Big Sky Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

why I didn’t go into the trees
without a saddle. I know my own limits.”
    “Fun?” he nearly choked on the word. “These are work horses.
They’re not for your own personal riding pleasure.”
    Mackenna laughed, pricking his temper even more. “You are so
wrong,” she said, “and what’s more, you need to lighten up. Maybe if you
actually had a little fun in your life you wouldn’t hate it so much.”
    “Stop making this about me,” he said.
    “How about I just stop this conversation completely?”
    With that she strode angrily past him, ignoring his red face
and sputters. Kelly walked timidly past Brent in all his fury and then ran to
catch up to Mackenna. She looped her arm around her friend’s and leaned in to
speak.
    “What do you think that was all about?” Kelly asked.
    “I think that guy is way too full of himself,” she answered,
still irritated. “Seriously, how did he become Ty’s best friend? He’s
got zero personality. What a depressing stick in the mud!”
    Mackenna was too engrossed in her rant that she failed to
notice that Brent was right on their heels. At her last declaration, he sped up
and stormed past them without so much as a look. The
girls stopped, Kelly with a gasp.
    “He heard you, Mackenna,” she breathed in horror.
    Guilt settled into her stomach like a stone and she winced.
    “Damn.”

 

Chapter 5
    For a week Mackenna and Brent spoke only what needed to be
spoken in the context of their work and in all ways possible avoided one
another. She pitted her anger against her guilt at first, talking herself out of apologizing on more than one occasion, but it
was not to be borne. She considered herself a generally happy person and could
not bear the rot of negativity. While she felt justifiably angry at him for
patronizing her, slinging insults was gratuitously hurtful and not her style.
    She couldn’t understand why the two of them laughed like old
pals one minute and grated like sandpaper the next. She was generally
well-liked and never had this much trouble befriending a person. And she had
never, ever known someone so moody.
    The night before their first official day of work was spent
in the usual tradition around a bonfire with plenty of live music, dancing, and
chili with cornbread. Brent had indulged in three helpings of the meal and was
sitting on the ground, his back against a bench while he stretched his legs out
before him and laced his fingers behind his head.
    He watched several of the McCrae women and children do-se-do
and clap to the sounds of plucking guitar strings and fiddles. Kelly flung her
curls around and swayed her hips for his benefit, he knew. She laughed wildly
and did everything to flatter herself and her features. She was good, he
thought to himself, but it was the fact that she was good that put him off. She
tried too hard, and that didn’t appeal to him. He didn’t like being pursued. He
wanted to be the pursuer. He decided that he could appreciate her beauty without
succumbing to it.
    Mackenna watched him eye her best friend and felt an
unfamiliar sadness that she neither understood nor indulged. She had never
begrudged Kelly her beauty or her male conquests and she wasn’t about to start
now. The only thing she wanted from Brent was his friendship, she told herself,
but even as she admired his relaxed profile from her place near the food table,
the sudden rush of heat to her throat and cheeks told her it wasn’t altogether
true.
    His hardness and his masculinity tugged at her physical
awareness. Before then she’d only been surrounded by the middle-aged men of her
father’s acquaintance and the scrawny pock-marked boys of high school. Here was
a man in the middle and even when his words infuriated her she couldn’t stop
herself from admiring the slight slant of his bright eyes when he narrowed them
at her, the firm line of his jaw when he clenched his teeth, or even worse, the
relaxed sensuality of his lips when he smiled.
    Everything