The Fall

by Kate Sherwood

  “No extensive staff? No cowboys living in the bunkhouses, even? You’re shattering my illusions.”

  “No bunkhouses,” Joe said. “We’ve got quite a few outbuildings, but most of them are empty—I guess a couple might have been for sleeping, at some point. My dad knew more about the farm’s history, but….” He shrugged. “That’s kind of lost, now.”

  “You should just make it up. A void is a kind of freedom, right? You can fill it with whatever feels right to you, and if you repeat the stories often enough, people will start believing them.”

  “You think I should spin a complicated web of lies about the history of an Ontario farm?” Joe raised an eyebrow. “I’ll put that on the to-do list, but it’s going to be pretty close to the bottom.”

  “Your loss.” Mackenzie stretched his arms in an exaggerated shrug, and if he happened to know the pose would make his body look long, lean, and irresistible—well, no reason not to show Joe what else he stood to lose in all this.

  But as usual, Joe showed no reaction. He seemed to have lost all interest in Mackenzie, really, and was crouching down to greet Griffin and peer at his snout. “He looks good. Those little marks will probably go away, and if they don’t… they give him character.”

  “Yeah, he’s a tough guy now. Won’t go anywhere near that shed, though.”

  “He’s actually got some sense, then. Maybe we should introduce him to Red, try to teach that old bastard a few new tricks.”

  Mackenzie took a quick look around to make sure there were no kids within earshot, then said, “I really don’t like to introduce Griffin to the dogs of my casual tricks. I think it just confuses him.”

  Joe snorted, then grinned. “Yeah, that’s a good point.”

  Damn, there was something special about Joe’s smile. It made Mackenzie feel like he’d earned something, been granted membership into an exclusive club. People Earning Joe Sutton’s Amusement. PEJSA. They could sell T-shirts. “You want to go inside? Make sure your sister hasn’t passed out from the beauty of it all?”

  Joe turned to the little boy peering through the weeds, searching for blossoms. “Austin, you ready to go inside? You’ll like the inside too. It’s very nice.”

  Austin looked reluctant but obediently trotted over and took his uncle’s hand. And damn it, that was another stupidly appealing thing about Joe. Mackenzie didn’t think he had a paternal bone in his body and generally tried to avoid children whenever possible, but there was something really, really sexy about the way Joe treated the little guy: attuned to the kid’s needs and reactions. Gentle and respectful while still firm and in charge. Well, yeah, that kind of solved the mystery of why it was sexy, although it was a bit weird to think that the qualities Mackenzie had liked about Joe in the bedroom were the same ones that made him a good parent. Probably not something Mackenzie should think about too much, so he fell in behind Joe and Austin as they walked into the church.

  The family wasn’t there long, but Joe seemed to relax enough to not be looking for every possible escape; the milk wasn’t mentioned once. And when they’d finished their brief tour and Ally was getting Austin buckled into his car seat, Joe stayed back a little with Mackenzie. He kept his eyes on the truck as he said, “You doing anything tonight? Want some company?”

  Mackenzie knew what he should say. He needed to get some power in this damn relationship, needed to make it clear that he wasn’t a toy sitting on the shelf, waiting for the mighty Joe Sutton to pick him up and play with him when convenient. At the very least he should make a comment about two days in a row not being all that casual. Instead, he told the truth: “I don’t have any plans. Company would be good.”

  “I should put Austin to bed, and then I need to make sure someone else is staying home with him. That shouldn’t be a problem, but if it is, I’ll give you a call, okay? Otherwise, around nine, maybe? Here?”

  Mackenzie nodded with as much nonchalance as he could muster. “Okay. If something comes up for me, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, nine works.”

  Joe finally looked at him, and something about his expression made Mackenzie feel like he was about to be kissed. Which was ridiculous. No way would Joe do that, not out in the open, in front of his family… no chance.

  And sure enough, Joe started moving away, but he maintained eye contact as he went. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said quietly, and on that note, he turned and headed for the truck.

  Mackenzie stood and watched as the truck pulled away. Ally was waving happily from the passenger window.

  He went back inside the church and tried to distract himself. He put away groceries, responded to e-mails, worked on the marketing plan, and then went outside and weeded the garden. There was a lot to do, but he couldn’t keep his mind on any of it.

  Should he have something ready to eat or drink when Joe came by? What should he wear? Should he be daring and seductive? He could skip clothes entirely, or maybe just wear his robe… but was that seductive or just sleazy? What would Joe like? Mackenzie tried to put himself in the other man’s shoes. He’d found someone reasonably compatible: Mackenzie liked to bottom, and Joe was pretty damn good at topping. About the same age, neither one prudish or resistant to the idea of sex between acquaintances. They were both good-looking, although in different ways. Did Joe like it that Mackenzie was smoother than him? Prettier, less rugged? Or was that a turnoff? Was Mackenzie getting action because of what he looked like or in spite of it?

  He had too many questions and no idea how to answer any of them. He’d known all these things with Nathan, known what Nathan liked and expected, what parts of himself Mackenzie should accentuate and what parts he should disguise. But Joe was new, and Mackenzie was pretty sure he wouldn’t have the same taste as Nathan, at least in most areas.

  He yanked on a particularly tough clump of grass in one of the flowerbeds, then wrapped both hands around it and pulled again, harder this time. He could feel little rootlets breaking, but it didn’t seem to affect the central mass. He put his whole strength behind it, pulling until he was afraid something in his back was going to pop, and the clump was still exactly where it had been to start with.

  “You need to do it in little bits,” a female voice said from behind him.

  He turned to see Lorraine Liverson smiling at him, her amusement plain. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse tucked into her elastic-waist jeans, some sort of rubber shoes, and, most intriguingly, gardening gloves. She stepped forward, nudged him aside without actually touching him, and bent to wrap her fingers around a few blades of the tough grass. A practiced pull and the grass was being tossed into the battered wheelbarrow he’d found in the back shed. She looked up at him to be sure he was paying attention, then brought her other hand into action, wrapping and pulling, then both hands at once, picking the clump apart like a nervous anorexic destroying a dinner roll. Wrap, pull, toss. Wrap, pull, toss. The clump was gone in a matter of seconds and Lorraine straightened to smile at him. “You don’t need to fight it. Sneak up on it!”

  He nodded ruefully. “Thank you.”

  She looked at him a moment longer, then said, “You need a hoe.”

  “Pardon?”

  “A hoe,” she repeated. “Long tool with a sort of blade on the end.”

  Oh. Not the first meaning that came to mind when he heard that word. He tried to regroup. “It’s good for getting rid of weeds?”

  She shrugged. “There’s those who swear by it. I’ve never seen the point myself—it takes off the tops but leaves the roots behind, so the weeds just grow right back.”

  “So why do I need it?”

  “Because it’s good for frustration. If you had a woodstove, I’d say you need an ax—chopping a cord of wood will put a man in a much more relaxed state of mind. But you don’t have a woodstove. I do, but I started buying my wood presplit two years ago, and I haven’t looked back. But hoeing is almost as good as chopping. You spend a few hours hacking away at the soil, and you’ll be surprised how much better you f
eel.”

  “It’s that clear? The frustration?”

  “This was supposed to be a fun little project, wasn’t it? I saw you when you came up with the real estate agent and that older man. You saw the church, you liked it, you bought it. Didn’t even look around to see what else there was in the area, just… jumped in. But now you’re having to work at it.” She squinted at him. “You don’t strike me as someone who’s done a whole lot of work in his lifetime.”

  He wanted to argue, but didn’t think he could. “Not a whole lot,” he admitted.

  “Well, you’re working hard now, and that’s something. Sometimes that’s what’s needed.” She nodded at the grass in the wheelbarrow. “But sometimes you just need to work smart. And sometimes you need to ask for help from people who know what they’re doing.”

  “I did!” he protested. “I went to the chamber of commerce! They said they might be able to do something….”

  “And they’ve already started,” she said with a warning look. Apparently Lorraine was a defender of the chamber. “Dale Aithers called me yesterday afternoon and asked who I knew that might be interested in setting up a bed-and-breakfast. He specified it had to be people who wouldn’t have a problem with a gay couple staying with them, if it came to that. I gave him a few names. A few single ladies who would only likely be interested in either gay men or men traveling with women. You know, ladies who wouldn’t feel safe with a single, straight man in the house. Not that I think there are that many single, straight men who’d want to stay in a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Wow. That’s great. Thank you.”

  “I’m not sure it’s going anywhere, but we’re meeting at Sharon Thompson’s tomorrow evening to discuss it. She’s got the only B&B in town, currently, so we’re going to see how it’s done. See how much work it would take to get set up.” She gave him a challenging look. “We can’t afford to spend a whole lot of money fixing up our houses for guests who never actually arrive. People are going to be looking for some sort of assurance that this church is going to work out.”

  Mackenzie nodded. That made sense. But he wasn’t sure what he could say. “You’ve seen me working at it. You know I’m committed, right?”

  She shrugged. “You’ve been working. You’ve put some money into it. And Will Sutton does good work—I’m sure it’ll look beautiful when it’s done. But are you going to stick around? Can you afford to, if it takes a while for this to get off the ground?”

  Damn, Lorraine was sharper than he’d been giving her credit for. “I plan to,” he said. “I’m not sure what assurances I can give you beyond that.”

  “Well, you might want to give that some thought. Right now, people see you keeping to yourself. You don’t seem like you’re settling into the community. I saw those Suttons coming for a visit, and that was a good sign—seemed like you were making some friends, maybe growing some roots.” And again, she pointed toward the demolished clump of grass. “All clumped together like that, you couldn’t pull that grass out. That’s why it grows that way. One or two stalks all by themselves… easy weeding.” She smiled. “You don’t want people to think you’re going to be easy to weed.”

  “You are milking that metaphor for all it’s worth, Lorraine.”

  “I used to want to be a writer,” she acknowledged. “But don’t tell me it doesn’t fit.”

  “Oh, it fits. I understand what you’re saying. Thank you.” But understanding what she was saying wasn’t the same as knowing what to do about it. He cocked his head. “Would you like a glass of wine, or a cup of coffee? We could drink it out here, where everyone driving by would see me enjoying my friendship with a local citizen….”

  She smiled at him. “First, we work. You’ve been putzing away at this garden for a couple weeks now, and you’re barely keeping up. You need some help, and you need a strategy. That’s why I came over. After that, yes, I’d like a glass of wine. And then you can get cleaned up and eat some dinner and come over to my place. It’s nothing fancy, but I’m having people over for euchre tonight. Probably ten or fifteen people… Lord knows the numbers never work out perfectly. You can meet them and show them you’re part of the community.”

  “Euchre?” he said carefully. “I’m not even sure what that is.”

  “Do you play bridge?”

  “No. I don’t… they’re both card games, right? I don’t really play cards.”

  She looked at him like he was a Martian. “Well, we are going to need to do something about that.” She looked at her watch, then nodded decisively. “Two hours in the garden. Then you get cleaned up, come over and help me set up. We’ll have sandwiches for dinner, and I’ll teach you to play euchre. You don’t need to be great, but you need the basics. Then you’ll be ready for tonight.”

  Networking. That was what she was talking about. Nathan’s golf games, his glamorous social events, his weekends away… well, possibly those weekends had a different reason, if Mackenzie was being honest with himself. But still, the rest of it was part of being a businessman. In the city, it was one thing. Up here, it was euchre. Mackenzie could learn that, surely. Hopefully. But that wasn’t his only challenge. “What, uh… what time will this run to, do you figure?”

  “Oh, do you have other plans?” Lorraine’s eyes were bright and overly innocent. “I shouldn’t have assumed you were free!”

  Just because she’d seen his car in the driveway every other night since he’d arrived…. “Not really,” he said. “I just… you know, I want to know what to expect.”

  “It won’t be a late night,” she said. “We’ll probably wrap up around nine or so.”

  Nine. He could do it. Do his job and be home when Joe arrived. He wouldn’t have to cancel Joe’s visit. Yes, now that he knew he wouldn’t have to choose, it was easy to pretend the decision would have been that easy. Of course he would have gone with the event that would help the church. He wasn’t so enamored with Joe Sutton, not so desperate for contact that he’d turn down a chance to follow a business plan that really seemed to make sense. “Great, yeah, if that’s okay. I don’t want to put you out.”

  Lorraine beamed. “A new face at the table? And a young face? I’ll be the brightest star of the evening!” She turned back to the garden, hands on her hips. “Now, why don’t you keep doing what you’ve been doing, working on a small area and getting all the little fiddly bits out, and I’ll do a wide sweep and get the worst offenders out from the whole garden. Much more satisfying to end up with a huge pile of weeds, and it’ll make things look much more presentable, more quickly.”

  “I bow to your expertise.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  They spent the afternoon and evening as Lorraine had planned. Mackenzie managed to pick up on most of Lorraine’s euchre instructions and had the fun of producing a right bower at just the right moment to thwart his opponents’ plans and earn the glee of his partner. He wasn’t sure how much good he was doing for the church project, but surely he wasn’t doing it any harm. And he wasn’t sitting around at home trying to distract himself from thinking about Joe. Wasn’t watching the clock, even, up until about quarter to nine. He’d left a note and hadn’t locked the church door—he had to hope that’d be enough to keep Joe around if he arrived early.

  But as the evening dragged on, it got harder and harder to pay attention to the cards. The final game was a close one, both sides advancing by single points, and Mackenzie’s competitive spirit wasn’t enough to keep him from thinking about throwing the game and getting the hell out of there. But his partner was Mavis Wickens, a spirited octogenarian who was clearly taking great pleasure from the close battle, and he just couldn’t let her down.

  He left as soon as was polite after the last hand and almost jogged across the street. In the moonlight he could see a pickup parked by the side of the church. Good. He wasn’t too late. He just hoped Joe wouldn’t be angry or sulk like Nathan used to whenever something got in the way of his time with Mackenzie.

  He look
ed in the cab of the truck as he passed, but it was empty. Joe must be waiting inside; it wasn’t like Griffin was much of a watchdog. Mackenzie let his mind wander a little, imagining what Joe would be doing. He had his handle on the doorknob when Joe’s voice came from the shadows behind one of the church’s buttresses.

  “You stood me up for euchre, huh?” Mackenzie was pretty sure he heard amusement in the tone, but sometimes Nathan had been like that too… acting as if it were funny when really he was being bitingly sarcastic.

  Mackenzie turned with an apology on his lips but didn’t get time to make it. Before he could speak, Joe was there, tall and solid and pressing Mackenzie back against the stone wall. Joe put his right hand flat on Mackenzie’s chest, scissoring two fingers around his nipple; he grabbed Mackenzie’s hip with his left hand, steering his body to just the right angle. His grin was dangerous in a much different way than Nathan’s had ever been. “Did you win, at least?”

  Mackenzie tried to answer, but it was a little difficult when Joe’s body was pressed against him like that, when Joe’s lips were so close to his own. “A couple games,” he gasped. He could barely even remember what they were talking about.

  Joe finally kissed him, strong and confident and in control, and Mackenzie could feel his whole body reacting. It was like his muscles lost their strength while his nerve endings became supercharged. The cool night air felt colder, and Joe’s body was a warm blanket. Every touch sent shockwaves of pleasure out, and when Joe drew his mouth away, Mackenzie’s lips felt swollen and hot.

  “You going to invite me in?” Joe’s gaze was level, his lips curling to show he already knew the answer to the question.

  “Absolutely,” Mackenzie managed to say. Then he pushed the door open and led the way inside.

  Chapter 8

  “HE’S NOT planning on going back? At all?” Joe was trying to understand what his twin was telling him. It had taken Will several days to work through Nick’s nonsense and posturing, and now he was reporting back to Joe so they could figure out a plan. As usual, they had their serious conversations away from the house; this time, they were riding along the long ridge on the far side of the lake. Joe had deliberately left Misery behind and was riding Devil, a pure black quarter horse who did not live up to his name. Will was on Angel, a light-gray gelding of uncertain lineage but very reliable temperament. The horses were happy to do as they were told, so the men were able to focus their attention on the problem at hand. “We’ve already paid a chunk of tuition, right?”