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.”
“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.”