Twice Upon a Time

Chapter Five

The sun was setting and another hot and humid day was behind Chase, his body was sore, he was physically and mentally exhausted. After talking with Don they decided to re-fence part of the lower half of the field in hopes to keep the cows in until they could get the other half fixed. Spending the rest of the day digging post holes and stringing barbed wire. Mentally though his mind was on Mckinnley and how upset she was.

After putting all of the tools away Chase decided he was going up to the big house to appolgize. He hated seeing a woman upset exspecially when he was the one who caused the hurt in the first place, even if he didn't intentionally mean to.

Chase came out of the barn to lock up when a something hard smacked into his body. Mckinnley stumbled back and Chase reached out to steady her. She stared right at his well defined broad chest under his sweat drenched shirt that had dried hard. Against her brain, her mouth went completely dry from the thought of what his chest looked like under that shirt.

She hesitently brought her fingertips up to the tattoo that was on his bicep, Chase watched as her hand went up in touch his sun kissed skin. Then her brain caught up with her other emotions as she dropped her hand quickly and stuffed them in her pockets of her jeans.

"I'm sorry" both quickly blurted out and then laughed.

"I'm sorry for being such a witch earlier, I had no right to bite off your head, that was completely uncalled for. By the way, I didn't tell Ashlyn the truth, I'm going to let her believe what she wants" Mckinnley stated as she twisted the toe of her boot into the dirt.

"I want to appolgize ma'am for upsetting you, I had no intentions to make you sad"

"Please call me Mckinnley, I hate being called ma'am" both smiled as she backed away from the barn to allow Chase to lock it up.

They walked around the barn to the part of the yard that had various lawn chairs that overlooked the land. Both sitting down, Mckinnley bringing a leg up to wrap her arms around, she thought Chase deserve the story from her before he heard bits and pieces from everyone else.

"As I'm sure you already know I was married at one time, Jack was his name. We had grew up in a small town like this in Kentucky and knew each other our whole lives. Well we fell in love, got married after college, and shortly after that he became ill. He was diagnosed with a gyloblastoma of the brain, which is an aggressive cancer to have. However, we fought it with chemo and radiation and it did work for a little while, but it came back and spread throughout his body. By that point I was pregnant with Ashlyn and we thought that we had all the time in the world." Mckinnley paused to try to control herself from crying in front of a almost perfect stranger.

Chase didn't know what came over him, seeing that Mckinnley was hurting and he wanted it to stop, or being selfish and wanting to be close to her and feel body next to his again. He stood up and took a couple of steps towards Mckinnley before she could object. Chase took her hand and pulled her up to her feet, wrapped his strong arms around her. At first Mckinnley stiffened like a board, she'd never been this close to another man since Jack. The steady drum of Chase's heart calmed her nerves and her body began to relax, she brought her arms around his body laying her hands flat on his back. His muscles twitched and rolled under her hands which made her relax even more, to feel as if his embrace was protecting her from everything that had been bothering her all these years.

Silent tears began to flow as they just stood there in silence, neither one having the nerve to say or move an inch. Minutes passed as crickets started their nightly chirp and bullfrog down by the river bed began bellowing. Mckinnley breathed in Chase's scent, she couldn't put her finger on it but the only way she could think of it was to call it work. He smelled of hard labor, sweat, sawdust, animal feed, and a bit of manure to her distaste. However mixed all together made a heavenly aroma that seemed to be made just for him.