Cowboy Take Me Away(150)
“See? You even turned the cookie-baking comment into another thing I’m doin’ wrong.”
“Being a little defensive, aren’t you?”
“Do you blame me? Whenever one of the boys does something that requires discipline, it falls on me. That ain’t fair. As I see it, you took the phone call from Karen’s mother, so you oughta talk to Colby and Colt about what happened.”
The confusion in her eyes made things clearer for him. She hated that her boys were growing up and keeping secrets from her, and she wanted to believe they’d done nothing wrong, but she was afraid to ask.
There were levels of wrong, but Carson didn’t believe for a second either of his sons would ever disrespect a girl or a woman and force her to do something she didn’t want to.
“Here’s where I’m at. Our boys are good-lookin’. You know it. I know it. They know it. Hell, everyone in town knows it. I’m betting Karen climbed into Colby’s pickup willingly, stripped off her clothes willingly, and had herself a good old time swimming buck-assed nekkid with our boys. But at some point she started feelin’ guilty about it. Or her mother got nosy, demanding to know what Karen had been up to and Karen didn’t want to admit she’d had fun, so she changed her story to one where the wild McKay boys forced her into getting naked and goin’ swimming with them.”
“I’m just supposed to chalk it up to boys being boys? Excuse my sons’ behavior because they’re McKays?”
“No, but it’ll go a long way in tryin’ to explain it.”
“You are an exasperating man, you know that? This is why you need to deal with this. I have no experience with this wild teenage behavior, Carson. None. And you do. Lots of experience.”
“If me’n Cal and Casper and Charlie had done half the crap that was blamed on us, we’d be in jail right now. Sundance is a small town, Carolyn. Rumors spread, and change so much that usually what the end person hears ain’t close to the truth of what really happened. This won’t be the only time we’ll hafta deal with it. So we’d better come up with a way that I don’t always end up bein’ the bad guy.”
“That’s how you see it?”
“Yep.”
“Bull.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Bull. I’ll agree when it comes to ranch work and chores you crack the whip. But how often do you have to do it? Hardly ever because the boys don’t want to disappoint you, or get extra chores for leaving things undone. Whereas I have to ask five times to get the garbage taken out, and then whichever boy deigns to do it, mutters about me being a nag. Same thing happens when I tell them to put away their clothes. Or to pick up their rooms. Or to help with the dishes. I can’t be the disciplinarian because they don’t listen to me. I’m just the nagging mother.”
“Caro, that’s not true.”
“It is.”
“How long has this been goin’ on?”
She rolled her eyes. “Years. So maybe I am using the gender argument when it comes to teenaged boys. But do you really believe they’ll have an open conversation with their mother about sex? Cord wouldn’t look me in the eye for two weeks after I found that Playboy magazine in the bathroom. He reacted the same way after that night at the Rusty Spur and I all but told him that fighting made you horny and you were about to ball my brains out in your truck.”
He sighed. “All right, all right, I get it. I’ll talk to them. But fair warning that if I do this, chances are slim Karen’s mother is getting an apology.”
Carolyn kissed his cheek. “Thank you. I’ll tell the skinny dipping twins you want to see them in your office.”
So that’s how Carson ended up having the sex talk with his sons. It helped that he’d had three shots of whiskey before the conversation started.
Getting summoned into Dad’s office sent the other kids scurrying upstairs to their rooms, because a trip to the office meant they were in big trouble.
Colby and Colt sat on the padded bench and the two of them nearly took up the entire thing. Carson remembered when he could line up all five boys on the bad bench.
“Have any idea why you’re both in here?”
A moment of silence followed.
Then Colt said, “I know I was drivin’ too fast. And I don’t have any excuse except I wanted to see how fast that truck would do a quarter mile. Colby was just along for the ride.”
Carson looked at Colby and the boy cracked like mud in the August sun.
“I know you said you didn’t want me on the back of a bull because I’d break my fool neck, but I had to try it one time. And Colt didn’t have nothin’ to do with it besides drivin’ me there and home.”