Page 40 of Homecoming Heartbreaker

Guilt and annoyance replaced excitement. “I try to keep family and work separate.”

Molly rolled her eyes and made sure he saw her dramatic gesture. “Thousands might believe you. I don’t.”

“Drop it, Mol,” Mack growled.

That wasn’t going to happen. “Why are you three still not talking? It’s ridiculous, Mack!”

Mack made a show of looking around the empty, decrepit building. “How did we go from talking about this barn to my family?” he asked, his tone suggesting that she back down.

She never had and never would.

“Why aren’t you and your brothers talking, Mack?” Molly persisted.

Mack started to walk away but Molly placed her hand on his roped-with-muscle forearm. She ignored the flash of heat and the corresponding lust. This was more important than the still-bubbling desire.

“I confided in you, Mack.”

She had him there and he knew it.

“We do talk.”

That was such a lie. “I’m not talking about quick conversations about Jameson and you know it. You guys were tight, best friends as well as brothers, but now you are little more than strangers.”

“Yeah, well, nearly killing them in a car crash tends to change the dynamic,” Mack muttered, grief and regret coating the bitter words.

Had he spent the past fifteen years blaming himself? Surely not? Molly chose her next words carefully. “Mack, it was an accident. Everyone knows that.”

When his eyes met hers Molly saw, for the first time, the guilt lodged deep in his soul.

“I lost control, Molly, and the blame is mine to shoulder. I was behind the wheel. I put that truck into the ditch.”

“I was told you were all arguing, that you were distracted,” Molly protested.

Mack’s expression turned hard and she could feel him pulling back, creating distance between them. “I am the oldest—”

“By months, for God’s sake!”

Mack ignored her interruption. “—and I was responsible for looking after them, for their safety. I failed and Travis nearly died. I lost my right to a family because I failed to look after them. I allowed myself to be distracted, to lose control andit will never happen again.”

Wow. Mack had always been hard on himself but this was ridiculous. “You are being insanely tough on yourself.”

“No, I’m really not.”

Molly frowned, hearing the subtext beneath that hard statement. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Leave it alone, Molly.” Mack turned to walk toward the door but Molly ran to stand between him and the door, stretching her arms out wide to create a barrier between him and the exit.

Mack sent her a “get real” look. “Molly, I’m bigger and stronger than you and could just lift you up and out of my way.”

Molly dropped her arms. “Yeah, of course you could.” Her eyes clashed with his and she sighed at all the pain in those deep, dark depths. “Tell me, Mack.”

She wanted to know; the curiosity was killing her. But more important, she sensed that, like her theft, this was a piece of the past that needed to see the light.

“My mom died at childbirth.”

She knew that. He’d been raised by his dad until he was seven. One day, his father dropped him off at school and never bothered to collect him. Mack never heard from him again.

“I know, Mack,” Molly replied, keeping her tone gentle and nonconfrontational.

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