McKettrick's Choice

Margaret’s smile faltered a little as she gazed up at Holt, waiting.

“Maybe when I get back…” he began awkwardly, but then his voice just fell away.

She sighed, shook her head. “I don’t believe I want to wait, Holt,” she said. “If that’s what you’re asking me to do, I mean.”

He touched her face, let his hand fall back to his side. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, and he was, truly, though he doubted it would count for much in the grand scheme of things. At his brothers’ urging, he’d brought this woman out from the east, and now here she was, all got up in a bridal gown, with half the territory in attendance, and there wasn’t going to be a wedding.

“I’ll go ahead and marry you anyhow,” he said, against his every instinct, because he was Angus McKettrick’s son and a deal was a deal. But he couldn’t make himself sound like that was what he wanted, and Margaret was no fool. “I’ve still got to leave, though, either way.”

A tear shimmered on her cheek, but Margaret held her chin high, shook her head again. “No,” she said, with sad pride. “If you really wanted me for a wife, you’d have gone ahead with the ceremony, put a ring on my finger so everybody would know I was taken, maybe even asked me to come along.”

“It’ll be a hard trip,” Holt said. From a verbal standpoint, he felt like a lame cow, turning in fruitless circles, trying to find its way out of a narrow place in the trail. Nonetheless, he kept right on struggling. “Hard things to attend to, too, once I get there.”

She worked up another smile. “Godspeed, Holt McKettrick,” she said. Then, to his profound chagrin, she turned to face the gathering.

All attempts at merriment ceased, and a hush fell.

“There will be no wedding today,” Margaret announced, in a clear voice, while everyone stared back at her in bleak sympathy. Her spine, Holt noted, with admiration, was straight as a new fence post. “But there will be a party. I’m going upstairs right now and change out of this silly dress, and when I come back down again, I expect to find every last one of you making merry.”

With that, Margaret started for the house. Holt’s sisters-in-law, Emmeline, Mandy and Chloe, all flung poisonous glances in his direction and hurried after his retreating almost-bride.

Only Lizzie, Holt’s twelve-year-old daughter, had the temerity to approach him, and her cheeks glowed pink with indignation.

“Papa,” she demanded, coming to a stop directly in front of him, “how could you?”

Holt loved his child, though he hadn’t known she’d existed until last year, and except for Margaret herself, Lizzie was the hardest person in the crowd to face just then. “I’ve got business in Texas,” he said, because that was the stark truth and he had nothing else to offer. “It can’t wait.”

Lizzie stiffened, blinked her large hazel eyes, and bit her lower lip. “You’re leaving?”

He reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she shrank from him.

“Lizzie,” he whispered.

She turned on her heel, fled to her grandfather. Angus put an arm around the child and glowered at Holt. The old man looked like Zeus himself, shooting thunderbolts from his eyes.

“Hell,” Holt muttered, and started for the barn.

His brothers fell in beside him, their faces hard. Holt lengthened his stride, but they stuck to his heels like barn muck. Stubborn cusses, cut from the same itchy cloth as their pa, every one of them.

“What the hell is going on here?” Rafe snarled. The firstborn of Angus’s three younger sons, Rafe was a bull of a man, and always the first to demand an accounting. He and Kade and Jeb formed a semicircle in front of Holt, barring his way into the barn, where his horse was stabled, blissfully unaware of the long, arduous ride ahead.

Holt might have shoved his way through, if he hadn’t figured that would lead to a fight. He wasn’t afraid of tangling, but a brawl would mean a delay, and the need to get where he was going made an urgent clench in the pit of his belly.

He pulled out the crumpled letter, thrust into his vest pocket earlier, and shoved it at Kade, who happened to be the one standing directly in front of him. “See for yourself,” he said.

Kade scanned the page, while Jeb and Rafe peered at it from either side.

“I’ll saddle your horse,” Kade said, handing it back. He was the middle brother, the thoughtful, practical one.

“Best pack yourself some of that wedding grub, too, for the trail.”

“Have a word with Lizzie before you go, Holt,” Rafe interjected. “She doesn’t look like she’s taking this real well.”

“I could ride along,” Jeb put in, with typical eagerness. The youngest of the brood, he was also the fastest gun, and hands-down the best rider. Jeb was handy to have around in a tight place, for those reasons and a few others, but the plain and simple truth was that Holt didn’t want to have to look out for him. He wasn’t fool enough to say so, though.

He might have grinned, if he hadn’t just humiliated a fine woman and learned that two of the best friends he’d ever had were in trouble. Jeb had a wife to look after, and a baby daughter, barely walking. Rafe and Kade were in the same situation, since all three of their brides had managed to come a-crop with babies a year ago last Independence Day.

“This is my fight,” Holt said. “I’ll handle it.”

Rafe looked thoughtful. “John Cavanagh. That’s the man who raised you, isn’t it?”

Holt nodded, though Rafe’s assessment didn’t begin to cover what Cavanagh meant to him. “He’s got a spread outside San Antonio.”

“And this Gabe yahoo…?” Jeb fished. “Who’s he?”

“We were Rangers together,” Holt explained. Gabe Navarro was a wild man—part Comanche, part Mexican, part devil—but he was neither a murderer nor a horse thief. Holt had known him too long and too well ever to believe either accusation.

Apparently satisfied, Kade headed into the barn to get Holt’s horse, Traveler, ready.

Rafe and Jeb went to the feast table and commenced gathering food for the journey. Holt looked for Lizzie and found her still in Angus’s arms, her head resting against the old man’s broad shoulder.

“Here, now,” Angus murmured, giving his eldest son an unfriendly but resigned glance as Holt approached. “You talk to your papa, Lizzie-beth. It’s no good parting without saying what needs to be said.”

Lizzie sniffled, raised her head, and met Holt’s gaze.

Angus squeezed her upper arm, then favoring Holt with a withering glare, he walked away.

“Are you coming back?” Lizzie wanted to know.

“Yes,” Holt said, with certainty. He wasn’t through with Texas—he’d left too many things undone there—but in the deepest part of his heart, he knew the Arizona Territory and the Triple M were home. He belonged on this stretch of red, rocky dirt, with his impossible father, his rowdy brothers and his spirited daughter.

She dashed at her face with the back of one hand. “You promise?”

“You have my word.”

“What if you can’t come home? What if somebody shoots you?”

“I will come back, Lizzie.”

“I guess I have to believe you.”

He chuckled, extended an arm. Lizzie hesitated, then curled against his chest, clinging a little. “You be a good girl,” he said, resting his chin on top of her dark head, wishing he didn’t have to leave her behind. “Mind Concepcion and your grandfather.”

She trembled, tugged a cherished blue ribbon from her hair and tucked it into Holt’s vest pocket. “A remembrance,” she said softly, and Holt’s heart ached. Before he could find words to assure his daughter that forgetting her would be impossible, she went on, “Are you going to visit Mama’s grave? She’s buried in San Antonio, in the cemetery behind Saint Ambrose’s.”

He nodded, still choked up. Lizzie’s mother, Olivia, was part of the unfinished business waiting for him in Texas. He needed to say a proper goodbye to her, put her to rest in his mind and his heart, even though it was too late for her to hear the words.

“Will you take her flowers—the best you can find—for me?”