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“Then no, I don’t remember.”
Proof positive, and a reminder to Elsie that her crush had always been one-sided. She certainly didn’t need to rekindle it now.
“Well,” Kye prodded her. “How did we meet?”
Elsie took a sip of her soup. It was thick and spicy, warm with cheese and comfort—which were sometimes indistinguishable from one another. “As long as you don’t remember, I can say anything, can’t I? I saved you from a burning building, and it’s quite ungrateful of you to forget about it.”
Kye’s lips quirked in a familiar way. “No, I’m sure I would remember that.”
“Think harder…the smoke, the heat, the flames licking around you.”
He took a casual sip of his water. “I believe what you’re actually describing is Hell. I’ve been there several times but don’t recall ever seeing you there.”
“Oh, I’ve been there many times,” Elsie said. “It’s always a lovely reprieve from the Montana winters.”
Both of Kye’s parents laughed at that. “True enough,” Mr. McBride said.
Kye’s gaze was steady on Elsie. “So where did we actually meet?”
She had to tell him, even though she didn’t want to. “When I was eight you came over to tutor Carson. After a while, you went to play basketball, and I wanted to play too. Carson told me to go away, but you said I could be on your team. You put me on your shoulders.”
Mrs. McBride let out an appreciative sigh. “That’s so sweet.” She patted Kye’s arm. “It’s nice to know you were kind to someone’s sister since you were rarely kind to your own.”
“I was frequently kind to Celeste,” Kye said.
Mrs. McBride kept patting his arm. “Oh, I’m just teasing.” She turned to Elsie confidently. “He wasusuallykind to his sister. I always told my boys you could tell how a man would treat his wife by the way he treated his sister.”
“Poor Olivia,” Elsie said, referring to Carson’s fiancé. “Maybe I should warn her about that deer head Carson kept hiding in my bedroom.” One Christmas, Elsie’s parents had been given a mounted deer head from some relatives. Elsie had thought the thing was horrible and said they shouldn’t keep it, which had been an invitation for her brothers to hide it in places she would find it—her bed, her shower, her closet, and the back of their car.
Kye raised a finger of recognition. “I do remember the deer head. I probably should confess that it was my idea to put it in your fridge. Took Carson and me a good half an hour to clear out the space for it.”
“Really?” Elsie asked with a smile of her own. “Well, I absolve you for it. My mother was the one who found it that time. I think that’s what finally convinced her to get rid of it.”
Mrs. McBride shook her head at her son. “A deer head in the fridge? Someone should be warning Lisa about you.”
Kye went back to his dinner. “Totally unnecessary. Besides, I don’t think you canreallyjudge a man by how he treats his sisters.”
Mrs. McBride finished off a bite of her sandwich. “Then how should you judge him?”
“By the way he treats his students,” Elsie supplied. She shouldn’t have said it. It was too close to admitting that the memory of Kye rejecting her still stung.
“In that case,” Kye said, “I have nothing to worry about. I’ve always treated my students well.”
Is that the way he saw it? Granted, maybe by law, he’d had to reject her, but he hadn’t needed to do it so heartlessly—accusing her of trying to get him fired and emphasizing it had always been one-sided between them. Hadn’t he ever heard of the phrase “I’m flattered, but I just want to be friends”?
Mrs. McBride spooned a second helping of potato salad on her plate. “I’d say you’ve treated some of your students a fair sight better than they’ve treated you.” She offered the bowl to Elsie. “The shenanigans those kids come up with.”
Elsie felt her cheeks warm. Shenanigans like throwing yourself at your teacher? Was Mrs. McBride about to make the connection? Well, it served Elsie right. She should’ve kept her mouth shut. She should’ve said nothing during the meal except, “My, this food is good. Thank you.”
Mrs. McBride offered Elsie seconds of the potato salad, but Elsie declined. She wasn’t hungry, and the sooner dinner ended, the better.
“Skipping school,” Mrs. McBride went on, “cheating, trying to forge parent’s notes—it’s amazing the school can get anybody to teach these days.”
Mr. McBride leaned forward to take the potato salad from his wife. “Kye won’t have to put up with it much longer. Every year I get more useless. Soon Kye will have to run the entire ranch.” He put a couple of dollops of the salad on his plate. “I suppose dealing with all those kids is good practice for herding ornery cattle.”
“Not all the kids are bad,” Kye said, probably for her benefit. “Some are great. And some…” his gaze was back on her, “some stay with you.”
Why did he say things like that? Was he teasing her? Pitying her? Or was she reading things into his words that weren’t there? Maybe he was talking about all of the students who hadn’t kissed him.
