Sierra's Homecoming

She moved to the front of the house, peered between the lace curtains in the parlor. Jesse’s truck was gone, leaving deep tracks in the patchy mud and snow, rapidly filling with gossamer white flakes.

Bemused, Sierra returned to the kitchen, grabbed her coat and went out the back door, shoving her hands into her pockets and ducking her head against the thickening snowfall and the icy wind that accompanied it. Nothing in her life had prepared her for high-country weather; she’d been raised in Mexico, moved to San Diego after her father died and spent the last several years living in Florida. She supposed it would be a while before she adjusted to the change in climate, but if there was one thing she’d learned to do, on the long journey from then to now, it was adapt.

The doors of the big, weathered-board barn stood open, and Sierra stepped inside, shivering. It was warmer there, but she could still see her breath.

“Mr. Reid?”

“Travis,” came the taciturn answer from a nearby stall. “I don’t answer to much of anything else.”

Sierra crossed the sawdust floor and saw Travis on the other side of the door, grooming poor old Baldy with long, gentle strokes of a brush. He gave her a sidelong glance and grinned slightly.

“Settling in okay?” he asked.

“I guess,” she said, leaning on the stall door to watch him work. There was something soothing about the way he attended to that horse, almost as though he were touching her own skin….

Perish the thought.

He straightened. A quiver went through Baldy’s body. “Something wrong?” Travis asked.

“No,” Sierra said quickly, attempting a smile. “I was just wondering…”

“What?” Travis went back to brushing again, though he was still watching Sierra, and the horse gave a contented little snort of pleasure.

Suddenly the whole subject of the teapot seemed silly. How could she ask if he or Jesse had moved it? And, so what if they had? Jesse was a McKettrick, born and raised, and the things in that house were as much a part of his heritage as hers. Travis was clearly a trusted family friend—if not more.

Sierra found that possibility unaccountably disturbing. Meg had said he was single and free, but she obviously trusted Travis implicitly, which might mean there was a deeper level to their relationship.

“I was just wondering…if you ever drink tea,” Sierra hedged lamely.

Travis chuckled. “Not often, unless it’s the electric variety,” he replied, and though he was smiling, the expression in his eyes was one of puzzlement. He was probably asking himself what kind of nut case Meg and Eve had saddled him with. “Are you inviting me?”

Sierra blushed, even more self-conscious than before. “Well…yes. Yes, I guess so.”

“I’d rather have coffee,” Travis said, “if that’s all right with you.”

“I’ll put a pot on,” Sierra answered, foolishly relieved. She should have walked away, but she seemed fixed to the spot, as though someone had smeared the soles of her shoes with superglue.

Travis finished brushing down the horse, ran a gloved hand along the animal’s neck and waited politely for Sierra to move, so he could open the stall door and step out.

“What’s really going on here, Ms. McKettrick?” he asked, when they were facing each other in the wide aisle, Baldy’s stall door securely latched. Along the aisle, other horses nickered, probably wanting Travis’s attention for themselves.

“Sierra,” she said. She tried to sound friendly, but it was forced.

“Sierra, then. Somehow I don’t think you came out here to ask me to a tea party or a coffee klatch.”

She huffed out a breath and pushed her hands deeper into her coat pockets. “Okay,” she admitted. “I wanted to know if you or Jesse had been inside the house since you brought the baggage in.”

“No,” Travis answered readily.

“It would certainly be all right if you had, of course—”

Travis took a light grip on Sierra’s elbow and steered her toward the barn doors. He closed and fastened them once they were outside.

“Jesse got in his truck and left, first thing,” he said. “I’ve been with Baldy for the last half an hour. Why?”

Sierra wished she’d never begun this conversation. Never left the warmth of the kitchen for the cold and the questions in Travis’s eyes. She’d done both those things, though, and now she would have to explain. “I took a teapot out of the china cabinet,” she said, “and set it on the counter. I went up to Liam’s room, to help him settle in for a nap, and when I came downstairs—”

A startling grin broke over Travis’s features like a flash of summer sunlight over a crystal-clear pond. “What?” he prompted. He moved to Sierra’s other side, shielding her from the bitter wind, increasing his pace, and therefore hers, as they approached the house.

“It was in the cabinet again. I would swear I put it on the counter.”

“Weird,” Travis said, kicking the snow off his boots at the base of the back steps.

Sierra stepped inside, shivering, took off her coat and hung it up.

Travis followed, closed the door, pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of his coat before hanging it beside Sierra’s, along with his hat. “Must have been Liam,” he said.

“He’s asleep,” Sierra replied. The coffee she’d made earlier was still hot, so she filled two mugs, casting an uneasy glance toward the china cabinet as she did so. Liam couldn’t have gotten downstairs without her seeing him, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to reach the high shelf in the china closet without dragging a chair over. She would have heard the scraping sound and, anyway, Liam being Liam, he wouldn’t have put the chair back where he found it. There would have been evidence.

Travis accepted the cup Sierra offered with a nod of thanks, took a sip. “You must have put it away yourself, then,” he said reasonably. “And then forgotten.”

Sierra sat down in the chair closest to the wood-burning cookstove, suddenly yearning for a fire, while Travis made himself comfortable nearby, on the bench facing the wall.

“I know I didn’t,” she said, biting her lower lip.

Travis concentrated on his coffee for some moments before turning his gaze back to her face. “It’s a strange house,” he said.

Sierra blinked.

Cool place, Liam had said, right after they arrived, but it’s haunted.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s a strange house’?” she asked. She made no attempt to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

“Meg’s going to kill me for this,” Travis said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“She doesn’t want you scared off.”

Sierra frowned, waiting.

“It’s a good place,” Travis said, taking the homey kitchen in with a fond glance. Clearly, he’d spent a lot of time there. “Odd things happen sometimes, though.”

Sierra heard Liam’s voice again. I saw a kid, upstairs in my room.

She shook off the memory. “Impossible,” she muttered.

“If you say so,” Travis replied affably.