She shoved fries into her mouth.
“The day you and Mack-y have passion is the day the Pope starts wearing a Speedo in public.”
We both focused on our meal until we finished. As I led her to my truck and opened her door, I spotted Mackay pulling into the parking lot. When he looked over and noticed us, I pulled Liz close.
“What’s in your hair?” As she squirmed to escape, I said, “Hold still. I think it’s a spider.”
She tensed as I ran my hands through her gorgeous curls, but to her credit, she didn’t squeal.
“Damnation. It’s tangled in your hair. Hold still.” I took advantage of her ignorance to pull her nearer. “There’s another bugger,” I whispered. “You must have ran into a nest of webbies.”
She shuddered, and I felt her heart pounding into mine. “Almost have it,” I muttered as I lowered my head and inhaled the smell of her shampoo. Tropical, with a hint of coconut. I allowed my fingers to explore her wild curls, hoping Mackay would misconstrue the whole scene.
When I heard a door slam, I knew I’d kept her preoccupied enough that Vanilla had received my message loud and clear. She would thank me someday.
“Got it.” I flicked my fingers in the air so she’d think I was getting rid of a nonexistent arachnid.
“Thanks,” she said breathlessly into my chest, revealing how my closeness had affected her. Why was she fighting this so hard? Most girls would have had me in a prone position in the backseat by now.
I kissed her brow, smoothing the stress lines there. “You’re welcome, Little Miss Muffet.” I pulled back to look at her and knew she was crazy about me. The truth was evident in her golden brown eyes. If I could get her to let down her hair more often and date other guys, she’d probably be crazy for them too. “Let’s get you home.”
As I released her, her eyebrows turned down in confusion, which was good. She confused the hell out of me. Turnabout was fair play.
Chapter 35
Liz
Men will send me to my grave. I came to Montana to escape them, but between Rawson Law and Mackay Benson, I’ve had more trouble than I ever did in Vegas. After the uncomfortable drive to Levanson’s yesterday, I looked forward to going out with Mackay to get my head back in whack. Rawson had thrown me for a loop when he kissed me. Now I could hardly look him in the eye without my body betraying me. Dang his smile. It should be illegal.
As Mackay helped me into his car, I thanked him. I didn’t care what Rawson said. Mackay was the purest vanilla bean ice cream ever created. So what if he was predictable. Who wanted to build a house on an unstable foundation? Not me. I needed someone steady and reliable.
After he pulled out of the driveway, I began listing all of Mackay’s positive traits.
He volunteered at the Food Bank each week. Rawson never did anything selfless like that.
Faithful church man. Rawson scoffed at religion.
Smart. Rawson was brilliant, but didn’t always use that gift for good.
Mackay was kind to a fault. Rawson teased me unmercifully.
Thoughtful. Rawson never considered my feelings. I mean, who calls a girl a heifer?
Good listener. Mackay had listened to me even when I brought up horrid subjects or tried to bore him in the early days of our relationship. Rawson just made fun of me.
Blind to my faults. Rawson loved pointing out my flaws, although he did try to make up for it by forcing me to do that stupid Love Triangle game. Dumb man.
Honest. Mackay would go back to a store if they undercharged him a penny. Rawson broke promises like a karate master shattered wood.
Dutiful son. Mackay’s parents thought the world of him. Rawson’s dad wanted to strangle him on a daily basis.
Hard worker. Mackay worked long hours at the hardware store. Rawson seemed to work when it suited his mood.
When we reached the junction to turn, I realized Mackay hadn’t spoken. I’d been so lost in my thoughts I hadn’t even asked how his day had gone.
“How was work?”
“Fine.”
I glanced over at him and noticed that his hands clenched the wheel. Maybe he was stressed about his father. This past Sunday when we visited, he could hardly speak due to pain. Cancer sucked.
“How’s your dad?”
“Each day’s different.”
Silence occupied the space between us, which seemed odd since Mackay usually filled it with friendly chatter. I tried a few more times to draw him out, but gave up after his fourth one word response.
Mackay drove to the same diner Rawson had chosen last night. What were the odds? When he pulled into the parking lot, he raised a brow.
“Have you eaten here recently?”
I nodded. “Last night. But I can order something different. I don’t mind.”
“Who were you with?”
I stared at him. Was he interrogating me? “I stopped here with Rawson last night after a work call.”
His nose wrinkled. “He’s very charming when he wants to be.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s a big tease.”
“Was he teasing when he kissed you?”
“I’ve never kissed Rawson Law,” I snapped, but blushed as I recalled the truth. But he’d forced that on me unawares. Mackay couldn’t blame me since I’d pushed him away. My pesky conscience reminded me that I hadn’t wanted to stop him. Even though it’d been the shortest kiss of my life, it had also been the best, and I’d relived that moment dozens of time in my dreams. But I had stopped him. How did Mackay know about that kiss in the truck though?
“But you like him.”
“No!” When he gave me a hard stare, I lowered my eyes. Maybe a little, I admitted to myself.
Mackay took a deep breath and looked out his window. “I was here last night and saw you two kissing.”
“What?” I certainly hadn’t kissed Rawson here.
“He doesn’t care about you, Liz. I know you work with him, and it’s probably easy to get caught up in the moment, but you don’t know him like I do. The man’s a womanizer. I saw him do this in high school—move in and get some girl to like him, then use her all up and cast her aside. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
I hadn’t thought Mackay possessed a mean bone in his body, but he must have ingested calcium-fortified fury recently.
“He’s not like that.” I don’t know why I defended him. Mackay was right. I didn’t know Rawson that well.
“You’re naive and gullible, just like all the other girls who had their hearts broken by him.”
“Now wait just a confounded minute. I resent being compared to some high school cheerleaders who wanted the big guy on campus.” Which I’m sure Rawson was. I mean, all I had to do was look at him to know he’d been Mr. Popular.
“You’re nothing like them,” he said adamantly. “If you were, I wouldn’t care. But I like you, Liz. A lot! I don’t want you to get hurt.”
His concern touched me. Even though Mackay thought I’d cheated on him, he still cared. That was pretty sweet. I reached out and squeezed his hand. “What you saw last night wasn’t what you think.”
“Liz, I’m not mad, but I—”
I placed my finger against his lips. “He didn’t kiss me. Rawson was trying to get a spider—two spiders, actually—out of my hair.” I shuddered thinking about creepy crawlies invading my personal space. Thank goodness, Rawson had extracted them.
“I saw him kiss your forehead.” He sounded sullen.
“That was just a friendly kiss.” Like ours, I wanted to add. “It meant nothing.”
“I don’t like you hanging out with him.”
“We work together. We have to hang out. But we’re friends. Nothing more.”
“You said you like him.”
My eyes widened. Had I voiced my feelings aloud? “It’s the kind of like I feel for Matt Damon. He doesn’t like me back, I assure you. In fact, he’s always trying to convince me to go out with a couple of other hands at the ranch.”
>
Mackay tapped his steering wheel. “That’s because he hates me.” He took both my hands in his. “You have to stay away from him. He’ll do anything to hurt me, and probably just seeing you with me at church made you a target. He bullied me in high school, and now he’s trying to steal you away to make some macho point.”
“Really, Mackay. If Rawson wanted to steal me away, he would’ve tried a little harder. He mostly pokes fun of how bad I look. How’s that charming?”
“You’ve never looked bad a day in your life.”
“You haven’t seen me mucking stalls at four a.m.”
“You’re the prettiest girl I know. And the nicest. Rawson would be a fool not to make a play for you.”
“Well, he’s not. I promise.”
He hit the steering wheel, making me jump. “Mark my words. He’ll hurt you.”
“Look. I’m sorry he bullied you in high school, but more than four years have passed. He’s different now.”
“He’s an actor. He shows you what you want to see. He did this with every pretty girl in high school—acting like Prince Charming until he had them wrapped around his finger, then throwing them off with his middle finger a week later when he was onto the next flavor of the week.”
I flinched as he brought up flavors. Did Rawson tease and kiss me yesterday because I was a new flavor? Would he toss me aside and ignore me once he got a taste of how boring and truly plain I was? He compared Mackay to vanilla, but if anyone resembled that flavor, it was me. Besides horses, I didn’t have any cool hobbies. I liked to read and cut things out with a scroll saw. I could whistle, change the oil in a truck, and take gadgets apart, but no man wanted a girl who was better than him at guy things. Men wanted feminine beauties who were helpless and made them feel manly. That wasn’t me. I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t anything special either. To guys, I was a pal, not a gal.
He heaved a weary sigh. “Maybe we should take a break from seeing each other.”
Was Mackay breaking up with me?
“It’s not that I don’t like you. I think the world of you, Liz. But I can tell your heart’s not in this relationship.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued in a rush.
“With everything going on—Dad’s health and Mom worrying about medical bills—I can’t do this. Not with how things stand between us. We’ve been going out for four months. I’d like to take things to the next level, but I don’t think you’re ready. Maybe if I give you space, you can decide whether you’re all in…or not.”
I twisted my hands in my lap, feeling like the worst girlfriend ever.
He tipped my chin. “Promise to be careful. I know how charming that jerk can be. But no matter how funny or handsome or whatever you think he is, don’t let down your guard. He’s not a good man.”
I managed to nod and turn away before he noticed my tears.
He blew out a deep breath. “I guess we better go inside and order.”
“Can we just go through the Wendy’s drive-thru instead?” I couldn’t fake happy right now, and wanted this breakup date over sooner rather than later.
He started his car and drove down the road to my take-out Mecca, where I ordered a chili to warm up my cold, dead heart.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything else?”
“No.” I didn’t want him to waste any more money on me, and he was too old-fashioned to let me pay.
The hour drive home seemed to take twice as long as normal. It was an unwritten law of physics that awkward tension drew out the distance between any two points. When I spotted the log entrance to the ranch, I almost cheered; not because I hated Mackay and wanted away from him, but because I felt unworthy of such a decent man. God had given me a second chance to have what I wanted—a solid husband and marriage—and I’d thrown it away by being the worst girlfriend ever and only thinking about myself. Who did that to such a nice guy?
Me, that’s who. I ruined everything.
Chapter 36
Rawson
Monopoly ranked high on my list of most hated games. Yet, I sat on the rug in an uncomfortable position playing the time-waster of my own free will and choice. When Benny asked if I’d play with him and Liz, I shocked him by agreeing. The game still took too long, but with Lizzie on the other side of the board, that suddenly didn’t seem so bad. She was fun to hang around.
As Benny finished his turn, I rolled the dice and moved my boot to Boardwalk. “I’ll buy it.”
“I wonder if your feelings on this matter are clear, Lord Vader.” Benny was the smart-aleck banker.
“They are clear, my master.” As I handed over four hundred Monopoly dollars, he snickered and gave me my property.
Liz rolled the dice. She moved the thimble to Baltic and purchased it.
“If you’re trying to buy up all the cheap sh—” I caught myself, “—crap and bankrupt us at the end with hotels, you might want to rethink your strategy. With doofus here buying everything he lands on, we’re both in trouble.” I rubbed Benny’s head hard to make his hair stand up straight.
“Stop it!” He pushed my hand away.
“How was your first day of sixth grade?” Liz asked.
My brother’s brows scrunched together before he forced a smile. “Good. Couldn’t be better.”
I bit my tongue to keep from interrogating him. There’d be time to pull the truth from him later.
Benny rolled a seven. As I counted ahead from his token, I clenched my teeth. When he threw money into the bank and snatched up Park Place, I threw Boardwalk across the board.
“Are you kidding me? Now what good will this do me?”
Liz reached over to touch his hand. “I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookie win.”
I whistled. “That was good. So I’m a Wookie now?”
“If the fur fits, wear it.” She concentrated on the board, fighting a smile.
I waited until she glanced up at me. She always did. “If I recall correctly, you told me the other day you’d like to kiss a Wookie.”
She rolled the dice. “No, I said I’d rather kiss a Wookie, meaning the creature ranks higher than you if I had to kiss something nasty. But Mackay ranks higher than you both.”
Benny gave her a weird look. “I thought you told me you broke up—”
“I’ll buy it!” she shouted over Benny’s enlightening announcement.
“You broke up with Mack-y?”
Crimson splotches flared up her cheeks and neck, revealing the truth her tongue restrained.
“I knew you’d come to your senses eventually and dump that bin of vanilla.”
She glared at me. “For your information, he dumped me.”
“Then he’s stupider than I thought.”
She huffed and grabbed her new property. As we circled the board several more times, I kept catching her watching me and knew she liked me. She just didn’t want to like me. It was a unique position to be in. Girls usually threw themselves at me.
“Your turn, bro.” Benny jabbed me in the side.
I rolled the dice and half-heartedly moved. Benny had one of every property, so I had no chance of winning. “New rule. Sixth graders aren’t allowed to play this game.”
His bottom lip jutted out. “You’re just sore about Park Place.”
“Damn straight.”
Lizzie threw me one of her stern librarian scowls. With her hair locked up in a ponytail prison, she pulled it off well.
“Ooops. I mean, Dang straight.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbled.
“Since you’re not stuck with vanilla, are you ready to try a new flavor?”
She raised her eyebrows. “We haven’t completely broken up.”
“You’re either together, or you’re not. Which is it?”
The dice were forgotten. Benny held them in his hand as he stared at us.
“We’re just taking a break from each other.”
“Did you hear the key word in there, kid?”
H
is countenance lit up as I included him. “Break, as in break up.”
Lizzie shook her head. “No. Break, as in rest. We’re getting our lives in order before we get back together. With his father so sick—”
“Stop making excuses. If I were Mackay and you were my girl, the world could be falling apart and I would never…ever!…take a break from you. The worse life got, the tighter I’d hold onto you.”
“Ben, it’s your turn,” she said.
I squirmed to get blood moving into my crossed legs. How did Indians sit like this?
“Do you have any classes with the kids from church?” she kept her focus on my brother.
“Yeah,” I piped in, “because if you don’t, the devil’s going to get you.”
Benny snickered as he collected $50 rent from Liz for landing on one of his railroads. As she gave me the evil eye, I hissed and crossed two fingers in the air to ward off her spell. The corny act elicited an unwilling smile and a hard eye roll from her.
I’d take what I could get.
“I wish. But Alice saw me in line at lunch and invited me to eat with her and her friends.”
Liz smiled. “That was nice of her.”
As Benny blushed, I realized he was growing up. If the accident hadn’t happened, he’d be in seventh grade, instead of sixth. That’s when I started noticing girls.
“Are you sweet on this Alice chick?” I asked.
Benny’s face turned red.
Lizzie elbowed me. “He’s only thirteen.”
“So? I liked girls at his age.”
Benny snorted. “You were born liking girls.”
“True that.”
Liz folded her arms. “Well, normal boys think girls have cooties at this age.”
“I knew girls had cooties back then. They still do. But having a scientific mind, I’ve always enjoyed studying cooties up close and personal.” I winked.
They both made gagging faces that made me hoot. Monopoly had never seemed so fun before.
Lizzie shoved my arm. “You’re terrible.”
“And gross.” Benny handed me the dice.
“Gross and Terrible.” I shook the dice and let them fall. “That was my nickname in junior high. That and Cootie Catcher.”
Between Hope & the Highway Page 16
