Riding Tall (2 page)

“Hi,” Mackenzie said. Joe heard a lot of noise in the background, and Mackenzie raised his voice as if to drown out the din. “I’m still in the city. This job is going long. I’m not going to make it back tonight.”

And Joe’s shoulders tensed again. But he forced himself to keep his voice calm. “Oh. That’s too bad. You’re going to stay at Kristen’s?”

“No, they’re putting us up in a hotel. Hopefully a good one.”

Joe leaned against the side of the truck. “Did they say why they couldn’t get it done? Did something go wrong?”

“Nothing big. Just one of those things.” Joe could almost hear Mackenzie’s shrug. He obviously wasn’t too worried about this. He wasn’t upset about spending a night in a hotel instead of coming home to Joe.

So Joe shouldn’t be worried about it either. Things were going well with Mackenzie, but that didn’t mean the two of them had to be together all the time. Independence wasn’t a sin. “Okay, have fun. We’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Or maybe the next morning,” Mackenzie amended. “If tomorrow goes long, I’ll be too tired to drive that far. I’ll stay with Kristen if they don’t put me up again.”

Joe swallowed hard. It felt like the beginning of the end. He’d known it all along. Mackenzie was only visiting the country; he belonged in the city. Joe was going to get his heart broken. It was coming.

Or, just possibly, he was insecure, paranoid, and neurotic. “Sounds good,” he said. “Drive safe.”

“You bet. Hey, how did it go at the school?” But before Joe could answer, he heard a voice in the background, and Mackenzie said, “Oh, they’re ready. I’ve got to go. Give Griffin a good-night kiss for me, okay?”

And that was it. The call disconnected. Joe looked at his reflection in the blank screen and tried to find his confidence. Mackenzie wasn’t starting to slip away. He just had a modeling job, and he was wisely choosing not to spend hours on the highway if he wasn’t going to be alert. Everything was good. When the phone rang again, Joe smiled in anticipation, but it wasn’t Mackenzie’s number displayed on the screen.

He hit the button to talk to his youngest sister. “Ally, are you calling from class?”

“Are you standing in the parking lot of my school staring at your phone?”

“I was standing in the parking lot of your school
talking
on my phone.”

“That’s not what
I
saw. But anyway, did you get it all figured out? Is Lacey coming to school tomorrow? What’s her schedule?”

“I’m working on it.” He looked up at the school, trying to find his sister’s face in one of the windows. “Seriously, though, are you calling from class? Your teachers let you get away with that?”

“Bathroom break,” she said unconcernedly.

“I’m pretty sure those are supposed to be for going to the bathroom.”

“I’m
in
the bathroom. So there.”

“You’d better not be peeing.”

“Yuck!”

“Okay, I agree. Now you should go back to class. But before you go, can you tell me—is there any reason the school wouldn’t want Lacey back? Were there problems last year?”

Ally’s answer took longer than it should have. “Not
problems
, exactly. I mean… she did
not
have a stable home life, you know! She had a lot of challenges!”

Joe groaned internally. “Ally, listen to me, okay?” He paused for her to object, but she didn’t, so he continued. “I’m on her side. I want to help. But I’m not going to be able to do a very good job of that if I don’t have all the facts I need. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said reluctantly.

“So you should make one more call before you go back to class. Get in touch with Lacey, let her know that we’re going to be having a talk this afternoon. Me and her, and you can be there if she wants. Okay?”

“Yeah. But be nice, okay? You
know
that family was a mess! Can you imagine living with them and not having some issues? I mean, it’s not easy to get to school on time when your parents are passed out in the bathroom so you can’t shower! And then if you
do
make it in and somebody gives you attitude for being late, maybe you’d slip up and give a bit of attitude back, right?”

“It’s not going to be a trial. I’m not looking to change the past or punish anyone for it. I just need to know what we’re dealing with.”

“In a nice way,” Ally tried.

“You bet,” Joe said with enthusiasm he wasn’t feeling. “So call her,
briefly
, and then get your ass back to class. And if anyone gives you attitude for talking on the phone when you said you were going to the bathroom, you had damn well better not give them any attitude back.”

“You’re no fun,” Ally groused.

“I’ve got errands to run this afternoon. Pick up Austin at the end of the day, and I’ll meet you at the elementary school, give you both a ride home. Okay?”

“Okay. But you should call Austin’s school and let them know the plan. The new secretary over there doesn’t really understand our family dynamic. I think she thought I was trying to kidnap him the last time we didn’t get on the bus.”

“Excellent,” Joe sighed. “Okay, I’ll call. Have a good last class.”

He was in the truck and about to pull out of the parking lot when his phone rang again. He didn’t recognize the number. “Joe Sutton,” he said into the phone.

“Joe, it’s Margaret Varney. We’ve got cattle in our hayfield.” The Varneys owned the farm next door to the Suttons’ place. They didn’t raise cattle.

“Damn it.” His mind raced, trying to find a way this wouldn’t be his problem. “They’re black?” he asked. There was one other cattle operation in the area, and they raised Herefords. If the cattle were red and white, they belonged to that farm. If they were Black Angus….

“They’re black,” Margaret confirmed. “It’s not a big deal—it’s the field we sell to you, anyway. Your guys are probably leaving some nice organic fertilizer behind. But that field isn’t fenced, and the road’s got some blind turns right around there. I wouldn’t want them to get out on the road and get hit.”

No, Joe wouldn’t want that either. “I’m in town, but I’ll be out there in twenty minutes or so. They’re in your side field, the one by the maple bush?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m going to stop at the house and get a horse and a dog to help me round them up, so that’ll add a bit of time. Less than forty-five minutes, okay?”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Margaret promised.

She was a good neighbor, lucky for Joe. Still, this was a nuisance. His errands obviously weren’t going to happen that day, but he’d be back in town the next morning to drop Lacey off. Assuming that went well, he’d have time afterward. If it
didn’t
go well, he supposed he’d be pretty damn busy with his threatened campaign against the school.

He got stopped by a train at the level crossing on the edge of town and pulled his phone out to call Ally. She wouldn’t be getting a ride home that afternoon. He should have known better than to plan it.

Should have known better
. The words played in his mind, and he tried to relate them to cattle and picking kids up after school. They had nothing to do with Mackenzie. Things with him were fine. Joe hadn’t made a mistake there.

He tried to ignore the nagging voice that told him he
had
made a mistake, a huge one, and he was going to suffer for it. Every day that passed, every extra drop of affection he let fall into the already huge pond of his feelings for Mackenzie. Every drop was going to burn like acid when Mackenzie left him.

“Shut up,” he growled to himself, forgetting he’d dialed the phone and was holding it to his ear.

“That’s charming,” Ally replied. “You called me to tell me that?”

“Sorry,” Joe muttered. He needed to pull himself together. The whole world didn’t need to know about his insecurities. “And why aren’t you in class?”

“I was visiting! And maybe I could sense that you’d be calling me back.”

“Stop visiting and get to class. I thought I’d be leaving a message. I just needed to tell you that plans have changed.”

“Don’t they always?” Ally replied. The attitude was close enough to Joe’s own that it startled him. Was his cynicism rubbing off on his little sister, or were they both just realists who saw the world as it truly was?

But he didn’t have time for philosophy; the train was almost past. “Take the bus home, okay? I’ll explain later.” He hung up the phone once he heard her assent and started driving as soon as the crossing gate lifted. He needed to keep moving. He’d learned that long ago, when he’d first taken responsibility for the younger members of his family. If he stayed still and let himself think, it would all start pressing down on him. The responsibilities he’d never asked for, the pressures he didn’t need, the goddamned cattle in the neighbor’s hayfield… it could be too much, unless he kept moving and refused to think about it. This was his life, and there was no escape, so he might as well just get on with it.

Thinking about Mackenzie made things better. Sure, Joe was up here and Mackenzie was a couple hundred miles away, living the glamorous life, but he’d come back. Joe kept his brain moving past the little voice reminding him that one of these times Mackenzie
wasn’t
going to come back, because there was no point dwelling on that, either. This time, at least, Mackenzie would probably be back. Joe could just focus on that, and it made everything else a little easier to accept.

Chapter 2

“N
O
WONDER
you’re in such a hurry to get out of here,” the makeup artist gushed. She was looking at the photo in Mackenzie’s wallet: Joe sitting on top of Misery, the man grinning while the horse pinned her ears back. “He’s
gorgeous
. And he’s, like, a real cowboy?”

“A rancher,” Mackenzie said with a nonchalant shrug. “I think technically the cowboys are the hired hands. He owns the place.”

“Wow. That is
so
sexy!”

“I know. It’s killing me to be down here.”

“Why
are
you?” she asked with a furtive glance around them. “I mean, this isn’t exactly the cover of
Vogue
we’re shooting. Wouldn’t you be happier up with him?”

“I would be,” Mackenzie admitted. “But it’s hard to make any money up there.”

“So who cares? Let the rich rancher take care of you!”

Possibly Mackenzie had overstated things, or at least allowed the woman to develop a slightly exaggerated understanding of Joe’s wealth. He wasn’t going to correct her, though. “I want to have my
own
money,” he said. “For independence, you know? I don’t want to be a kept boy.” He’d been that for too long, and even if he knew Joe wouldn’t be an asshole about it, he refused to go back to that dynamic.

“Wow. You’re stronger than I would be.” She took one more wistful look at the photograph, then turned her attention back to Mackenzie. “And you’re looking pretty gorgeous yourself,” she said with satisfaction. She lowered her voice to say, “It’s a bit sad that we’re doing a vampire shoot this long after the trend crested, but you could suck my blood anytime.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Mackenzie smiled at her. It
was
sad that they were doing a vampire shoot. It was sad that he’d pissed away the best years of his potential career just because Nathan didn’t like him working, and it was sad that he was now too old, according to his agent, to break into the top ranks of the modeling world. Well, it hadn’t just been the age, if Mackenzie was being honest with himself. Carson, his agent, had been kind, but clear:
You’re a good-looking man, Mackenzie. Very, very handsome. But you’re not exotic. You’re not special. There are a thousand other Mackenzies out there, looking just like you do. All of you very, very handsome. I can get you catalogue work and local ad campaigns. You know the drill. It can be a career, but I’m being honest with you. I don’t think you’re going to the top. You’re already too old for your type, to be honest. People want eighteen-year-old twinks; they don’t necessarily want what they turn into ten years later.

Carson had been talking about
advertisers
not wanting him anymore, but Mackenzie had still been tempted to pull out his wallet and flash Joe’s picture in the agent’s face.
Joe
wanted him. That was what mattered.

And Joe hadn’t been impressed with Mackenzie’s past as a kept boy.
I don’t want to date someone who chooses his fucks based on the size of their bank accounts
. Sure, they’d been in the process of breaking up when Joe had said that, but that didn’t mean the accusation wasn’t valid. Joe looked after himself
and
every orphan and stray that wandered into his environment; he wouldn’t have much respect for a grown man who couldn’t even make a living. And Mackenzie wanted Joe’s respect. He wanted to be Joe’s partner, not just another dependent.

So he smiled at the makeup artist and glowered at the photographer, trying to look dark and dangerous in his leather wear. He wondered if any of the material came from Joe’s cattle. “Does black leather come from black cows?” he asked one of the assistants while the photographer was monkeying with his camera. She looked at him like he was insane and stepped a little further away.