Читать книгу McKettrick's Pride - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

EXPLORING THE INSIDE OF the shop with Avalon padding alongside for company, Echo had the inevitable second thoughts. Bringing the place up to her modest standards would take a considerable chunk of her cash reserves, which had been dwindling steadily since she’d made the decision to relocate.

She’d had a good job in the Windy City, planning and staging fund-raisers for an art gallery, a tiny apartment with a view of the lake, and a growing online business that had filled her lonely evenings, though she still wasn’t making a profit.

Now she ran her fingertips across a dusty shelf, toward the back of the very small store. Her reasons for leaving Chicago—a nasty breakup she couldn’t seem to get over, and the fact that her life had become sterile, without any discernible dimensions—seemed downright reckless in retrospect.

Had she made a mistake?

Avalon gazed up at her with that singular and unquestioning devotion only dogs can manage.

Pets hadn’t been allowed in her building. The management didn’t want stains on the carpets, or scratch marks on the doors. Not to mention barking, though the flight attendants in 4-B had made enough noise to rival an animal shelter at feeding time.

“Sterile,” Echo mused aloud, feeling a little better. “Real life is supposed to be messy.”

Avalon made a sound Echo took as full agreement.

They trekked upstairs, woman and dog, for a look at their new living quarters. The area consisted of two rooms, counting the miniscule bath, but the place had a certain run-down charm, with its uneven hardwood floors and big windows overlooking the street at one end and the alley at the other.

Avalon’s toenails clicked on the floor as she explored, sniffing the stove, checking out the claw-foot bathtub, standing on her hind legs, forepaws resting on the sill, to look out the front windows.

“A little soap and water,” Echo said, hoisting up one of the rear windows to let in some fresh air, “and we’re golden.”

Again, Avalon seemed to agree.

They spent the next ten minutes hauling things in from the car—suitcases, the air mattress and accompanying bedding, Echo’s laptop, and the various accoutrements of dog-care she’d purchased that morning at the discount store.

“We need cleaning supplies,” Echo told Avalon. It worried her a little, this new habit of conversing with a dog, but the truth was, she’d been alone so long, she’d stored up a lot of words. “And food.”

She filled Avalon’s new water bowl at the sink—thankfully, Cora hadn’t shut off the services—and set it on the floor. While the dog lapped, she poured kibble into a second bowl and put that down, too.

While Avalon crunched industriously at her bowl, Echo dumped the folded air bed out of the box, plugged in the attached pump and watched as the thing inflated.

“Definitely like camping,” she said, remembering Rianna’s words with a little smile.

But thoughts of Rianna led straight to Rianna’s father, and Echo’s smile dissolved. There was something distinctly unsettling about Rance McKettrick—besides his surly temperament. His good looks were almost overpowering, and everything about him, including his car, said money.

Echo had nothing against money, but in her experience, people who had it were used to getting what they wanted, and if somebody got in their way, too bad.

She thrust out a sigh. She was being unfair.

She knew nothing about Rance McKettrick, really, except that he was a widower with two beautiful children, to whom he did not pay enough attention. He was wealthy, and way too handsome and he exuded the kind of uncompromising masculinity that both attracted Echo and made her want to run the other way.

Rance McKettrick was not Justin St. John.

He was not the man who had betrayed her and broken her heart.

Best she remember that, and at the same time keep her distance.

She had her shop now. She had a plan for the future, and her Web site was getting more hits every day. She had Avalon, even though the arrangement was probably temporary.

For now, today, she was doing just fine.

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT costs to keep a Lear jet idling on a runway?” Keegan snapped as Rance boarded the sleek company plane.

Jesse, wearing his usual jeans, boots and western shirt, just smirked and took a sip of whatever he was drinking. He’d always been laid-back, Jesse had, but now that he’d hooked up with the lovely Cheyenne Bridges, and put a big, glittering diamond on her finger, he gave new meaning to the term.

He was getting regular sex, and it showed in his eyes and the easy way he wore his skin.

Rance felt a twinge of envy. There had been plenty of women since he’d got over the worst of mourning Julie, but he couldn’t recall one of their faces in that moment, let alone any of their names.

Echo Wells floated into his mind, all gossamer and smooth. He recalled the tendrils of fair hair escaping from her braid, especially around her temples, and the way she’d smelled of some faint, flowery perfume.

He shook the recollection off.

No sense heading down that trail.

If ever a woman was wrong for him, it was Echo Wells, with her pink obsession and her grouchy dog and that dumb crystal hanging from her rearview mirror.

She probably read tarot cards and danced naked under the moon.

He smiled a little. Not an entirely unpleasant thought, if you left out the tarot cards.

“I don’t give a damn what it costs to keep a jet idling on a runway,” he told Keegan, settling into one of the plush leather seats and buckling up. “I’m rich, remember?”

“What else is new?” Jesse asked, and he seemed a little wistful as he turned to look out the plane window. Probably missing his lady, Rance reflected, with an utter lack of sympathy.

“Well,” Rance said, as the pilot appeared in the doorway of the cockpit, looking for a nod to take off, which Keegan promptly gave, “I’ll tell you what’s new, cousin. A hippie woman bought the shop next to Cora’s. She drives a neon-pink car and wears sneakers to match.”

Both Jesse and Keegan looked at him with interest, Keegan frowning, Jesse smiling a little.

“I like my women a little broad in the beam,” Jesse said.

“Oh, right,” Keegan countered irritably. Somebody had sure pissed on his parade that morning. It pleased Rance to think it might have been him. “Like Cheyenne. The woman has a body that won’t quit.”

The engines revved, and the jet taxied down the strip, picking up speed.

Jesse grinned. “Eat your heart out,” he said.

“You do need a woman,” Rance told Keegan. “A little nookie might mellow you out.”

Keegan glowered. “The kind you’re getting?” he retorted.

“Boys, boys,” Jesse put in, grinning that Jesse-grin that often made Rance want to put a fist down his throat, “you’ve both got perpetual hard-ons. That’s your problem.”

Both Rance and Keegan glared at Jesse.

He laughed.

“I do not have a hard-on,” Keegan said.

“Not where it shows,” Jesse countered.

Rance’s thoughts strayed back to Echo, and he started imagining what might be under that soft, almost see-through dress of hers.

He shifted in the seat and crossed his legs.

“This meeting had better be good,” he said, desperate to change the subject, along with his developing thought trend. “I’m missing Rianna’s birthday for it.”

“Tell me you remembered to get her a present,” Jesse said. He looked serious now, and Rance recalled what Cora had said, about how Jesse paid more attention to the girls than he did, and it rankled.

“Of course I did,” he lied. He’d call Myrna Terp, back in the Indian Rock office, first chance he got, and ask her to order something, have it delivered in time for the party at Sierra and Travis’s place, out on the ranch. A pony, maybe. Or one of those kid-size cars that ran on a battery pack.

Preferably pink.

He felt better, and unaccountably disturbed.

He’d never bought anything pink in his life.

“How’s Devon?” Jesse asked, turning to Keegan. Devon was Keegan’s ten-year-old daughter, and since the divorce, he didn’t see much of her. She lived in Flagstaff, with the ex, who was threatening to move to Europe with a boyfriend and take the kid with her.

Rance ached a little, thinking what that would be like.

Keegan let out a long sigh, and his broad shoulders, a McKettrick family trait, seemed to sag a little. He shoved a hand through his chestnut-colored hair and gazed down at the tastefully carpeted floor of the jet.

“Travis is picking her up Saturday afternoon, so she can go to Rianna’s party,” Keegan answered, and when he looked up, his face was glum. Travis, now their cousin Sierra’s husband, was a lawyer for McKettrickCo and a childhood friend to all of them, though he was closest to Jesse. “Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it, missing all the stuff we do?” Keegan asked.

“Duh,” Jesse said. He’d never held down a real job in his life. He was a trust fund baby, like the rest of the McKettrick men, and up until he’d run into Cheyenne Bridges again, he’d spent most of his time playing Texas Hold ’Em, chasing women and riding horses. Keegan and Rance had worked since they graduated from college, because it seemed like the right and responsible thing to do. Still, Rance sometimes wondered if Jesse didn’t have the best of it, and he suspected that Keegan asked himself the same question he’d just voiced, in the dark hours of a lonely night.

“Cora gave me hell for leaving,” Rance admitted. “There’s Rianna’s birthday, and Maeve was supposed to get braces put on her teeth on Monday morning.” He paused, shook his head. “I can see why missing the party is a problem, but I’ll be damned if I understand why I ought to be in the orthodontist’s office instead of my own.”

Jesse shook his head. “Because,” he said, “kids are scared of dentists.”

“Maeve isn’t scared of anything,” Rance replied, with some pride.

“That’s what you think,” Jesse said.

Rance studied him, alarmed. “Is there something going on with my daughter that I ought to know about?” he asked, putting a slight emphasis on the words my daughter.

“Why don’t you ask her?” Jesse replied.

“Listen, if she told you something was troubling her, I want to know about it.”

“Do you?” Jesse asked.

“Hell, yes, I do!”

Jesse relented. “You missed her recital. Everybody else’s dad was there—except you.”

“I’ve watched that kid twirl batons for hours on end,” Rance protested. “That’s about all she ever does.”

“Not the same,” Jesse argued coolly. “She had a special outfit for the shindig, and she won a ribbon. She wanted you there, Rance.”

“Well, you were obviously there,” Rance growled.

Jesse nodded, showing no signs of backing down. “Cheyenne and I both went. Took her and Rianna to the Roadhouse afterward, for ice cream. Do you know what the worst part was, Rance? Watching that kid try to pretend it didn’t matter that you couldn’t be bothered to show up.”

The pressurized air seemed to crackle.

“Hold it, both of you,” Keegan said.

“I don’t need some poker-playing, bronc-riding womanizer telling me how to raise my daughter,” Rance bit out.

“You sure as hell need somebody,” Jesse replied, “because you’re not getting it on your own.”

“Enough,” Keegan insisted. “We’re on a jet, not out behind the barn.”

Rance sighed angrily and thrust himself back in his seat.

Jesse turned to look out the window again.

They were landing outside San Antonio before anybody said another word.

ON SATURDAY MORNING, three days after her daddy had left town with her uncles, Keegan and Jesse, Rianna McKettrick opened her eyes and lay very still in her twin-size canopy bed at Granny’s place on Zane Gray Road.

In the bed across from hers, Maeve went on sleeping, breathing softly.

“I’m seven,” Rianna wanted to say, right out loud. “Last night, when I went to bed, I was only six. Now, this morning, I’m seven.”

It seemed a wonderful thing, a thing people ought to be told.

She knew Maeve would just roll her eyes and look at her like she was stupid. It made Rianna sad. The bigger Maeve got, the less she seemed to like her little sister, and try though she might, Rianna couldn’t catch up.

It took some of the fun out of being seven.

With a sigh, she sat up, tossed back her covers and slid out of bed. She padded into the bathroom she and Maeve shared when they were at Granny’s, which was just about all the time. She’d heard her daddy say that they all ought to stay out at the ranch house, but Granny didn’t like to be that far from the Curl and Twirl.

Granny was a businesswoman. She had things to do.

All grown-up people did, it seemed to Rianna. All the time.

She washed her hands and headed for the stairs.

Granny would be down there in the kitchen, listening to the radio and waiting for the coffee to brew. Rianna could smell the familiar aroma already, and that made her sad, too. It reminded her of her daddy. The first thing he did, every morning when they were at home on the ranch, was make coffee.

Last night, after Granny had tucked her and Maeve in, listened to their prayers and left the room, Rianna had whispered to her sister that she thought Daddy might come to the party, after all. He had that jet to travel in, didn’t he?

“Forget it,” Maeve had said. “He won’t be there. He’s busy.”

Remembering, Rianna paused on the stairway, doing her McKettrick-best not to cry. She wished she had a mommy, like the other kids at school.

She thought of Echo—Miss Wells, Granny said to call her—with her sparkly smile and pretty hair. It would be a fine thing to have a mother like Miss Wells, driving a pink Barbie car, pulling up in front of the elementary school and waiting to see Rianna and Maeve come out the door. Taping their drawings and arithmetic papers to the front of the fridge.

Rianna’s throat ached, and her eyes burned so bad she couldn’t see for a moment.

“Rianna, honey?” It was Granny, standing at the bottom of the stairs with the newspaper in one hand, looking up at her. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

Rianna swallowed hard, summoned up a smile and went the rest of the way down the steps. “I’m seven,” she announced.

Granny smiled, leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Patted her lightly on one shoulder. “You surely are,” she agreed. “You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

“Maeve says I’m a dweeb,” Rianna confided solemnly.

Granny bent a little more and hugged her tight. She smelled of lilacs, just like always. “Don’t you pay too much attention to the things Maeve says,” Granny told her. “She’s growing up, just like you are, and sometimes that’s hard. It makes a person crabby.”

“Was my mommy ever crabby when she was growing up?” Rianna, unlike Maeve, had no memory of her mother. She wished she had, because then there might not have been a big hole opening up in the middle of her chest when she saw moms hugging their little girls, gathering them up like chicks, loading them into minivans.

Granny’s face softened. “Oh, yes,” she answered, and her voice sounded kind of funny, like she’d swallowed something and couldn’t quite get it to go all the way down. “Sometimes she was. Mostly, though, she was happy. She was smart and beautiful, too, just like you and Maeve.”

Rianna had heard those things before, many times, but she never got tired of listening. “How come Daddy isn’t happy?” she asked.

Granny’s face changed again, but it was different from before. It made Rianna wish she hadn’t asked. Maybe Maeve was right. Maybe she asked too many questions. But how else was she supposed to find things out? It wasn’t as if people told a kid anything much—beyond “Brush your teeth” and “Do your homework—” without a lot of prodding.

“He works too hard,” Granny said. “And he misses your mama something fierce.”

“I miss her, too,” Rianna said. Maeve might have mocked her, said she couldn’t miss Mommy because she’d been too young when she died, but Granny seemed to understand.

“She’d want you to have a real happy birthday,” Granny said.

Maeve appeared at the top of the stairs, still in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand. She yawned. “Is breakfast ready?”

“I’m seven,” Rianna burst out, unable to contain the stupendous news.

“Big deal,” Maeve said.

“Maeve McKettrick,” Granny scolded, “if you’re going to be snotty, go back to bed.” She turned to Rianna again and smiled. “Meanwhile,” she went on, “there just might be a pile of presents waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Rianna’s spirits rose. She liked presents.

Maeve came grudgingly down the stairs.

“You think you’re a teenager,” Rianna whispered, waiting until Granny went on into the kitchen, to pay Maeve back a little for thinking it wasn’t important to be seven. For one thing, Rianna reasoned, it was the only way to get from six to eight. “Just because you’re getting braces.”

“At least I’m not a baby,” Maeve sniffed. “Like you.”

Rianna clenched her fists at her sides. “I’m not a baby!”

Granny doubled back. She said she had eyes in the back of her head, and sometimes Rianna believed her. Imagined them peering out through the hard-sprayed fluff of hair.

“That will be quite enough,” Granny said. “This is a beautiful day, and we’re all going to be nice to one another.”

There was a big stack of presents by Rianna’s plate, all of them tied up with ribbon, and that took her mind off mean Maeve calling her a baby. She wondered out loud if any of them were from her daddy.

Granny’s mouth pulled in tight again, but only for a second. “He had something sent to the ranch,” she said. “Myrna Terp called me and told me so.”

Mrs. Terp worked at McKettrickCo, and always slipped Maeve and Rianna cookies and hard candy in little twisty wrappers when they visited, while their daddy pretended not to notice.

“I hope it’s a dog,” Rianna said.

“As if,” Maeve said.

“Maeve,” Granny finished.

Maeve rolled her eyes. She did that a lot. Rianna figured one of these days they’d pop right out of her head, like in a cartoon, and roll around on the floor.

“Maybe it’s a mommy,” Rianna said.

“You can’t buy a mother, stupid,” Maeve answered, but at another look from Granny, she bit her lower lip, pulled back a chair at the table and sank into it hard.

“Land sakes, Maeve,” Granny muttered, “I can hardly wait until you’re sixteen.” She didn’t sound like she meant it, though. That was another thing about grown-ups; they were always saying one thing when they meant something else entirely.

Rianna inspected the present on top of the pile. “Can I open it?”

“Eat your breakfast first,” Granny said. She dished up Rianna’s favorite, French toast, with blueberries and whipped cream on top. There was milk, too, and orange juice. Rianna was afraid she’d be eight before she got to open her presents.

After breakfast, she ripped in.

A coloring book.

A small plastic pony with a lavender mane and tail.

“That’s from me,” Maeve said.

There was some Barbie stuff from Granny and, finally, a gold locket in a red velvet box.

Rianna drew in her breath. Maeve had gotten one just like it when she turned ten. Rianna had thought she’d have to wait three more years to be grown up enough to wear anything but plastic pop beads.

Her fingers were shaky as she opened the tiny heart. Her mommy’s picture was inside, and there was one of her daddy, too. Both of them were smiling.

Rianna scrunched up her face, trying to remember the pretty woman in the photo, wishing she’d come to life, like pictures did in the Harry Potter movies, and say, “Happy birthday, Rianna.”

Or maybe, “I love you.”

“You’d better not lose that,” Maeve said.

Granny gave Maeve another look, helped Rianna get the necklace out of the box and fastened it around her neck, even though she was still wearing her pajamas.

The thin gold chain glittered magically as Rianna looked down at it.

Granny sniffled and turned away, standing at the sink for a long time.

“She misses Mom,” Maeve confided in a whisper.

So do I, Rianna wanted to say, but she knew she’d get shot down, so she didn’t.

Maeve patted her hand. Smiled like the old Maeve, the one who’d liked her. “Happy birthday, kid,” she said.

THE SHOP WAS COMING together nicely.

Echo and Avalon were outside, on the sidewalk, admiring the gold lettering on the display window—Echo’s Books and Gifts—when Cora pulled up in her old pickup truck. Rianna and Maeve tumbled out of the passenger-side door almost before their grandmother got the vehicle stopped.

“Look!” Rianna crowed, practically dancing in her delight. “I’ve got a locket, and my mommy’s picture is inside it!”

Echo smiled, attributing the slight sting she felt, just behind her heart, to missing her own mother, who had died, along with her father, when she was four. She’d been raised by an aunt and uncle who had three children of their own, didn’t need the irritation of an extra one, and frequently said so.

“Let’s see,” she said softly.

Proudly, Rianna opened the locket.

Echo bent to look.

Rance, a few years younger, heart-stoppingly handsome, and plainly happy. The woman in the adjoining photo had chin-length brown hair with a touch of red, a mischievous smile and large, expressive eyes.

“That’s my mommy,” Rianna explained reverently.

Echo nodded. “She’s very pretty. And you look just like her.” She raised her eyes, took in both Rianna and Maeve.

“I think we look more like Dad,” Maeve said.

“Well, you do resemble him, too,” Echo told her, exchanging glances with Cora.

“Did your furniture ever come?” Rianna asked.

Echo nodded. “Yesterday,” she said. “Avalon likes the air bed, so she slept on that.”

“You still don’t have any books,” Maeve remarked, approaching the display window. Avalon followed, licked the child’s hand tentatively.

“Next week,” Echo told her. “In the meantime, I’ve got a handyman coming to put up new shelves.”

“You girls come on inside now and don’t bother Miss Wells,” Cora said, sounding distracted. It was only eight-thirty, but the Curl and Twirl was already full.

Obediently, Rianna and Maeve went into their grandmother’s shop.

Cora lingered, looking a little flustered. “I didn’t mean to sound abrupt,” she said. “It’s just that, well, days like this, I miss Julie—that’s my daughter—even more than usual.”

Echo nodded. “Birthdays and holidays are harder,” she said quietly.

Cora brightened, making a visible effort. “It helps to keep busy,” she said. She gave an anxious little laugh. “Tell me I remembered to invite you to the party tonight,” she pleaded. “It’s on the ranch, at Travis and Sierra’s place.” Cora had already explained, during other sidewalk visits, that Sierra was Rance’s cousin and Travis was her husband. Travis had grown up with Rance, Jesse and Keegan, but Sierra was a relative newcomer to the family.

“You did,” Echo said. “And I told you I thought I’d be intruding.”

“Nonsense,” Cora said. “How else are you going to get to know people if you don’t come to parties? You can bring the dog, too, if you don’t mind letting her ride in the back of my truck. You could squeeze in up front with the girls and me.”

“I guess I could follow in my car,” Echo said. Cora was right. She was opening a business in Indian Rock, and she would have to get over her shyness and be a part of the community if she wanted this new chapter of her life to be a successful one.

Cora gave an approving nod. “We’ll leave here around six o’clock,” she said. Then she opened the door of the Curl and Twirl and vanished inside.

Echo ran damp palms down the thighs of her jeans. Rance wouldn’t be at the party, she reminded herself, and there was no reason to believe the rest of the McKettrick tribe wasn’t nice. Rianna and Maeve were sweet, and Cora was proving to be a good friend.

“We can do this,” she said.

Avalon cocked her head to one side, perked up her ears and let her tongue loll, looking just like the digital picture Echo had taken the day before and posted to every lost-pet Web site she could find.

All of a sudden, Echo wanted to break down and cry, right there on the sidewalk. Because little girls lost their mothers. Because their fathers were too busy to attend birthday parties. Because maybe no one cared enough about this dog to search the Internet and then come to take her home, and because someone might do just exactly that.