McKettrick's Heart

The woman flinched, startled. A pink flush glowed on her cheekbones, and her green eyes flickered with affronted guilt. Still, her gaze was steady, and more defiant than ashamed.

“Keegan McKettrick,” she said. Then she tried to go around him.

He blocked her way. “You have a good memory for names,” he told her. “Yours slips my mind.”

Florence, meanwhile, opened the back of the station wagon, presumably to stow the bags. “I’m not doing this all by myself,” she said.

Keegan remembered his manners—at least partially—and waved Florence back from the luggage. “There’s another bus tonight,” he told the woman whose face and body he recalled so well.

“Molly Shields,” she said, and raised her chin a notch to let him know she wasn’t intimidated. “And I’m not going anywhere. Kindly get out of my way, Mr. McKettrick.”

Keegan leaned in a little. Ms. Shields was a head shorter than he was, and he must have outweighed her by fifty pounds, but she didn’t shrink back, and he had to accord her a certain grudging respect for that. “Psyche’s sick,” he said in a grinding undertone. “Just about the last thing she needs is a visit from her dead husband’s girlfriend.”

The flush deepened, but the spring-green eyes flashed with swift defiance. “Step aside,” she said.

Keegan was still getting over the brass-balls audacity of her attitude when Florence interceded, poking at him with a finger.

“Keegan McKettrick,” the old woman said, “either make yourself useful and load up those bags, or be on your way. And if you can take time out of your busy schedule, you might stop by the house one of these days soon and say hello to Psyche. She’d like to see you.”

Keegan deliberately softened his expression. “How is she?” he asked.

Molly Shields took the opportunity to slip around him, grab one of the suitcases.

“She’s bad sick,” Florence answered, and tears glistened in her eyes. “She invited Molly here, and I’m not any happier about it than you are, but she must have a good reason. And I’d appreciate some cooperation on your part.”

Keegan was both confounded and chagrined. He nodded to Florence, lifted two of the five suitcases by their fancy handles and hurled them unceremoniously into the back of the station wagon, doing his best to ignore Molly Shields, who sidestepped him.

“You tell Psyche,” he said to Florence, “that I’ll be by as soon as she feels up to company.”

“She usually holds up pretty well until around two in the afternoon,” Florence replied. “You come over tomorrow, around noon, and I’ll set out a nice lunch for the two of you, on the sunporch.”

Keegan didn’t miss the phrase “for the two of you” and neither, he saw from the corner of his eye, did Molly, who was wrestling with the largest of the bags. “That sounds fine,” he said, and jerked the handle from Molly’s grasp to throw the suitcase in with the others.

She glared at him.

He went right on ignoring her.

“I’d best pick up some bread and milk while we’re here,” Florence said, addressing Molly this time. With that, she disappeared into the convenience store.

“Does Psyche know you were boinking her husband?” Keegan asked in a furious whisper the moment he and Molly were alone.

Molly gasped.

“Does she know?” Keegan repeated fiercely.

She bit her lower lip. “Yes,” she said very quietly, when he’d just about given up on getting an answer.

“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.

She felt a pang, and her throat tightened.

If all that was true, why did it sting so much to recall the way he’d looked at her?

* * *

RANCE RODE ACROSS the creek on a paint horse Keegan hadn’t seen before.

He might have come right out of the 1880s, the way he was dressed—boots, jeans, a Western-cut denim shirt and a beat-up old hat resurrected from his college-rodeo days.

“Got your message,” Rance said in his usual taciturn way, reining in and swinging deftly down from the saddle.

Keegan glanced across the creek toward Rance’s rustic, rambling ranch house, which faced his own, almost a mirror image. The two places dated back to the nineteenth century, when old Angus McKettrick and his four sons had still ridden the sprawling acres of the Triple M, though of course some modern conveniences had been added over the generations since. “You leave the girls home alone?” he asked, referring to Rance’s young daughters, Rianna and Maeve.

“Emma’s there,” Rance said with a slight and faintly goofy smile. “She’s making supper. You’re welcome to join us if you want to.”

Keegan felt bereft in that moment. He wanted to say yes, be part of a family, if only for an hour or two, but at the same time he wondered if he could cope with the contrast between his cousin’s life and his own. “I might,” he said to be polite, but he knew he wouldn’t go, and Rance probably did, too.

Rance let the reins drop so the horse could graze on Keegan’s lawn, which needed cutting. “What’s this about Thayer’s girlfriend moving in with Psyche?” he asked. “In the first place, I didn’t know Thayer ever had a girlfriend.”

Keegan shoved a hand through his hair. He’d been all-fired anxious to hash things out with Rance or Jesse or both of them, and had rushed outside when he’d seen his cousin crossing the shallow part of the creek. Now he wasn’t sure how to put the whole thing into words. “He cheated on Psyche from day one,” Keegan said after unclamping his back teeth. As kids, he and Psyche had made a playground pact to get married when they grew up, and have a big family. If she hadn’t been dying, he’d have grinned at the memory.

“I didn’t know that,” Rance replied quietly. He’d known about the pact, though. He and Jesse had teased Keegan unmercifully back in the day, but they’d been as smitten as he was. “I’d have blacked the bastard’s eyes if I had.”

Keegan recalled the night he’d run into Thayer and Molly, caught them sneaking around behind Psyche’s back, and felt the same clench in the pit of his stomach as he had then. It had been part rage, that feeling, but part something else, too. Something he’d rather not identify.

“She’s up to something,” he said flatly.

“Like what?” Rance asked.

“I don’t know,” Keegan admitted after thrusting out an exasperated sigh. “According to Florence, Psyche invited that little viper for a visit. I figure Molly must have manipulated her into it somehow.”

Rance arched an eyebrow. “It does seem like an odd arrangement. Mistresses and wives don’t generally mix all that well, especially under the same roof.” He paused for a beat. “Molly?”

“Molly Shields,” Keegan said.

Rance’s mouth quirked up at one corner, and a thoughtful smile rose into his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

“Psyche’s a rich woman,” Keegan reminded his cousin, getting agitated again. “It’s got to be a scam.”

Rance considered that. “Could be,” he said. “Or maybe this—Molly Shields, was it?—maybe she’s just looking for a chance to make amends. Psyche’s dying. Ms. Shields did her wrong. Isn’t it possible she’s trying to set things right before it’s too late?”

Keegan gave a snort. “Love,” he told his cousin, “has softened your head.”

Rance chuckled. “That’s about all it’s softened,” he said.

Keegan grinned before he could catch himself. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch,” he told Rance. “So’s Jesse.”

“Your turn will come,” Rance replied, and he looked dead serious.

“I’m through with marriage,” Keegan answered. His ex-wife, Shelley, had cured him of any romantic notions he might have had where love and wedding cake were concerned. He was looking for regular sex of the no-strings-attached variety.

“I thought I was, too,” Rance said. He looked back over one shoulder toward his own place, and the pull of Emma’s presence was visible, for a fraction of a second, in the way he stood, leaning a little toward home.

“Pure luck,” Keegan reiterated.

“Come on over and have supper with us,” Rance urged, turning back to face Keegan again.

Keegan shook his head. “Not tonight,” he said.

Rance clasped Keegan’s shoulder briefly with one newly calloused hand. “I know it’s hard on you,” he said. “Psyche coming home to die and all. But she’s not stupid, Keeg. If she asked that Shields woman here for a visit, she’s got something in mind. You been to see her yet? Psyche, I mean?”

Again Keegan shook his head. Swallowed hard and looked away before meeting Rance’s steady gaze once more. “I’m going there tomorrow, for lunch.”

Rance nodded in solemn approval. “You tell Psyche I’ll be by later in the week, when she’s had more time to settle in.”

“I’ll tell her.”

Rance started to turn away, whistled for the horse. He caught the reins in one hand, put a foot into the stirrup, turned back before mounting up to go back to his woman and his kids. “Keeg?”

Keegan waited.

“If there’s trouble and Psyche needs our help, we’ll give it. You, me and Jesse. In the meantime, try not to let this eat another hole in your stomach lining.”

Until he’d met Emma—known as Echo when she first came to Indian Rock—driving a bright pink Volkswagon with a white dog riding shotgun, Rance had been as committed to McKettrickCo as Keegan was. He’d worn three-piece suits, traveled all over the world driving the hard bargains he was famous for and put in eighteen-hour days when he was in town.

He’d fallen in love, hard and fast, like Jesse before him, and nothing had been the same since. Now here he was, warning Keegan about ulcers.

Keegan was still getting used to the change, and there were times when he thought he never would.

He managed another grin, nodded again. “Take care,” he said.

“Back at you,” Rance replied.

And then he was riding away. Watching him go, Keegan felt about as lonesome as he ever had, and given some of the things he’d been through, that was saying something.

* * *

PSYCHE WATCHED from her bedroom window with a slight, wistful smile as Keegan got out of his car in front of the house, steeled himself in that subtle but unmistakable way she knew so well and opened the front gate.

I should have married him, she thought.

“Keegan’s here,” she told Florence, who had helped her out of her nightgown and into a royal-blue silk caftan for the occasion. She’d actually considered wearing a wig, but in the end she’d decided on a scarf instead. It seemed less pitiful, somehow.

“I’d better get down there and open the door for him, then,” said Florence. “You want me to come back for you?”

Psyche squared her shoulders. Turned to face her old friend. “No,” she replied, summoning up a smile that wouldn’t fool Florence for a moment. “I want to make an entrance.”

Florence smiled back, but tears shimmered in her eyes, too. She nodded once and left.

From the nursery, Psyche could hear Molly’s voice, comically high-pitched as she read Lucas a story. Psyche’s heart pinched; it was hard, withdrawing from her son so he could bond with Molly, but it had to be done. She’d fought the good fight. Psyche had done everything she could to stay alive, but it was a losing battle, and she knew it. Every day she was weaker than the one before. Every day the world seemed a little less real, a little less solid, as though she were retreating from it somehow, dissolving like a wisp of smoke.

She wasn’t even dead yet, she thought, and she already knew what it felt like to be a ghost.

Downstairs the doorbell chimed.

Supporting herself by keeping one hand to the corridor wall, Psyche made her slow way toward the elevator.

When the door opened on the first floor, Keegan was waiting there, quick to offer an arm and a gentle smile. His McKettrick-blue eyes were dark with a sorrow he was trying hard to hide.

Something swelled in Psyche’s throat. Made it impossible to speak.

Keegan took in the caftan and the flowing scarf. “You look as beautiful as ever,” he said.

Psyche knew he was lying, and she blessed him for it, and for giving her a moment to regain her composure. “Stop it, you flattering scoundrel,” she said. Then, with a twinkle, “But not right away.”

He laughed hoarsely and bent to kiss her forehead. He was still gripping her arm, firmly but gently, and when she wavered a little, turning to lead the way to the back sunporch, where Florence had set the table for lunch, he swooped her up into his arms and carried her.

Tears stung her eyes. She had forgotten such gallantry existed.

When they reached the rear of the house Florence was there, arranging snow-white peonies, big as salad plates, in a shimmering crystal bowl.

Psyche gasped at the sight of her favorite flower. It was the third of July, and the last of the peonies in her garden in Flagstaff had been gone for two weeks. “Where on earth did you get those?” she asked Florence, putting a hand to her heart.

“Keegan brought them,” Florence said, sniffling once before resetting her shoulders to their usual proud lines.

Keegan lowered Psyche carefully into one of the chairs at the table. His neck was a little flushed.

Psyche strained to kiss his cheek and gave voice to an earlier thought. “I should have married you, Keegan McKettrick.”

He smiled. “I tried to tell you,” he teased.

“Sit down so I can serve this lunch,” Florence blustered, uncomfortable with all the emotion. “I been slaving in that kitchen all morning long.”

Keegan chuckled, drew back the chair next to Psyche’s and sat.

Florence brought in a tureen of chilled avocado soup and a platter of biscuits first, then one of her complicated and patently delicious salads. In the meantime, Keegan popped the top on the bottle of vintage champagne chilling in the center of the table and poured some into Psyche’s flute, then his own.

“Ambrosia,” Psyche said after taking a sip.

Keegan raised an eyebrow. “Are you supposed to have alcohol with your medication?” he asked.

Psyche laughed and toasted him before raising the glass to her lips again. After swallowing, she retorted cheerfully, “The stuff could kill me.”

Keegan’s smile was gentle, but his eyes were moist. “That’s not funny,” he said.

Psyche reached out and clasped his hand, but just for a moment. She still had some pride, and it was bad enough letting her childhood sweetheart see her as an invalid without his feeling her bony fingers and tremulous grasp. “Yes, it is,” she argued. “And don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Keegan McKettrick. I could not bear that.”

After that, they ate. It gave them something to do, though Psyche suspected Keegan’s appetite was no better than her own, and he, like her, was just going through the motions. Neither of them would have hurt Florence’s feelings for the world.

“I have a favor to ask of you,” Psyche said when they’d both given up and pushed their plates away.

Keegan waited.

Psyche suppressed an urge to lay a hand to his cheek, to tell him not to look so sad, that everything would be all right. Instead, she stared at the peonies for a long time, until they blurred into a misty mass of feathery white.