Long Time Gone - Lorelei James Page 0,10

is older than Kimi, his conscience chose to point out.

Kimi held her bottle of soda aloft. “To the happy couple. May the good times outweigh the bad.”

Strange toast, but he touched his glass to hers anyway and said, “Amen,” before taking a sip.

“So show me this porch swing. It’s not something I expected a bachelor to have.”

Cal took her hand, leading her through the kitchen and out the back door. “It came with the house.”

Kimi stopped on the edge of the cement patio. “Cal. This is so cool.”

The brick house had been built after the First World War. It wasn’t like other houses in rural Wyoming and he’d been secretly glad that Carson had given it over to him so easily. The entire area behind the house, half an acre deep, was ringed with lilac bushes that created a natural fence. The grass back here wasn’t the weed-like variety that surrounded the trailer, but thicker and softer like the manicured lawns in town. Although water was scarce, the man who’d owned the place had rigged up a windmill and pump that hooked into an irrigation system. None of it currently worked but once things slowed down the next couple of weeks, Cal planned on fixing it. “You like it?”

“I love it. It’s an oasis in the desert.” She pointed to the raised areas sectioned off with old railroad ties. “Are all of those flower beds?”

“I guess some were vegetable gardens. The man we bought it from said he’d let everything go after his wife died because it was too hard to be out here in her domain without her. Even seeing it now, I imagine this place was really something.”

Kimi got right in his face. “Promise me you’ll take care of it and get it back to the way it used to be. Even if you have to ask Carolyn to help you. She knows a lot about flowers and gardening.”

“Maybe I don’t want her to see it, so she won’t get it in her head that she wants to move in, and I’ll be back in the trailer,” he retorted.

She laughed. But then she grew somber. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Cal sipped his whiskey. “Yep. I’ve never had anything that was just mine. Carson and Dad were more interested in the Ag land to give the house and the barn more than a passing glance. They saw a sagging roof, busted windows and space that’d become a critter habitat. I saw more.” Why had he admitted that? And how did he know Kimi wouldn’t blab all this to her sister the second she got the chance?

But she was intuitive. Her gaze softened. “I promise your secret garden is safe with me, Cal McKay.” She tugged on his hand. “Let’s sit on the swing and you can tell me all about your plans for this place, because I know you’ve got them.”

Nosy little thing. But he was amused by her insistence rather than annoyed. After they’d settled in the swing, she asked a million questions, offered suggestions and generally entertained the hell out of him. She was sweet and funny and real.

Talk shifted to their families. Kimi spoke of her mother’s health problems with detachment, but Cal didn’t blame her. It sounded as if there’d been a disconnect between mother and youngest daughter for more than half of Kimi’s life. She said even less about her father. She did talk about her brothers, and seemed both resigned and grateful that she wasn’t closer to them.

“What about your mom?” she prompted.

“She died suddenly when me’n Carse were eighteen. Dad turned his grief into anger and somehow that ended up aimed at us.”

“That stinks.”

“Yeah. I guess Dad didn’t consider that we’d lost something too. After six months of dealin’ with that shit, Carson decided we needed to move out on our own.”

The chains on the swing creaked as they set it to moving again.

“We?” she asked.

“Yep. The McKay twins are a matched set.”

“Do you do everything your brother wants?” Right after Kimi said it, she tensed, as if she expected him to bristle.

“Usually. Not because I ain’t got a backbone or my own opinion, but because he’s usually right. Our dad might be in charge, but Carson sees the whole picture. What’s important now and how it’ll change years down the road. I ain’t gonna argue with him just to show my ignorance like our brother Casper does. But if Carson is in the wrong, I ain’t afraid to tell him so.”

“You two