Chapter Three
Wisps of dark hair that had escaped Maclyn’s low ponytail blew across her face. “Figure of speech?” she asked as she brushed the strands away.
Trev opened the door and gestured her inside with a jerk of his chin.
The scents of hay, damp dirt floor, and cattle mingled as they entered the relative stillness of the big structure.
Trev closed the door, pushing against a sudden gust. This storm had come out of nowhere.
His weather app had shown clear for the day the previous evening but squalls that formed out of nowhere were not unusual.
And now he had a smaller, more personal squall to deal with, which had also seemingly come out of nowhere. He’d decided early that morning that he needed answers, particularly if Mac was going to be working with him.
Trev pushed his hands into the pockets of his canvas coat. “Maybe it’s time for …” He sought the correct words; words that wouldn’t put her back up.
“The full explanation that you didn’t ask for yesterday?” Maclyn guessed.
“Tell me the alibi part.” Because the wild thoughts that had run through his head all night needed to be tempered with a few facts.
She leveled a serious look at him, a silent warning that he may not like what he heard.
“I need to know,” he said.
Maclyn pushed her hands into her pockets, mirroring his stance as she studied the straw-strewn dirt at their feet.
She glanced sideways as one of the pregnant cows, in a pen hidden by a stack of straw bales, banged the side panel.
Trev would check her in a minute, but right now he wanted Maclyn to tell him her side of things, as she’d done years ago, only this time he’d listen.
“Brooke and I were different in a lot of ways, but she was my friend right up until she threw me under the bus.” She moved straw with her toe, “When that happened, it was so …” She shrugged, indicating she couldn’t put her feelings into words.
“What I didn’t know was that her secret life was about to catch up with her. ”
Trev stayed quiet, allowing Maclyn to bring her thoughts together, but his heart was beating faster than its normal rhythm. All the little chips and chinks in his relationship with Brooke, things he hadn’t really thought about, had begun coalescing after Mac dropped her bomb the previous afternoon.
“Neither Brooke nor I were driving your truck that night.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She let her guy, whom she’d arranged to meet in Red Lodge I guess, drive her back to the rodeo grounds in your truck. Late.” Maclyn cleared her throat.
She hesitated, watching him for a sign to continue. Trev nodded even as his gut went tight. Brooke had been meeting a guy for some side action while he and Dylan had been miles away, checking out a roping horse in Miles City?
That made him feel stupid. Used.
“He wrecked the truck.”
All Trev could do was stare. What the fuck?
“I think there was a deer involved. Brooke called me to come and get her when I was about to head back to Western.”
It had been the last rodeo of the season, and Maclyn hadn’t made the finals, so she’d decided to return to school, and Brooke was going to hitch a ride with him back to Bozeman. That much he knew was true.
“I drove to the accident site, then took her back to the rodeo grounds. I offered to stay, but she insisted she was fine. So, I left as planned and didn’t find out that she’d blamed me until weeks later.” She pulled in a breath. “You know … when you confronted me about insurance.”
“Why didn’t you mention this guy before?”
“I didn’t know about him.” The words rang true. “I thought Brooke had been drinking, so it made sense that she’d been trying to avoid a DUI by calling me. When I showed up, I had no reason to suspect she hadn’t been alone. I think you know the rest.”
It was pretty much burned in his brain. He and Dylan had pulled into the rodeo grounds late the following morning, only to be met by Brooke sobbing about his truck and how Mac had borrowed it, swerved to miss a deer and ended up sliding down an embankment.
It was Brooke’s fault for lending Mac the truck, and she begged him to just let the matter go.
She’d pay for repairs. At the time, he’d thought Brooke was being a good friend. He had no reason to believe otherwise.
“Finding out that Brooke blamed me for the wreck, that she insisted she wasn’t even there, was like finding myself in a weird dream.
It was …” Maclyn let her words trail as she frowned at the memory.
Trev hesitated, then put a hand on her upper arm.
Her gaze flashed up and he dropped his hand.
She didn’t seem to notice he’d even touched her, and it was painfully obvious from her expression how betrayed she’d felt.
“It was shattering,” she finally said.
“Listen—”
A sudden gust of wind blasted over them as the door behind them opened and Wade strode in. “You guys going to work anytime soon?”
Trust Wade to be his gruffest in front of the new hire.
“Waiting for the wind to die down,” Trev said, holding Maclyn’s gaze long enough for her to know that this conversation wasn’t done, and then shifting it in his uncle’s direction.
“Then I guess the cows will go hungry today.” Wade touched the brim of his wool cap and nodded at Maclyn. “I’m Wade.”
“Maclyn Kane.”
Wade’s eyes narrowed and Trev wondered if he remembered that she was the one involved with the wreck.
How could he? Trev had given him the minimum amount of information regarding the incident and Wade had seen his boys get into enough trouble over the years that he hadn’t questioned him too closely.
“Nice to meet you,” Wade finally said before turning to Trev. “I’ll take care of the bulls. The New Holland is acting up, so use the John Deere when you show Maclyn how to feed.”
“Will do,” Trev said, feigning an easy smile. Feigning rarely worked with Wade.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Trev said as if it were a dumb question.
“Uh-huh.” Wade’s parental radar might be rusty, but it was still operational. He bounced a look between Trev and Maclyn, as if sussing out trouble, then shook his head. “I’ll check the cows. Catch up with me when you’re done feeding.”
After Wade had opened the gate to the rear of the barn where the calving pens were located and had traveled out of earshot, Trev asked the question that had to be asked. The one that, if Maclyn couldn’t answer, might exonerate Brooke. “How’d you find out about the mystery guy?”
“Madi Fletcher.”
“No shit.” Madi was the closest thing the rodeo had to a bona fide girl scout. Not the gossiping kind. Definitely not the lying kind.
“Her brother picked up the guy from the accident site just before I picked up Brooke. She let slip while we were talking at the Dillon rodeo the following year. She wouldn’t tell me the guy’s name when I asked. Just said he was married and had called her brother to help him out of a jam.”
Talk about being played. He felt stupid for not picking up on things as they were happening. Felt stupid having to have Maclyn spell things out. Stupid for not believing her in the first place.
“Are you okay?” Maclyn asked.
No. He was not okay and for once he didn’t feel like hiding it. “I might be having some thoughts about my ability to read people.”
“I felt the same way. Still do.” She pushed her damp hair over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing as she studied his face. “Do you believe me?”
He had to say the words. He owed her that much.
“Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “I do.”
*
Big tractors were not much different than their smaller cousins in general operation, but the procedure of loading large bales was new to Mac. Talk about being in a sink-or-swim situation. Screw this up and what were her options?
Desperate job hunting followed by more desperate job hunting. Once her check from Sweet Grass arrived, she’d have some breathing room, but until then—She jerked as Trev made a noise. The tractor bucket missed the windbreak by a matter of inches.
Focus, girl.
Trev cleared his throat as they headed out of the pasture, the tractor giving a puff of exhaust as she geared up. “You might want to give yourself extra room at the windbreak. Jordan and I rebuilt it over Thanksgiving, and I’d like it to stay upright.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It takes time to get used to the extra length in the front.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised, then since she didn’t need Trev focusing on her shortcomings, she said, “Looks like you have a lot of projects in the works.”
“We do. The former foreman had back issues and Wade tried to keep up on his own instead of telling us. By the time Hayes moved home, the place was kind of falling apart.”
Mac parked the tractor and brought the bucket to the ground, lifting the big machine off its front wheels because she didn’t let up on the controls in time. She maneuvered the lever, bringing the wheels back to solid ground, then closed the grapple hook with a clang that made her jump.
When she glanced at Trev, his eyebrows were drawn together in a thoughtful frown, which in turn caused her stomach to tighten.
“I’ll get the hang of it.”
“I’m sure you will.” He unlatched the door, climbed down the steps, then waited for her to follow. Once her feet were on solid ground, she asked the question that had been eating at her.
“If someone more qualified than me applies for this job, what happens then? Are you going to let me go?”
“We both know this isn’t long term.”
She nodded, wishing her heart wasn’t slowly climbing up her throat.
“That said, I wouldn’t be too happy if you quit without notice because you found another job and left us hanging.”
She answered with a silent nod.
“Let’s call this our post-Brooke phase. We’ll be upfront with one another. No secret maneuvering.” He tilted his head. “Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you a guaranteed three weeks if you’ll give me the same. I’ll also keep your horses here until you find a landing spot. Even if it takes some time.”
Maclyn was grateful for that, except … “What happens if I knock over the windbreak with the tractor?”