Cowboy Take Me Away(149)
It’d be another fifteen minutes before he could pay Carolyn his hourly visit. He watched the comings and goings of the vehicles in the parking lot below. A fixer upper old Ford truck screeched into the lot. A teenaged boy hopped out of the driver’s side and held the door as a blonde girl slid out, her high heels connecting with concrete. They indulged in a passionate kiss and a quick round of grab ass. Then after the couple cleared the tailgate, another boy exited the passenger side and joined them. The guys looked enough alike that they had to be brothers. The girl turned and laid a sloppy wet kiss on the second boy, keeping the first boy’s arm looped around her waist and the other boy’s arm draped over her shoulder.
Even in his wild youth he’d never shared a girl with Cal—it seemed creepy, in his opinion—but it wasn’t for lack of offers. And if the rumors were true, his sons and his nephews had no such dilemma about sharing a woman or two. Or three.
Thank heaven those days worrying what his boys were up to were long behind him, because his sons were too damn young when they’d started sweet talking girls out of their clothing.
Carson still remembered how the first phone call about those wild McKay boys had turned Carolyn’s world upside down. Like Cord and AJ, they’d been in a similar disagreement about which of their boys many sins were his responsibility to deal with…
The door to the machine shed slammed.
“Carson.”
Not the hey let’s go upstairs and roll around between the sheets tone he was hoping for from his wife whenever she sought him out. “Yeah?”
“Do you have any idea what your sons did?”
He hated conversations that started like this. “What?”
“Colby and Colt lied to us last night. They weren’t at youth bingo night at the church.”
“Where’d they go?”
“They picked up Karen Ayers and went to the lake. Get this; they convinced her since we’re born naked that God prefers everyone swim naked as a way to honor him.”
“And the girl fell for that cheesy line?”
“Yes! So both of our sons spent the evening frolicking naked, at a public lake, with a sixteen-year-old girl!”
Oh hell. He tried not to laugh and focused on fixing the lawn mower engine that’d crapped out again.
“Carson McKay. This is not funny. I received a very angry phone call from Karen’s mother, demanding an apology from us, for letting our sons run wild. And an apology from our sons, to her and her daughter, for taking advantage of Karen.”
“How’d Karen’s mother find out about Karen sneakin’ off and goin’ skinny dippin’ in the name of God with Colby and Colt? Because I doubt either of them boys were dumb enough to walk her to the door afterward when they were dripping wet.”
“That is not the point! Did you even hear a word I said?”
He looked up at her. Yes, his wife was mad as hell, but she’d always been so damn cute whenever she got her dander up, so he was having a real hard time not planting a kiss on that pouty mouth. “What is the point?”
“Your sons are running wild.”
“Sugar, they’re teenage boys. They’re gonna go a little wild sometimes. See what they can get away with. They’ll do dumb shit. Same as we all did.”
“You’re excusing their behavior?”
“No.” He stood and twisted his neck side to side to alleviate the throbbing in his head. “How did Karen’s mother find out about her daughter’s trip to the lake with the McKay boys? The town gossips?”
“I guess Karen confessed everything to her mother this morning.”
“Everything? Was skinny dippin’ all those three got up to last night? Or did something else happen?”
Her eyes widened. “You mean, like, did one of the boys have sex with her?”
“Did you ask Colby or Colt if they were messing around with her?” He didn’t add: or if both of them were? At the same time?
“No. I came straight here to talk to you about this situation so you could deal with them.”
That’s when Carson lost his sense of humor. He wiped his hands on a greasy rag. “Why does this fall on me? Because I’ve got a dick? Or because I almost talked you into skinny dippin’ with me when we were young and wild so I oughta know a young man’s mind?”
She threw up her hands. “What has gotten into you?”
“Caro, I’m serious. I wanna know why when the boys do something wrong, that doesn’t have to do with the ranch, I have to be the hardass about it and you get to swoop in and bake them goddamned cookies.”
“If you ever stepped foot in the kitchen to actually cook something for your children, I might be able to laugh at that comment.”