Big Sky Eyes (8 page)

Chapter 12

Gone was the Brent she had come to know and love. He was
replaced with the surly, mean character she had met on day one. She hadn’t
noticed his slip backward in the remaining two weeks of her recovery because
she hadn’t much contact with him. Now that she was riding again and back at her
regular duties, the difference was staggering.

When she teased, he rode away. He spoke only what absolutely
needed speaking. He snapped at Kelly enough that she suspended her pursuit and
filled her mouth with unpleasant opinions of him. He and Ty could be seen
arguing almost nightly by the stables because the guests were starting to
complain to Bev of his abruptness.

There were only three weeks left of the summer season when
Mackenna finally decided to brave the beast. Evening was falling. Guests were
hunkered around the fire pit, visiting with Bev and Grant while they ate barbeque.
Ty and Leslie were shoeing one of the horses in the round corral. Lord knew
where Kelly was, but Mackenna knew where Brent was.

 
He was in the second
story of the stables, in his wooden loft that hung over half of the stalls. It
was completely open, no doors in or out, and had only one square window that
ran the height of the wall and could be easily shuttered. Narrow wooden steps
led the way up and Mackenna made no attempt to hide her approach. In fact, she
called out to Sass and tossed down an apple as she climbed above her stall.

Once she reached the platform, she found Brent sitting
cross-legged in front of the open window, his arms wrapped around his knees,
fingers dangling casually in between. He still wore the red bandana he’d had on
during the workday. He had let his stubble grow out longer in the previous
week. It wasn’t quite a full beard, but definitely more than a shadow. He wore
the same clothes he’d been riding in: blue jeans and a white tee. His back was
to her.

“Whatever you came up here for,” he called angrily, “I don’t
have it. I don’t want it. I don’t need it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said with an exaggerated
exhalation. “Glad we got that part out of the way.”

“Go away, Mackenna,” he said wearily with a sigh.

“Are you trying to scare me with your attitude?” she asked
evenly. “If you are, you can stop wasting your time. I spent six hours with a
grizzly. I hate to tell you, but he takes the cake.”

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he bit back. “I’m trying to
tell you that I don’t want you here.”

She sat down beside him, crossing her legs like his. “Well,
that’s just too damn bad,” she said, “cause I’m not going anywhere until you
tell me what’s going on with you.”

“I hope you brought a blanket,” he said. “It gets cold here
in the middle of the night.”

“I remember,” she reminded him. “But If I’m here that long
I’ll steal yours. So, see? It’s in your best interest to tell me what’s up so I
can leave.”

“It’s none of your business,” he growled. “Just leave it.”

Here, she faltered. “You’re right. It’s not my business, but
it’s really bothering me how much you’ve changed.”

He said nothing, just continued to watch the sunset out of
the window. The last golden rays exploded in shafts of brilliant light shooting
up from behind Mortimer Peak. Mackenna didn’t want to force him to reveal
anything he wasn’t comfortable with, but she couldn’t stand this cold, harsh
distance between them. She’d been racking her brain for weeks to determine when
he had changed. She decided to test her theory.

“Alora is a strong woman,” she stated.

“She’s fragile,” he returned stiffly. “She’s far weaker than
she realizes, and too pigheaded to listen to reason.”

“Aah,” she drawled. “So, that’s where you get it from.”

He rose swiftly with an impatient huff.

“Brent,” she called after him as he began pacing. “Come on,
it was a joke.” She stood, facing him. “Look, I get it. You feel guilty that
you are not with your mom, helping her out, but why does that mean that you
have to act like a jerk around here?”

He stopped abruptly and glared at her.

“Mackenna, you don’t
get
anything. It’s not about missing my mom. It’s about taking care of her. She’s
got no one but me to look out for her.”

“That’s not true,” Mackenna interrupted his flow. “She has
Emma and a whole host of friends in the McCrae family.”

“One family of friends and a live-in nurse,” he said dryly.
“This should make her life happy and me happy for abandoning her to it?”

“How many people does a person need to be happy?” she asked,
and when he didn’t answer right away she spoke with more sympathy. “Even if you
could fill every moment of your mom’s life with love and laughter, it’s not
going to make her walk again.”

“So, the answer is to not try to make her happy?” he said,
dripping with disdain.

“No, Brent,” she said firmly. “Don’t twist my words.”

“What’s your point then?” he snapped.

“My point is that you are trying to heal something that
can’t be healed,” she returned heatedly. “You can labor away for the rest of
your life but you’ve already set yourself up for failure.”

Brent turned his back on her, balling his fists against a
rising anger. When he finally spoke the words ground out of his mouth in a low
snarl.

“Mackenna, I know you came here to help, but you have no
idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is pissing me off. Go
away. Go back to your horses and your jokes and your freedom and leave me alone.”

She sighed with a frown. This was not going at all the way
she had hoped or wanted. Something was eating away at him and it was bone deep.
The deeper he hurt, the worse his insults were. Her heart swelled with ache for
his pain. He had made up his mind, though, and he was shutting her out. She was
not going to reach him through words. She gathered all of her years of
experience with her mother’s work and decided to back off.

“I’ll leave, Brent,” she said. “But I want you to know that
I am not leaving because you’ve insulted me, or because you’ve yelled at me, or
even because I’ve made you angry.” She paused, waiting for him to turn around
but he did not. “I’m leaving because you deserve to be alone right now with the
way you’re acting. You’re determined to be miserable and that is such a waste.”
She made to leave but could not depart without expressing the last of her
thoughts. “And it’s damned selfish of you!”

At that, he snapped around, his eyes pools of blue flames.

“Selfish?!” he yelled. “I’m selfish because I won’t come out
and play with you?!
Because I won’t indulge your little crush
on me?!”

Mackenna stepped back as if she’d been slapped. Her cheeks
flamed with embarrassment and then anger.

“No, you arrogant ass!” she shot back, her eyes and voice
filling with tears. “You’re selfish for what you’re doing to your mother! She
feels like she’s depriving you of life when you’re with her, and when she pushes
you into something that you might enjoy, you make her suffer for it by forcing
yourself to hate it.
Either way, you’re miserable and
she loses!”

She panted, fighting to dam her tears, not wanting them to
spill in front of him. Her next words came out in a whisper.

“How do you think that makes her feel?”
 
When he didn’t answer, “Forget about your own
guilt. Think of hers.”

She turned and sped down the steps, stomping passed Sass
only to slide to a stop. A ride was exactly what she needed. She grabbed the
first bridle she saw hanging on a wooden post and buckled it onto the roan.
Flinging herself onto Sass’s bare back, one swift kick of her heel and the pair
tore out of the stables, beating down the shadows across the open meadow while
tears streaked down Mackenna’s cheeks.

Brent went to the window and watched her sprint away from
him, from his biting tongue and callous insults. His features were still
twisted in anger, but his innards were cringing at how he sent her away and the
message she shot to his soul before she left. He had not once in the past five
years thought of the guilt his mother must surely feel. After the accident,
Brent had given up any ideas he once owned for his future and devoted his time
and attentions to caring for her.

Alora had never asked it of him, but to him it wasn’t a
question to be answered. She was his mother, whose entire world had just been
shattered.
 
There was no way he could
walk away and continue with his plans. She was constantly pushing him to take
jobs out of state, to date someone seriously, to go to college somewhere, but
he considered it a mother’s natural inclination and had refused.

For years, he worked side-by-side with Ty raising cattle for
slaughter. It was a job that worked him hard enough to forget his own abandoned
ambitions. During the summers Ty would always help his family out on the dude.
Brent had never had any interest in it. He knew it would take him away from his
mother’s home, which was too far away to commute every day. The cattle ranch
was only ten miles from home.

His shoulders sagged with the realization. That’s why his
mother had persuaded him to work the dude this summer. At the time, she made a
case for Bev McCrae, saying she was starving for good hands. Alora had said it
was the height of bad manners for him to refuse Bev’s request for help on the
dude and she would not allow him to shame her that way. The McCraes had been
good, Christian friends to them and he couldn’t justify refusing to help
either.

As he stood gilded in the fading sunlight, he thought back
to those four weeks that Mackenna was injured. The three wranglers managed just
fine without her. Bev McCrae was not in any desperate need of help. Brent shook
his head at his mother’s trickery. More than likely she had begged Bev to take
him on at the dude. Why? Mackenna’s words echoed through him.
She pushes you into something you might
enjoy.
She pushed him away from her so that he could enjoy himself without
the burden of taking care of her.

Mackenna was right. The harder he fought to hate life, the
more guilt he put on his mother. What the hell was he supposed to do? He didn’t
feel right enjoying life when his mother had suffered so much. He could never
live with himself if he followed his dreams, leaving her to live out her days alone.
The reality was that he could never pursue the career he wanted or a serious
relationship as long as he nursed his mother. He couldn’t afford it even if he
wanted to.

Sure, the summer had been more pleasant than he had
imagined, but it was almost over. Then, he’d be back to the cattle and back in
his home. Mackenna would be back in Nevada where her dreams for her own future
awaited.
Three weeks
, he thought. This
was Mackenna’s summer, too, and she deserved to enjoy the last three weeks of
it, and he had just about taken that away from her. He had no right to send her
off in tears just for trying to be a friend.

He descended the steps and found Jake. Bridled and bare
back, he bore Brent across the meadow in pursuit of the strawberry roan and her
golden-haired rider.

Chapter 13

Mackenna was thankful for the clear night as the moonlight
tumbled over tiny rocks in the mountain stream, glowing white against the
night. With it being near the end of summer, the stream had degenerated to more
of a trickle, but it was enough to make the banks around it green and lush
during even the driest months. She dared not go beyond it. She did not want to
be too far away from the ranch. She was alone and without saddle or weapon of
any kind.

She sat on the ground, Sass’s reins in her hand as the horse
grazed nearby. The tears came without ceasing as she threw pebbles into the
water.
Indulge your little crush on me
,
he had said, and every time she repeated it in her head, she cringed and
blushed.
 
He knew she had feelings for
him. That on its own was bad enough, but that he would reduce them to a teenage
crush hurt her deeply. He would never see her as anything more than a kid. She
pulled her knees into her chest and wiped her eyes on them, steadying her
breaths.

“Mackenna,”
came
his voice from
behind her. She turned to find him sitting atop Jake staring down with eyes
full of regret. She hid her face from him.

“Brent, I gave you what you wanted and left you alone. Now
you do the same for me and leave.”

“I’m not going to leave you out here alone,” he said. “Come
back with me.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

“Fine,” he said, dismounting. “Then, I’ll stay here with
you.”

He sat on the grass next to her and she turned her face away
from him. He knew it was to hide her tears. He didn’t want to embarrass her
again by broaching the subject that had brought them on. As the silence
thickened between them he heaved a heavy sigh and began talking about what he
had never intended to tell her.

“My mom was paralyzed five years ago,” he began weakly. “I
had just turned nineteen and was looking into moving away for college. It had
been raining hard that whole day. When I got home from work that night, I was
drenched. My dad had called home to tell my mom that he was stuck at the office
and wouldn’t be home for hours. Back then we had a small log home about fifteen
miles from town. Nothing fancy, about ten acres in the mountains we used for
our own leisure. My dad was an attorney and that’s how we made a living.

“When Dad had called to say he’d be at the office, Mom felt
bad and decided to take him some dinner. She’d asked me to do it first, but I
refused. I’d been out in the rain all day and didn’t want to go back out in it.
So, she decided to go. At the last minute, my twelve-year-old sister Natalie
said she wanted to go, too. So, they left to take my dad food.”

Mackenna watched him recount the story. His gaze was focused
on the stream ahead of him, his eyes beaming like bits of the moon overhead.

“Well, when she got to the office he was there all right,
but he wasn’t working. He was screwing his paralegal. Both my mom and sister
saw. They ran out of there before he could say anything, but he followed her in
his car. As she was driving back to the house in one of the mountain passes there
was a mudslide. It came rushing down right at her and washed her truck off the
road and down two hundred feet.

“Nat died,” he said with sad finality. “Mom didn’t, but she
never walked again. My dad pulled her out of the car. One week after Nat’s
funeral, he filed for divorce. He said he’d had the papers drafted up before
the accident. Mom was too distraught to know what was going on around her. She
signed without even reading them. If she had, she would have known that he left
her nothing, not even the home she’d lived in for twenty-two years. No alimony.
Nothing.

“Obviously, Mom had no job or income of her own, and who was
going to hire her? In one month, she lost the man she adored, the home she
knew, the daughter she loved and the use of her legs. She wasn’t mentally fit
to handle it. I moved us into town, to a small apartment that I could afford on
my wages. She gets disability, but it’s about twelve hundred bucks a month.
With Medicaid she gets some help with her prescriptions but it doesn’t cover the
in-home care she needs while I work to keep us alive.”

Mackenna was horrified and heartbroken for him and Alora. She
could not imagine living through such an ordeal, losing so much in one night. She
reached for something, anything, to combat the despair in his voice.

“I can’t believe your father would leave your mother with
nothing if he knew all of the circumstances.”

“He knew what condition he was leaving her in, and I’ll be
damned before I ever seek him out for help. The day he walked out of her life,
he walked out of mine.”

She knew there was no arguing with him. There was no need.
She’d feel the same way in his position.

“So, anyway,” he continued, “That’s why I
won’t leave my mom.
It’s already killing me to have to leave her in
Emma’s care for the summer.” He turned to her and their eyes met. “I’d
appreciate it if you kept this to yourself.”

“Brent, I would never betray your confidence,” she said
steadfastly. “Does Ty know?”

He nodded. “The McCraes go to our church and were friends to
us before the accident. They know all about it, but I still don’t want it
talked about. Kelly probably doesn’t know, unless Ty’s said something to her.
It was the McCraes who offered me work and decent pay on their ranch. They are
the reason we’re as comfortable as we are. We owe them a lot.”

“There is no charity from the McCraes,” Mackenna said. “They
are good Christian folk, yes, but you earn your pay. You’re one of the hardest
workers I’ve ever met, Brent. If you weren’t pulling your weight, the McCraes
wouldn’t have kept you, charity or no.”

He shrugged, returning his gaze to the water. She studied
his profile as if for the first time, seeing all of the years of struggle and
emotion that sculpted the beautiful lines of his face. Now she understood why
he called his life in Montana a prison, although she suspected that part of him
loved it. It was likely more the bitterness of being forced to give up what
he’d wanted to do than it was being in Montana.

“What were you going to study before the accident?” she
asked.

He looked at her.
“Photography.”

She flinched.

“What?” he asked, an amused smile taking hold. “Shocked ya?”

“Yeah,” she said, grinning back. “I never would have figured
you for the artsy type.”

“Well, photography is as much science and math as it is art,
at least if you shoot film anyway.”

“Sounds like you were able to study it a little bit.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling as the memories came back to him.
“I took some classes in high school. I shot all of the yearbook photos my
senior year. My teacher said I had talent and continued to mentor me after high
school, at least until the accident. Once mom and I moved into town I sold all
of my gear. We needed the extra cash. Now, I don’t even have a cheap disposable
camera to my name.”

“Photography, huh?” she shook her head disbelievingly. “I
would have figured you for something more like engineering or something.”

“Engineering?” he said with mock disgust on his face.

“Yeah,” she defended. “You totally have an engineer’s
personality: serious, emotionless, no sense of humor…”

When he raised an eyebrow to her, she elbowed him playfully.

“Just kidding.”

“Yeah, right,” he drawled and they chuckled. Amid the
silence that followed, Mackenna wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him
close, but she settled for placing her hand on his upper arm.

“Thank you for telling me, Brent. I know you didn’t have to,
and I’m sorry for goading you into it.”

“You didn’t goad me into it, Mackenna,” he said then placed
his hand over hers. “I’m sorry for attacking you like I did. I shouldn’t have
taken my anger out on you.” He reached out a finger to trace the tear line
streaming through the day’s dirt on her cheeks. “I hate that I made you cry.”

Mackenna shivered, whether from his touch or the chill air
she did not know, but in response Brent wrapped an arm around her and held her
close. She leaned her head against his chest and sighed. He was warm and
comforting. How would she be able to leave in three weeks? The thought already
tore at her, teasing fresh tears into her eyes. She held them back with pinched
eyelids.
 
They sat silently and content
for a good while.

Brent surprised himself by how easily he found comfort with
her. He didn’t know what had set about the change but ever since the night of
their dance he saw her through new eyes. Though he fought hard to ignore and
shun her, he still studied her when she wasn’t aware. He found his gaze
fastened on her smile, the way it lit up her entire face and was so infectious
that those around her grinned like fools.

He watched as she gave her heart to Sass every day,
displaying her affection in every caress or coo. She had kept her hair bundled
at the nape of her neck throughout the day, but he couldn’t forget how soft and
shiny it was falling around her face and his hands, and he longed to run his
fingers through it. Her jeans were looser on her now than when she first
arrived, her arms tighter and stronger and he nearly fell from his horse when
he realized that he was watching the soft bounce of her breasts as she cantered
along the line of tourists in their party.

Though he didn’t understand the sudden attraction he felt
for Mackenna, he certainly didn’t welcome it. A part of him felt like it was
wrong to think of her in any sexual way, simply because of her age. His mother
was right that she was closer to eighteen than sixteen, but he still could not
break the connection he had made between her and his kid-sister.

He still wasn’t sure that he agreed with his mother that
Mackenna had real feelings for him other than friendship, but he was determined
to keep their relationship held at friendship anyway. There was no point
exploring something that would end in three weeks anyway. Toward that end, he
patted her arm and helped her rise.

They rode back to the ranch quietly and though Mackenna had
hoped that he would invite her up to his loft to spend more time together, he
did not. She felt a greater connection to him now that he had shared something
so personal with her, but she did not know where that connection affected him.
Whatever he felt toward her, she knew that the Brent she loved was back and
would stay for the next three weeks.