The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming

He let himself into the kitchen a few minutes later. By then Sierra had set another place at the table and lit several more candles. They all sat down at the same time, and there was something so natural about their gathering that way that Sierra’s throat caught.

“I hope you’re hungry,” she said, feeling awkward.

“I’m starved,” Travis replied.

“Cowboys eat meat loaf, right?” Liam inquired.

Travis grinned. “This one does,” he said.

“This one does, too,” Liam announced.

Sierra laughed, but tears came to her eyes at the same time. She was glad of the relative darkness, hoping no one would notice.

“Once,” Liam said, scooping a helping of meat loaf onto his plate, his gaze adoring as he focused on Travis, “I saw this show on the Science Channel. They found a cave man, in a block of ice. He was, like fourteen thousand years old! I betcha they could take some of his DNA and clone him if they wanted to.” He stopped for a quick breath. “And he was all blue, too. That’s what you’ll look like, if you sleep in that trailer tonight.”

“You’re not a kid,” Travis teased. “You’re a forty-year-old wearing a pygmy suit.”

“I’m really smart,” Liam went on. “So you ought to listen to me.”

Travis looked at Sierra, and their eyes caught, with an almost audible click and held.

“The generator’s low on gas,” Travis said. “So we have two choices. We can get in my truck and hope there are some empty motel rooms at the Lamp light Inn, or we can build up the fire in that cookstove and camp out in the kitchen.”

Liam had no trouble at all making the choice. “Camp out!” he whooped, waving his fork in the air. “Camp out!”

“You can’t be serious,” Sierra said to Travis.

“Oh, I’m serious, all right,” he answered.

“Lamp light Inn,” Sierra voted.

“Roads are bad,” Travis replied. “Real bad.”

“Once on TV, I saw a thing about these people who froze to death right in their car,” Liam put in.

“Be quiet,” Sierra told him.

“Happens all the time,” Travis said.

Which was how the three of them ended up bundled in sleeping bags, with couch and chair cushions for a makeshift mattress, lying side by side within the warm radius of the wood-burning stove.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1919

HANNAH AND DOSS RETURNED separately from the barn, by tacit agreement. Hannah, weak-kneed with residual pleasure and reeling with guilt, pumped water into a bucket to pour into the near-empty reservoir on the cookstove, then filled the two biggest kettles she had and set them on the stove to heat. She was adding wood to the fire when she heard Doss come in.

She blushed furiously, unable to meet his gaze, though she could feel it burning into her flesh, right through the clothes he’d sweet-talked her out of just an hour before, laying her down in the soft, surprisingly warm hay in an empty stall, kissing and caressing and nibbling at her until she’d begged him to take her.

Begged him.

She’d carried on something awful while he was at it, too.

“Look at me, Hannah,” he said.

She glared at Doss, marched past him into the pantry and dragged out the big wash tub stored there under a high shelf. She set it in front of the stove with an eloquent clang.

“Hannah,” Doss repeated.

“Go upstairs,” she told him, flustered. “Leave me to my bath.”

“You can’t wash away what we did,” he said.

She whirled on him that time, hands on her hips, fiery with temper. “Get out,” she ordered, keeping her voice down in case Tobias was still awake or even listening at the top of the stairs. “I need my privacy.”

Doss raised both hands to shoulder height, palms out, but his words were juxtaposed to the gesture. “If we’re going to talk about what you need, Hannah, it’s not a bath. It’s a lot more of what we just did in the barn.”

“Tobias might hear you!” Hannah whispered, outraged. If the broom hadn’t been on the back porch, she’d have grab bed it up and whacked him silly with it.

“He wouldn’t know what we were talking about even if he did,” Doss argued mildly, lowering his hands. He approached, plucked a piece of straw from Hannah’s hair and tickled her under the chin with it.

She felt as though she’d been electrified, and slapped his hand away.

He laughed, a low, masculine sound, leaned in and nibbled at her lower lip. “Good night, Hannah,” he said.

A hot shiver of renewed need went through her. How could that be? He’d satisfied her that night, and the one be fore. Both times he’d taken her to heights she hadn’t even reached with Gabe. The difference was, she’d been Gabe’s wife, in the eyes of God and man, and she’d loved him. She not only wasn’t married to Doss, she didn’t love him. She just wanted him, that was all, and the realization galled her.

“You’ve turned me into a hussy,” she said.

Doss chuckled, shook his head. “If you say so, Hannah,” he answered, “it must be true.”

With that, he kissed her forehead, turned and left the kitchen.

She listened to the sound of his boot heels on the stairs, heard his progress along the second-floor hallway, even knew when he opened Tobias’s door to look in on the boy before retiring to his own room. Only when she’d heard his door close did Hannah let out her breath.

When the water in the kettles was scalding hot, Hannah poured it into the tub, sneaked upstairs for a towel, a bar of soap and a night gown. By the time she’d put out all the lanterns in the kitchen and stripped off her clothes, her bath water had cooled to a temperature that made her sigh when she stepped into it.

She soaked for a few minutes, and then scrubbed with a vengeance.

It turned out that Doss had been right.

She tried but she couldn’t wash away the things he’d made her feel.

A tear slipped down her cheek as she dried herself off, then donned her night gown. She dragged the tub to the back door and on to the step, drained it over one side and dashed back in, covered with goose flesh from the chill.

“I’m sorry, Gabe,” she said, very quietly, huddling by the stove. “I’m sorry.”

Present Day