on the sidewalk, and one guy stopped backing out so he could gawk. It was true, Cypress Hollow got its fair share of tourists in fancy vehicles, but a Rolls Royce, all long lines and sleek paint, didn’t come along often. Even though he knew better, Mac almost expected a chauffeur wearing white gloves to glide out of the driver’s seat.
Instead, Royal got out, flushed and rumpled as usual. Today he wore black mirrored sunglasses, a knit beanie that looked as if he’d had it rolled in his back pocket before putting it on, two T-shirts – a long sleeved one under a short sleeved one – and jeans with holes at the knees. He looked like Mark Zuckerberg after a rave.
Royal stomped through the diner, greeting Old Bill as if he were a long-lost friend. Bill looked startled, but then gripped the handshake offered to him. Royal worked the whole room this way, pressing hands and cracking jokes that made people laugh in spite of their surprise, before making his way to Mac’s booth.
“Yo, man. I missed you,” said Royal as he sat. Then he leaned forward, his elbows on the table, not noticing until Mac pointed it out that the cuff of his long sleeved T-shirt was trailing in Mac’s coffee. “Oh, sorry about that.” He shook the moisture off, wiping the rest on his jeans. “So tell me. How’s small town life treating you?”
Mac said, “Fine.”
“Tell me more.” Royal, as usual, was bossy. Demanding. But as well as being his employer, Royal was his friend. Mac felt something he hadn’t even known he’d been worrying about slip away.
“Slow, I guess,” Mac said.
“You’ve only been here for what, five days?”
“I feel like I should have done more. I should be already setting things up and I haven’t started.”
Royal shook his head and patted Mac’s hand paternally. “You’re here to smooth the road, not pave it. You can leave that part to me. I’m the steamroller. You’re the face. Now, how does it feel to be back home?”
Royal was good at getting people to not only trust him but to tell him things – it was how he’d gotten so far in business. Though only in his early forties, he’d amassed a huge fortune, raking in money in the dot-com boom, then plundering the housing market. He’d gotten out right before the bubble burst. Now he did something with solar energy, but Mac knew him through horses. Royal’s true passion was raising thoroughbreds – every moment he didn’t spend making money, he spent in his barns. They’d met at Bay Gate Downs when one of Royal’s stabled horses had failed a CO2 test (a faulty read, or the horse would have been scratched and the trainer possibly ousted for illegally enhanced performance). Mac and Royal had taken instantly to each other. Royal had worked hard to woo Mac away from the track with a high salary and promises of breeding winners, but in all honesty, Mac had been ready to leave. Racetracks were drying up, down to about eighty from the couple hundred that had been in business when Mac had started practicing. In ten years, there’d only be a handful of tracks left. Most people were separated from the country, from horses, two or three generations away from living on the land. They watched TV and ate at drive-throughs. Dirt and animals and farms didn’t exist in people’s minds anymore, and racetracks were part of that dying life. Hell, most of the bets placed at Bay Gate Downs came in through the twenty-four satellite casinos that played the races. The stands didn’t even fill up anymore.
The chance paid off. He loved working for Royal, being with the same horses every day. There were two hundred of them, enough to keep him busy as they came in and out from track stables, always some mare to breed or deliver, or a foal with its first hot foot. Didn’t stop him from missing the roar of the crowds, though.
Royal was still waiting for him to answer how it felt to be home. His expression was patient, as if he had all the time in the world.
Mac had a sudden urge to tell him about Cora, about the way she looked digging in that hole she’d made in her kitchen, the look she’d worn when she’d opened the coffee can to find Logan had left her exactly nothing. Instead, he said, “There’s…”
“A woman.” Royal said, triumphant. “I knew it!”
“Whatever,” said Mac. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you tell me about her?”
“No. No way.”
“Who is she?”
“No one. I’m sorry it came up.” And he was.
Royal leaned back, and put one finger alongside his nose, exactly as Santa would have done if Santa looked like a Los Angeles surfer. “More and more interesting. Is this the one that got away?”
Mac twisted in his seat. Royal was just guessing, but he was too close to the truth for comfort. “You think about women too much.”
“They’re why we live,” said Royal, and his eyes focused dreamily on the backside of Abigail MacArthur.
“Watch it. I hear she’s married to a very tall sheep rancher.”
Royal straightened. “Right. But dude, this town is full of real women. You know how rarely I see those? I see blondes with enhancements they’ll still be paying off when the warrantees run out. Although who am I kidding? I like an enhancement as much as the next man. But the women here wear jeans like they mean it. I could fall in love here.” He paused. “I already know it wouldn’t be mutual, but that’s okay. I could deal with unrequited. Unrequited with maybe some touching. You think?”
“Women in Cypress Hollow want relationships to go with the touching.”
Royal sighed happily. “This is the perfect town.”
Mac knew this about his friend: he loved three things – love, money, and horses. Love always came first, even ahead of the horses. He fell for women left and right, and he was always looking for The One. It was too bad most of them were after the wallet in his back pocket.
Royal said, “So what, you haven’t said a word to your family yet?”
“I haven’t found the right time.” Sure, he could have brought it up that night when everyone was together at dinner. He should have. But he hadn’t.
“Did you at least talk to your mom?”
Mac shook his head.
“But they do need the money, right? You still think they’ll go for it?”
Mac said, “My Aunt Valentine is perennially scratching her pennies together. My mom is better off, with some investments she made when my dad died. Cora doesn’t work a real job, just pulls money in with sheer grit, I think.”
Shirley interrupted them with another coffee refill.
Royal smiled. “Hello, ma’am. You know, this place is pretty –” he pointed to the ocean, the waves breaking on the sand just across the main street “ – but you’re the one I can’t take my eyes off.”
Mac snorted.
Shirley just raised her eyebrows. “You ever get anywhere with that line, little boy?”
“Never used it before. You inspire me.”
Mac watched her soften before his very eyes. She laughed. “I’ve got a man my own age, twenty-five years older than you.”
“Is he a good man?”
Mac felt himself sink into the booth.
But Shirley smiled and said, “Yeah. He’s good.”
“I’m glad he is, because if he were a bad man, I’d be forced to track him down an
d make him regret the error of his ways.”
“Oh, you’d do that, would you?” Shirley looked ten years younger than she had thirty seconds before.
“It would be my honor and my duty.”
Shirley swung to look at Mac. “He always talk like this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There ought to be a law.” But she was pink and pleased as she took Royal’s order, and Mac knew that the eggs would come to Royal perfectly cooked.
“So, back to you,” said Royal. “How can I help?”
“Are you here to scope out the land or to bully me into moving faster?”
“I’d never bully you.” Royal’s eyebrows flew upward in affront. “As if. I just like to keep an eye on the people I care about. You should know that. But yeah, I want to see the land. Now, who’s the girl?”
“Not telling you.”
“She’s the wife of your cousin, the loser who died.”
Mac’s mouth dropped open. He glanced around to see if anyone could have heard Royal’s words. “How did –”
Royal popped his knuckles in satisfaction. “I pay people to find these things out.”
“But –”
Royal laughed. “I’m teasing you, bro. When he died, you remember I took you out and got you so hammered you wanted to throw away your paycheck on video ponies?”
“I don’t gamble.” Not on anything that costs money.
“And you crawled up your front steps on all fours, pretending to be a tiger?”
“What I remember about that night was the pain I felt the next morning. I don’t think I’d ever been that hungover in my life.”
“In vino veritas, brother. That’s all I’m going to say.”
It was so Royal, to know a secret for so long, Mac’s secret, and never say a word, but just save it until he could use it. “You do that to all your friends? Get them drunk and learn their secrets?”
Royal looked into his coffee cup as if there were a fifty dollar bill at the bottom that he could find if he just peered hard enough. “Nah. You’re my only friend.”
Cora's Heart: A Cypress Hollow Yarn Page 9
