into Two Shot with white knuckles on the steering wheel. She wasn’t looking forward to this assignment, and worse yet, she couldn’t get hold of Kelsey. She’d tried to call her sister at work and they said she’d taken the day off.
Kelsey never missed work, any more than she missed any of Katie’s activities or play dates. Maybe she had one of her headaches. Up until now, she’d somehow held them off until the weekend.
Pulling up to the curb outside the trailer, Sarah threw the Malibu into park. Sure enough, Kelsey’s car was parked in the driveway. There was another vehicle there too—one Sarah had never seen before. It was a pickup, an old Chevy from the ’80s with a two-color paint job and chipped fenders. It was the kind of truck a cowboy drove when he wasn’t winning at the rodeos. Sarah stared at it a moment, foreboding roiling in her stomach.
No. It couldn’t be. Tossing her purse over her shoulder, she practically ran up the walk to the front door. Giving it three quick raps with her knuckles, she barged in.
Kelsey sat at the kitchen table, a cup of tea halfway to her lips. Kitty-corner from her, at the head of the table, sat Mike. He paused midmotion too, a forkful of Kelsey’s famous made-from-scratch coconut cake raised halfway to his lips.
Sarah hung onto the door frame, barely able to absorb what she was seeing. Mike hadn’t sent a support check in six months. Why the hell would Kelsey be feeding the bastard?
“Sarah!” Kelsey clanged the teacup down on its saucer and jumped to her feet, almost knocking her chair over backwards. “What’s wrong?” Her eyes widened. “You should be at work.”
Sarah ignored her and turned to Mike. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Eating.” He hoisted his fork in the air as if she might not have noticed the massive sugary slab in front of him, white cake with white frosting coated in snowy white coconut curls. “How ’bout you? You didn’t get fired, did you?”
“Of course not. I can’t afford to get fired.” She was ready to fling some real zingers at Mike, but Kelsey hooked the leg of a chair with one foot and jerked it out from under the table, almost tipping it over.
“Sit, Sarah. We need to talk.”
Sarah sat, a little stunned. Kelsey normally didn’t order her around.
“He’s been working,” Kelsey said. “All this time.”
“Working? Let me guess. At the rodeo?” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Eight seconds at a time? Or—wait a minute. You didn’t make the eight seconds most of the time, did you? It’s probably a challenge for you to ride that kitchen chair.”
He took the insults in stride. “No rodeo,” he said. “I’m working for the Carrigan Corp. Got a job on the oil rigs. We’ve been up north of Bismarck, building roads and digging trenches.”
Sarah glanced down at his hands. He’d always had the typical cowboy calluses on his riding hand, but now he had them on every finger. Grime was etched deeply into the whorls of his fingertips and the lines in his palms. They were the hands of a working man.
“I didn’t want to go,” he continued, setting down his fork. “I mean, I wanted to go. I felt like the marriage wasn’t working, and—well, that’s personal. I know she’s your sister, but what happens between Kelsey and me is none of your business.”
“I…”
“No.” He held up a hand with such an authoritative gesture she swallowed her retort. “We were married, me and Kelsey. You weren’t in that marriage, and you don’t know how things were between us. I left because it wasn’t working, but I always meant to take care of Katie. I just didn’t have any luck.”
“Or skill,” Sarah muttered. “You couldn’t stick the coin-operated pony at Walmart.”
“You think I don’t know that?” The anger in Mike’s tone surprised her. He was usually such a mild-mannered guy. “But there are no jobs here, Sarah. I couldn’t find a ranch job after the feed store closed, and rodeo was the only thing left. Kelsey didn’t want me to leave. She thought I ought to be in Katie’s life, and I think she was right, but that didn’t leave me a whole lot of choices.”
Sarah shifted in her chair, starting to feel uneasy. Maybe she’d made too many assumptions about Mike.
“I could only deal with losing for so long, even for Katie. Carrigan had a couple guys quit on ’em and they wanted workers right away.”