McKettrick's Heart

“If you’re trying to pull some kind of scam—”

Molly’s shoulders had been stooped a moment before. Now she rallied and looked as though she might be about to slap him. “You heard Mrs. Washington,” she said. “Psyche asked me to come.”

“Not without a lot of setting up on your part, I’ll bet,” Keegan retorted. “What the hell are you up to?”

“I’m not ‘up to’ anything,” Molly answered after an obvious struggle to retain her composure, such as it was. “I’m here because Psyche…needs my help.”

“Psyche,” Keegan rasped, leaning in again until his nose was almost touching Molly’s, “needs her friends. She needs to be home, in the house where she grew up. What she does not need, Ms. Shields, is you. Whatever you’re trying to pull, you’d better rethink it. Psyche’s too weak to fight back, but I assure you, I’m not!”

“Is that a threat?” Molly countered, narrowing her marvelous eyes.

“Yes,” Keegan retorted, “and not an idle one.”

Florence returned with the bread and milk, went around to the other side of the car and put the groceries in the backseat. “If you two are through arguing,” she said, “I’d like to get back to Psyche.”

Keegan sighed.

Molly gave him one last viperous look and got in on the passenger side.

Keegan spoke to Florence over the roof of the ancient station wagon. “I’ll be there at noon tomorrow,” he said. “Should I bring anything?”

He’d be bringing plenty, counting the questions he wanted to ask Psyche.

At last Florence smiled. “Just yourself,” she answered. “My girl will be mighty glad to see that handsome mug of yours.”

Keegan might have grinned if he hadn’t been mad enough to bite the top off one of the propane tanks and spit it to the other side of the road. “See you then,” he said.

He stood watching as Florence fired up the wagon, popped it into gear and zoomed out onto the street.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered.

Five minutes later, well down the road back to the Triple M ranch, where members of the McKettrick clan had lived for a century and a half, he punched a digit on his cell phone.

He got his cousin Rance’s voice mail and cursed while he listened to the spiel. He’d undergone a transformation recently, Rance had, since he’d taken up with Emma Wells, who ran the local bookstore. Given up his high-powered job at McKettrickCo, the family conglomeration, and started ranching in earnest.

The beep sounded. “That bitch Thayer Ryan was screwing around with is in town,” he snapped, without preamble, “and guess where she’s staying? Psyche’s place.”

With that, he thumbed End and put a call through to Jesse, his other cousin. Jesse, who had a type-Z personality, was even harder to reach than Rance, since he refused to carry a cell phone. This time, Keegan didn’t even get voice mail.

He was about to backtrack to town, figuring he’d find Jesse in the poker room behind Lucky’s Bar and Grill, fleecing unsuspecting Texas hold ’em devotees of their hard-earned money, when he remembered that Jesse and his new bride, Cheyenne, were still away on their honeymoon.

A lonely feeling swept over Keegan, one he was glad no one was around to see. Jesse was in love with Cheyenne, Rance with Emma.

And he was alone.

His own marriage hadn’t worked out, and his daughter, Devon, living in Flagstaff with her mother, visited only occasionally. Going back to the big house on the ranch was the last thing he wanted to do, but he couldn’t face returning to the office, either.

A lot of the family members were agitating to take McKettrickCo public, and fight though he did, Keegan was outnumbered. He could already feel the company, the only thing that kept him sane, slipping away.

What would he do when it was gone?

Jesse, never involved beyond cashing his dividend checks, didn’t give a damn. Rance, once willing to work eighteen-hour days right alongside Keegan, now preferred to spend his time with his kids, Emma or the two hundred head of cattle grazing on his section of the ranch.

Their cousin Meg, who was a force in the San Antonio branch of the company, might have taken Keegan’s side, but she’d been distracted lately. Whenever she came to Indian Rock, she holed up in the house that had originally belonged to Holt and Lorelei McKettrick, way back in the 1800s, keeping a low profile and fretting over whatever was bugging her.

He might have talked to Travis Reid, the closest friend he had except for Jesse and Rance, or even Sierra, another of his cousins and Travis’s wife. Sierra and Travis were busy moving into their new place in town, though, and no matter how cordially they might have greeted Keegan, he would have been intruding. They were practically newlyweds, after all, settling in to a life together, and they needed privacy for that.

All of which meant, when it came to trusted confidants, he was shit out of luck.

Chapter 2

MOLLY’S ROOM AND BATH were on the other side of Lucas’s nursery, opposite Psyche’s suite. She and Florence schlepped the bags up in the elevator, a few at a time.

Florence lingered in the hall doorway. “That boy looks a lot like you,” she said with a nod toward Lucas’s room. “Took me long enough, but I finally put two and two together. You’re his mama, aren’t you?”

Molly didn’t answer. It was Psyche’s place to tell Florence whatever she wanted her to know, and Molly wasn’t about to overstep those bounds.

“Thayer and Miss Psyche tried to adopt a baby for years,” Florence went on. “They got close a couple of times, but something always went wrong. The birth mother backed out, or a relative stepped in to claim the child. I can’t tell you how it grieved me, watching Miss Psyche put on a brave face, swallowing her disappointment, keeping her hopes up. Then all of a sudden, here’s Lucas. The perfect green-eyed, blond-haired baby boy. I should have guessed he came out of your affair with Thayer.”

Molly, in the act of unpacking one of her bags, stiffened, and her gaze sliced to Florence’s face. Outside, on the front lawn, the sprinkler system came on, making a chuckety-chuckety sound, and the scent of fresh-cut grass blew in through the open windows on a soft breeze. “None of this,” she said, “is Lucas’s fault.”

Florence spared her a dry smile. “So you do have some spirit,” she observed. “You’re going to need it, if you stay around here long. I’m headed downstairs shortly, to get supper started, but before I go, there’s one more thing I want to say. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll be watching you. You do anything—anything at all—to make things harder for my girl than they already are, and I’ll make the devil himself look like an angel of mercy. You understand what I’m saying to you, Molly Shields?”

Molly kept her spine straight. She’d come to Indian Rock like a whipped dog, but she had Lucas to think about now, and it was time to put on her big-girl panties and take care of business. “I’d rather count you as a friend,” she said, “but if you want a fight, I’ll give you one.”

Respect flickered in Florence’s eyes, but it was gone in a moment. “Supper’s at six,” she said, and then she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her.

Molly knew that was a courtesy to Psyche, not her, but she appreciated it anyway.

She looked around the room that would be home for the foreseeable future—brick fireplace, gleaming brass bed, antique bureau and chest, chaise longue, plenty of bookshelves. All of them old-money shabby.

She smiled ruefully, thinking of her own ultra-modern place in L.A., where everything was new, with no history, no memories, no meaning. What a contrast.

The smile faded as she remembered the encounter with Keegan McKettrick back at the convenience store/gas station where she and Florence had gone to fetch her bags. She’d seen utter contempt in his eyes, and he’d certainly made no bones about wanting her out of Psyche’s life and out of Indian Rock.

It had been a jolt, running into him. On some level, she realized, she’d still been smarting from their first encounter, in a Flagstaff restaurant, when Thayer had introduced her as a business associate.

Keegan hadn’t believed him, even then.

And looking back, Molly knew she should have been far more suspicious of Thayer’s glib reaction that night. In retrospect, it was a classic scenario—the guilty husband runs into a family friend and does a song and dance to explain the mistress away. Why hadn’t she seen that?

Because you were a fool, that’s why, she thought.

Molly opened a suitcase, found a floral sundress and fresh lingerie. She’d feel better after a cool shower, she reflected. More like her normal, competent self.

As for Mr. McKettrick’s obviously low opinion of her, well, that didn’t matter in the vast scheme of things. Lucas mattered. Psyche mattered.

Keegan McKettrick was a footnote.