26. 26 MCKENNA
26 MCKENNA
When the rooster woke me this morning, I took my time drinking coffee. I thought of calling Adrian but couldn’t press send.
I can’t shake off his parting words, his determination to see my father lie in destruction when his family has made millions off of my father’s brain.
I’m washing my breakfast dishes when there’s a knock at the door.
“Coming!” Thinking it might be Grace’s oldest son wanting to know if I can muck for him because he has baseball practice, I fling open the door.
“Roger, I’m happy to muck...” The words dry in my throat. “Daddy?”
My mind can’t take in the fact that my father is standing in front of me. He has a slight tan, the wind is ruffling his salt and pepper hair, and his blue eyes are misty behind his glasses.
I throw myself at him. Hugging him so hard, we both nearly topple to the ground.
“My sweet girl. I am so sorry.”
“Daddy, you’re here!” Sobs stick in my throat.
“There, there,” my dad pats my back, and I tug on his arm and bring him inside.
“I know, Mckenna. I’m here. I’m so sorry. We have a lot to tell you.”
“We?” I squeak out the word, and looking behind him, I see my mother standing on the porch. She’s wearing a light pink pantsuit and her pearl necklace, and she has make-up on for the first time in months.
“Mother?”
“Hi, Mckenna.”
“You’re not sick?”
My mom looks at my dad, who tips his head, gesturing outside.
I can’t let go of my father. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, my love. I’m so sorry.” My dad cups my face and leads me to the swing at the end of the porch.
“What is it?”
My mom darts a nervous glance at my father. He throws his arm around her and gives me a look.
“We want you to know how immensely proud we are of you. We’re really sorry for putting you through hell.”
“You didn’t. Adrian came in like a sledgehammer and knocked down everything you and Mr. McIntyre built up. He didn’t listen. He jumped to conclusions.”
“Mckenna, that’s not what happened.” My mother frowns.
“I was at that board meeting, Mom. It’s exactly what happened.”
“Adrian has never been one to mull things over.” Dad squeezes my hand. “It’s a good quality. Adrian’s ability to make decisions quickly and spring to action is something I’ve always admired about him.”
“But he had no right to!”
“Mckenna, you have to understand that from Adrian’s point of view. It looked horrible.”
“I know he’s been raised to take over from Fredrick, but you’re like a second set of parents to him. He could have waited.”
“That’s the problem.” My mom reaches over and squeezes my knee. I try not to flinch, but I can’t help it. Maybe it’s because I can feel the pieces sliding together in my brain. This woman before me wasn’t the one who was wearing fuzzy pajamas and staring at the TV when I left her.
This is Boston Liz Moran, wife of celebrated scientist Davis Moran. The woman who came from poor beginnings but worked her way through business school met Davis and then patiently waited for the brilliant scientist to get work while she worked at a job she hated in finance.
This is the woman I haven’t seen in months, who didn’t call me, who didn’t wonder how I was doing.
“Adrian has never been the type of person to forgive. I think he’s still mad at me for running into his first car.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Dad. He shouldn’t have parked it by the garage.”
Dad waves my comment away. “You can’t blame Adrian for doing what he was trained to do, Mckenna. He felt betrayed, and he acted like any man feeling that way would.”
“Yeah, and burn down everything you created.”
“My love, what we created at MM Industries will live on, but your mother wanted to leave.”
“I know! Mom was unhappy. Grace tried to get her to work with the horses.”
“Mckenna, I love that you love horses, but I don’t want to be around them unless I’m betting on them on the track,” my mother says. “I missed your father. And I missed what the four of us had before you came along. Before our children came along.”
My parents exchange a heavy look.
I scratch at my denim-covered knee, torn between staying here and running down the long drive, getting in the second-hand car I bought after arriving in Oregon.
“What does that have to do with Adrian making up stories and destroying what you built based on flimsy proof?”
“Mckenna.” Dad’s tone makes me stand and walk to the edge of the porch.
I can see the herd grazing on the hill.
So many nights, I have fallen asleep to the sounds of hooves on the ground galloping. After everything, I’ve found peace here. I don’t want to hear what my parents are going to say.
The way mom tenses her shoulders and dad moves to stand behind me gives me the worst feeling.
My stomach is a tangled mess of butterflies. “I don’t want to hear it, Dad.”
“You have to, Mckenna. I’m sorry.”
“Mom’s been unhappy and distant for years, you know that.” My dad places a hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah. Mom, I’m sorry I prefer horses to pianos, but that’s just who I am.” I shrug off his hand,
“I know, Mckenna. I love you. I love who you are.”
“How could you leave us all these months without any communication?” I spin to my father, the words coming out so sharply that he flinches. But I can’t hide it anymore.
“Mckenna, I know. It was wrong of me to do. Your mother has put up with me all these years.”
My mom stands up and comes near me, but I don’t want her here, not right now. I don’t like her expression.
“Yeah, but what hardship? She got the fancy house she wanted in Boston and the opportunity to hang out with her friends.”
“Mckenna, you know there’s more to life than houses and parties,” my mom says.
“Yeah, what?”
“Mckenna…” my mother says. She reaches out and squeezes my arm.
“I knew the competition was breathing down MM Industries’ neck. We had been approached by offers from the underbelly—”
“The underbelly? You mean criminals?”
She shakes her head as if she can’t believe I’m saying the word. “Yes. I didn’t want to go through another media circus. I asked your father to work somewhere quieter for years, especially as you’re all grown up and about to start a new life of your own—the one you’ve always wanted.”
“That you wrecked!”
“Mckenna, we’re sorry. We really are.” My father puts his hand on my shoulder, and I want to shake off his touch, but I stay there, taking in deep breaths, remembering all the time I spent studying in his library. All the time I spent watching him in the labs.
He always encouraged me.
If my mom isn’t the warm and fuzzy person Grace or Jackie McIntyre is, that’s not her fault. stood in my way until that one time.
“What happened?” I take my dad’s hand in mine and turn to face him.
“Dad didn’t do anything, not what they said he did,” Mom’s voice sounds as if it’s from far away. “It was me. I went and met with those interested people…those criminals. I’m the one who started sloughing off money here and there.”
I stare at my mother, my insides jumping around. “But why?”
“Because she wanted another life and didn’t know how to get out. Because she wanted to force other people into making a move.”
A memory of Adrian’s dad, placing his palm on the small of my mother’s back when our parents were going out to a charity event, races through my mind.
“This is so fucked up.”
“Mckenna!”
“Really, Mom? You’re going to take issue with my language? You intentionally sabotaged MM Industries because you weren’t getting your way quick enough? To think that I sold.--”
The words die on my lips. Grief crashes over me, making me gasp for breath.
I sold myself for money I desperately needed because I couldn’t stand living in a one-bedroom with my practically comatose mother. I couldn’t take it for another day.
Not because I missed the trappings of the life my parents built. Okay, I did, but because more than anything, I was determined to create my own life.
I was all set to take the exam that’d launch my career, one that I had worked eight years for, and it was taken from me because my mother wanted something different.
“You didn’t sell Penelope?” my dad asks.
I close my eyes and shake my head. “I don’t know where Penelope is, but I didn’t sell her. Forget what I said. I don’t know what to do right now, what to say, or how to be around you. Can you go, please? I love you, and I’m glad you’re okay, Dad, but I can’t talk this out right now. This is too much.”
“I understand you don’t want to talk to us right now. We can call Grace. I don’t want you to be alone.”
“You didn’t seem to care that I was alone for the past year, Dad.” I hate that tears are in my eyes. I want to scream at him, to let the anger I feel tumble out at both of them, but that’s not my nature.
The only person who makes me red-hot angry is Adrian.
None of my old friends or my classmates called me when the headlines dragged my family through the mud.
The employers who praised my skill and dedication pretended not to know me. The employees of MM Industries, whom I grew up being doted on by and who treated me like royalty, all gave me the cold shoulder.
My mother ignored me for months, trapped in her own agenda.
And my father, who loves me but who has always loved my mother more, left me hanging in the wild.
But Adrian called me.
Even though he was mad at me for rejecting him again, for saying no to him again, he still reached out a week after he flipped my life upside down.
And he kept trying to reach out.
I’m the one who was too frozen with grief and pain to reach out to him.
And then I gave that journalist the interview without a second thought. No wonder he was angry with me.
He went all these years thinking I hated him, and that I thought I was too good for him.
And then I told him to go away because he couldn’t get over what my father did.
I can’t get over what my parents did.
“Please go! I don’t want you to be here!”
“We understand, Mckenna,” Dad tries to give me a hug, and I move out of the way. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to bleed.
All these months, I wanted to hug him, touch him, and know that he was safe and well, but now I can’t stand to look at him.
“Mckenna, we’ll work this out.” Mom’s hand hovers near my shoulder, but she doesn’t touch me.
I stand on the porch until I see them walk down the laneway and enter an SUV. They drive away, and my heart breaks. I wonder if I’m ever going to see them again, and I’m not sure that I care if I do.
And that thought–the thought that I don’t care if I ever see my parents again- sends me racing inside, flopping on the bed and clutching a pillow to my chest.
I finally let out the sobs.
I don’t know if I should call Adrian. How would he ever understand this? What would he think of my parents?
This is all too much. I grab my phone, but I can’t bring myself to call him down and hug my pillow. Tears roll down my cheeks until I finally sleep.
It’s the subtle change of air, his footsteps disturbing the space, along with a scent of his cologne.
The scent of familiarity that has me stirring from sleep.
“Mckenna,” his voice breaks on the word.
“No…” I am so overwhelmed I can’t think. I don’t want him here. Seeing him here, taking up my private cocoon, is too much.
I clutch the sheet to my chest, curl myself up into a ball. “Go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Adrian’s footsteps are light on the wooden floor. This is so unfair. First, my parents show up and now him.
He said he wanted me.
But then he couldn’t accept my father.
The story that has been told for years is that Adrian’s family made my family wealthy. But if it wasn’t for my father’s work, my father’s time and energy and effort…a scream bubbles up in my throat. I toss the sheet away from me and get off the bed. I want out of here.
“Mckenna, I’m sorry.”
“It’s so unfair. All of it.” My voice is tight and I don’t know how to talk to him. But he’s taking up this room.
He takes my hands in his. I try to get out of his grip. “Yes, it’s unfair. I’m going to make it up to you. I am sorry. I should have run into Club Lust and taken you back home with me. We should have got on a plane together and found your father. I am sorry. I thought I had to do what was expected of me.”
“It hurt so much. All of it.”
“I know, baby. I’m here, and we’re going to be alright,” he drops my hand, and caresses my cheek.
“How? Our whole lives were a lie,” my voice wobbles.
“But what we have between us is not a lie. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
I sniffle, nuzzling my head against his chest. “I wasn’t ready.”
“I’m ready now. I’m here now and the next move is yours. Can you forgive me?”
My heart is beating so fast. His dark eyes stare into mine and all the memories of us flutter through my mind.
It has always been Adrian for me.
“Yes.”
His chest feels so strong under my palm. I lay my head on it and he wraps his arm around me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t you have a company to run?”
“Not right now. My only job right now is to take care of you.” His lips skim my neck, tracing my jawbone to behind my ear.
He crashes his lips against mine, his hands roaming over my body. The kiss is so hard it makes me dizzy. His tongue twirls with mine so roughly that I feel every ounce of possession he has for me.
“I’m never leaving you again, hellion. Wherever you are, I’m going to be right there.”
“Even if my hands are up a horse’s–” He slants his lips over mine, stopping my words.
I giggle and push him back.
“Even then, Mckenna, you are going to become a vet, and I’m going to be a stay-at-home husband.”
“You are?” I trace his lips with my finger.
“Yes. It’s time for me to get my head out of my ass or my predetermined life’s ass and find out what I want instead of chasing the dreams of other people. Dreams that they didn’t care enough to protect in the end.”
“I get they’re allowed to change their minds, but they could have done it in a better way that wouldn’t have caused so much pain.”
“I can’t forgive them for the hurt they’ve caused you. I don’t know if I will ever speak to my family again, Mckenna. They all played a part in keeping me from you.”
I squeeze his biceps. “Adrian, I don’t want to be the reason you stay away from your family.”
“You’re not. They are.” He kisses me long and slow, and I’m lost in his taste, in the feel of his body pressed against me.
His hand slides to my nape, and it feels so good, like that’s exactly where his hand belongs. My hand roams over his back, grabbing him, needing him closer. As he deepens the kiss, my nerves buzz with anticipation.
I never want to be away from this man again.
We spent too much time apart.
First by his meddling sister and by the decisions our parents made.
We deserve this.
We deserve each other.
He breaks the kiss, leans his forehead against mine.
“Tell me what you want, hellion.”
I swallow, knowing that I can either give in to this electric field around us, this brewing storm that has always been between us, or I can close my heart to the promises Adrian offers.
“I want you.”
“And?” He arches an eyebrow.
“I want you to fuck me.”
“Good girl. I can’t wait to feel your pussy around my cock, but I’m only going to do this if you give up control and let me take care of you. Now and forever. Tell me, Mckenna.”
In reply, I fist my hand in his hair, and kiss his mouth low and slow. “Yes. Yes, I want you, Adrian. I want us.”
His slow-spreading smile makes my heart beat super fast. I gasp in surprise as his teeth skim my throat, and then his hand collars my neck. “Good girl. We’re never going to be apart, ever again.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He pushes me on the bed. “That’s right, Mckenna. Who do you belong to?”
“You.”
“I love you, Mckenna. So damn much.”
“Love you too.” My skin is on fire as he reaches behind me, grabbing something from my nightstand.
“Give it to me, hellion. I want every part of you.”
I swallow, my nerves buzzing as Adrian holds the cloth sash to my dressing gown.
“I can take it. I want you, Adrian McIntyre.”