Chapter 16
BETWEEN WHITE-KNUCKLED driving conditions, pulling a trailer over snow-packed roads, changing a flat tire halfway home and trying to figure out how to break the truth to her dad, Kenzie was ready to drop long before she saw the sign announcing that Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, was seventeen miles ahead.
She took the next exit, crossed under the Malone gate and began the last leg of her journey home.
Winding her way across the ranch, she let herself take in the sweeping grassland and strong five-wire fences that ran to the moonlit horizon.
It was a good thirty minutes of dirt roads, muddy potholes and creative curse words before the mare barn came into view.
Parking out front, she rested her forehead on the steering wheel, the only sound that of the engine ticking as it cooled. Eyelids heavy, she may have passed out for a minute before jerking upright at the rap of knuckles on the driver’s-side window.
She powered the glass down with a touch before shutting the engine off. “Hey, Andy. You’re up late.”
“Could say the same for you.”
She couldn’t stifle the jaw-cracking yawn, only nodding in response.
The weathered cowboy leaned back and made a show of examining her truck and trailer. “Looks as if you drove through every snowdrift and salt spill you could find.”
“They treated the roads pretty heavily for ice so it wasn’t too... You know, I was going to say it wasn’t too bad, but that’s a bald-faced lie.” And she was done with those. For good. Even if it hurt, it was the truth or nothing from now on.
Opening the door, she hopped down from the cab. “The salt needs rinsed off, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“That’s a first.”
“What’s that?” she absently asked.
“You puttin’ off caring for your precious truck.” He shook his head and grinned. “You two ought to write your love story down for future truck owners, Mackenzie. I’m stuck in a mediocre relationship with mine, and you give me hope I might just find ‘the one’ if I keep searchin’.”
She felt the color leave her cheeks. Such a profound statement given what she’d left behind earlier today.
Roll with it, Malone.
Dredging up the last of her emotional reserves, she managed a small smile. “Funny guy.”
“Suppose only a fool gives up hope, though, huh?” Andy slapped the halter lead he held against his leg. “Came out to check on Bean’s labor.”
Impossible as it seemed, Kenzie perked up. “Bean’s foaling?”
“Said so, didn’t I?” Andy glanced over his shoulder. “The Malone’s in there with her now.”
Her knees simply folded and she went to the ground.
Andy dropped the lead and went to one knee beside her. “Malone,” he called, low but strong.
“No,” she croaked. “Don’t call him.”
“Too late.” The cowboy stood and slipped into the darkness at the same time Jack Malone appeared.
Her dad sank to a crouch beside her, running his hands down her arms. “What’s hurt, baby?”
My heart. “Nothing.” I’m bleeding out. “I’m fine, Dad.”
“You’re sitting on the ground, your skin’s the color of chalk dust and corral slop is soaking into your jeans. And from the sounds of it, your horse is protesting being left in the trailer.” He reached out and gently removed her hat. “Talk to me, Mac.”
The use of her nickname made her throat tighten. It was the name Michael had bestowed on her when he’d found out their mom had dared deliver him a sister instead of the brother he’d requested. Michael had refused to call her “a girl name,” and Mac had stuck.
“I’ll get your mother.” Her father made to stand.
“No,” she all but shouted as she reached out and grabbed his arm. A single tug pulled him off balance and down he went, landing with a squelching sound on the ground beside her. “Please.”
The look of surprise on the infamous Malone’s face eased the tension in her, but not as much as his comment did.
“You’re going to be the one to tell your mother later why I had to go—what’s it called when you don’t wear underwear beneath your britches?
Commandeering? Soldiering?” His face brightened. “Going mercenary!”
She laughed as heat infused her cheeks. “You have to stop with the modern slang, Dad. It’s called going commando, and no, I don’t want to tell her why you’re going to shuck your underwear in the barn.”
He reached over and yanked on a piece of her hair. “You just landed me on my ass in the muck, kiddo. It’s soaked through my Wranglers and my unmentionables are now soggy. I’m ditching ’em as soon as I can. I think there’s a pair of clean coveralls in the barn I can pull on.”
She plugged her fingers into her ears and began to chant, “La, la, la, la.” Then she met his amused gaze. “I’m not pulling my fingers out of my ears until your lips stop moving.”
He grinned.
She dropped her hands. “I’m ruined. You realize that, right? No daughter needs to know these things. As far as I’m concerned, you and Mom are Ken and Barbie.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You have no defining—” she blushed furiously and waved her hands about “—parts, Dad. Parts.”
His booming laughter was answered with coyote chatter, their yips and barks carrying across the night breeze from who knew how far away. Wiping away tears, her dad grinned down at her. “Ken and Barbie. Does that make you... What was that teenage kid’s name?”
“Don’t,” she said, smiling. “Don’t even try to remember Skipper’s name, Dad. You’ll ruin childhood memories by renaming her something like Petunia.”
“Fair.” He reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Kenzie’s ear. “You never were much for dolls.”
“They weren’t—”
“Horses. I know.” His smile was wistful.
She suddenly felt as if she were five again and the world, her world, was centered right here on Malone land. Leaning over, she rested her head on her father’s shoulder. “I needed that, Dad. Thanks.”
“What’s going on, baby girl? Talk to me.”
“What makes you so sure anything’s going on?” She was stalling, but she couldn’t help it.
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, honey.”
She nodded, fighting the wave of nausea that rose up her throat. “I want to...” Resting a hand on her chest, she forced herself to meet her dad’s open gaze. “I should to talk to you before I see Mom.”
“Sure.” He whistled and Andy reappeared. “Do me a favor and walk Kenzie’s mare out and then put her up.”
“Sure, boss.” Andy moved with bowlegged agility, unloading the horse and moving away with her before Kenzie could summon an effective protest.
Jack Malone turned to her. “So spill.”
She sucked in a breath and held it to a slow count of ten before letting it rush out on a harsh exhale.
Every cell in her body was screaming at her to flee, seeming to understand this was a fight she’d never be able to win.
Fighting down the urge, she rose, moved to the wooden corral fence and scrambled up to the top rail, where she perched, waiting for him to join her.
Her dad followed, standing in front of her with a suspicious look on his face. Crossing his arms over his chest and widening his stance, he took two deep breaths and schooled his features. “Go on, then.”
If she was going to deal in hard truths, she might as well start with him.
She’d spent her whole life trying to please this man, but never more so than over the past decade.
Not once had she felt she’d succeeded. What she had to tell him now would irrevocably cement her sense of failure.
She’d survived a lot of crap over the years, but she wasn’t sure she could survive this.
Her dad considered her, then closed the distance between them. Reaching out, he gently took her hand and cradled it in his own. “You know there’s nothing you can say or do that will make me stop loving you, Mac, so out with it. What’s been eating at you?”
“I lied to you.” Nice finesse, Malone. Nothing like hurling it at him via fast-pitch. The truth hung there, suspended in flight. It had been offered and, apparently, received, and neither sender nor recipient was sure what to do with it.
He finally offered a short nod. “Okay. About what?”
She’d known from the moment she got into her truck and headed home twelve hours ago that she would have to tell him everything or nothing. There would be no CliffsNotes version.
“You won’t stop loving me.” A declarative question if ever there was one.
“There’s nothing in the world that could make me stop loving you, Mac.”
Then, everything it is.
Decision made and reassurances offered, there was no point in stalling. So she didn’t. Starting with the admission that she and Ty had been lovers, she ran through the entire course of events, wrapping up with the details involved in her long trip home.
There was only one topic she didn’t address: the fact that she’d fallen in love. That in the midst of the continual heartache involved in healing physical wounds and the terror of learning to recognize her true self, she’d fallen in love with Tyson Covington.
There would be fallout from her actions and the choice to keep this one fact to herself.
It was one of life’s simple truths—cause and effect.
A Japanese man had even created a kind of chart—an Ishikawa diagram—to make results traceable and repeatable and to identify weak points.
Whoever Ishikawa had been, he’d no doubt have a heyday with her psyche.
She was so messed up she probably would have broken the initial diagram.
Hell, she’d probably have broken the theory behind the diagram.
Whatever. All she wanted right then was her dad’s reassurance that it was all going to be okay.
The longer she waited, the longer she stared at Jack Malone’s neutral countenance, the more her internal panic levels escalated. They were fast approaching DEFCON Total Emotional Annihilation when he finally spoke.