Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons by Elaine Coffman Page A

brothers, Nicholas, Tavis, and Ross. Strangely enough, in spite of the constant bickering and fighting between them, they were fiercely loyal and close to one another. If they had thought about having a motto, it would have been: “I can do it to my brother, but nobody else can.”
    As time had passed, the friction, the tendency for the twins to disagree violently was still there, but the number of fist fights diminished. Alex and Adrian still found themselves locked in frequent battles, but usually of a nature that could be settled by talking, with a good fist fight thrown in every now and then—if for no other reason than to just clear the air.
    But today Adrian wasn’t feeling like talking. For weeks his ire had been rising toward Alex and some things needed settling. It had been quite a spell since they’d had a fight and cleaned the slate, and on top of that, fighting had gotten to be such a habit with him and Alex that he couldn’t conceive not having one every now and then.
    Early the next afternoon, Alex, having finished his chores, was riding over to the Simon place when he saw someone standing all alone in the middle of the pasture. From this distance he couldn’t tell if it was Karin or Katherine, but figured it had to be one or the other. He turned his horse in the woman’s direction. When he drew close enough to speak, he didn’t, for there was something about the way Katherine was standing there looking like the tight bud of a four o’clock before the flower opens in the late afternoon. Something was wrong.
    He rode closer, and dismounting, spoke her name. “Katherine?”
    She was turned away from him, but he could tell by the way her body was all hunched forward that she had been crying. Seeing her like this, with the sun so brilliant all about her, she seemed no more than a vapor, a fairy spirit that guarded this particular pasture. “Katherine?” he called again and stepped to her side. He saw then what had caused her distress. Lying before her like a crushed petal was a fawn, its huge brown eyes open and starting to cloud, a gaping hole just behind one ear where the blood had already dried.
    “Why?” she sobbed. “Why would anyone shoot a fawn?”
    He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her against him, feeling surprised that she wasn’t as hefty as he expected. In truth, she was more narrow in the shoulders than Karin. He looked down at the gleaming head, not red and not really brown, but a color that lay somewhere in between. Another thought struck him: Karin would have never noticed a dead fawn in the pasture, much less paused to grieve over it. “Don’t cry, Kath. It won’t do the fawn any good.”
    “I know, but it’s so little. See? It still has its spots. Why would anyone kill it?”
    “Maybe something happened to the mother and they killed it to keep it from being orphaned.” He began looking around, then spying an area not too far away where the grass had been trampled, he took her hand. “Come on.”
    He pulled her along with him like a child would pull a toy on a string, and she followed just as silently. “See?” he said, pointing.
    She followed with her eyes. “Blood.”
    “Quite a bit of it. See, here’s where it came down. Then it was pulled over here. There are tracks here. Two horses. And the marks of a man’s boot. He must have killed it then loaded it on the other horse here.”
    “A deer?”
    “Probably a doe. He must have discovered the fawn in the grass where she’d left it hidden.” His arm came around her. “Poor Kath, don’t take on so. It was a mercy killing. The hunter didn’t want the fawn to slowly starve to death.”
    “It was murder!” she sobbed against his shirt.
    “After you’ve had time to think on it, you’ll feel differently.”
    She pulled back and looked at him, the sight wrenching his heart. “No, I won’t. I won’t ever forget the way it looked, Alex. It was so sm-sm-small.” Her tears were coming harder now, running