19. 19 MCKENNA
19 MCKENNA
Iwant to lean my head against Adrian’s shoulder, but I stop myself as the car makes a turn.
I feel like Cinderella, and I’m well aware that the clock is counting down.
Adrian places his palm on my thigh, slowly slides it lower underneath my dress. The heat of his hand spreads warmth across my bare skin.
“Sir, I…” I stop at his raised eyebrow. There’s so much I want to say, but I’m not sure if I can put all my uncertainty into words.
“Stop thinking, Mckenna. Isn’t it a nice view?”
I gasp as he slides a finger into my folds, swallowing my cry of surprise. The day is sunny, the river is sparkling. As we turn onto the highway, I try to figure out where we are going.
“Yes, the river looks pretty.”
“Not as pretty as you are, my hellion,” he murmurs close to my ear. His warm breath makes me shiver.
I clutch his arm as he rubs my clit while his other fingers are hooked in just the right spot. He curls a finger, making me propel forward.
“Give it to me. Be a good girl and come for me.”
I don’t want to get off in the back of the car because I’m worried about being overheard by the driver.
But he works his fingers in gentle, smooth strokes, and the heat in his dark eyes burns through me.
I can get lost in this man. In the power he commands in the world and the power he wields over me.
That scares me.
I don’t want to get lost. I’ve put my dreams on hold long enough.
He spreads his fingers, concentrating on circling my clit, adding more pressure.
His fingers pump inside me, driving my pleasure higher, until it uncoils, the orgasm rocking through me with flaming heat, burning my body.
“Good girl.” Adrian grabs my wrist, presses his fingers to my lips. Am I kidding myself by thinking I can walk away from this man?
I squirm on the seat, and I open my mouth. He drags his fingers across my tongue, and I taste my own saltiness.
I don’t know if I can forgive him for what he did to my father. It might be fine now, as we’re just together, giving into the lust that’s simmered between us all these years, but what happens when he leaves his socks on the floor? Or he comes home late without telling letting me know he’s going to be late? Or I smell perfume on his collar? Am I going to be able to leave the past where it belongs and not dredge it up to hurt him?
Anxiety swirls in my gut, wondering if we can actually make a future work between us.
“You’re thinking again. Do I need to give you another orgasm?” Adrian brushes his lips against mine, but I stay where I am, straight back against the buttery car upholstery.
“No.” I tense against his touch.
“Mckenna, what is it?”
We pass farms and fields, and the car turns down a long, paved driveway.
“What happens if you get mad at me? Like, if we live together and we have a fight?”
He places his hand on my shoulder. My stomach rumbles, and suddenly, I feel like I’m sixteen. I remember trying to help Ava with her math homework, sitting at their huge marble kitchen island, and Adrian striding into the kitchen.
He’s grown more handsome over the years.
“We won’t fight, hellion,” he takes my hand to his lips and kisses it.
“Adrian, I’m being serious.”
“So am I. We’re here. Wait for me.” Before his driver reaches Adrian’s door, Adrian is out of the car and at my door, holding it open for me.
“Thank you.”
I step out of the car and the smell of fresh cut grass and hay and manure hit my nostrils.
“Where are we?”
Adrian runs a hand through his hair. It’s an utterly boyish gesture and I can’t help smiling hugely.
“We are at a friend of mine’s stables. We have the place mostly to ourselves. I thought you’d like to go for a ride?”
He slips his hands into his pockets and studies my face with an intensity that makes me want to kneel at his feet.
It’s like he’s worried I’m not going to like this gesture.
“Yes!” I haven’t ridden in a year. My body has a visceral reaction, remembering the feel of Penelope striding under me. “Are we spending all day here?”
“The plan was to go for a ride, then have lunch, and then go back to my house for dinner. Is that okay with you?”
It’s the first time he’s asked my permission about plans. Maybe, my heart whispers, maybe it can work.
“It sounds great.”
“Good.” Adrian places his hand on the small of my back.
“Good afternoon. Mr. McIntyre? I’ve been expecting you.” A short man with short gray hair holds out his hand to Adrian.
“You must be Kurt. Thanks for making time for us today.”
“No problem. Connor said to make you feel welcome. Come this way.”
Adrian drapes an arm around my shoulders. I’m blinking back tears as we follow Kurt down a path to the stables. The fields stretch out to my left, and I think those are Arabians in the paddock, but I’m slightly too far away to confirm.
Kurt holds the door to the stable for us, and we walk through. All the familiar smells are threatening to split my heart in two.
Being away from Penelope and the horses I loved, not teaching or running my hand through a mane, was a grief I endured for months. I choke back a sob.
“I have to ask, have you ever ridden a horse before?” Kurt tilts his head.
“I have. I wasn’t expecting to ride today,” I gesture at my dress.
“It’s my fault. I wanted to surprise Mckenna, but she’s an experienced rider. Mckenna won the USEF Junior Jumper National Championships. She made us all proud.”
Kurt lets out a long whistle. “Then I’m not worried.”
The stable is impeccably clean, with of dust anywhere. The stalls are modern box stalls, and as we walk down the aisle, a beautiful chestnut Morgan gives us a snort.
“This one is Grant, and the one across from him is his brother, Bogart. I’ve groomed them. They’re ready for you.”
Kurt must have seen my face fall.
“If I had known I had an experienced horsewoman coming today, I wouldn’t have.”
“That’s okay. I imagine I’m not your usual guest.”
Kurt chuckles. “No, that’s for sure. Follow me to the changing room.”
But before I step into line following Kurt, I give Bogart a pet and watch how he moves.
His coat is so glossy and shiny that I know these horses are living a good life.
We pass stalls with nameplates spelling out, “Tracey,” “Gable,” and “Wayne.”
“Is your friend an old movie fan?”
“Connor is a director,” Adrian winks at me.
Kurt opens the changing room door, a clean, functional space with lockers against one wall. On a shelf, clothing is neatly stacked and organized by size.
“You’ll find what you need there.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll get the horses out of their stalls. Do you want to tack yourselves?”
I give Adrian a smirk. “Do you remember?”
His sudden, deep laugh startles me. It pulls on my bank, and I remember Adrian struggling to tack up properly.
“When it comes to horses, I’m as clumsy as ever.”
“Thanks for asking. I’ll handle the tack,” I say to Kurt.
Kurt nods. “I’ll give you your privacy.”
Once Kurt has left, Adrian steps into the changing room. “What do you think?”
My heart is thudding at the timbre in his voice.
“Thank you.” I stand on my tiptoes and brush my lips against his.
“You’re welcome.” He smiles so wide, I see all his straight pearly whites.
“This is the best surprise,” I return his grin, my heart fluttering because this feels so good.
“Get ready.” Adrian gestures to the shelves.
Twenty minutes later, we are leading the horses out of the stables. Bogart is frisky, eager to go, and alert. I can’t wait to ride.
There’s an outside arena, and Kurt showed me where the trails were on a map of the property that he sent to my phone.
As I approach the mounting block, Bogart picks up his step, and his tail swishes. “Are you a happy boy when you’re ridden?”
“Not as happy as I am,” Adrian murmurs.
With how I’m blushing, I’m happy nobody is around.
“Are you doing all right with Grant?”
Adrian gives his horse’s neck a good pat. “Yeah. He seems calm.”
“That’s my assessment, too,” I smile at Adrian, remembering him at the stables, giving Penelope a nuzzle after I had finished teaching.
“You don’t like horses, but you spent a lot of time at the stables.”
It’s true what they say, it’s like riding a bike. I mount up easily, slipping my feet into the stirrups. I chose an English saddle and take a moment to adjust my seat, feeling the irons on the soles of my borrowed boots.
Adrian mounts up. He might not love horses like I do, but he’s been around them his whole life and knows how to ride.
“One, just because I’m not obsessed with horses doesn’t mean that I don’t like them. Two, of course, I hung around the stables. It was the one place I could watch you without other people noticing or you making excuses for why you didn’t want to hang out with me.”
The butterflies swim from my belly to my throat. I concentrate on warming up Bogart, trying to put Adrian’s words out of my head.
But as I ease into a trot, I can’t help but smile.
He wanted me as much as I wanted him.
I loved how protective he was of Ava, even though she’s awful. He does the well-bred stuff, like opening doors for other people and offering to carry stuff.
But it’s that heart of his I know he buries under the cool professional his father wanted him to be.
Like a couple of years ago, two days before Christmas, we were both at the MM Industries offices, when Adrian took a phone call from a charity. Their bins had been broken into and they’d asked if Adrian would be willing to make a last-minute donation?
“Come play Santa with me, Mckenna.”
I didn’t hesitate because I was always eager to spend alone time with him, where Ava wasn’t. Laughing, we ran down to the parking lot and had the best time in Walmart, filling the cart with toys as we went.
He was the one I called when my car broke down on the freeway. He told me to keep my doors locked while I waited for service to get to me, and ten minutes later, he pulled up behind me.
“I didn’t want you out here waiting,” he said and drove me home like it was no big deal.
From my viewpoint, he was the caring, protective older brother who I had always wanted for myself.
I shift my weight from my pelvis to my seat bones, and at the next corner, I signal a canter.
Lost in the rhythm, my mind stops thinking, but my heart can’t stop feeling. I feel like I’m going to burst with happiness and, simultaneously, fling myself into a ball and cry.
Because I love Adrian McIntyre and I have always loved him.
But that day, he walked into the board meeting to tell us to get out? That was his settling into his don’t fuck with me or else face.
It’s like all the years between us, all the time we spent where we were orbiting each other’s family, didn’t matter.
It all turned to dust with his icy, hurting words.
From my peripheral, I see Adrian trot over to the next ring. I focus on the back-and-forth motion, loving how the air feels on my face and appreciating this horse under me.
Bogart has a nice, smooth canter, and it’s easy for me to give myself over to it.
After several more turns around the arena, I ease Bogart out of the canter and settle back into a walk.
Adrian comes back over to our ring.
“Mckenna, why are you crying?”
He comes up beside me, his dark eyes full of concern.
Taking the reins in one hand, I wipe my tears away.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
He cocks an eyebrow at me, and I tense, holding my breath.
I don’t want to tell him why, not at this moment. I want to enjoy the fresh air and these horses because I don’t know what my future looks like tomorrow.
“Kurt mentioned a short trail that takes us by a pond? Feel up to it?”
“Yes, let’s do it.”
To my surprise, he takes the lead, and it allows me to not churn the doubts through my mind. The trail is well-groomed, with beautiful oaks lining either side of the path.
After a good walk, Adrian sets a trot.
It’s so familiar to me, being on top of a horse. Working with these gentle giants is all I wanted to do. My heart aches as I think of how Adrian’s actions derailed that plan. Even if my father needed money, why didn’t he go to Adrian’s dad?
All my dad wanted to do was to help people. He didn’t care about money, and maybe that’s why he was so bad with it. But I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t tell Mr. McIntyre he was in trouble.
Maybe it wasn’t the first time. Some of these blanks are my fault. I’ve ignored the of paperwork that my mother was handed by a representative of Adrian’s company. I think of my mother telling me they had to wait to get the reports from the forensic accountants to see if my dad was owed anything.
I frown now as we go back into a walk. When my mom told me this, I was exhausted from working two jobs and wanted to put anything related to MM Industries out of my mind. It was my fault I didn’t look into the details. But that doesn’t sound right. My father had lots of patents and inventions in bioengineering. I know all his accounts were frozen, but all these months later, we still don’t have a penny.
“Adrian, I need to ask you a question.”
“Ask me anything, hellion.” He smiles over his shoulder.
“There haven’t been any formal charges against my father.”
Adrian stiffens. “That’s true. But the investigators have more questions for him.”
“Right, but does that mean all his accounts are frozen?”
“The investigators froze all accounts relating to MM Industries as a precaution. I had nothing to do with your father’s account being frozen.”
“What about the royalty or whatever he got from MM Industries for his patents? I know you folded the company and started Colossus, but you’re still using the technology, right? Doesn’t he get paid for that?”
“Mckenna, I always pay my debts.” He stops at a little clearing and comes next to me.
“But we haven’t had any money in months.”
“Your father’s personal assets are frozen, but he gets a payment twice a month on the royalties earned on the licenses. I know it’s not as much as when he was a partner, but you have to take what you get when he decided to sell our tech to the mob.”
“Allegedly,” I mumble. “I haven’t seen a cent since we were kicked out of our house.”
And I thought that was because the Feds had frozen all our accounts, but now, as I think of the vacant look in my mother’s eyes, I wonder if it’s something more and that information has been kept from me.
“I don’t know Mckenna. Talk to your father’s lawyer. The pond is just down this path.”
His tone indicates the conversation is over.
I try to stay in the moment, take in the frogs in the pond and the sound of the birdsong and the magnificent creature I’m riding.
But I can’t put it out of my head.
Did my mother lie to me? It’s the only possibility that is left. And maybe I didn’t push it because I didn’t want to bother her.
Ever since we moved to Detroit, my mother has been in a locked state of mind. She spends hours watching TV, or if she’s not doing that, she’s staring out the window. She barely speaks to me and barely eats.
I know how much my parents were in love and understood she was grieving.
But I had struggled to provide for us. Where was the money? I wish I could see my father and ask him to sort this out.
My brain hurts with these thoughts. It’s pulling from this serene moment, and I don’t want to think about my father or the past. Adrian places his hand on the small of my back and I blink back tears, giving him a smile. He gives me that sultry smile, and it’s like everything is okay between us again. We’re back to having a truce. We turn around and head back to the stables.
I take my time untacking Bogart.
“How was your ride?” Kurt comes in as I take the saddle off, with two people behind him.
“It was perfect!”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Kurt says as he takes the saddle from me, and one of his helpers comes to untack Grant.
Adrian comes up behind me, slides his hands down my waist and nuzzles my neck. “Let’s hit the showers, Mckenna. We have lunch waiting for us.”
I swallow over the rush of tears. I don’t want to say goodbye to these horses; the fear of not being around equines causes me to break out in a cold sweat. But then I remembered the 500k in my bank account that’s going to be mine tomorrow at this time.
It’s not enough to afford the equestrian facility of my dreams, but it’s enough to sit the exam and board Penelope if I can find out where she went.
I quickly rinse off in the dressing room and change into my sundress and throw on my cardigan. My complexion has more life than it has in a long time.
My muscles are sore with the familiar ache of riding.
Though I’m feeling scrambled from thinking of the future and the money problems, the ride has done me good.
Adrian meets me outside, looking refreshed. His hair sticks up in different directions, and I want to run my hands through it and fix it.
“I can help you figure out what’s going on with your father’s money.”
“Might take you up on that,” I mumble.
He slips my hand in his and gestures to a golf cart.
“Your ride, my lady.”
I giggle. It’s weird that this is the mode of transportation in a stable full of horses.
“Have you ever driven one of these before?”
He gives me that cocky grin. “Yeah. My buddies and I were known to rip it around the country club after hours.”
I can picture it and laugh, climbing on next to Adrian.
“Here we go.”
I hold on for dear life as he zips up a paved path to the right of the stables, and I slide into him as he drives up a hill, stopping at a brick cottage.
“What an unexpected place for lunch.”
“I want to do the unexpected, hellion.” His hand slides up my back to the nape of my neck, pulling me in for a long kiss.
My heart is saying yes as his tongue rolls against mine, sending shivers of heat up my spine, but my brain can’t chill out enough to decide if this is a long-held fantasy I’m trying to make true or if I’m prepared to say yes to a new reality.