McKettrick's Heart

“Psyche—”

She raised a hand. “Don’t,” she said. “Let me finish, please.”

He nodded.

“Teach Lucas to ride horseback, Keegan. Teach him not to be afraid. Teach him to play baseball and to—and to be a boy.”

“Let me bring him up, Psyche,” Keegan said, and she knew he meant it, bless his heart.

“He needs a mother,” Psyche insisted.

“You’re his mother,” Keegan replied. “That isn’t going to change.”

Psyche began to cry. Grabbed up a linen table napkin and swabbed at her wet face. “Molly’s going to adopt him,” she said. “As soon as I’m gone. I’ve already made all the preliminary arrangements.”

Keegan frowned. “Why her? Of all people, Psyche, why her?”

Psyche wouldn’t, couldn’t, look at him again. The linen napkin wafted to the stone floor of the porch, and she intertwined her fingers in her lap. “So you knew, then? About Molly and Thayer?”

“I knew,” Keegan confirmed, biting out the words.

“Something good came out of their affair, Keegan,” Psyche said, desperate to make him understand. Lucas would need him in the years to come. Her boy would need a man to help him grow, and Keegan McKettrick was the best one she knew.

She saw the realization dawn in his eyes. They widened, then narrowed.

“She’s his biological mother,” he rasped.

Psyche nodded. “Thayer came to me only a few hours after Lucas was born and told me everything. He begged me not to divorce him—said we could raise Lucas together, as our son, that Molly was willing to give him up. The simple truth is I wanted a child so badly that I agreed.”

“Oh, my God,” Keegan said on a long breath.

“I loved Lucas with all my heart from the first moment I saw him,” Psyche went on, because she was almost out of strength. “I’ve never regretted what I did, not for a moment. I want him to have a good life, Keegan, and you and I both know, that takes more than money. Please—tell me you’ll look after him… .”

Keegan slid out of his chair, crouched beside Psyche, took both her hands in his, held them with a gentleness that tore her heart like paper.

“I give you my word, Psyche,” he said, looking up at her.

She smiled through her tears. Pulled a hand free to stroke his sleek chestnut hair lightly. “McKettrick-true?” she asked.

“McKettrick-true,” he promised.

She sagged with relief and exhaustion, let herself cry against his strong shoulder. “I should have married you,” she said again.

He held her. “Let’s pretend you did,” he replied gruffly. “I’ll take care of your boy, Psyche—just as if we’d made him together.”

Psyche gave a shuddering sob. “Thank you,” she murmured.

As surely as if she’d had the room wired for sound, Florence appeared. “You’re all done in, Miss Psyche,” she said. “Time you rested for a spell.”

Psyche nodded, her head still resting on Keegan’s shoulder.

He stood, lifted Psyche into his arms again. Carried her—not to the elevator, but up the winding staircase at the front of the house. The one she’d come down, in a prom dress, so long ago. He’d been waiting shyly at the bottom that night, in a tuxedo, with a white peony corsage in his hand.

He mounted the second staircase, too, without so much as breathing hard. Florence followed at a slower pace.

When they reached the third floor Molly was standing in the corridor, watching with sad, enormous eyes.

Psyche felt Keegan tense.

Molly stepped aside.

“This way,” Florence said grimly.

Keegan carried Psyche into her room, laid her gently on the bed. Bent to kiss her forehead.

“Don’t forget your promise,” Psyche told him.

“McKettrick-true,” he reminded her. He curved a little finger, and Psyche hooked it with her own.

Then she smiled, closed her eyes and gave herself up to sleep.

* * *

MOLLY WAITED in the hallway outside Psyche’s room, longing to disappear but too stubborn to run.

After a few minutes Keegan came out. Stopped when he saw her standing there. Narrowed his gaze.

“Is she—is Psyche all right?” she asked.

He hesitated, took a step toward her, stopped again.

Molly stood her ground.

“Bad news for you,” Keegan said in a scathing undertone. “She’s still alive.”

Fury surged through Molly; trembling violently, she clenched her fists at her sides. If it hadn’t been for Lucas, and for poor Psyche, she might have launched herself at him, kicking and slugging.

Psyche’s door was closed from inside with an eloquent little snap.

Molly advanced, looked right up into Keegan’s outraged face. “Of all the reprehensible things to say!” she whispered.

He grasped her elbow and shuffled her down the hall, well away from Psyche’s door—and Lucas’s. “You want to hear ‘reprehensible,’ lady? Reprehensible is sleeping with another woman’s husband, then having the gall to move into her house and take over raising her son!”

He’s my son! Molly wanted to shout. But of course she didn’t. She simply stood there, drawing deep breaths and releasing them slowly until she knew she could address this impossible man without shrieking every word.

Keegan only made matters worse. Jabbing at Molly’s collarbone with the tip of one index finger, he growled, “Get ready for the fight of your life, Ms. Shields. Psyche believes she’s doing the right thing, the honorable thing, letting you adopt Lucas, because you’re his birth mother. But there’s one flaw in her logic—one she’s too sick and too weak and too damn desperate to see. If you’d really wanted that baby, you wouldn’t have signed off on him the way you did.”

Molly couldn’t have been more stunned if Keegan had struck her a physical blow. She felt light-headed, swayed and reached out to press a hand to the wall of the corridor, so she wouldn’t fall.

Keegan was relentless. “I’ll stop you any way I can,” he said. “You may pull off this—adoption—but I’m the executor of Psyche’s estate, and you won’t get a plugged nickel of that kid’s money, so if you’ve got a boyfriend waiting in some tropical hideaway for your ship to come in, honey, you’d better just write this con game off as a loss and get on the next bus out of town!”

That did it. Molly drew back her hand, and she would have slapped him, except that he caught her wrist in a hold that was just short of painful.

Tears of dizzying anger and frustration rushed to her eyes. “You—don’t—understand,” she said, and it was as if someone else had spoken the words, from a distance.

“I understand plenty,” Keegan snapped, flinging her hand free. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it, sugarplum. You’re in way over your head here. Go find another gravy train.”

Molly rallied. “You listen to me, you obnoxious bastard!” she choked out in a whisper that scraped at her throat like a wad of steel wool. “I’m not a crook, and I’m not some airheaded little bimbo you can bully onto a bus, either!”

He glared at her.

She glared back.

Both of them took deep breaths.

“This isn’t over,” he said.

“It sure as hell isn’t,” she replied.

He turned and stormed down the hall to the top of the stairs.

Molly just stood there, leaning against the wall, afraid her legs wouldn’t support her if she tried to walk.

When she felt able, she made her way back into the nursery.

Lucas slept, curled into a plump little ball in the middle of his crib, one thumb in his mouth. The windows were closed and latched, but a breeze ruffled his fine spun-gold hair just the same.

Wild thoughts rushed through Molly’s head, an onslaught, sweeping all logic and reason before them.

She could snatch him up in her arms, make a run for it.

Disappear.

Empty her bank accounts.

Start over somewhere, with a new name. Dye her hair, and Lucas’s, too. Call him Tommy or Johnny…

Stop, she thought.

She couldn’t do that to Lucas, or to Psyche.

She couldn’t do it to herself.

She moved to the windows, looked down at the street just in time to see Keegan standing beside his car, staring upward. She could have sworn their gazes collided—she actually felt the impact—but of course that was impossible. He’d have no way of knowing which room she was in.

She was certain of one thing, though.

He was going to make trouble.

Molly folded her arms and dug in her heels.

“Bring it on, Mr. McKettrick,” she said softly.

In the next moment, with a decisive, angry grace, he got into the Jag, slammed the door and drove away.

Molly waited a few moments, then slipped out of Lucas’s room and into her own. Her cell phone was on the dresser, charging.

She unplugged it, punched in a number.

“It’s about time you called,” her assistant, Joanie Barnes, said. “Where are you?”

“Indian Rock, Arizona,” Molly answered, suddenly weary, sagging onto the side of her bed. She’d told Joanie, and everyone else who inquired, that she was attending a writers’ conference in Sedona, trolling for promising new authors. Only one person in L.A. knew the truth, and that was her dad.

“You didn’t make plane or hotel reservations,” Joanie accused. “I know, because I checked. And Fred Ettington said he drove you to the bus station.”

Molly sighed, pushed back her hair. Fred ran a car service, and she kept him on retainer to ferry important clients and editors to and fro when they were in L.A. on business. Desperate to get to Arizona and see Lucas, she’d called Fred out of habit, never thinking that he might blab.

Given a do-over, she’d take a taxi.

“Atmosphere,” she said brightly.

“What?” Joanie asked.

“The bus. I rode it for atmosphere.”

“You can’t beat a bus for that,” Joanie remarked sarcastically. “And what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m writing a book,” Molly lied.

“Oh,” Joanie said, patently unconvinced and making no effort to disguise the fact. “Right.”

“How are things going at the office? Any messages?”

“Only about a thousand,” Joanie retorted. “Godridge didn’t make the bestseller lists, and he’s threatening to sign with some New York agent. And then there’s Davis. He’s called about fifty times, frantic because he keeps getting your voice mail.”

Molly closed her eyes. Denby Godridge—“God” for short, at least around the office—was a grizzled old Pulitzer Prize winner with a major attitude and steadily declining book sales. She could handle him, though she didn’t relish the prospect. Davis Jerritt was another client—and another matter. His horror-suspense novels were runaway bestsellers, and the work in progress featured a psychotic stalker. A former actor, Dave liked to get into character when he was writing, and Molly had been selected to play the stalkee.

“Tell him I’m dead,” she said.

“Davis or God?” Joanie quipped.

Molly sighed again. “Look—I can’t explain right now, but there are some things I have to handle, so I’m going to be out of the loop for a while.” Like, forever. She paused, searching for words, and finally settled on a partial truth, strictly as a last resort. “I think I might need a lawyer.”

Chapter 3

UNTIL HE DROVE INTO TOWN the next morning and saw the carnival setting up in the vacant lot behind the supermarket, Keegan had forgotten, first, that it was Saturday and, second, that it was the Fourth of July. Later there would be a community picnic and barbecue at the park, and when it got dark enough, the fireworks would begin.

Muttering, he reached for his cell phone and speed-dialed Shelley’s number in Flagstaff. He’d promised to call Devon the night before, so they could make plans to spend the weekend together in the Triple M, but because of the situation with Psyche and Molly Shields, he’d neglected to do it.

“Hi, Dad,” Devon said eagerly.

“Hi, babe,” Keegan replied, pulling over to the side of the road, across from Echo’s Books and Gifts and the Curl and Twirl, so he could concentrate on the conversation with his daughter. “Got your bags packed? I can be there in forty-five minutes.”

There was short, pulsing silence. Then, “Mom said you forgot me. That’s why you didn’t call.”

Keegan grasped the steering wheel tightly with his free hand. “I blew it big-time, Devon,” he replied, “and I’m sorry. But you’re my best girl, and I could never forget you. I’ll explain on the drive down here from Flag, okay?”

“Okay,” Devon answered, brightening a little.

“On my way,” Keegan said.

“I’ll be waiting,” Devon promised.

And she was. Long-legged and gangly, with blondish-brown hair reaching to the middle of her back and huge brown eyes, she sat on the steps in the portico at Shelley’s, an overnight bag and a giant pink teddy bear beside her.

Seeing Keegan pull up, she leaped to her feet and snatched up the bag and the bear to hustle toward his car.

Behind her the front door opened, and Shelley stepped out. She was a beautiful woman, and someday Devon would look just like her. A one-time flight attendant for an upscale charter jet outfit, as well as a former Playboy centerfold, Shelley had a face and body that were categorically perfect. Unfortunately, her personality wasn’t.

Shit, Keegan thought. He’d hoped to avoid his ex-wife.

Hell, he’d been trying to do that since about an hour after he married her.

He got out of the car, came around to meet Shelley while Devon stowed her gear in the backseat of the Jag, then jumped in on the passenger side up front to buckle her seat belt.

“She waited all evening for you to call,” Shelley said. She was wearing a skimpy tank top and jean shorts with frayed hems—designer stuff, probably, made to look as though it came from a discount store.

Keegan thrust out a sigh. “You could have called me, you know.”

“It’s not my job to monitor your schedule,” Shelley retorted.

Conscious of Devon watching them through the windshield, Keegan kept his temper. “I should have called,” he said tersely. “I didn’t. Shoot me.”

Shelley smiled bitterly. “Oh, I’d love to shoot you, Keegan. If only there weren’t that troublesome little matter of prison, I probably would.”

Keegan unclamped his back molars by an act of will. “Sucks to be you,” he said.

“You wish,” she retorted. “Thanks to our divorce settlement, and Rory, it’s really pretty excellent to be me.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Keegan told her.

She grinned. “No, you’re not,” she countered.

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

“Bite me, Keegan.”

“That’s Rory’s job, thank God.”

Shelley’s saucy little smirk faded to a pout. “Rory and I want to live in Paris,” she said. “I surfed the internet and found a wonderful boarding school for Devon.”

It wasn’t the first time Shelley had mentioned moving to Paris, but the boarding school was a new element. “You and Rory can go live in Riyadh, for all I care,” Keegan told her. “But you’re not taking my daughter out of the U.S. Period.”

“She’s not your daughter,” Shelley said.

Keegan felt nothing for Shelley, but the words struck his solar plexus like a ramrod, just the same. He stole a glance in Devon’s direction. It would have been impossible for her to overhear, but for all he knew, the kid read lips. Thank God she was smiling blissfully at the prospect of a weekend on the Triple M.

“We were legally married when Devon was born,” he said evenly. “Unless you want to go on TV and let Maury Povich announce the results of a DNA test to the nation, you’re up shit creek and the paddle’s miles downstream.”

Shelley glared.

“I guess Rory could adopt her,” Keegan went on, having no intention of letting that happen while he still had a pulse, “but it would mean the end of the child support, wouldn’t it?”

“I freaking hate you, Keegan McKettrick.”

He chucked her chin, because he knew it would piss her off. “Right back at you, kiddo,” he said. Another glance at Devon told him the kid was worried. He smiled at her, then gave Shelley a jaunty wave and turned his back on her.

“Fuck you, Keegan,” Shelley told him.

He faced her again, smiled warmly, for Devon’s sake, and kept his voice low. “We might still be married,” he said, “if you’d limited yourself to that. Sleeping with me, I mean. But that would have cramped your style, wouldn’t it, Shell?”

“Like you were so perfect,” Shelley challenged, but she’d pulled in her horns a little.

“Nice talking to you,” he said. Then he opened the door on the driver’s side and slipped behind the wheel.

Shelley stood watching from the portico as they drove away, her face like a gathering storm.

“I don’t want to go to Paris,” Devon told him.

Startled, Keegan gave her a sidelong glance. Maybe she’d heard all or part of his conversation with Shelley after all. God, he hoped not.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

They pulled out onto a quiet, tree-lined street, in one of the best neighborhoods in Flagstaff. Despite her coffee-tea-or-me experience with the airline and the centerfold, Shelley probably would have been renting a single-wide in some trailer park if it hadn’t been for him. She had the financial instincts of a crack addict.

“I can’t speak French,” Devon told him.

He reached across to squeeze her shoulder, found it stiff with tension. “You’re not going to France,” he said.

“Mom says it’s romantic. Paris, I mean. She gets all dreamy when she talks about it. She and Rory are going to hold hands in the rain.”

Keegan suppressed a sigh. Rory worked as a personal trainer. Shelley didn’t work at all. If she and Rory got married, there would be no more alimony, and she’d have to sell the fancy house and split the proceeds with her pesky ex, settlement notwithstanding.

All of which meant he wouldn’t be shopping for a wedding gift anytime soon. Damn it.

“I’ve been thinking, Dev,” he said, stepping carefully into a delicate subject. “How would you feel about coming to live with me on the ranch? Permanently, I mean?”

“Mom won’t let me,” Devon answered, and out of the corner of his eye Keegan saw her shrink in on herself, shoulders stooped, chin lowered to rest in the pink fluff on top of the teddy bear’s head. She had a death grip on the stuffed animal, both arms locked around it. “She needs the child support.”

Keegan’s stomach clenched like a fist. “She told you that?”

“I heard her and Rory talking.”

Silently Keegan cursed his ex-wife and her muscle-brained boyfriend. “She loves you, sweetheart. You know that.”

Devon shrugged. “Whatever.” After a short silence, she added, “They fight a lot.”

It was all Keegan could do not to pull a U-turn in the middle of the street, speed back to the house and confront Shelley, back-to-the-wall style. “Is that right?” he asked carefully. Moderately.

Inside, he seethed.

He’d talked to Travis Reid, who was his attorney as well as a friend, about suing Shelley for full custody. Travis figured things would get ugly if he did, and most of the fallout would come down on Devon.

“About money,” Devon went on, mercifully oblivious to the turmoil going on inside the man she believed to be her father. “That’s mostly what they fight about. Rory wants to get married, but Mom says they’ll be broke if they do.”

Keegan’s sinuses burned, and the backs of his eyes stung. He drew a deep breath. “You like this Rory yahoo?”

Another shrug of shoulders too small to carry the burden of two parents who despised each other, plus a boyfriend. “He’s all right,” Devon said.

“You aren’t going to any boarding school in Paris,” Keegan told her. It wasn’t much in the way of consolation, but it was all he had to give at the moment.

“You promise?”

“As God is my witness,” Keegan said.

Devon quirked a grin. “Scarlett O’Hara said that in Gone with the Wind.”

“Okay.” Honesty time—the kid had enough deception to deal with. “I didn’t see the movie.”

“There’s a book, Dad.” She imparted this information gently.

“I know that, shortstop.”

“Did you read it?”

He laughed. God, it felt good to laugh. How long had it been?

“Is there a quiz?”

Devon released her grasp on the bear long enough to slug him affectionately on the upper arm. “No, silly,” she said. Then, in that confounding way of females, heading full steam in one emotional direction and suddenly hairpinning into a one-eighty, her eyes filled with tears. “How come you don’t like Mom?”

For the second time that day Keegan pulled off onto the side of the road. He laid both hands on the wheel, deliberately splayed his fingers to keep from making fists; any reference to Shelley had that effect on him, and it was time he got the hell over it. “We’ve discussed this before, Dev,” he said. “When people get divorced, they tend to be mad about it for a while.”

“You and Mom were mad before you got divorced,” Devon pointed out.

Keegan sighed. It was true. He’d been twenty-four when he married Shelley—stupid and horny, on the outs with Psyche. Out to prove God knew what.

“I’m sorry, Dev,” he said. “I’m really sorry for everything we put you through.”

“People shouldn’t get married if they don’t like each other.”

For some strange reason, Molly Shields flashed into his mind. “You’re right,” Keegan replied. “They should like each other first. Be friends.”

“Did Uncle Jesse like Cheyenne?”

Keegan considered. “I think he did.”

“Even when they first met?”

“They had some rocky times, but, yeah, I think they were friends.”

“Before they fell in love?”

“Before they fell in love.”

“Uncle Rance and Emma, too?”

A bleak sensation passed through Keegan’s spirit, cold and hollow. “Them, too,” he said.

Devon beamed. “So you just have to find some woman you like, and be sure you’re friends, and then you can get married.”

“It’s not that simple, Dev.”

“Sure it is,” she said.

“You’d like that? If I got married again?”

“If she was nice to me, like Emma is to Rianna and Maeve. They like her a lot. She lets them help in the bookstore, just like they were grown-ups. And they get to try on her shoes, too. She has lots of shoes.”

“So does your mom,” Keegan suggested, at a loss.

“She won’t let me try them on, though,” Devon said.

“There’s something to be said for wearing your own,” Keegan reasoned, baffled. “Isn’t there?”

“It’s not as much fun,” Devon explained. “How many ten-year-olds do you know with high heels?”

“You’re too young for high heels.”

Devon rolled her eyes. “Dad, you’re such a guy.”

He grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “And you’re stuck with me for the duration, kid. Furthermore, I don’t own a single pair of high heels.”

She laughed, and the sound rang in the confines of that car like the peal of a bell from some country church steeple.

Keegan shifted the Jag back into gear, checked the rearview and pulled out onto the road again. “You hungry?”

“Starved,” Devon said, sucking in her cheeks in a comical effort to look emaciated. “Mom’s a terrible cook, and Rory won’t eat anything but trail mix.”

“I guess I saved you from a terrible fate—breakfasting at Casa de Idiot.”

Devon giggled again, and Keegan wondered why it made his vision blur for a moment.

They stopped at a pancake house, stuffed themselves with waffles. Keegan would have preferred to keep the conversation light, but he’d promised to explain why he hadn’t called Devon the night before, as agreed, and she pressed the issue.

He told her about Psyche. How they’d been friends since they were little kids, and now she was really sick. He’d gone to visit Psyche, he told Devon, and he’d been so upset when he left her, he hadn’t been able to think of much else.