McKettrick's Pride

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.