Читать книгу McKettrick's Pride - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN AVALON STAUNCHLY refused to get into the Volkswagen that evening at six sharp, Echo led the way back into the shop and up the stairs to her apartment on the second floor. Cora and the girls, about to drive off in Cora’s pickup truck, trailed after them.

With a sigh, Avalon settled onto the air mattress she’d appropriated after the furniture arrived, scorning Echo’s brass bed, an estate-sale find she prized very highly.

“Do you think she’s sick?” Echo asked worriedly, turning to Cora.

Cora smiled, approached the dog and crouched, gently patting the dog’s belly. “No,” she answered. “I think she’s pregnant.”

“You mean she’s going to have puppies?” Rianna cried exuberantly, before Echo could present the same question—not so exuberantly.

“What else would she have, dingbat?” Maeve asked her sister.

“Puppies?” Echo repeated.

Cora straightened, smiling. She looked festive in her red jeans, matching boots and silk shirt, causing Echo to wonder, even in the midst of rising panic, if her soft blue broomstick skirt-sweater combo and open-toed sandals were the proper attire for a party on a ranch.

“I’m no veterinarian,” Cora replied, “but I’ll stand by my diagnosis just the same.”

“Yikes,” Echo said.

Cora bent and gave Avalon a long, affectionate stroke with one hand. “You just rest, girl,” she told the animal. “I promise we won’t keep your mistress out late.”

“Shouldn’t I take her to an emergency clinic or something?” Echo fretted.

Cora chuckled. “No,” she said. “She’s not in any apparent distress. Just a case of the oogies, I figure.” She smiled fondly down at Avalon. “Right, girl?”

Avalon sighed, rested her muzzle on her forepaws and closed her eyes.

Meanwhile, Cora linked arms with Echo. “Come along, now,” she urged. “You’re all dressed up and you’ve got someplace to go. Avalon will be just fine.”

“Puppies,” Echo reiterated, but she let herself be pulled out of the apartment and down the stairs, casting anxious glances backward every few steps.

“That’s life for you,” Cora said, out on the sidewalk again, watching as Echo fumbled to lock up the shop. “Do you want to ride with us?”

“I’ll take my own car,” Echo decided. Cora’s truck would be crowded with her stuffed in there. Besides, she’d probably want to leave early. “I’ll follow you.”

Cora nodded, ushered the girls into the pickup and climbed aboard herself.

Echo, offering a silent prayer that Avalon would be okay in her absence, pulled out behind Cora and followed her the length of Main Street, then onto a series of country roads. After about fifteen minutes of travel, they passed beneath a huge, old-fashioned sign marking the entrance to the Triple M Ranch.

Echo knew little about the spread, just the basic facts she’d been able to scrounge up on the Internet, but passing under that arched wooden sign felt like slipping through a wrinkle in time.

The Triple M was the fourth largest ranch in the United States, and it had been founded by one Angus McKettrick, in the nineteenth century. Once primarily a cattle operation, the place was now dedicated to historical preservation. The family fortune, apparently considerable, was generated by McKettrickCo, an international corporation. Four houses remained from Wild West days, including the main ranch house, which Angus had built with his own hands, along with the original barns and other outbuildings.

Barreling along in a cloud of dust from Cora’s pickup, Echo simultaneously worried about her dog and wondered what it would be like to be part of something as vast as the Triple M. According to her brief research, McKettricks had been living on this land for well in excess of a century. Echo, who had never lived in one place for more than a few years, could barely imagine having roots in a piece of ground that had seen so many generations come and go.

Presently, after many twists and turns, one of the ranch houses came into sight, a huge, sturdy wooden structure as at home on the land as a venerable oak or ancient ponderosa pine.

Children and dogs chased one another noisily across an expansive front yard, and colored lanterns hung from virtually every tree limb in sight, glowing red and yellow and blue, even though it was still daylight.

There were cars and trucks slant-parked at every possible angle.

Feeling self-conscious amid such practical, well-used vehicles, Echo found a place to tuck her pink bug, gathered her forces and got out. She reached behind the seat for the large stuffed pony she’d bought at the drugstore in town, as a birthday gift for Rianna.

While the girls ran ahead to join the festivities, Cora wended her way from her own distant parking spot to walk with Echo. From the other woman’s expression, Echo gathered she’d half expected Indian Rock’s newest arrival to bolt for town without saying howdy to anybody.

Since she’d been tempted to do exactly that, Echo blushed slightly and bit her lower lip.

“They’re all good people,” Cora assured her. Evidently, mind reading numbered among her other skills, like fixing hair and teaching little girls to twirl batons. “If that pony’s for Rianna, you picked a real winner. She’ll love it.”

Echo straightened the big red bow tied around the toy’s middle. She’d done that herself, in lieu of wrapping paper. “I’m never going to remember everyone’s name,” she confided. Despite the public nature of her job at the museum in Chicago, and the similar ones that had preceded it, she was naturally something of a loner.

“Not to worry,” Cora assured her. “It takes time to get to know folks. Showing up, that’s the important thing.”

“Half the town must be here,” Echo observed as she and Cora walked toward the house.

“Everybody except Rance McKettrick,” Cora said ruefully.

Sadness whispered against Echo’s heart, made it quiver slightly. She didn’t speak, because she had no right to offer an opinion, though she certainly had one.

“My Julie would give that man what-for if she could,” Cora added, before putting on a party smile and marching into the happy fray.

Echo had little choice but to go along, since Cora had once again hooked an arm through hers.

A tall woman with short, shining brown hair and thoughtful blue eyes approached, smiling. Cora introduced her as Sierra McKettrick, Rance’s cousin.

“She’s descended from Holt and Lorelei,” Cora informed Echo.

Seeing that Echo was at a loss, Sierra smiled warmly. “We McKettricks are big on family trees,” she explained. “Holt was the firstborn son of Angus, the patriarch. Lorelei was Holt’s wife. The house was theirs.”

Echo nodded, struck, once again, by a poignant sense of history.

“Echo owns the new bookstore next to my place,” Cora told Sierra.

“The whole town’s waiting for your shop to open,” Sierra said, eyes twinkling. “I’ll certainly be a regular customer.”

Echo thanked her, and Sierra moved away, graciously greeting other guests. After placing the beribboned pony with a mountain of gaily wrapped gifts, she did her best to mingle. Cora came and went, making occasional introductions, bringing her a glass of punch, tacitly encouraging her to work the crowd.

Echo smiled a lot, scrambling to link names with faces, and soon lost track. Sitting on the porch steps, taking a social breather, she watched as Travis Reid, Sierra’s husband, strung an enormous piñata from a tree branch. Rianna and Maeve and a bevy of young friends and cousins waited eagerly below, while the adults looked on, enjoying the scene.

Cora plopped down beside Echo with a little sigh.

“Lordy,” she said, “I’m getting old.”

“Never,” Echo replied.

Rianna, being the birthday girl, was to have the first whack at the piñata, now suspended by a rope. Travis tossed the other end to a handsome young man in a wheelchair, who caught it ably.

Sticks were handed out to all the children, who waited, anxiously polite, while Rianna swung, giggling, at the bobbing piñata.

A free-for-all followed, and the plaster bird, covered in colorful crepe-paper feathers, finally burst. Candy and small toys rained down, and the kids scrambled for their share of the booty.

It was a golden, glimmering keepsake of a moment, one Echo tucked away in a quiet corner of her heart.

A distant flapping sound distracted her, though, and everyone else at the party. As it drew nearer, they all looked up, shading their eyes against the last of the daylight.

“I’ll be darned,” Cora breathed, a smile breaking over her face, as a helicopter hovered above the field sloping away from the barn, setting the deep grass rippling in waves of green.

“They invited the president?” Echo asked, only half joking.

“Better than that,” Cora said, getting to her feet and dusting off the back of her jeans. “That’s Rance, unless I miss my guess, come to do right by his little girl!”

Echo caught her breath.

Adults restrained children wanting to dash across the field to the helicopter as it landed.

The blades blurred, then slowed.

The door of the copter swung open and, sure enough, out spilled Rance McKettrick like a conquering hero. Stooping until he was clear of the updraft, he grinned as Rianna climbed between two rails of the fence and ran toward him.

He wore jeans, a white shirt open at the throat, and a brown leather jacket that had seen better days, and the vision of him scooping up his young daughter and spinning her around and around in his arms imprinted itself on Echo’s memory like a living photograph.

“Just when I’m ready to wring his fool neck,” Cora marveled, with a hint of tears in her voice, “he comes through.”

Two other men got out of the helicopter, grinning. Another child broke free of the crowd and dashed to meet one of them.

“The blond one’s Jesse,” Cora explained, “and the other is Keegan. That’s Keegan’s daughter, Devon, hugging his neck.” She paused, smiling and shaking her head. “These McKettricks sure do know how to make an entrance.”

While Echo was glad, for Rianna’s sake, that Rance had arrived in time for the party, she was also strangely unsettled by his presence.

It wasn’t just that they’d had words the day she’d arrived—that had been a silly misunderstanding, the kind of thing reasonable adults quickly forget. No, it was the way he made her feel—suddenly and wildly disoriented, as though he’d breached her innermost boundaries, blithely unaware that he was trespassing.

“I think I’ll go back to town and check on Avalon,” she said to Cora, but she was staring at Rance as he hoisted Rianna over the fence, then climbed nimbly over after her.

Cora clasped her hand. “You stay right here,” she said.

It wasn’t as if she could move, anyway. Echo stayed put.

Rance swung Rianna up onto his shoulders, while Maeve walked alongside, beaming up at her dad. He reached out, put an arm around Maeve’s shoulders and pulled her close.

Jesse and Keegan followed, Devon leaping fawnlike at Keegan’s side.

A beautiful dark-haired woman threw her arms around Jesse’s neck as soon as he’d cleared the fence.

“That’s Cheyenne Bridges,” Cora said, ever helpful. “She and Jesse are getting married next month, up on the ridge.”

Echo watched as Jesse and Cheyenne kissed, feeling peculiarly alone, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck riding in a rapidly sinking lifeboat.

She was so caught up in the romantic exchange that she didn’t register Rance’s approach until he was standing directly in front of her. Lifting Rianna down from his shoulders, he grinned.

Out of all the people at that party, he had to walk right up to her?

“Hello, Echo Wells,” he said.

She swallowed. “That was quite an entrance,” she remarked, stealing Cora’s line because nothing else came to mind.

The grin widened.

Echo wondered helplessly if it was registered somewhere, that smile, as a lethal weapon and an unfair advantage of cosmic significance.

“The jet could only bring us as far as Flagstaff,” he told her. “We chartered the helicopter there.”

Echo, still recovering from the grin, floundered in choppy conversational seas. “Impressive,” she said, because it was impressive, watching a copter land in a field during a little girl’s birthday party.

Rance’s face changed almost imperceptibly.

Rianna tugged at his hand. “It’s time for birthday cake, Daddy!” she chimed. “It’s time to blow out my candles and open my presents!”

Rance nodded, but the expression in his eyes was still serious, and a little perplexed. “You go ahead,” he told the child. “I’ll catch up.”

Rianna hurried away, toward the cake and the presents, skipping as she went.

“I live to impress you, Ms. Wells,” Rance said icily.

“I didn’t mean—”

He walked away.

“Numbskull,” Cora put in.

Echo, having forgotten all about Cora, turned to her with a questioning look.

“Him, not you,” Cora said, putting one arm around Echo’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get some of that cake.”

Echo wanted nothing so much as to go home to her little apartment above the bookstore, and her dog. There, she could brew herself a cup of tea and put Rance McKettrick right out of her mind.

Alas, Cora wasn’t about to let her leave and, besides, she didn’t want to give Rance the satisfaction of sending her scuttling for cover. Assuming he’d notice her absence in the first place, which didn’t seem very likely.

“IS THAT HER?” KEEGAN ASKED, holding a plate of cake in one hand and a glass of punch in the other. “The woman who bought that storefront next to Cora’s shop?”

Rance followed his cousin’s gaze to where Echo stood, chatting with Cheyenne. His jaw tightened and he wanted to sigh, but he didn’t, because Keegan might read things into that that just weren’t there.

Or shouldn’t be.

“That’s her.”

Keegan grinned. “She’s easy on the eyes,” he said.

“Forget it,” Rance replied, too quickly. “She’s one of those New Age types. Drives a pink car.”

Keegan’s gaze sliced straight to his cousin’s face. “Oh, well, then. A pink car? That changes everything.”

Rance rubbed his chin. He hadn’t taken time to shave before catching the jet to Flagstaff, and he was getting a stubble. “Not your type,” he said, still watching Echo. She looked like a fairy princess, straight out of a storybook, with her hair pinned up and wispy around her neck, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d whipped out a wand with a twinkling star on one end. “That’s all I meant.”

“Not my type—or not yours?” Keegan asked.

Rance shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, if you want to put the moves on the lady, go right ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to fool yourself, as well as me?”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

Keegan chuckled. “Hot damn,” he said. “You’re smitten.”

“Smitten?” Rance scoffed. “Keeg, old buddy, you’re spending way too much time with the lonely hearts club, if you’re using words like that.”

“I think I’ll ask her out,” Keegan mused.

Rance’s spine stiffened. “Have at it,” he said, and went to watch Rianna tear into her presents.

Myrna had come through for him, he saw, when Rianna got to the biggest gift in the bunch, wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a gigantic silver bow. She tore open the package and struggled with the cardboard box inside.

Even as he helped his daughter with the carton, Rance was aware of Echo, watching from a discreet distance. He wondered if Keegan really intended to ask her out, and what she’d say if he did.

Rianna let out a shriek of joy when the miniature car was revealed. It was a pink Volkswagen, with its own motor, working headlights and a horn.

“It’s just like Echo’s!” Rianna shouted, climbing into the little rig and tooting the horn. “It’s just like Echo’s!”

“I thought it belonged to somebody named Barbie,” Rance said.

Rianna looked up at him. “Thanks, Daddy,” she whispered, her eyes glowing in the gathering dusk.

Rance’s voice came out hoarse when he spoke. “Guess you’d better take it for a spin,” he said.

Rianna quickly found the ignition button, pushed it and drove right out of the carton. She did a few figure-eights, like a little clown in a circus parade, and flashed her headlights.

Laughing, people jumped out of her way.

Rance laughed, too, once he got over wanting to cry.

To think he’d almost missed this.

AVALON HAD PERKED UP by the time Echo got home, around nine that night. Hooking a leash onto the dog’s collar, Echo took her down the stairs and outside.

Since almost everybody in town was apparently still at Rianna’s party on the Triple M, the streets were empty. The sky was clear, speckled with stars, and there was a soft breeze, scented with newly mown grass, lilacs and roses in full bloom. Somewhere nearby, the faint whoosh-whoosh of a lawn sprinkler sounded.

“This is why I wanted to live in a small town,” Echo told Avalon, who squatted dutifully. Using a plastic bag she’d brought for the purpose, Echo disposed of the evidence, dropping it into a trash can at the end of somebody’s driveway. “It’s so peaceful.”

They came to a park, with a bandstand in the center, and lots of swing sets and trees. Since there was no one around, Echo decided to let Avalon off her leash to run, and was alarmed when the dog suddenly bolted across the grass toward an RV parked on the far side.

She was breathless when she caught up.

Avalon stood on her hind legs, yelping and scratching frantically at the door of the RV.

A light came on inside, and a woman stuck her head out. “Well, what’s this?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Echo said quickly. “I hope she didn’t leave any marks on the paint.”

Suddenly deflated, Avalon turned and slunk back to Echo, her head down.

“I’m sure she didn’t do any harm,” the woman said. “What a nice dog.”

Echo reattached the leash, then crouched to rub Avalon’s ears, trying to comfort her. The dog slouched against her, actually rested her head against Echo’s shoulder, and gave a deep, shuddery sigh.

“Did your people drive a motor home like that one?” Echo whispered sadly, almost expecting the dog to answer.

Avalon gave a soft, despairing whimper.

“We’ll find them,” Echo told her, even as her eyes filled at the prospect of parting with her wayfaring friend. “I promise, we’ll find them.”

That night, Avalon foreswore the air bed and slept with Echo, curled despondently against her side and chasing something in her dreams. Echo, meanwhile, lay awake, wondering about Rance McKettrick.

What made him tick?

And why did she give a damn?

“OF ALL THE DERN FOOL THINGS to give a seven-year-old child,” Cora scolded affectionately the next morning, as she made breakfast in the sunny kitchen of Rance’s house. She’d spent the night in a guest room, since the girls had been too exhausted from all the excitement to make the trip back to town. “She must have run over my toes half a dozen times.”

Rance, sipping fresh coffee and leaning against the counter, gazed out the window at the creek flowing by, shining in the sun. Keegan’s house, the first one on the place, loomed augustly on the other side of the stream. “I told Myrna to get a Barbie car,” he said, by way of explanation. He hadn’t actually remembered what he’d told Myrna, until he asked her at the party, but Cora didn’t need to know that.

He crossed to the window, squinting a little, trying to see if Keegan’s Jag was parked in its usual place. The homestead, a log structure like Rance’s own house, was old, and it didn’t have a garage.

“Did you happen to see Keegan drive off this morning?” he asked, and then could have kicked himself. Cora possessed uncanny abilities of perception—women’s intuition, she called it—and he wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised if she guessed what he was really worried about.

“It’s not my day to watch Keegan McKettrick,” Cora said. “But since Devon’s there, I imagine he’s probably at home. If he’s got a lick of sense, he’ll take a few days off, instead of putting in twelve hours at McKettrickCo like he usually does.”

Rance didn’t dare turn around and look at his mother-in-law. He was afraid she’d see something in his face if he did. Not that there was anything to see—he just didn’t want her misunderstanding his concern about where Keegan might have passed the night, that was all.

He was a little startled when Cora’s hand came to rest on his shoulder; he hadn’t heard her approaching. “That was a fine thing you did, Rance,” she said quietly. “Getting back here for Rianna’s party, I mean.”

He looked down at her, not used to her praise. Once, they’d been close, he and Cora, but Julie had been the link between them, and things had changed after she died. The girls might have bridged the gap; instead, they were cause for argument, most of the time.

“I shouldn’t have left in the first place,” he said, to himself as much as to Cora. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

Cora’s hand still rested against his shoulder. “Maeve and Rianna remind you of Julie,” she said gently. “It’s been five years, Rance. You need to let her go and concentrate on raising your daughters. Start seeing them for themselves.”

Rance’s throat closed. He set his coffee cup down on the wide sill of the window. Rafe McKettrick, his ancestor and Angus’s second son, had hewn that sill himself and hammered it into place. Rafe had had two daughters, too, with his wife, Emmeline. Rance wondered if he’d ever felt as confounded, raising girls, as he did.

Fortunately, before he had to say anything, Rianna and Maeve erupted into the kitchen like a couple of bullets.

“Can I drive my car all the way to town, Daddy?” Rianna demanded.

Rance turned, grinning down at his daughter, trying his best to see the child behind the overlay of Julie that always clouded his vision where Maeve and Rianna were concerned.

“No,” he said.

“It’s thirty miles to town, you dummy,” Maeve remarked.

“No name-calling,” Rance told his eldest daughter. The truth was, all of a sudden he saw two individuals standing there, in baby-doll pajamas and bare feet, with only a trace of Julie showing around their eyes.

“I’ll be careful,” Rianna said, “and I won’t speed. Cross my heart.”

Rance laughed. “Your rig tops out at about two miles an hour, kiddo,” he answered. “Take you a couple of days to get to Indian Rock, and your battery would die before you got to the main road.”

Rianna looked gravely disappointed. “Well, what’s the use of having a car if you can’t take it anywhere?”

“End of the driveway and back,” Rance decreed. “No farther.”

“Across the bridge to Uncle Keegan’s house?” Rianna tried. The kid had a future with the company, as a contract negotiator, if McKettrickCo didn’t go public in the meantime. The fight was still on where that decision was concerned. The meeting in San Antonio had gone on for the better part of three days, with nothing settled.

“No way,” Rance said.

Rianna plopped onto one of the benches lining the long table. It was a copy of the one across the creek, on the homestead. “I wanted to give Devon a ride,” she lamented.

“Devon can’t fit,” Maeve said. “It’s a baby car.”

“Leave your sister alone, Maeve,” Rance told his elder daughter.

Maeve subsided, but there was McKettrick thunder in her eyes.

“Babies don’t drive cars,” Rianna told Maeve.

“Enough,” Rance interceded.

“How am I supposed to show Echo that my car is just like hers?” Rianna persisted.

Rance closed his eyes, remembering how he’d gotten his back up the night before, when Echo had called his arrival by helicopter “impressive.” He’d been ultra touchy, stressed out because the meetings in San Antonio had done nothing but raise more trouble in the McKettrick ranks. He’d felt compelled to leave early so he could be home for Rianna’s party, and when the company jet landed in Flagstaff, there was a delay chartering the chopper. He’d been flat-out wrong to take those things out on Echo by snapping at her the way he had.

“Echo saw your stupid car last night,” Maeve pointed out.

“Maybe Avalon could fit,” Rianna speculated.

Rance sighed.

Cora stepped in. “Eat your breakfast, both of you.”

Rance gave her a grateful look.

“You, too,” she said.

He took his place at the head of the table—a seat he occupied all too infrequently—and let Cora serve him a plate mounded with fried potatoes, eggs and sausage links. He’d employed a variety of housekeepers and nannies over the years since Julie died, but none of them had lasted. Too much responsibility had fallen on Cora.

“Looks like a heart attack waiting to happen,” he said appreciatively, and dug into the food.

Cora laughed. “Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do,” she replied. “I cook you a meal, and you accuse me of trying to kill you.”

Maeve’s eyes widened. Her lower lip wobbled and, suddenly, she looked a lot younger than her usual ten-going-on-forty. “You wouldn’t really have a heart attack, would you, Dad?” she asked.

Rance reached out, ruffled her hair. “No,” he said quietly. “I plan on living to be a hundred and causing you all kinds of trouble in my old age.”

Maeve relaxed visibly, and her eyes danced. For a moment, he saw Julie again. “Just keep in mind,” she said, “that I’ll have a say in picking out your nursing home.”

Rance threw back his head and shouted with laughter.

“I get to help,” Rianna said. “What’s a nursing home?”

“Never mind,” Cora told her, bending to kiss both her granddaughters on top of the head. “Nobody’s going into a nursing home. Not in the immediate future, anyway.”

A silence fell, and Rance looked up at his mother-in-law, suddenly realizing that she was getting older. She’d lost weight since Julie died, and there were wrinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her husband had passed away years ago, and she had no family other than Maeve and Rianna—and him.

“What’s a nursing home?” Rianna repeated.

“It’s like a hospital,” Maeve explained. “Old people go there.”

Cora, her gaze locked with Rance’s, suddenly looked away.

He pushed back his chair, stood and followed his mother-in-law to the sink, where she stood with her back to the room. He laid a hand on her shoulder, just as she had done earlier, when he was at the window.

“Are you feeling okay, Cora?” he asked quietly. “You’re not sick, are you?”

She shook her head, tried to smile. “No, Rance—I’m fine.”

But as she turned from him to tackle the breakfast dishes, it was clear something was on her mind.

Maybe he ought to tell her he thought he knew what it was.