Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons (5 page)

“I don’t understand that. He’s smart as a whip. And I think he’s an adorable boy.”

“Then you talk to him!” Katherine said and stomped from the room.

Ellie shook her head, as if to say she saw Katherine had a tough row to hoe ahead of her. How much simpler things would be if Katherine would just fancy Adrian instead of Alex. But the heart had its reasons, although reason, she well knew, played a very small part.

“Adrian!” Katherine said with a snort, hitching her skirts up and throwing her leg over the banister to slide down, still fuming when she hit the bottom. “I’d sooner be sweet on papa’s mule as Adrian Mackinnon.” Adrian might be Alex’s twin, but the two of them didn’t look anything alike, and even if they had been born identical, she would still love Alex. And that was the gospel truth, for as much as Katherine adored Alex, she ignored Adrian. Whenever she was around Adrian, she was as cool as a February wind, in no way thawed by Adrian’s fond intent or his desire to please her.

Katherine went down to the barn, ignoring her cat to sit on an overturned bucket. But the cat was persistent. The third time she wound herself around Katherine’s legs, Katherine sighed and said, “Okay, you win,” and plopped Georgia on her lap.
Alex and Karin. Karin and Alex
. Sometimes all of that was downright nauseating. Just how much was a body supposed to tolerate anyway? The two of them acted like they were joined at the hip, or at least that they were the only two people in the world. It wasn’t fair. Hadn’t she considered herself in love with Alex Mackinnon for as long as she could remember—way before Karin paid him any mind at all? And what in the blue blazes made Alex so silly over Karin? It was she, Katherine Simon, who Alex used to pay attention to. Didn’t he tease her about her freckles? And didn’t he put a garter snake in her paint box? But as time passed and she grew older, her woman’s intuition grew as well. It was a crushing blow to realize Alex considered her nothing more than his friend.

Katherine looked up to see Adrian walk into the barn, the sunlight tinting his brown hair with the reddest gold. That was another thing she didn’t like about Adrian. His hair was too close to the color of her own. Of course he didn’t have her green eyes. And he didn’t have Alex’s pale blue ones either. Katherine decided then and there that she didn’t particularly care for dark blue eyes either.

“Hello,” he said. “Your ma said I’d find you in here.” Adrian stopped a few feet from her and looked at the face that played such havoc with his heart.

“As you can see, my ma was right.”

“What are you doing?”

“Honestly, Adrian,” she said with teeth-gritting irritation that dripped from every overstressed syllable, “even
you
should be able to see that I am holding the cat.”

Adrian thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, not understanding her at all. He had come looking for Katherine because he wanted to visit and you can’t visit properly when the person you want to visit with won’t visit back. “I don’t suppose you’d want to go for a walk down to the creek. There are lots of pecans on the ground.”

“Whatever for? Mother has had me gathering pecans all week. That is
work
, Adrian.
W-o-r-k.
Besides, I just gathered pecans this morning. Now, what makes you think I’d want to traipse down to the creek to gather more?”

“Oh,” he said, looking a bit unsettled. “Well, I guess I’ll be going, on home, then.”

“All right.”

“Bye Katherine.”

“Goodbye, Adrian.”

Adrian ran into Ellie hanging out clothes in the backyard. “Did you find Katherine?”

“Yes, ma’am. She was in the barn, like you said.”

“Did you have a nice visit?”

“Not especially.”

“Was Katherine rude to you, Adrian?”

“No, ma’am.”

Ellie breathed a sigh of relief.

“But she wasn’t very friendly.”

“Oh, dear,” Ellie said.

“That’s all right, Miz Simon.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what’s come over that girl of late. Cross as crabs, she is, without a kind word to say to anybody.” She watched Adrian walk toward his horse. “I’m awful sorry, Adrian.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Adrian mounted his horse and rode away. Ellie watched him for a spell then shook her head and went back to hanging out her laundry. A short while later Katherine came out of the barn. Ellie looked up just in time to see her walking her way. “Why such a long face?” Ellie asked.

Katherine gave a mournful sigh, one that sounded somewhere between pining and lost hope. “It’s because of Alex. No one will ever understand how much I love him. I don’t think I was ever destined to be happy. I know he will ask Karin to marry him and they’ll probably live right across the creek for the rest of their lives and raise a dozen sons and daughters. And what about me? I’ll be an old maid, for I’ll never love anyone as I love Alex.” Her expression turned even more forlorn. “I can see it all now. They’ll even ask me to be in the wedding and I’ll have to walk behind Karin and carry her veil, smiling at the people on each side of the aisle, never allowing them to see that beneath my new bridesmaid dress there is the brokenest of hearts.”

“Is
brokenest
a word?”

“I am taking poetic liberty, Mother. Most broken heart just doesn’t have the right flow to it. When you are speaking of a broken heart it is imperative that the words flow.”

“Oh, I see.” Ellie had to hand it to Katherine. She had a sense of the dramatic and a flair for drama that any actor would covet. She quickly picked up a tablecloth and began spreading it out to dry, hoping it would hide the spasm of twitching that had suddenly seized her face. But it didn’t help. Thankful that Katherine didn’t tarry long after her eloquent speech, Ellie buried her face into the tablecloth and laughed so hard she developed a serious case of the hiccups that lasted four hours.

It was her own fault, Ellie supposed, for she had always encouraged her daughters to talk about things. Katherine was by far the most responsive, the real talker in the family, and hearing Katherine go on and on, Ellie would often lay her mending aside to muffle a cough she faked to hide her smile. Whenever Katherine got on one of her soapboxes about one issue or the other, Ellie would sometimes take the opposite position, just to offer her a challenge. It got to be a sort of game between the two of them—Katherine making a point; her mother challenging it, then Katherine would plunge ahead, giving a multitude of reasons and even more quotes of why she was right to feel the way she did, knowing all the while that the more determined she became, the more her mother enjoyed it.

It was much the same between Karin and their father, for he was as close to her as Ellie was to Katherine. As she grew older, Katherine would often find herself imagining what it was like in her parents’ room at night. She could almost hear her father say, “That Karin, she’s a real little princess. I’m glad she’s not the wild ragamuffin Katherine is.” And her mother’s reply, “But Katherine has a wise and loving heart and a strong spirit.” But most of all, they were both loved by their parents, Katherine soaking it up hike sunshine that made her grow straight and strong, Karin looking on it as more of a blessing that made her feel special and set her apart.

It was only a few days later that Katherine lay across Karin’s bed watching her dress. She was trying to figure out just why it was that Karin always looked so neat and lovely, and why she always looked like a flag forgotten on the pole outside the post office during a windstorm. She watched Karin put on her yellow muslin dress and patiently button the row of tiny buttons that ran down the back. Katherine sighed. She didn’t have the patience to button that many buttons, especially when she considered that in a few hours she’d have to
unbutton
them all again.
All this fuss getting dressed when she has to know she’ll just be taking everything off in a few hours. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Katherine wrinkled her nose as she watched Karin move to stand in front of her mirror and brush her hair one hundred strokes. Katherine was betting she didn’t give her hair a total of one hundred strokes in two weeks. It was a wonder Karin’s hair didn’t fall out and leave her head as bald as a plucked chicken. But there it was, going up on top of her head, as perfect and shiny as a spinning top.

“Do I look all right?” Karin asked, whirling around, a look on her face that told Katherine she knew she looked beautiful and was dying for Katherine to tell her so.

“Yes, and you well know it”

“Don’t be such a crab,” Karin said, picking up her parasol. “‘If you can’t say something nice…’”

“‘Don’t say anything at all,’” Katherine finished in a mimicking tone.

Without another word, Karin hurried from the room.

Katherine waited until she left, then made a face and did her best to sound like Karin, “‘Don’t be such a crab.’ Bah!” For a while she lay where she was, her eyes moving around Karin’s room. How did Karin keep her room so neat and clean while hers always looked like a storm had just blown through? She grimaced and rolled over. One of the five dresses Karin had tried on fell to the floor. Draping herself over the side of the bed and coming to her feet, she picked the dress up and almost tossed it back to the bed when she held it up in front of her. Maybe she would look as pretty as Karin, if she put on her dress.

Katherine had a quick vision of Karin throttling her.

She put the dress on, giving a few of the buttons down the back a go, and then tying the sash. She moved to the mirror and brushed her hair, intending to go all the way to one hundred, but when she reached twenty, her arm gave out, so she stopped.

After four or five tries, she had her hair on top of her head and jabbed full of Karin’s pins, but it didn’t look quite as good as Karin’s, resembling more a windblown haystack than a shiny new spinning top. She tilted her head to one side. The knot of hair slid that way as well. Katherine shoved the knot back in place and studied herself critically. She had done everything she had seen Karin do. Why didn’t she look as pretty?

A few minutes later she went downstairs to find her mother. Maybe she could tell her just what she had done wrong. Her mind on finding her mother, she didn’t notice as she walked by the parlor that Alex and Karin were there, sitting at the piano. And why should she have noticed. Pianos were for playing, and if a body wasn’t going to play the piano, they ought not be sitting on the piano bench. There were chairs for that. As she passed she heard Karin’s shriek of laughter. “Oh, this is too much,” Karin said, laughing. Then, between gasps for breath, she said, “Alex, will you look at that?”

Alex looked up and grinned. Katherine was a mess. Her dress was way too short, and a tad small. The pale pink color was horrid on her, and the back was misbuttoned—at least where it was buttoned—and the sash was trailing the floor behind her. And her hair! What on earth had she done to it? It looked like she’d been caught in an updraft. Either that or someone had hit her in the head with a cow pattie. But in spite of the sight she presented, Alex liked Katherine and he didn’t have the heart to laugh at her. For a few seconds her eyes met his and held. Although he didn’t say anything, Katherine knew he was telling her that their friendship was something special and secret.

But that didn’t make any difference at a time like this as far as Katherine was concerned. To have her sister ridicule her like she was, and knowing Alex was privy to that was the same as if Alex had laughed his fool head off. Her face red with humiliation, Katherine whirled and ran up the stairs.

“You shouldn’t embarrass her like that,” Alex said.

“Then she shouldn’t go traipsing around like someone just fired her from a gun.” Karin thumped a crumb from her skirt. “Besides, she won’t be upset for long. She never is.”

“She won’t? I’ve always thought Katherine stayed mad longer than anyone I knew. I think she’s still mad at me for putting that snake in her paint box.”

“Oh fiddle! She just wants you to think that. Actually she likes to pretend she’s mad just so she’ll get attention.”

Alex frowned. “Humiliating someone isn’t giving them attention. I don’t think…”

This was starting to get Alex’s attention off of her and onto her sister, so she gave Alex a gentle whack with her fan. “Hush up, Alex. You don’t know my sister like I do, and what’s worse, you are ignoring me.”

Alex gave her a blank look, but he hushed up.

“Now,” Karin said, “where were we?”

Looking down into Karin’s beautiful blue eyes, Alex gave her a smile that Katherine would have given two years of her life to see bestowed upon herself. “You may know Katherine better than I do, but I like her and I hate to see her hurt.”

That sent Karin into a pout. “Will you stop all this palaver about Katherine? Heaven knows why you’re always so eager to champion her cause,” she said. “She’s always making a fool of herself in front of you and we both know the reason why. She’d give her eyeteeth to have you for a beau.”

“I’m not championing her cause. I just don’t like to see anyone hurt and embarrassed. And I think you’re wrong about Katherine having heart flutters over me. We’re friends, that’s all.”

“You go on thinking that, Alexander Mackinnon. You go right on. Don’t bother to listen to me when I tell you Katherine is smitten over you and would do anything in the world she could to have you.” She whacked him again with her fan. “One of these days you’ll see I was right.”

Deep in his heart Alex knew of Katherine’s fondness for him, and more often than not, she did make that known to the point of embarrassing herself and him. At first he had found her pestiferous ways quite irritating, for she did have a tendency to show up at the most inopportune times, and she frequently stalked him with all the finesse of a Comanche hot on the trail of a stray steer. But of late his feelings about her childish adoration had changed from irritation to amusement. She was just so damn comical in the ways she went about it that he couldn’t help harboring a fondness for her.

Only last week she had gotten some nasty rope burns on her hands trying to reach the hayloft by climbing up the rope so she could spy on him and Karin. And a week or so before that he and Karin had sneaked off to the pecan grove, and he had been about to put his hand on Karin’s breast when a branch overhead groaned suspiciously. Looking up he had seen those familiar green eyes staring down at him. Grabbing her by the ankle, he gave her a yank that sent her tumbling into his arms. He carried her to the path and set her on her feet none too gently, telling her he would give her dainty little posterior a good dusting if he ever caught her spying again.